No topics left in a meeting with a customer

Question

I'm a software developer. We (our CEO, our project manager and me) currently had a two day project meeting with a client (their CEO, their project manager and two power users).

On the second day the project managers and CEOs had to discuss some organizational stuff, where the user and I were not needed. So they proposed that we do some hands-on testing to improve usability details.

They thought that the meeting of the managers would take about one and a half hours, but in the end took three hours.

The hands-on was really productive and helpful for the user and me for about two hours, but then we ran out of topics. So we three were sitting in front of my PC for an hour, mostly in uncomfortable silence. We started talking about things like holidays and so on.I did not limit myself to any fixed schedule or topic. We covered issues in the current test version of the product, all questions I had regarding the next phase and additional features for current and upcoming parts. There were no topics left I could think of. But as neither me nor them are big small-talkers this felt really awkward.

How could I've handled the situation, what do you do in similar situations?

Answer 1

In addition to the comments above, you are now finding out that small talk is a useful skill.

I suggest picking one or two safe topics - not religion or politics - and practice getting into conversations about them with friends and colleagues until doing so no longer feels at all uncomfortable.

I'm English, so for me the weather is the default small talk subject. The weather has to do something that can be discussed. If it is neither too hot nor too cold, too wet nor too dry, talk about how nice it is. It either prevents or permits taking a walk outside the building, which fits in nicely with taking a short walk-around break.

Of course, any time you think of something to tell or ask the users about the product, switch back to that. The objective of the small talk is to free up your mind to find other relevant material to discuss.

Answer 2

Since you had a firm fixed lunch time and a gap that needed to be filled, see if there are any topics you planned on discussing that afternoon or later in other meetings that could be discussed then. If you could not because critical attendees were in the other meeting then do a preview of what will be covered in the afternoon. If you can move even some of the discussion that would result from the afternoon topics/meetings to that morning it would help mitigate other portions of the day running long or could result in the last meeting ending early, and who does not like meetings that end early?

If you have absolutely nothing to fill it with, then as Brandin said in the comments take a break.

Answer 3

"It looks like we're done early, so unless there's something you'd like to bring up I'll close up now and return the remaining time for you to to other things with. See you (whenever the next meeting is)!"

Answer 4

Since as you said, the first two hours were productive it is clear that there would be subjects adjacent to what you covered that could have been discussed. For example you could have discussed some other aspects of the product that the user may have found interesting such as design tradeoffs that you had to make. Similarly you could have asked the user what other features they would like to see in the product.

I have to say that you will go a lot further in what you do if you can stretch yourself beyond what the CEO and project managers told you to do. The situation was only awkward because you let it be so.

Answer 5

Outside of cultivating the ability to do small talk as was mentioned, you can also spend some time reviewing what you did and the findings that you made. Taking some time to sum up and make sure everyone is on the same page is usually time well spent.