I absolutely recognise this selling behaviour – I once watched withe fascination as a well-known VLE vendor managed to sell their “enterprise” VLE into my institution despite it having been rejected by the academics and by the techies (including me). Their technicque was as you describe – keep getting meetings until you manage to get one where the academics and techies are excluded. They did this so successfully that a very Senior Bloke at the university comfided in me that the deal had been successful because “we managed to keep the academics out of it”….