Selling the Invisible: a field Guide to Modern Marketing \(Biz Books to Go\) pdfdrive com

Have a healthy distrust of what experience has taught you.

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The Fallacy of Confidence
You know several things about your business:
“Our customers buy on price.
“Telemarketing does not work with this audience. “Our clients won’t pay for
higher quality, even if we could achieve it.”
You know things like these. Or do you?
You hear similar sacred truths in every company. Often, these sacred truths
start with someone—we’ll call him Will—as a mere opinion. Will then starts
seeing everything in light of his opinion. He leaps on any evidence that supports
his opinion and ignores all contrary evidence. Before long, Will’s opinion has
become his conviction, which he conveys to other employees. Will’s apostles,
impressed by his reputation and conviction, spread Will’s faith further. Soon,
Will’s mere opinion has become a company-wide dogma.
But many of these so-called truths are false. Just like many of your truths
about your service.
This sobering fact—that you, Will, and I are wrong far more often than we
know—has been suggested by dozens of studies that test people on subjects on
which they consider themselves authorities. The people tested answer a series of
questions, and then answer this question about each answer: “From one to a
hundred percent, how certain are you about this answer?”
What happens?
On the answers of which people say they are totally—100 percent—certain,
they are right only 85 percent of the time.
In other words, 15 percent of the time you think you are absolutely certain
you are absolutely wrong.
In most services, that 15 percent error—those wrong but widespread
assumptions that everyone in the company is making—is the most leverageable
part of your business. Find it, and attack it.
If you are prone to being certain, copy Jay Chiat. The head of Chiat Day, the
ad agency behind many of America’s most conspicuous advertisements, Chiat
carries a note in his pocket. The note reminds him that whenever he is in an
argument he should remember the note’s three words:
Maybe he’s right.
Maybe others are right and you’re wrong—even if you are certain you’re
right. These tests, which demonstrate the fallacy of confidence (“the
overconfidence bias,” as it is called by psychologists), also tell you not to be
overwhelmed by other people’s total convictions. In fact, many businesses

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unwittingly follow the Path of Greatest Conviction; they consistently do
whatever the most convinced person argues they should do.
So those Question Authority bumper stickers offer good advice. Even when
you or someone else feels certain, you should question that authority.
Especially your own.