This Is Marketing: You Cant Be Seen Until You Learn to See

Why don’t people choose you?
Here’s another difficult exercise, one that stretches the empathy muscle of a
typical marketer:
Those people who don’t buy from you, the ones who don’t take your
calls, who sneer at your innovations, who happily buy from a competitor
even if they know you exist . . . those people . . .
Why are they right?
Why are the people who don’t choose you correct in their decision to not
choose you?

---

If you’ve worked hard, it’s tempting to denigrate their judgment, to
question their values, and assume that these folks are either ill-informed,
selfish, or simply wrongheaded.
Put that aside for a moment and find the empathy to fill in this sentence:
“For people who want what you want (____) and believe what you believe
(____), your choice of ____ is exactly correct.”
Because it is.
People are quite likely to make perfectly rational decisions based on
what they see, what they believe, and what they want.
If you’re a career coach, then explain why people who don’t hire a coach
have made a smart decision. Or explain why people who are using someone
else to coach them have done something that makes sense for them.
Years ago, I went to a cooking class that a friend had bought me as a gift.
The chef was teaching everyone to make a dish that used ground veal. “Any
questions?” he asked. One student had the temerity to raise his hand and
ask, “Is it okay to make this dish with ground turkey instead?”
In a thick accent, the chef sneered, “You could . . . if you wanted it to
taste like dirt.”
Of course, they were both right.
For the student, the availability, health benefits, or moral imperatives
associated with choosing turkey over veal might mean that he cared more
about the story than he did about matching the taste profile that was on
offer. For the teacher, for whom the Proustian memory of this dish was
everything, the idea of substitutions disrespected the effort he was putting
into his work.
That’s what right means in this case. Based on who they are and what
they want and what they know, everyone is right. Every time.
When we find the empathy to say, “I’m sorry, this isn’t for you, here’s
the phone number of my competitor,” then we also find the freedom to do
work that matters.

---