Marketing Tip (??!): Suspend Judgement

[Vinsomelosesome]

"Suspend judgement", I've been told over and over again. Suspend judgement until your prospect/customer sums up a problem/feedback. Question is: How?

Years of evolution has seen to it that we judge ASAP to get ourselves out of sticky situations. So we see a stick on the road resembling a snake, we jump. Its only later that we realize it was a stick and not a snake. Don't you think we judge our customers because we are scared that they will end up killing our time, same as the "snake" would have killed us had we not jumped in time? Here comes the client to waste my time and (blink) here I am interrupting his line of thought. Job done! I am safe and so is my time.

How much would we listen to if we let every speaker "sum up" without interrupting him? And how much time would all this effective "listening" end up consuming? How effective will we be (zzzzzz) after the drab way most people present their problems?

Yet every marketer worth his salt tells us to "suspend judgement". Good for those consultants who charge by the hour. But for mere mortals like me its a bad idea.

I wonder how a self serving opinionated fool like me got into marketing. I gather it all started when I was at the receiving end of a prank. Someone had put a sign on a road saying "diversion". This diversion led to a dead end and about 20 motorists fell for the prankster without questioning. I was 16 and open to ideas of sin.

My warped mind decided that in order to make people buy a brand or a prank, what counts is a perception of authority. Sound like you have authority and it becomes your attribute (at least from a customer's perspective).

At a time when clients want me to suspend judgement, I am opionated. Does that mean I do not listen to my clients? Of course I do! I mean my clients think I do. Gigabytes of data reach me. But data is like humans. Torture it enough and it will say what you want it to.

After that its a cruise to close. The data was from your client/prospect. You spend time to torture it and do as you decree. The client had a solution based on his needs. You had a client willing to spend for your data torture skills and "learned" recommendation.

Who's evaluating anyway? Do you evaluate your buying decisions post purchase? Or do you back those decisions to prove how brilliant are the choices you make?

The act of suspending judgement = lack of agression. Far as I know one human being cannot be a good listener as well as an agressive seller both at the same time. Neither can an organization. There are dangers in reacting too slow. Dangers in waiting for a prospect to "sum up". A more agressive seller will upstage you. Moreover, suspending judgement is not human nature. Its anti-evolutionary.

Fight or flight is a basic human reflex. One cannot suspend judgement to wait for a "sum up" before deciding on which path to take.

So lets find out ways to market without doing the suspension thing. Any takers?