Be Careful Of These Marketing Fallacies That Prevent Respectful Trading
It’s A Two Way Street
These psychological thinking traps are quite common in all of life’s situations and you may or may not be prone to any of them. The reality is that both marketers and customers can fall into these unhelpful patterns of thought which fail to reach their conclusion most of the time. This can be frustrating, time-consuming, and end up damaging our reputation as good examples and knowledgeable experts. If we’re the customer, we can find ourselves working against our own best interest by not giving the business transaction a level field. When we are the ones who are not grasping the full reality, it never tips in our favour. Here we will look at a few common fallacies that should take a good cloth to all of us and clean our perspectives a little.
Heaven’s Reward
You don’t deserve the bad things, you’re a good person, and God is looking after you. This, sadly, is not how it works. We can have a healthy faith in God, we can know in our core that some kind of consciousness prevails within the fabric of our reality, and we can have faith that we are somehow a little part of this. However, as we all know, bad things happen a lot. Very bad things happen, for you to think that God is protecting you from something bad, can you look in the eyes of the cancerous child and say with all honesty, that God must have been upset with you? Of course not, that would be a horrible and hurtful thing to say. You’d likely be asked to leave and never come back. This fallacy prevents us from taking the steps that ensure success, we expect it to fall into our hands.
I Know And You Don’t
Being right all the time is something we can fall into, especially if we are right nearly all the time. As far as our expertise goes, we may have the upper hand. There are many more things happening outside of this field, though, and for you to take that same confidence to this wider picture is where wrong decisions can be made. You’re not right all the time, and often our minds can draw a picture and fill in the blanks to such an excellent degree that we are certain we are right. If new information is given that changes this picture, let go of the picture. We must allow people to fill in the gaps for us and this means listening to them and accepting that our clever idea was perhaps not accurate.
Pigeon Holing
We love order and shortcut systems. We, therefore, assign emotionally relevant tags to certain things that help us draw a bigger picture at just that one element. This is called heuristic thinking. It’s natural for us, and in a world of so many things, it’s really helpful. When something is in our direct attention, though, heuristic thinking is unhelpful. It can prevent us from listening and cause us to make unhelpful and hurtful snap judgements. We need to snap the autopilot off and become present with the conversation or the exchange. Otherwise, we may end up being tricked or tricking ourselves into passing up on something we need.
The Puppet Master
We think that we can change their mind if only we can frame the situation differently. This form of persuasion might seem like a good idea if we’re trying to sell something. When someone clearly isn’t right for the sale, we can waste a lot of time with them for no good end. They feel manipulated and we feel frustrated. Neither is something good to take home to. Just let go of the people who are not right for you, or your efforts will be wasted on them. If they’re going to change their mind, they’ll do it on their own terms and come back to you.
You Should, You Have To, You Must
Like the puppet master fallacy, the control fallacy implies that you are somehow in charge of another person’s mind. It’s passive-aggressive and is using reason to make sure a person does what you want them to. The reality is the only thing we need, and if they do not want to go forward then you need to prevent yourself from making pushy statements. Pleading from a position of authority gives your brand a nasty look. The truth is that this is a free society and provided something is not illegal, we can do what we like and what we can afford to do.
Polarised Mindset
Thinking in absolutes and extremities means that we assign all of the equation to ourselves or the other person. We personalise everything and make the issue a matter of great importance to us. The results appear catastrophic or heroic depending on how they come back so we put our heart and soul into it in order to make the experience as epic as possible. Our thinking is based on logical stances that define our character virtues by the manner of our behaviour, we are highly principled and ensure everything we do has some kind of personal relevance to our agenda. It’s all black or white. This is a world of fantasy and screenplay. The real world is a multitude of situations and you’re a little part of the ones that present to you. Remember your place and put everything in a perspective that sees the whole.
