Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell is a fascinating book and has some application to marketing in general and library marketing in particular.

Very briefly, it's about "micro-slicing" -- the way that we take in information, usually visual information, and make a gut-level decision about it in less than a few seconds.

What we call our instinct is more accurately termed the lessons we've learned that are filed away in our subconscious.  Sometimes we have access to them and sometimes we don't:  an example is the tennis expert who can't tell you why it is that he knows a tennis player is going to serve a fault even before he's hit the ball.  People who have the most access, generally, are experts.  Blink is about those split-second decisions:  their genius and their limitations.

For marketers, Gladwell has a lot of lessons.  Context matters:  a better-tasting product may sell less if it's packaging is off-putting.

Surveyers take note:  Experts can tell you why a product is superior or inferior or pleasing or not.  Non-experts can't tell you that:  they can really only tell you if they like it.  If you press them, they will struggle to come up with reasons for their decisions that may be false .. and they may change their choice to align with the false criteria they made up to justify their original choice.

Furthermore, Gladwell shows us that we'll sell more jam if we have 3 flavors than if we have 32.  Jam .. and many other products .. are an appealing product that we often buy on impulse.  Impulse drives us to make the purchase.  If we have to spend too much time trying to figure out which flavor we want to buy, the impulse will buy and it will actually be easier for us not to buy.

So .. decision-making work can kill the sale.

Gladwell also interviews a hugely successful car salesman who reports that his philosophy is not to pre-judge his potential customers.  As a result he gets more business and enthusiastic customers who give him lots of referrals -- ensuring that he'll go right on being the most successful car salesman.  This is important:  pre-judging is a huge part of the car sales business.  But this guy doesn't do that and he's hugely successful.

Not pre-judging our customers can help us, ultimately, get more business.  We have to make judgments of some kind in order to function, but that, ideally, should be tempered with an attempt at keeping an open mind that can help us discover and meet the needs of our customers.