Individual biases influence on both sides of a transaction – the buying side and the selling side.

Today I will look primarily at the selling side of a transaction and how our individual biases tend to make a mess in a marketing activity.

A simple example could be the way our website should be organised. Depending on the kind of dispensation in the marketing team you could have a staid looking website or a very aggressive looking website. There is nothing wrong in either of these extremes or even in something in-between. The point that needs to be kept in mind is about – who is the customer you are targeting.

If you are targeting a mature audience and you present a staid looking website which is very functional , it might work very well. On the other hand a startup might create a very good user interface for the younger generation but the older generation is not able to get their arms around it.

Since we think the world sees everything the way we see something, these challenges arise. The way we see things is a function of our exposure, our biases, our mindset and our capabilities.

I have a personal bias against doing news paper advertisements. Its just my belief that our kind of business does not have a mass appeal and therefore a newspaper is not the best place to spend money. As a matter of fact you would have noticed this bias in some of the posts that I have put out earlier. Having said that this bias could also be limiting our growth because we have never tried to see its proof.

Another place I see this happening very frequently is summarily dismissing a segment of the market that may not buy. Again I will give my examples so that you know none of this is theoretical. Today itself I had one interaction where I was told that the hospitals are investing a lot of money in IT especially after Covid. I have had this personal bias that hospitals invest in medical equipment, in faciliies but only invest the basic minimum in IT and therefore we have not invested in that area.

Biases happen because of our experiences, so there’s nothing wrong, as long as we are willing to question them from time to time, it should not become an ego issue, otherwise we can lose on lots of opportunities.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!