Page 53 - Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing - PDFDrive.com

experience in life is unique. Anytime that we apply the apparent lessons of one
experience to another one, we tend to assume that the two experiences are
essentially identical.

They never are.
Don’t look to experts for all your answers. There a re no answers, only
informed opinions.

The Fallacy of Authority

Chances are, your organization runs on the Alpha Principle. Ideas do not follow
the good thinking in an organization; ideas follow the power.

Most organizations work like the groups of apes from which we evolved. The
alphas dictate what the group does and thinks.

But are alphas better at decision making? Not necessarily. Alphas are just
better at getting and keeping power. In most organizations, in fact, alphas are the
people who just look and sound like they should have the power (a conclusion
suggested by several studies that show that height, not business school
performance, is the strongest predictor of an MBA’s starting salary).

If your smart people don’t kill your ideas, chances are the alphas will.
If you’re an alpha, learn to shut up. Imitate Ben Taylor, the alpha who runs
the Executrain franchise in Minnesota, often the most successful of America’s
very successful Executrain franchises. When asked to explain his success,
Taylor’s first response is “I listen.”
The bumper stickers are right: Question Authority. Question alphas.

The Fallacy of Common Sense

A client once told me that “doing a marketing plan is simple. It’s just common
sense.”

Unfortunately, common sense is not that common.* What seems common, in
fact, is people acting contrary to their own experience—recall again those people
who accepted VALs in the 1980s. Or worse, people act against their obvious
self-interest—a human habit that inspired an entire book, The Marc h of Folly,
by historian Barbara Tuchman. As famous examples, Tuchman cites Montezuma
surrendering to an Aztec army the size of your high school PE class, and the
Trojans deciding, “Hey, the Greeks left this huge horse behind. Let’s haul it back