1. The mindset that customers are not smart. They may well not be. 50% of all humans on earth have average or below average intelligence, statistically. If you sell a Mensa study guide then your target customer is probably smarter than you. If you sell helmets for daily wear, well you might be smarter than your target customer. That’s irrelevant. Whether you customer is buying a helmet to safely walk to the grocery store or if they are trying to figure out cold fusion, they don’t think they are dumb. You hear it in offices everywhere all the time, sometimes it’s just letting off steam, and maybe that’s okay, but if the general idea of “our customers are idiots” begins seeping into how you market, how you talk on the phone, or anything else you do, you are in trouble as a business. Here’s the thing, even if they are dumb they are not so dumb that they don’t know when someone else is treating them like an idiot, and it is just as often the case that the business is missing the point as it is the customer missing it. Assume your customer is smart. Sell to the smart customer. Even if the dumb customers don’t get it, they’ll have a good impression on some undefined level. Meanwhile treating them all like idiots will just piss off the idiots without knowing why and piss off the smart customers, and they’ll know exactly why.
2. The customer is always right. The customer is right about half the time, like everyone else. While “the customer is always right” is a wonderfully clever slogan, it can be detrimental to your staff, to your brand image, and to the bottom line. Here’s when the customer is wrong almost all of the time: 1. When they are being asses to your employees. One customer’s satisfaction is not worth all the good a good employee can do over years of employment. Don’t worry too much about that customer if everyone else is happy and they are just being difficult. On the other hand though, objectively look at the merits of a complaint, just don’t go in with the assumption that this random person happens to be right because they happen to be a customer. 2. When they are giving you marketing or product advice. One of the most helpful tools for marketing or branding, or even deciding on a new service or product, can be focus groups, where you take the opinions of random customers. But only when the results are being evaluated by a professional. Because when customers are in a focus group they are not in the customer mindset, now they are in a business mindset or an advertising mindset which is not who you are probably trying to sell to and it is not a roll they have experience with. If you do not know how to interpret the results of a survey or a focus group, these tools will almost always do more harm than good.
3. Someone else is doing it so… Dressed in exciting graphics and business catch phrases, a lot of really, really bad marketing ideas can look pretty good. Don’t fall for it. See what works by testing it yourself.
4. Selling and marketing are the same thing. Selling is getting someone to buy something. Marketing is getting someone to want to buy something. If you have good marketing you don’t ever have to sell anything ever again. On the other hand a good salesperson can make your business a lot of money. Just don’t group these things together. You are talking to a different person when you are marketing than when you are selling (even if it is the same person in a different mindset).
5. Customers care about what my business is doing. They really don’t. Are you number 1? It’s a boring number. Do you have more customers than some other business? Customers root for the underdog. Are you growing fast? Customers assume that means you won’t have time to talk to them if they call you. The only time these self-aggrandizing statistics might be relevant (which by the way every business says all of this stuff, every business, and so customers assume it’s all bogus anyway) is while building trust maybe in places like your About Section, and you need to have something to back these statements up or you’re wasting your time even mentioning it.