by Mattias Sjovall
Stockholm, 2018
Since we have already concluded that the customer is a human being, we should extend this to describe the customer in yet another way, namely as a human being with two significant and important constituent parts.
Rational and emotional impact in the context of decision making.
There are many reasons why it is incredibly useful to be aware of this when interacting with people.
Initially we can address the concept of the left and right halves of the brain. The left half of the brain typically stands for words, numbers, logic, analysis, structure and step-by-step thinking. And the right part of the brain stands for imagination, colors, form, the now, intuition and thinking of many things at the same time. We instinctively want to believe that most decision making is done by the left part of the brain but researchers have increasingly argued that it might not be that simple and that gut feeling might have a greater impact on decisions than we previously thought.
In a world in which the customer is truly in the center of the business universe it is helpful to be reminded of this, since the rational and hard-core arguments are not automatically and at all times the most important focus when communicating with a customer. All the way back to the 17th century we have been living in an over-dimensioned view of rationalism as the ruling factor. Historically and philosophically, this was in many ways driven by the school of the famous philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) and embraced by Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716). Eventually other aspects were considered through the philosophical direction of phenomenology, driven by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and inspired rational thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980).
Today there are arguments proposing that the rational parts are only the ratifications or provide the rational reasons for a decision, and that the decision is actually founded in emotions. Most probably, a combination. At least, that is my gut feeling.
In the brain, we also find the strong reward system driving human behavior decisively to wanting to do certain activities in order to, in the end, receive a reward, a dopamine kick. There are many use cases where this system is misused and drives illness because being unbalanced addicted to certain behaviors. This is well known in the commercial industries, especially the Retail sectors where you want to provide the dopamine-kick integrated into the buying process. In aspects of teaching and education this could be used in order ensure the student receives rewards and energy during the learning journey (and curve). It could be as easy as just to confirming that the student has understood the topic well, or just acknowledging the student by seeing and respecting the student’s situation.
The point is, by being interested in the human being, the brain, the driving forces and behaviors, you can adapt and become a bet- ter teacher, sales rep, consultant or marketing manager. Become interested in the tones behind the chords when interacting with real people.