Customers lie
Customers, users, clients; call them what you will, they lie. They may not be intending to, and only a few may actually be trying to swindle you, but they do. Ask a user about your site or product and he/she’ll lie to you. Ask a client about their long-term goals with a project and they’ll tell you a blatant untruth. We live in a society where honesty is prized as one of the highest virtues yet other things are prized even more, like saving face, fitting in and being nice.
Common types of lies
- I like your product and I will surely use it
- This project is our top priority
- I can’t afford it right now but…
- I understand
- Just go ahead and do what you think is best
I like your product…
…but I’m not using it.
I was once interviewed by a research firm about a new product; a water-cooker which boils water really quickly and filters it. I’m quite sensitive to the taste of unfiltered water. I’m not one of those people who believe it actually helps any but I drink fruit juice or filtered water because tap water simply tastes bad to me. Many brands of bottled water are actually worse, to me. It’s those “natural” minerals and stuff I guess. Anyway, I like my water as close to pure H2O as I can get it. Or squeezed from some fruit. Tea and Coffee also benefit immensely from using filtered water, and if you think I’m weird about water you’ll think I’m positively deranged regarding tea and coffee.
So I was quite taken with the idea and I answered that I would surely buy one.
It’s been over a year and I still haven’t.
Liking a product, having a use for it and being able to afford it does not equate to buying it.
But consumers like to hedge their bets. If something appeals to them, and you make them feel like they have a say in whether it goes to market or not, they’ll give you a little push in the right direction. Your budget is not of their concern. You’ve just told them they want something (yes, you have) and how to make sure it becomes available.
This project is our top priority
In many Asian cultures saying ‘no’ is highly impolite. If an answer is ‘no’ they’ll say ‘maybe’. It’s your job to ask ‘maybe yes or maybe no?’
In corporate cultures having anything but top-priority projects on your plate is highly suspicious. Working on anything not top-priority suggests you have no top-priority stuff to do first and for a manager this translates to business is going bad.
So, any project either becomes top-priority for whatever reason sounds plausible or gets passed on like a hot potato to an underling or a manager lower on the pecking order. This is why businesses go down with screaming engines, to crash in a ball of flames of exciting projects and forward-plans.
It is your job to ask; ‘is this project top-top-priority, or just top-priority?’
I can’t afford it right now but…
IttyBiz has an excellent post on this subject, so I’m not going to repeat it.
http://ittybiz.com/customers-cant-afford-it/
The short and sweet; can’t afford it usually means they can, but won’t. Or they are negotiating. Obviously, in the latter case, you should decide if it’s worth it to play their game.
I understand
People get edgy about admitting ignorance. Often have I myself nodded ‘understandingly’ while racking my brain for a meaning to a particularly silly acronym.
Especially with superiors, colleagues or (probably worst of all) underlings present, people will feign understanding. If you are part of my target audience, you’ll be in a business that is particularly steeped in jargon, arcane knowledge and ‘magic’.
It is good to realise that to non-developers, designers and IT-folks, we do ‘magic’. We may think it all very simple; from the outside it looks like magic. It feels incomprehensible and, oh no, again with the explanations! People will take one look, see a very steep learning curve and mentally give up. You can see the blinds go down behind their eyes. To get you to stop embarrassing them by trying to explain something they think they will never understand, they nod and basically do whatever it takes to convey to you that they understand.
You need to anticipate this. Keep pitches and explanations simple. Don’t explain how Flash works, or AJAX, but simply outline the differences in behaviour in terms anyone can grasp. You are the expert; they should (and will) trust you with the technicalities under the bonnet. You just explain that your solution makes the car run better.
Then, after a meeting, call the key-decision makers and ask if they want further clarification. Alone, on the phone, they will be more at ease asking questions and I haven’t met a client yet who didn’t appreciate a little personal after-care.
Just go ahead and do what you think is best
…but do it my way. People are arrogant. It’s built-in. The assumption that the best way is their way is so ingrained in most people that they simply can’t even envisage other people seeing things differently.
Never assume a carte blanche. There’s the job outline (or lack thereof) and what people actually want done. Dig until you know both.
Any other approach is setting yourself up for unpaid bills, endless revisions and angry clients.
If a client dumps a job on your lap and makes to leave, try to get as much info as you can. Then, at each significant step, check if what you are planning to do meets with approval. Don’t overdo it, but do it.
In closing
Saying what you think the other person wants to hear comes natural to most people. You’ve done it several times today and so have I. We do not think of it as lying since it’s a behaviour ingrained in our psyches and culture.
Bending the truth to get a better deal is part of the game of negotiation. I’m particularly good at it. That is why I tend to get stuff cheap. All business people play this game.
Customers give you a job because they don’t want to or are not able to do it themselves. This sense of ‘can’t, won’t’ carries over into the briefing stage. Never assume your brief is as comprehensive as it needs to be, but patiently, carefully and politely try to get that extra info they without a doubt left out.
And last but not least: people just lie. They do. Never assume you have the whole picture, and always get sensitive things in writing. The humble follow-up summary in E-mail works great for this.
‘Hi John, as discussed, this is what we are going to do… please confirm…’
Assume that everything you hear is to some lesser or greater degree untrue. Don’t hold it against people, because you do it too. Just make sure and dig deeper.
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