The Awful Truth About Questions

4 replies
Most questions are not asked because people want an answer.

They are asked because people want to look smart.

Basically, these people don't want to hear your answer. They want to hear their own answer in your voice, which means they are just as smart as you. Or no answer at all, so they can give it to you and show how they are smarter than you.

Similarly, when you ask a question, most people are not going to give you the answer... unless it shows how smart they are.

(Well, unless they think it does, anyway. Sometimes those answers really just demonstrate how completely stupid people are.)

If they can't figure out how to look smart by answering the question, they will try to answer a completely different question which will make them look smart.

If they can't think of a question to answer which will make them look smart, they will usually do one of four things:
  1. Make a joke
  2. Get offended
  3. Ask why the question matters in the first place
  4. Ignore everyone else entirely and talk about themselves

This is all motivated by a single drive: the desire not to appear stupid in public.

The fact is, we're all stupid most of the time about most things. Stop and think about what you've done today. How many stupid things have you done that you only got away with because nobody was looking? If anyone was actually spying on you all day and could see everything you did all day, wouldn't you look like a complete moron? How many of us have mornings like this two or three times a week?

10:14 - Lost glasses
10:15 - Found glasses on desk
10:17 - Lost glasses
10:19 - Found glasses on desk
10:23 - Lost glasses
10:25 - Found glasses on desk
10:41 - Lost glasses
10:42 - Found glasses on desk
10:56 - Lost glasses
10:58 - Found glasses on desk

Because seriously, if you were smart, none of that would be there. You would just know your glasses were on the desk. Your glasses are ALWAYS on the desk. And once you know that, you never "lose" them. You just go "they must be on the desk," where indeed they are.

But you're an idiot, so you lose them. Over and over again.

I do this with dry erase markers. I go to write something on the whiteboard, and I don't know where the marker I was using is. I have another one... but I want the one I was using. And it is always either on the desk or in the kitchen. But I am an idiot, so I call it "lost" and check the bedclothes and the bathroom and the refrigerator first. I don't know why. Just stupid, I guess.

And that's our lives, when you really look at it. We do stupid things, then pretend we didn't do them, and if we got caught doing them we make excuses for why they're not stupid. Then we spend the rest of our time looking for ways to be smart. We have to, or people will think we're stupid.

So why does this observation matter to us, as marketers?

Well, simply put...

Your customer is terrified of looking and feeling stupid.

This is a desperate niche nobody is really talking about, and it's everywhere.

If you're in the classic car niche, there are people terrified of not knowing the difference between a Charger and a Challenger, let alone between a '68 and a '71.

If you're in the dating niche, there are people terrified of looking stupid in front of a potential date.

If you're in the internet marketing niche, there are people terrified of admitting they don't know the difference between CPA and CPM, let alone how to calculate their conversion rate.

Making people feel smart is something you can do anywhere, with anyone, and it always makes the customer happy.

So go forth and be badass.
#awful #questions #truth
  • Profile picture of the author Steve B
    What your post says to me, whether or not you intended it, is that building a relationship with people is important, especially one where you don't assume the role of all-knowing grand poo-bah but instead you make your customers comfortable and confident that you can help them in a non-condescending way.

    Thanks for the post.

    Steve
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    • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
      Originally Posted by Steve B View Post

      What your post says to me, whether or not you intended it, is that building a relationship with people is important, especially one where you don't assume the role of all-knowing grand poo-bah but instead you make your customers comfortable and confident that you can help them in a non-condescending way.
      Pretty much, yeah. A lot of the anti-guru sentiment comes from the simple fact that by appearing to know a whole lot, the guru makes it seem like others know very little - which makes some of those others feel stupid, and they hate that. So they blame the guru, for making them feel that way.

      The thing about the internet generation is that we can all find out pretty much whatever we want to know, if we bother to look, and the hard part is sifting through the vast amount of data for what we actually want.

      Like if you want to know how to make a squeeze page, you have to dig through fifty thousand products that make one for you before you get to anything about how to make one yourself. And while you're digging, chances are you feel stupid. Once you find what you want, chances are it's been written by an engineer who also makes you feel stupid. And since you don't like feeling stupid, these things suck and you don't want to do them.

      But if you do that, and then you take the condescending explanation that makes you feel stupid, and you rewrite it in a helpful and friendly way that doesn't make people feel stupid... that has value. People will pay for that. And it's not that they couldn't do it, or that you are smarter than them, or that you are better than them - you just bit the bullet and waded through the stupid to pull out the value. Anyone could have done it.

      Sometimes I think some of the internet marketers out there forget this. I think they start to believe their own bullshit and think they really are smarter and better than everyone else. But we're "jes' folks" like everyone else. We've got a bit more experience wading through the stupid, but there's no reason anyone else couldn't do it.
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      "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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      • Profile picture of the author Steve B
        I love this definition:

        Guru - An ordinary guy a safe distance from home.


        Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
    And we've had that definition for over 2,000 years:

    "And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian." - Luke 4:24-27
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    "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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