On Feelings, Facts, and the Minefield of Human Motivation
A few months ago, I was on the phone with the sourcing manager of a prospective customer. I had submitted a quote to her a week ago, and I was following up to see what the next steps were. As I suspected, the next step was: lower your prices.
I asked the sourcing manager that I was working with: what number do you need us to get to and why? Her answer was that she needed to see a 7% reduction in our pricing. She needed that because she and her leadership are facts-based people. Her (paraphrased) explanation was: “Just show me the facts. Show me the numbers. Facts tell the stories. It doesn’t matter how people feel about things. The facts speak for themselves.”
I lowered our pricing as she asked. Taking her at her word that “the facts would speak for themselves.
We didn’t hear back.
I Guess We Don’t Need Marketers…
So I scheduled a follow-up call with to find out what happened. The sourcing manager began to tell a story about how the people at the site had feelings of loyalty to their current supplier. There was concern about bringing us in — despite our lower pricing.
I’m not sure there’s much she could have done to overturn the decision. I don’t fault her for that. But what I do fault her for is what I fault many people in both business and politics for: believing in this ludicrous proposition that the facts speak for themselves, and that feelings don’t matter. I’ve never heard anything so silly in my life.
If the facts spoke for themselves, we wouldn’t have the need for marketing, and we’d need far fewer sales people. We wouldn’t need nearly as many lawyers, judges, or detectives. And nonfiction writers? Forget it! We’d have only a handful. But none of this is true. All these vocations continue to grow. The need for them is real and increasing. Why? Because the facts don’t speak for themselves. They never have, and they never will.
Feelings Matter
In addition — and this speaks to the other thing for which I fault this sourcing manager — feelings DO matter. Feelings have always mattered. Feelings are the primary reason things get done. Facts are great to have, but they will never wield the same power as feelings.
In fact, the only way that facts can actually get someone to act on something, is if hearing the facts evokes a feeling of urgency and importance in someone. That’s the entire reason why we have marketing, sales, and trial lawyers with well-prepared opening and closing remarks.
Think about coaches. If the facts really spoke for themselves, all a good coach would need to do is point at the scoreboard and show her team that their score is lower than their opponents’ score. But that’s not how good coaches work. Good coaches — whether in sports or business — rely on getting their people to feel enough to take effective action. The appeal to emotion, folding in facts as tentpoles on which to prop up an appeal to that eternal driver of human endeavors: feelings.
Think of the millions of people out there who have been told by their doctors to exercise. They’ve read about the benefits. They’ve watched the transformation videos online. Their friends have told them how much better it feels to be active. They know they’re in poor health. But yet they don’t work out. This is but one example of many similar behaviors.
We’re All Irrational
The point is, facts don’t speak for themselves. And by an overwhelming margin, feelings do matter — so much so that they tend to inform which facts people will accept, reject, or seek out (see inoculation theory).
Facts mingle with feelings, and feelings mingle with facts. But both of them drive our behavior. To pretend otherwise is to oversimplify. As much as we don’t want to admit it, human behavior is not as rational as we like to think it is.
And for those of us trying to persuade people to do something, it’s in our best interest to realize this as quickly as possible. If we don’t, we’ll continue to be confused and frustrated (feelings!) by how a rational presentation of the facts can still fail to win the day.