THE PERILS OF INCOMPLETE INTELLIGENCE

"Better to be ignorant of a matter than half know it."

Publilius Syrus (1st Century BC) Roman writer and poet

I respectfully suggest an edit.

Better to be ignorant of a matter than half know it, taking action as though you knew it all.

I've been guilty of this, what about you?

I Can't Believe You Don't Know That!

"Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn."

Benjamin Franklin

18th century American statesman/inventor

Always?

A lot of technology marketers look down on those who don't know how to use technology products.

Many of these people are not stupid, when it comes to technology, they just don't care enough to learn more than they already know.

Shameful, yes, but for who?

Not (Always) What We Seem

"Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average."

Sigmund Freud

19th/20th century psychiatrist

Keep this in mind as you conduct business with others you assume are "normal".

Customer Knowledge: The Key to Sales

"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well, the product or service fits him and sells itself."

Peter Drucker
20th century American business author/consultant/teacher

I can't believe I'm going to edit Mr. Drucker, however . . .

If you really do know and understand your customer, you will do a much better job creating and effectively marketing products for and to him/her than you will if you don't.

Customer Knowledge: What Do You Know?

"I think Amazon is the preeminent pioneer in building a new way of doing commerce: personalized, database-driven where the big value is not in the purchase fulfillment, but in knowing as much about a customer base of ten or twenty million people as a corner store used to know about a customer base of a few hundred. In today's mass merchandising world, that's largely gone; Amazon is trying to use computer technology to re-establish it."

Andrew Grove
Past Chairman, Intel Corporation

Cost and price comes down when we move to mass market retail but so too does the retailer's and manufacturer's knowledge about its customers decline.

Must it be that way and if so, is that a problem?

Whether B2C or B2B how important is customer knowledge in your business? If it is important, what do you do to increase your customer knowledge?