This is Article one of six in a series of lessons for small business marketers from Malcolm Gladwells Blink.

Six articles may seem a bit much to review one book, but Blink is worth it. Malcolm Gladwell's newest book is about first impressions--specifically, about the first Two Seconds a person encounters new data.

Because Blink deals with First Impressions, learning the mechanisms behind a blink' can have huge payoffs for the small business marketer. As Gladwell writes (p. 241):

This is the gift of training and expertise--the ability to extract an enormous amount of meaningful information from the very thinnest slice of experience. To a novice, that incident would have gone by in a blur. But it wasn't a blur at all. Every moment--every blink--is composed of a series of discrete moving parts, and every one of those parts offers an opportunity for intervention, for reform, and for correction.

The above quote describes an encounter between a police officer and a young man with a gun. The police officer is the person who has the training and expertise, but when we look at our customers we see that all their so-called snap decisions about purchasing a product from you--or not purchasing a product from you--are also the results of their own blinks'.

Those of you who've read our articles before know how much we enjoy and admire Gladwell's first book, The Tipping Point. But why spend six articles examining this new work? The answer is simple: each section of Blink reveals vitally important lessons for the small business owner and marketer.

Consumers are generally very adept at buying and sorting through advertising hype. Much of Blink examines the ability of experts to make extremely good decisions or arrive at spot-on conclusions in those first two seconds.

You probably see elements of this skill of the specialist in your own industry. Doesn't your accumulated experience sometimes enable you to evaluate certain aspects unique to your field in a blink? Products and procedures that were mysterious when you were a rookie in the industry now make sense and have become such a part of your experience that you don't even think about how you process some of your decisions.

Well, consumers have been buying their whole lives--they are experts at it. The more we can learn about how our customers make decisions, the more we can adjust our own small business marketing efforts to fit their style of evaluating.

Chapter One in Blink explores a mental process called thin slicing'. As you read this book--and we emphatically encourage you to go buy it and read each chapter and then look at some of our comments--please understand Gladwell's definition from page 23: Thin-slicing refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.

OK, it's a good definition, and a catchy phrase. But you may ask yourself--How do I use this in my small business?'

Well just a few pages later, on p. 32, Gladwell details how an expert, John Gottman, has discovered that one factor--Contempt--is the #1 predictor if a marriage will survive or not. Later, Gladwell supplies us with another example drawn from the medical and legal professions; a single factor--A doctor giving respect to patients--is the key determinant of whether or not a patient will sue their doctor for malpractice. And there is a dominant indicator that shows if the doctor gives respect to the patient: tone of voice.

These are two powerful examples of how experts who have enormous experience with a certain set of human behavior have been able to discover one small yet critical indicator of how people will behave.

And it's really no different for your small business. As you read through Blink you'll see several examples of how the experience of experts can uncover key indicators that can then be taught to people who aren't specialists. These non-experts can become very good at thin slicing a particular behavior, because they know what traits or indicative behaviors to look for. Even a casual observer can tell if a person's tone of voice is respectful or domineering.

Many small business owners find it almost impossible to pass on to their employees all their experience--but how could they? It's taken you years to really learn your industry, and your customer. But if you can teach your staff how to identify the really important signals a customer sends, and then how to react to those signals to either make the sale or service the customer, you'll arm your people on the frontlines with a powerful weapon in the war against lost sales and unhappy customers. If you can teach your employees what elements of the client purchase process are most important to thin slice, you will gain an edge over your competition.

Remember: Brand (who you are) + Package (your Face to the Customer) + People (customers and employees) = Marketing Success.

2006 Marketing Hawks