Next Business Level

Had a meeting with a prospect a few days ago and I asked one of my people to sit in to get another perspective. Afterwards, we had totally opposite opinions on how the meeting went. He thought there wasn’t much opportunity while I thought there was a lot of potential.

We both sat in the same meeting so how did we come to different conclusions? I’m not saying either of us was right or wrong – we just had different perceptions. Which gets me thinking.

What is perception? How does it develop? Is perception reality, like marketers say?

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. I’m just a bottom line kind of guy. I don’t know much about philosophy but I know

about business and I know about people. And I know that we all perceive things differently and how we perceive it becomes our reality.

If we want to see opportunity, we’ll see it. If we had a bad experience with a certain situation before, we’ll probably see things a little differently than someone who had a positive experience.

As a business owner, you can try to manage expectations about your company and your brand but you can’t really control them. Because you can’t really control what people think, what they’re coming into a meeting with, whether they’re having a bad day or a good one. Because you can’t be everything to everybody.