Retail Therapy: Am I a Victim?
Ian Brodie | August 5th, 2009 - 3:23 pmIt’s easy to snigger at people who try to buy their way to happiness with a bit of “retail therapy”. In fact we know from the research of psychologists Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich that experiences make people far more happy than buying things – so their efforts are rather misplaced.
But perhaps we shouldn’t feel so superior. Those of us in business often fall victim to a similar malaise: the curse of the “next big thing”. It’s the business equivalent of retail therapy.
How many times in business have we been seduced by the prospect of a new marketing or sales system offering us “all the leads we can handle” or to “grow our business 500%”?
In truth, we know what works: get a good marketing & sales approach and stick to it.
The absolute worst thing you can do is flip backwards and forwards between approaches, never giving any of them the time to work. Try referrals one week, cold calling a few weeks later, pay-per-click a few weeks after that. The result: guaranteed failure.
But it’s just so tempting. Sticking to somthing is hard work. You have to grind out results activity after activty. The ads for the new sales method tell me it’ll be easy; a few hours a week; any fool can do it.
In my case, I’ve partly learnt the lesson of “next big thing therapy”. I don’t flip between methods: I stick with what i know will work even if something comes along that claimes to be even better.
But I’m not all the way there yet. I may not flip between new systems – but I still buy them. My curiosity gets the better of me. I have to know whether what people are claiming is as good as it sounds (it rarely is of course). It’s my own version of retail therapy.
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