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If you could only see what I see - Alan Berg CSP Wedding Business Solutions PodcastIf you could only see what I see!

How is it that two people can look the same thing, and see totally different things? Each of our perspectives come from our collective experiences. People born in different cities, or into different cultures, will often view the same things very differently. Each of us has the Curse of Knowledge, and it’s the same knowledge that can hinder us in the sales process.

Listen to this new, 7-minute episode to get some perspective and clarity on how your customers are seeing you!

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Below is a full transcript. If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or contact me via textuse the short form on this page, or call 732.422.6362

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– Boy, if you could only see what I see. Listen to this episode, find out what I’m talking about. Hi, it’s Alan Berg. And welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. What I’m talking about when I say, “If you could only see what I see”, is perspective, and it’s really interesting how multiple people can look at the same thing and see something different, perceive something different. I remember a funny one. There was a song called “Easy Lover” and it was by Philip Bailey originally from Earth, Wind & Fire and Phil Collins originally with Genesis. And when the song came out, he had these two Phils, he had Philip and Philip, and it came out. And I remember there were some people that were like, “Oh, that’s Phil Collins and who’s this other guy?” And then other people were like, “Oh, that’s Philip Bailey. Who’s this other guy?” Because of your perspective.

If you were an Earth, Wind and Fire fan is like, “Oh I know who Philip Bailey is.” And if you were a Genesis fan you knew who Phil Collins was but you may not know the other. I also think about when we, I like to watch “Jeopardy,” my wife and I we love to watch “Jeopardy.” She actually records it from me when I’m away, we watch it together. And there are some categories where maybe TV shows or maybe movies or maybe books, and sometimes like, “Oh man, I’m nailing this category.” And other times it’s like, “I got nothing”. These TV shows, never even heard of them or these actors and actresses, never even heard of them. And that’s perspective because what you’ve been focusing on is your Curse of Knowledge and your Curse of Knowledge is all the stuff you know that you can’t un-know. But there’s a whole lot of stuff that you don’t know.

And this very often happens with your customers. Your customers are coming in with their own Curse of Knowledge. How many other weddings and events have they been to? How many times have they tried to hire somebody like you, which might be zero, but what’s their perspective coming in and yours is all of this Curse of Knowledge which is all of this info, which is also your baggage, bringing all of this stuff with you. Everybody you’ve ever worked with, everybody you’ve ever spoken to, all these things and your perspective, you’re looking at things a certain way and your customers are looking at it a different way, and you’re wondering why you can’t make the sale. Very often I’ll see people putting photos up on their websites or in their advertising and I’ll ask them, “So what are you trying to show?” And they’ll point out some things in that photo and I’ll say, “Okay, well, that’s what you’re looking at. I’m seeing something else because I’m looking at other parts of that.

Or I would say if you take a photo of a wedding and let’s just say that the picture has a bride and a groom, just for arguments sake, it could be a bride and a bride, it could be a groom and a groom, it doesn’t matter, but there’s a photo and you show that picture to different people. If you don’t say anything and you just show them that picture, they’re going to see what they want to see. So you might want them to see your venue or you might want them to see the dress or you might want them to see the flowers or the hair and the makeup or whatever. But if you just show them the picture, their eyes are going to go to the things that are more important to them at this moment or that they’ve been thinking about or looking at. So even if it’s a florist website and there’s a picture and there’s flowers in the picture, that doesn’t stop someone from looking at the dress or the venue or whatever else is going on in that photo.

So make sure that you are guiding people what they’re supposed to be seeing or what you want them to see, what you want them to focus on in your advertising and marketing. Don’t just throw pictures up and say, “Here’s pretty pictures.” Way too often I’ll see on a DJ website, let’s say, or a band’s website, a beautiful picture of a wedding couple but the couple is standing outside on a bridge or under a tree or something. And I ask them, “So what did you do to make this photo happen?” What part of your entertainment made this happen? And they’ll say, “Well, nothing really. It’s just a really pretty picture and that was my couple. I was like, great. It was you’re a couple, but you’re supposed to be showing pictures that show the results of doing business with you and the picture of them by the lake or a picture of them on a balcony. You had nothing to do with making that happen.

So it’s distracting them on your website because now it looks like a photographer’s website or the venue’s website or something like that. So in perspective here, understanding that someone else doesn’t see the world the way that you do, they grew up in a different place, they grew up in a different economic strata. They have different education, they came from a background, ethnic background that’s different than yours. Understand that those people are coming to the table with different views, which is a wonderful thing when you’re hiring people. To have this diversity of perspectives because if you just hire people that are like you, you’re not going to know what other people are thinking of what they’re looking at. But when you’re trying to sell to people, you having this Curse of Knowledge of what you know but not what they know and what their perspective is can actually hinder you.

And that’s why I always say asking better questions is always the way to sell more because you learn when you’re asking and listening you don’t learn when you’re talking. So think about this in terms of perspective. If you could only see what I see, right? You might be looking at the same scene but you’re not seeing what I see. So next time you’re in a meeting with someone, or next time you’re on the phone with someone or next time you’re designing something for your website or a marketing piece. Remember, not everybody is going to see what you see when you look at that. So get some other perspectives on there to make sure that the message that you’re trying to convey is coming across to your target audience. Thanks for listening.

I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

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©2022 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

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