I Thought For Sure You'd Know That

 

In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D by studying a game called “Tappers and Listeners.” 

The game is very simple. Each “tapper” was given a list of 25 simple songs, such as “Happy Birthday To You” or “God Save The Queen.”

Then the tapper was asked to tap out the rhythm of one of these songs to a listener, by knocking on a table. It seems a very simple game, and the tapper was sure that the listener would have a good chance of guessing the song he was tapping. 

Try it yourself - tap out the rhythm of “Happy Birthday To You.” Do you think that someone listening would know what song you were tapping? 

In the experiment, the tappers predicted that half of the songs would be guessed correctly by the listeners. 

The reality was different - very different. After 120 songs were tapped, the listeners had guessed exactly 3 songs. It was much harder than the tappers thought it would be. 

Why is that? Why did the tappers think it was going to be so easy? Why did they think the song was so obvious? 

The reason is simple - when a tapper taps, he is hearing the song in his head. He knows what song he is tapping - he has that knowledge. Try it and see for yourself. 

But the listener doesn’t have this knowledge and doesn’t hear the song. All the listener hears is a bunch of disconnected taps - like a bizarre Morse Code. 

Does this experiment apply to your business? 

Do you assume that your customers know everything about your business, because you know so much about it? Surely, it’s obvious to everyone what your business sells, where it’s located, what it does. You have this knowledge, and think that everyone else has also. 

I’m often amazed when people ask me if we do folding, or if we print cheques, or if we make signs and banners. 

Of course, we do. We’re a printing business. Doesn’t everyone know what we do? 

If they don’t know what we do, that’s not their fault - it’s our fault for not getting our message out. 

Are you getting the message out about your business? If you'd like help getting your message out, stop by and see us. We'd love to guide you.