by Lucendia Halliday

Was your first reaction, “Oh I am not stupid, this cannot apply to me!”  First, I researched the definition of stupid.  I hear it all the time, but I never really looked it up.  I remember from the movie, Forrest Gump, "Stupid is as stupid does".  (Details at the end of this article.) What does that mean and how to use this in our daily decisions?  After a 3-day seminar with entrepreneurs, I heard a lot of what I classify as stupid marketing assumptions, so I was inspired to write this.
Stinkin' Thinkin' also comes to mind. It is hard to learn if we think we are not capable, its not important or worse yet we think we already know everything on a subject.  All of these make us unteachable.

Definition of stupid

adj., -er, -est.
1.    Slow to learn or understand; obtuse.
2.    Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes.
3.    Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish or careless: a stupid mistake.
4.    Dazed, stunned, or stupefied.
5.    Pointless; worthless: a stupid job.
6.    adjective
1.    Lacking mental and physical alertness and activity: hebetudinous, lethargic, sluggish, stuporous, torpid. Slang dopey. See action/inaction.
2.    Lacking in intelligence: blockheaded, dense, doltish, dumb, hebetudinous, obtuse, thickheaded, thick-witted. Informal thick. Slang dimwitted, dopey. See ability/inability.

Where the mind goes, the person follows. Where are your thoughts leading you? Our coaching program starts with the mindset, we call it developing a marketing mindset.  We are change agents, since for some believe they are expert marketers already.  They don't study it daily or they didn't sit at the feet of the masters worldwide but they are experts at sales and marketing.  We do some ego bustin' too.  I started grad school with the question, "How do you know what you know?"  Granted I thought, what am I paying for?  I studied learning and human performance improvement.  This results in how to train adults.  This is the common thread of my career.   I believe children are easier to teach, they haven't build up years of baggage or misbeliefs.

As business owners and even employees we need to challenge our belief systems and check out our theories.  In big business, it is called market research.  This also means testing and tracking of your marketing.  Do you really know how to do all this?  Who taught you?  Who where your teachers, role models, how do you know they have it right? How do you know you know?  Also, I learned that psychologists are taught that as people we are all 100% stupid about one thing or another!  Ouch!  We don't know everything about everything.  In fact, we are so specialized we only know one little area and that requires lifelong learning on a daily basis.  Are you smart enough to know what you are stupid at?

As business owners, we make bad assumptions about our customers all the time.  We don't ask them or we don't ask the right questions in the right way because marketing is science too.  We fall in love with our products and services and assume the world does too.  My favorite marketing strategy is: competing on price alone.  Of course, people are going to rush to my business I save them time and money  - Guess What Big Deal! Everyone says that!  My second favorite marketing strategy is: I am all about quality  - Guess what, that is a given or you won't be in business very long!  Every time I am asked to speak, I emphasize these are the stupidest, laziest, least effective way to do business unless you are Walmart (price) and even so that is questionable on certain days.  The most common mistake I see during these tough economic times is overreaction to late or unpaid bills.  We used to pick up the phone and ask why instead of assuming people are out to screw us, going bankrupt next week or whatever else comes to mind.  Yes Nordstrom's still does make the phone call, do you in your small business?  

Do you really listen to your customers when they make comments and suggestions?  It is easy for our big egos to get in the way and blow it off. I suggest to my clients they log every comment and look for trends aka this is market research.  Big companies are so removed from their customers they pay big bucks for this data.  They like to manipulate their data to save careers and other nonsense but that is another article.  Don't be a big, dumb company is the morale of that story.  As small business owners we are front and center and in our customers faces so why not ask.  How can I serve you better?  What do you like best and least about doing business with us?  If you like us how about a testimonial?  How about a referral?  The list goes on…..Hopefully you get the idea and better yet implement it today in your business.  I will be writing more about this subject later because I have only scratched the service with this article.

Check out our new website and give me feedback - good, bad and ugly, we have thick skin.  I just posted a new blog on the definition of marketing check it out on http://www.marketing-strategy-planning.com/marketing-articles

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P.S.  I hope this article make you just a little uncomfortable enough to crack a book, sign up for a class or a workshop, hire a coach, be a little more a lifelong learner in all your subjects of interest.  As a coach, my job is to be my client's best friend or worst nightmare depending on what they are telling me. It is not to be liked, it is about results!  Yes I too have 3 coaches that supervise me on any given day!  I walk my talk to the best of my human ability.  :)

P.S. S.   As promised, after I goggled stupid is as stupid does here are my results:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=392986%20

"Forrest Gump's "Stupid is as stupid does" is a variant of an old adage, "Handsome is as handsome does." This saying appears in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and in Herman Melville's "Billy Budd," and can be traced as far back as the 14th Century.

"Handsome is as handsome does" basically means that true handsomeness has to do with a person's behavior, not just a handsome face. The saying is also phrased in the forms "Pretty is as pretty does" and "Beauty is as beauty does."

Forrest's version of the saying means that stupidity is not just a surface thing derived from a person's appearance. Stupidity is a matter of deeds, not looks. Like the other versions, it comes down to this: judge people by what they do, not by how they appear."