I Love You. Now Read This Post.

"It's been clearly established, through numerous studies, that you need to appeal to a person's emotions in your attempt to persuade. No matter how rational and logical your argument is, if you do not arouse emotions you will have great difficulty influencing him. Ninety percent of the decisions we make are based on emotion. We then use logic to justify our actions. If you appeal to someone on a strictly logical basis, you will have little chance of persuading him." - David Lieberman

As a numbers guy, I agree. Over reliance on logic comes easily to those blessed with it, and can derail the well-meaning ambitions of those who do. In my line of work, the personal needs of customers rule the day.

Suppose that a customer wishes to open an account, but is $100 short of the $30,000 limit required by the company. The customer pleas for an exception. Should it be granted?

Logicman: "No. Everyone must be treated equally. If we let $100 'exception' happen here, then doesn't that effectively reduce the limit to $29,900? When an exception is made because of being 'just barely' under the limit, there's no way to define 'just barely.' It becomes a logical slippery slope that eventually reduces the limit to zero."

Emotionman: "No. If we make an exception for this customer just because he happened to ask, how is that fair to the customer who obediently followed the rule? When we give special treatment to customers who push us, we are encouraging more of that type of behavior in our customer relationships in a way that just seems unhealthy. I can understand giving an exception if we made a mistake that hurt the customer in some way. What I can't get comfortable with is oiling the squeaky wheel. I feel like fairness means protecting all customers, rather than 'this' customer."

Which one did you buy?