It astounds me how often buyers and sellers don’t fundamentally agree on the nature of their transaction. This applies to purchasing a laptop, office printers, an office building or any type of service out there. Customers and salespeople come into the transaction with fundamentally different ideas of what is happening.
Customers have a problem in mind that they are trying to solve for a certain price but don’t want to give too much away for fear of a markup. Salespeople have a product in mind for the problem they imagine from the first few minutes of conversation. It doesn’t take long before both sides settle on an approach to the relationship that is based on probably not long with each other. To make matters worse these initial assumptions color the way we hear what each party says.
This fundamental disconnect happens because each party is trying to get something from the relationship that may not easily be expressed in words. I have a friend who recently was trying to purchase a budget laptop from Best Buy. He was looking for hardware that would be portable and support basic web browsing/video watching – nothing fancy. The first laptop he was pointed to by a Best Buy employee was a budget laptop that seemed to struggle to do anything with any zip at all. It technically met all of his stated specifications but it did not meet his unstated user experience requirement. He didn’t realize he needed to state “and has enough power to not lag with any given action.” He now has a new laptop (at a slightly higher cost) that meets his needs.
His experience is typical. There are some things that we all take for granted that will be part of the package. But I have read too many stories of people buying wireless routers only to find out that they also need to purchase internet service separately to know that people always immediately understand the full situation. General intelligence is no protection from this trap either. Because we all get in our own way some of the time.