It's the same as anything - how you look, your body language, the way you speak, the volume you speak at - it all matters and always will whether we like it or not.

In undergrad I did some retail electronics sales. When I first started if I didn't know the answer to something I would find out and be back to the customer within 30-60 seconds. That's all it took for them to not buy over and over.

Meanwhile, the best selling reps would say, "Absolutely!" to questions they had no idea what the answer was. Even if they were wrong the customer likely wouldn't come back and if they did they could usually be pacified enough.

Interesting lessons back then. I solved the problem by learning everything so I too could say, "Absolutely!" Took awhile though opposed to faking it.

I think this depends on who your customers are. For most people that have some knowledge the most annoying rep is someone that tries to answer what they don't know. If I come across these people I wont tell them I know they are full of shit so they probably think I bought their blustering but they aren't having my sale. But if it got you better sales in your experience it seems this is the minority of people.

It definitely depends on customers - for example the normal HN crowd is not the normal retail crowd. Most people are not informed consumers. But, even those guys I worked with back in undergrad have moved on and used the same techniques to sell $100k+ deals. Though it's kind of unfair to call them techniques - it's just their personality. They just get people excited and get them to say yes, whether it's for a DVD player or a $50k project. There's a science to it, but I'm guessing everyone here probably already knows that.

worse, you're really only getting sales from people who have already committed. If I'm unsure and I suspect bs, I'm likely just to bail.

I hate to say this, but this isn't saying, "HOW you deliver your idea" is being judged. YOU are being judged.

As in... how prestigious your school and prior work was; how you speak and what it says about your intelligence; what social class you're in based on clothes, grooming, material possessions, where you vacation, who your friends are; how you look; how you speak.

I absolutely detest this idea because I feel like it lets too many inferior ideas dressed in the right packaging get investment and get built (see Startup.com documentary for a prime example of this), depriving the world of better solutions.

But the more I'm around the world of investors, entrepreneurs, and B2B buyers, the more I realize it's reality and it's not going away, so you're best bet is to adapt to it without selling your soul.

Devil's advocate: there are some conclusions to be made from someone's level of personal grooming, etc. Grooming = sign of mindfulness. If you're willing to make that - token, mind you - investment, folks get a message that you are interested in others' opinion, and that your wonderful solution was built with someone's specific problem in mind.

The general underlying point is that there is a deluge of ideas, features and suggestions, and folks put up filters like the above to sort them out. The unfortunate flipside is that some filters are more arbitrary - like the prestigious school prejudice.

I kind of agree with this. I feel people judge your idea by how YOU deliver it. So for example if you come across as uncomfortable while delivering your idea then often your idea looses merit quite quickly. This isn't always true and obviously if your idea is mind glowingly good then as long as you get the idea across people will work with you.

I don't think it's true (anymore) that people judge you by your ethnicity, social status, clothes, gender etc as I feel this article may imply without stating explicitly.

At the end of the day people are drawn to (not too) confident people with (not too) strong direction who are reliable and have a good idea.

> I don't think it's true (anymore) that people judge you by your ethnicity, social status, clothes, gender etc as I feel this article may imply without stating explicitly.

Perhaps less pertinent than before, but I suggest its still extremely important.

I can't think of a better link, but OKCupid shows how peoples (by default private) expressed beliefs in questions were significantly different from their actual actions (http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whether-...)

I was trying to figure out how to navigate to the rest of the article, but then I realized that it's just those three paragraphs. I wish the author had developed this a bit more.

You might like this 18 minute TED talk that parallels the article's idea. "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it."

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspi...

The core premise is sound. It is also consistent with research popularized in Blink, which shows how quickly people make up their mind.

In practical terms, most times the proposer knows his subject more than the proposed. It takes the receiver of the information time and attention (both of which are scarce in decision makers) to deeply understand the pros and cons. So they fall back on heuristics: "Did this programmer meet their deadline last time?" "Are they wearing a suit?" "Did they go to a school I respect?"

Early in my career, I thought, "It's only the content that matters. Anyone who disagrees is an idiot." It took a while to realize there are sound psychological reasons behind the other heuristics people use to choose. It took even longer to learn the game theory behind why some of the "Who you are" matters more than the quality of the idea in question. That's much too long a post for a writer who hasn't had their first coffee.

One last thought... The Karma factor in part is a signal to judging people. (Or rewarding) Of course most of read the articles first, before looking up the credibility of the poster. :-)

I agree and it also makes sense. frankly, just judging a (business) idea based on the messenger might give you a better accurracy on the likeliness of success than listening to the idea itself ( unless your insight is >= than that of the messenger). it's one of the principles behind pg's funding strategy. anyway, it's easy to get misleading feedback depending on whether you're good at presenting your ideas or not. always keep in mind that most people won't be able to make accurate predictions on your business idea (heck, not even you can!). the only way to find out if something actually works is by building it.

Not sure I agree with this. I believe that some people have the ability and desire to objectively analyze an idea without considering the source. In fact, considering the source before the object (in this case, the idea) is an ad hominem logical fallacy.

Also "Only about 1% of proposed ideas are ever accepted.": I would love to see the empirical testing that led to this conclusion.

Even on the Internet, where speech is highly disconnected from the speaker, we still see plenty of groupthink, ad hominems, and pre-judgment taking place. If we can't accomplish it here, then it certainly can't take place in the real world on a consistent basis.

That said, there's too much benefit to these 'irrational' heuristics to discard them.

Fuck this. Feeling judged is a crutch.

And he says things like "Only about 1% of proposed ideas are ever accepted." -- That means he knows how many ideas get proposed in the world and whether or not they are accepted.

He's full of shit.

While this is true I've also found something a little counter intuitive. If you dress and look like a schlep but what comes out of your mouth sounds intelligent, fast paced and impressive (note I said "sounds") then the contrast between what the person thinks you are and what you sound like can actually be an advantage in many cases. Same thing happens when people stumble on the hole in the wall restaurant that has "great food you have to try this place". While the food might be great many times the contrast also helps.

I agree, it's all about the contrast. Similarly, letting others recognize your accomplishments without pointing them out gives them ownership over the realization and makes it that much more meaningful.