By the time we get around to dealing with problems that require a professional, most things are already urgent and everything is more complicated than we initially thought it was. This is just as true for you, me, or any potential clients you know.

In these overwhelm-inducing conditions, it’s no wonder that people take shortcuts by **ignoring a mountain of facts they don’t understand and basing their buying decision on the few facts that look like they do understand.

Nobel-laureate Herbert Simon called this process “Satisficing”**, as in a combination of “satisfy” and “suffice”, a decision-making heuristic that aims for the first solution presented that seems to satisfy all minimum requirements, rather than waiting to understand all the options and then looking for the optimal solution.

In the words of Sir Terry Pratchett, jumping to conclusions seems to be mankind’s favorite sport.

To illustrate, if you had to get a really important contract translated into Korean by Tuesday, and people you trusted had no recommendations – how would you find the right person? You can’t compare their work, you can’t know if their degrees and awards are real or fake.

You would probably Google it, skim a few web pages, and decide on the most expensive-looking one you can afford. This is exactly how many people find you, and your processes need to reflect that reality.


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