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The unhappy 2%!

Updated November 2012

By Jim Connolly | November 13, 2010

I was recently reading a post over on Seth Godin’s blog, where he talks about the 2% of people who will complain or disagree whenever you do anything that gets their attention. Now, I’m not sure that number is 2%, in my experience it’s a lot lower than that, but Seth’s point is correct.  Whenever you make any change, even a vast improvement, there will be people who complain and these people are usually noisier than the other 98%.

As a small business owner, it’s important not to make the mistake of allowing the noisy 2% to stop you making decisions and taking action. You see, as soon as you make that 2% happy, the changes you made to appease them, will often cause a different 2% of people to complain!

Even those well known brands, which you LOVE and tell all your friends about, will have people who vocally dislike those same things that you think are great.

By perfecting what you do, you may get that 2% down to 1%, but there will always be people who disagree with whatever it is you do.  If you introduce a new service and 2% of people tell you it’s stupid, but 98% love it, go with the 98%!  Even if that 2% is vocal, and it often is, listen to what they are saying, learn from it, but allow it to influence your decision making by just 2%.

As Jim Rohn used to say; “Don’t major on minor things!”

The bottom line: You can’t please everyone, every time, with everything.  Don’t allow the noisy 2% to stop you making progress.

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Jim Connolly

Hi! I'm Jim Connolly and I use creative marketing to help small business owners increase sales, boost profits and build amazing businesses. Read more here.

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