Memories of bitterness

"I don't like that guy," she said.

"Why not," I wondered...

It turns out that she had done some business with him years ago and it hadn't gone well. When pressed, though, she couldn't actually recall what the problem had been, or how much financial or project damage had been done. All she remembered was that she didn't like him.

That's the way it usually is. You read those letters to the complaint columns in the paper or online, and the actual facts are often pretty trivial. What we remember isn't the financial hit, we remember the injustice, the disrespect, the way we felt at the time.

Your accountant might care about the facts. You, the marketer, need to care about the conversations and the memories.