Before this moment I never cared about the geometry of a bike

At the beginning of this year, I wanted to buy a new mountain bike. My old one was…well very old… and falling apart.

So I started visiting bike shops. The first shop I went into was empty except for a lonely sales rep. The rep wandered over to me, asked a little about what I was looking for, and then showed me a couple of bikes on the wall. I asked a few questions. She answered. It felt like a totally normal experience.

Then I went to another small local bike shop. The owner, Ryan, met me when I walked in. He asked the same initial question as the last sales rep. But something was different. Within 30 seconds of talking with him, you could tell – Ryan loves bikes. He didn’t just point out a couple of bikes for me to look at. He pulled them off the rack, squatted down, and talked me through the geometry of the bike, a bit of the history of how mountain bikes have developed over the last decade and his favorite features of this bike.

Oh, and it turned out we both road the same trails and he described to me what a feature of the bike would feel like while riding on a specific section of that trail.

Then he shoved me out the door and told me to take it on a test ride around the block.

I didn’t look at any other bikes. Or other bike shops. Ryan had transferred his love of bikes, the sport of mountain biking, and his passion for the intricacies of this particular bike.

When I got back from my test ride I bought the bike.

Selling is about transferring emotions. Which Ryan did masterfully. He cared deeply about how I would experience the bike. And it worked.

Here’s why this matters for data.

We spend most of our days in data trying to get business teams to care about data.

“Look at this report.”

“Here I built a new view.”

“Did you see the results of this ML model?”

But they don’t care about data. They care about the feeling of what data will give them.

Confidence in their next decision.

Relief in knowing their campaign results.

Clarity about their team's performance.

Excitement about the direction of their program.

Those are feelings people will buy.

It was good to see you today,

Sawyer

from ​The Data Shop