What it costs when your message depends on customers knowing things they do not know
A customer can understand every word of your message and still miss the reason to buy. This week’s column explores what that costs.
Earlier in this series, “The Curse of Knowing Too Much” and “Your Customer Is Not Taking the Course” explained how the gap develops: expertise obscures the missing steps, and customers arrive without completing your imaginary syllabus. Last week’s “Kitchen Sink Syndrome” highlighted the burden of too much information. “The Assumption Tax” follows the bill. What happens to your price, your sales cycle, and your chances of winning when customers must supply connections you never explained?
Cutting words helps only if the necessary connections survive.
The advantage they cannot see
Imagine a fictional heating and cooling contractor that offers a ten-year parts-and-labor warranty. Its proposal costs more than a competitor’s, which covers parts only. The contractor assumes homeowners know that repair labor can be expensive and will see why broader coverage matters. So the proposal prominently displays the warranty, and everyone inside the company considers the advantage obvious.
The homeowner sees something else: two companies installing similar equipment, each advertising a ten-year warranty, with one charging more. With no explanation of what a covered repair would look like under each proposal, the higher price starts to look like padding. The contractor eventually offers a discount to overcome a price objection its own message helped create. Congratulations: you have financed the explanation you neglected to provide.
The missing link lies between a feature and its practical consequence. Compare two ways to present the same warranty:
Before: “Ten-year parts-and-labor warranty.”
After: “If your compressor fails in year seven, we cover the replacement part and the technician’s labor. A parts-only warranty would leave the labor bill with you.”
The second version, followed by the applicable conditions, gives the homeowner something to compare. Understanding the words “parts and labor” was never the same as understanding their value.
Your brain charges for the work
Filling in missing connections takes mental effort, and people do not expend it indiscriminately. In six behavioral experiments published in 2010, Wouter Kool and colleagues found that participants tended to choose tasks requiring less cognitive control, supporting the idea that anticipated mental demand influences decisions. These were laboratory tasks, not sales calls, but they offer a useful lens for any message that prompts customers to investigate what your claims mean.
Neuroscience offers a related framework. Amitai Shenhav, Matthew Botvinick, and Jonathan Cohen’s “expected value of control” theory proposes that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex helps allocate cognitive control by weighing potential rewards against the effort required to pursue them. It is a model of how the brain manages effort, not a scan of your prospect reading a proposal. Its practical relevance is simple: effort requires a sufficiently worthwhile expected payoff.
That creates an awkward arrangement when the payoff is precisely what you left unexplained. You are asking customers to invest effort before they understand why it deserves their attention. They must hold your claim in mind, retrieve relevant knowledge, infer the consequence, and decide whether it matters. If the knowledge is missing, thinking harder cannot reliably supply it. The customer may simply decide that comparing the cheaper proposals is a better use of Tuesday.
Uncertainty changes the decision
An unexplained advantage also breeds doubt. Is this feature important? Does the extra expense prevent a likely problem or an obscure one? Am I overlooking something that everyone else understands? Craig Fox and Amos Tversky’s 1995 research on comparative ignorance showed that aversion to ambiguous choices can depend on comparisons with better-understood situations or with more knowledgeable people. Feeling less informed can change willingness to choose.
In a sales conversation, this suggests that another paragraph of confident claims may accomplish little. The buyer needs a basis for evaluation. “Our installation includes an independent inspection” leaves the important question open. Explain what the inspection checks and what happens if it finds a problem, and the claim becomes usable. Without that, an uncertain customer may postpone, seek another explanation, or choose the alternative they feel equipped to defend.
The bill lands in several places
Extra sales work. A representative makes another call to rebuild the business case. A proposal comes back with questions the original explanation should have addressed. A buyer forwards your document to a colleague who sees the price but cannot reconstruct the value. Each repair consumes time, and each unresolved gap is another chance for the decision to stall.
Lost margin. When customers cannot see a meaningful difference, price becomes the only comparison they can make, and discounts become the way to close the gap.
A misread loss. “Too expensive” may reflect a customer’s conclusion without explaining how they reached it. That does not prove that every price objection is a communication failure. It means you should check whether you established the value before deciding that the market refuses to pay for it.
Find the missing connection
- Complete the sentence. Take one important claim from a proposal or website and finish this line: “For this to help someone buy, they would already have to know…” Be specific. Perhaps they need to know what the alternative excludes, what a recurring problem costs, or why a credential improves the quality of the work. Then explain how that connection affects the decision. You do not need to attach the employee handbook.
- Test it on a lookalike. Show the explanation to someone who resembles your intended customer. Ask what the claim changes for them and why it would affect their choice. Listen for the reasoning rather than accepting a polite “makes sense.”
- Track what changes. Watch for repeated clarification questions, proposal revisions, discount requests, and time to decision. Compare similar opportunities before and after you improve the explanation, accounting for differences in customers and offers. Those observations can reveal a pattern; they do not automatically establish causation.
Every unexplained connection gives your customer another job. They pay first, in effort and uncertainty; your company pays later, with interest, in delay, reduced margin, or a lost sale. Before blaming buyers for failing to appreciate your value, make sure you gave them enough information to recognize it. If the reason to choose you exists only in the connections inside your head, you’re on mute.
Get the full story and subscribe at https://thesaltzmangroup.com/youre-on-mute/.
To learn where you might be making it more difficult for prospects to buy, download our free self-assessment tool, The Hidden Sales Loss Scorecard, at https://thesaltzmangroup.com.
TL;DR? Watch our three-minute summary on YouTube: https://youtu.be/hCxo8OurnYc
Production note: AI assisted in developing this article and creating its illustrative graphics under my direction. The ideas, perspective, and final editorial decisions are mine.
