Recently I wrote on dogs chasing cars and our human predilection to assign cause when there is in fact none.

Today I want to talk about puking cats. Don’t worry, I promise that it has to do with something, and also that future issues of this newsletter will deal with more palatable topics.

Here goes…

When I first moved to Turkey, I started a business selling evil eye jewelry (nazar boncuğu, for the Turks among us).

Most of my customers were in the US, so for better customer service, I set up a US toll-free customer service line. Customers would call a US number, my phone would ring here in Turkey, and the whole time the customer would think they were talking to someone in the US, unless I told them differently.

At first, I thought most of the calls would be order-related (where’s my shipment, my bracelet broke, etc). That’s not what I got, not at all.

Instead, the calls were mostly from middle-aged women who just wanted someone to let them talk. So a typical call was 20 minutes with a woman in Ohio who wanted to talk about how her cat just threw up a hairball, or how her daughter’s boyfriend was a no-good loser.

Those were the ones who ended up buying 20 bracelets to give away to friends. Everyone else bought one bracelet, maybe 2. But boom, 20 minutes talking about a puking cat, and I’d get a gazillion dollars in one fell swoop.

My point here is that we often overestimate the value of the thing we think we are doing, when in reality, in the customers’ eyes, we are actually doing something quite different.

All we can do in that situation is bring ourselves to the transaction. We like to think it’s all about “being professional,” and “providing a service,” and yes, we do need to be professional, and yes, we do need to provide a service.

But don’t forget that those two things are just table stakes. The real reason our customers stick with us often has little to do with those things, and more to do with something that, frankly, we don’t even know what it is.

Just like the dog thinks his chasing and barking is what scares the car away, but actually the dog has nothing to do with the car’s departure, it might not be the bracelets, maybe it’s the willingness to talk about puking cats.

So next time you ask yourself if you should spill a little personal juice in a business meeting, give it a try, it might make it easier to get what you came for.