Knowing When You Know

I sat down with two different bankers this week, on two different days, and heard almost the same story twice.

Both were talking about how their customers land on an offer price for land. One example each, and the examples lined up close enough that it stopped me. One customer builds a spreadsheet: real numbers, real expectations, a defensible price they can explain line by line. Another customer works off a different kind of data: "It's what I've heard others are paying." A gut number, not a modeled one.

In both cases, the gut number won the bid.

The spreadsheet customer is the one everybody calls the "better" customer. More disciplined. More prudent. The banker would rather have that customer's business, and I understand why. But here's the part that stuck with me: that same discipline kept costing them the land. Good analysis, sound reasoning, and an empty result, again and again.

So were they really the better customer? I don't know. I still don't.

I've been on both sides of this myself, and I can't hand you a rule for when to use which. There have been times I ran the numbers and trusted them completely. There have been other times I felt something and went with it, no spreadsheet in sight. I can't draw you a line and tell you where the numbers stop being the right tool and the gut takes over. I just knew, when I knew.

For a while I thought the lesson here was about method. Pick the right tool for the moment, spreadsheet or gut, and you'll come out ahead. But I don't think that's it anymore. I don't think this is about which approach is correct, because both of these customers were being exactly who they were. One is careful by nature. One trusts instinct. Neither of them was wrong to be that way.

The lesson, I think, is smaller and harder than picking a method. It's whether you're comfortable enough with who you are to admit which one you are, and honest enough with yourself to look at your results and ask if it's working. And if it isn't, whether you've got the guts to change.

That's not a formula. It won't tell you, on your next bid, whether to trust the number or trust the pull in your gut. I can't give you that. What I can tell you is that the only thing that's ever worked for me is paying enough attention to myself, in the moment, to recognize which one I'm looking at.

I can't tell you the rule. I just know when I know. And maybe that's the only honest answer any of us can give.