Are Prospects Reacting or Responding?

Has your doctor ever prescribed a medication and asked you back for a follow-up visit? Depending on what you tell him or her about the medicine, he or she will usually say one of two things:

That's great! You appear to be responding very well to the medicine.

or

Hmm. You seem to be reacting to the medicine. I'll presribe something else.

So, you can see that RESPONDING is a GOOD thing while REACTING is a bad thing.

So why do we often discuss getting a "good reaction" from our marketing messages. It seems like we're setting ourselves up for failure. Because, the one thing we absolutely don't want is a reaction. What we desperately want is a response!

Knowing this ahead of times enables us to ask better questions. We can develop marketing that provokes response instead of reaction. We can also do away with the "proactive" thinking which seems to only look ahead to an eventual reaction that will require our focus before it becomes a marketing catastrophe.

Maybe we can call our forward-thinking, filled with hope marketing prosponsive marketing?