Listen here, I need to impress on you the importance of the idea in this article and the impact it will have on your career/life/relationships/wealth - as long as you act on it immediately.

Of course, like me, you probably get these kinds of addresses, urging you, exhorting you, to take advantage of what the author’s firmly believe - Firmly Believe - will change everything for you. And like as not you’ll scroll past, mute or unfollow them for the temerity of their assumption or the pushiness of the tone.

Given that these kinds of pitches don’t really work (do they? They don’t work on me. Maybe I’m just too stubborn or jaded to expect much of snake oil?) I did wonder if there was a way of describing what the motivation for them was. Or rather, the expectation. My guess is something to do with the strong-person tone being most likely to cut in. The ballistic probability that this message would be heard over the other noise. 

So I give you The Probabalistic Scale, as a handy way to let the human cannonballs in you organisation (or your clients, possibly) in on the likely outcome of their approach. The more you bellow, bully or cajole, the less likely anyone is to take you seriously. Or even at all.  The Probabalistic Scale works directly in inverse proportion - the more balls, the less effect.

It could probably be adapted to become one of those psychometric tests, for interviewing potential candidates to new roles. 

Most annoyingly for me however was the (probabalistic, natch) thought that I’d made this word up, as it popped into my head as I cleaned my teeth. Turns out not. As any mathematician (or even a Roman Catholic) would have pointed out. 

Still, I bet neither would have applied it to marketing. I’ll take that. And you’d better too.