Entrepreneurs can manipulate the sales process so that it is harder for a potential customer to back out of the sale by using a simple and common flaw in human thinking.
I suffered from this just the other day when my decision to buy a suit was ‘manipulated’ by a good salesman.
I’ve mentioned before how easily our sense of self merges with that of a ‘tribe’ with significant implications for how we evaluate decisions. Well, it is true for inanimate objects as well.
For instance, I’ve read that people with bumper bar stickers are more likely to express road rage when their car’s ‘personal space’ is invaded. This is irrespective of whether their sticker say’s “god loves” or “magic happens.” These people have made a stronger link between their sense of self and their car. Alas, I cannot find the reference right now. The effect, however, is fairly well understood.
Knowledge isn’t everything. Even though I knew about the thinking flaw, I was unable to recognise it at the time it was being used. While I had a slight sense of ‘unease’ I went ahead with the purchase anyway.
A canny salesman used this thinking heuristic to ‘assist’ me in buying a suit. I went to town with the purpose of buying a new suit, something I do once or twice a year at most. Because of its infrequent nature, I’d planned to try on a wide range of suits and spend a couple of hours doing it. However, the salesman subtly induced my sense of ‘ownership’ and, as a consequence I bought the first suit I tried on!
In this particular case, I’d visited a number of stores to compare sales prices. When it came to trying them on, I went to one I’d been to before as they give good service.
When I tried the suit on it seemed to fit well. The salesman even confirmed the fact! Then he did a cute trick that ‘smoothed’ the purchasing decision. Rather than ask if I wanted the suit, he asked me to extend my leg so that he could adjust the cuff. Implicit, although never stated, was that it would be used by the tailor to make it fit me perfectly!
The salesman even went so far as to say, “It will hardly require any work at all!”
Now, as soon as I extended my leg I’d made a very large commitment to purchase that particular suit. When the pins went into the leg, it became ‘mine’ rather than one off the rack. This made it much harder to back out of the purchase. I did, in fact, make the purchase then and there.
This technique linked my sense of self with the suit in a very mild and subtle manner. Rather than comparing suits for the next few hours, I went with this one. After all, it fit me so well it hardly needed changing!
Entrepreneurs can use the characteristic that we extend our sense of self identity to objects in our possession to smooth the sales process. We are far more likely to pay for something we already own (even if only in our minds) than for something we have no attachment to at all.
