The Small BIG: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence (18 page)

I
n the mid-1970s Italian restaurateur and businessman Antonio Carluccio left his Northern Italian home and moved to the United Kingdom where, following stints as a wine importer and then working with Terence Conran’s famous restaurant group, he opened his first food shop. Today there are more than 70 Carluccio cafes across Europe and the Middle East serving a range of authentic Italian foods including pastas, salads, gelatos, and…scooters!

Yes that’s right. Prominently displayed on each Carluccio menu is a Vespa scooter that diners can order, presumably in a color of their choosing, while deciding what they might want to eat for dinner.

We are uncertain of exactly how many people would want to purchase a scooter from a restaurant. We are also unsure exactly how many Vespas have been sold in Carluccio’s cafes. But there is one thing, as a team of persuasion scientists, which we are certain about—the potential influence that a big-priced item (a Vespa scooter costs around $3,500) might have on the much smaller priced food items found on the same menu. Carluccio may not be selling too many scooters in his cafes, but the small act of including it on his menus may mean he is selling a lot more top-end panini. Put simply, including the motorbike on his menu makes his sandwiches appear to be a better value.

People rarely make decisions in a vacuum; in other words, our choices are almost always influenced by context, whether that context involves the potential alternatives we’re considering, aspects of the decision-making environment, or simply what we were thinking about before making the decision. As a result, the order in which options and choices are offered is really important. A basic concept in psychology is the phenomenon of
perceptual contrast
. This is the idea that a person’s perception of an offer can be changed not by making changes to that offer at all, but instead by changing what the person experiences immediately before the offer is presented. A $35 bottle of wine seems expensive if it appears halfway down a list that begins with a house wine priced at, say, $15. However, that same $35 wine will appear much more reasonably priced if a small change is made to the list so that a more expensive wine, say one for $60, appears on the list first. Nothing changes about the wines—just the order in which they are presented.

Therefore one small change anyone can make to potentially increase the success of a presented proposal or an offer is to carefully consider what the target audience will be comparing the proposal or offer to when they are making the decision.

Interestingly, this strategy can be just as effective even when the comparisons are ones that your audience is going to reject anyway. For example, when constructing a proposal for a client, a management consultancy might weigh several alternative approaches and, through a process of elimination, converge on an optimal recommendation. At this point, having thrown the ideas they eliminated in the trash, many of which might be too costly or take too much time to complete for the client’s liking, they would then work up the proposal focusing on their optimal choice. However, based on what we know about the persuasion process and specifically perceptual contrast, this would be a mistake.

Instead, the consultancy would be advised to take the ideas they decided to throw out and present them first, albeit briefly, at the start of their pitch. This small change could make for a big difference when it comes to presenting their chosen pitch because that proposal would now be seen in its proper perspective. For example, by first presenting an option that the client might think is a bit too costly, or one that the client might think will take too much time, will have the desired impact of making the target proposal seem even more like the “Goldilocks” proposal that it is—just right.

But what about situations when your offer or proposal is made up of multiple items bundled into packages? For example, a movie theater might offer customers the option to watch 15 movies for $99. A lawyer might offer 10 hours of consulting time for $2,500. An online music retailer might charge $29.99 to download 70 songs. Will the purchase decisions be affected by which of the two numbers appears first? Put another way, and using the online music retailer as an example, would more people be tempted by an offer of 70 songs for $29.99 or an offer of $29.99 for 70 songs?

Researchers Rajesh Bagchi and Derick Davis conducted a series of experiments looking for answers to this very question. In one study, participants were asked to consider one of a range of offers made by an on-demand TV broadcaster. One group received a price-then-item offer—specifically $300 for 600 hours of TV. A second group was offered an item-then-price offer—in this case 600 hours of TV for $300. Other groups, however, were presented with offers that comprised different combinations that were economically the same, including 60 hours for $30, $285.90 for 580 hours, and 580 hours for $285.90.

The resulting analysis showed that when an offer was easy to calculate, as was the case for the first and second experimental groups, it made little difference whether the item or the price came first. But when an offer was a little more difficult to calculate, things changed, with a preference for offers that were presented in the item-then-price sequence. This was especially the case if the package on offer was a large one. For example, people were more likely to prefer and trial the “580 hours for $285.90” offer than the “$285.90 for 580 hours” offer—despite these offers being exactly the same.

Why? It seems that as choices increase in complexity our attention is directed to the very first piece of information presented, be it the number of items, price, amount of time, or any other unit or measurement. In this case, people’s evaluations of the deal were more positive because the benefits were listed first and the cost was listed second. Furthermore this effect is amplified as it becomes more difficult to calculate what is being offered, ultimately leading to different evaluations and preferences for things that are the same.

There is a practical and potentially useful lesson for anyone in business to consider. Imagine, for example, that you are putting together a proposal for a client to supply a range of consultancy services over a period of time. Your proposal is quite complex involving multiple people delivering a variety of services at different rates, at different times, and in separate locations. In such situations this study, and others like it, suggest a small yet important shift in your approach to ensure you lead with an item-then-price strategy.

But what about situations where the offer you are making is much easier to calculate or involves smaller numbers of units? Even though these studies suggest that these order effects might be less pronounced, the process of attending to what you offer first remains highly relevant. And given the potentially big uplifts that can result in your subsequent influence, changing to an item-then-price strategy seems a small price to pay.

Focusing on the order in which you present items might even apply in situations where, rather than selling a product or service, you are selling yourself. For example, this research would suggest that, rather than highlighting the number of years’ experience on your resume followed by a list of accomplishments in that time, it might be more productive to present all your accomplishments first before mentioning the amount of time you served (e.g., “23 major projects in 2.5 years on the job”). Similarly, a new graduate might capture potential employers’ attention to their academic achievements more effectively in their cover letter by pointing out they successfully completed 37 classes in 3.5 years in college rather than the other way round. While we would never claim that this small change alone will be your key to getting into the C-Suite, given the costless nature of this strategy it is another small change that, in the context of a crowded marketplace, could help make a difference.

W
hether you are looking to improve the effectiveness of your communication in your personal life or in your professional life, the purpose of this book is to demonstrate, with scientific evidence, how making small changes in your approach can lead to big differences in how successful an influencer and persuader you are.

For example, imagine that you run a small business and you find yourself having to deal with an increasingly crowded marketplace where endless arrays of competitors are also vying for your customers’ attention. In such a competitive environment it is clear that going the extra mile and offering a little more to your customers than your competitors do makes good sense. Adding an extra incentive or a bonus feature to your product or proposition could be the
SMALL
BIG that puts your business on the winning side, rather than the losing one.

But are there situations where adding extra information, additional incentives, or bonus features not only fails to strengthen your case but actually weakens it?

Or put another way: Are there occasions when
more is less
?

Behavioral scientists Kimberlee Weaver, Stephen Garcia, and Norbert Schwarz thought that people tend to believe that offering extra features and information will strengthen their persuasion appeals largely due to the “additive” effect each extra feature brings. However, they also believed that the people who evaluate their proposals will fail to appreciate these extras because—rather than providing an
additional
effect—they see them as providing an “averaging” effect instead. Rather like when you add warm water to hot water you end up with a more moderate temperature, sometimes attempts to clinch a deal by adding extra features to an already strong proposal can lead to a reduction in the overall attractiveness of your proposal.

To test their ideas the researchers set up a series of experiments including one in which study participants were assigned to either a presenter role or a purchaser role. Those in the presenter role were provided with two MP3 packages. Package one was an iPod touch that came with a choice of cover. Package two was exactly the same but this came with the added benefit of a free music download. Presenters were then asked to choose which package they considered to be the most valuable—in other words, which package they would offer to the potential purchasers. Those in the purchaser group were asked to imagine that they were looking to purchase an MP3 player for a friend; after being told about each of the two iPod touch packages, they were asked how much they would be willing to pay for each.

The overwhelming majority of presenters (92 percent) chose to offer the package that included the additional free music download. Interestingly, though, the purchaser group was willing to pay
less
for the iPod and cover package when it came bundled with the extra free song download than when no free song download was offered. Paradoxically, adding a music download to the package in an attempt to increase its value counter-intuitively cheapened it in the eyes of many purchasers.

In another experiment, participants playing the role of customers searching for accommodation on a well-known travel website were asked how much, on average, they would be willing to pay to stay in a hotel with a five-star-rated pool. When those customers came to learn that the hotel also had a three-star-rated restaurant the amount they were willing to pay dropped by some 15 percent. Interestingly, almost three-quarters of another group of participants that played the role of the hotel owner wrongly predicted that adding the restaurant to their advertisement would allow them to command a higher average rate when in fact the opposite was true.
5

Across a range of studies the researchers uncovered a consistent pattern. Sellers believed that spending more money and adding features to their already-strong propositions would strengthen their offers. Yet on each occasion adding an extra feature actually cheapened the overall proposition, resulting in customers saying they would pay less.

Now some of you may be thinking this is all very well for folks who sell products and services like iPods and hotel rooms, but does this effect extend to other types of influence challenges? For example, what if your challenge is to sell ideas rather than products?

It turns out the researchers thought of that, too.

Let’s imagine that you have taken a job at your local city council offices with the responsibility for reducing littering in the city’s streets. Suppose further that part of your responsibility is to propose one of two penalty options for offenders who are caught littering. Which do you think you’d be more likely to recommend?

or

The researchers asked a number of government employees this exact question, finding that 86 percent recommended Proposal B even though a separate group of individuals evaluating the consequences rated the $750 fine + 2 hours of community service as
less
severe than a $750 fine alone! In this example, adding an extra
negative
feature to an already unattractive consequence made it slightly more attractive.

So why does this disparity between those presenting a proposal and those evaluating a proposal occur?

Weaver and her colleagues concluded that when constructing a persuasive appeal persuaders have a tendency to focus on each individual component of their offer, which leads them to take a piecemeal processing approach when they judge it. Evaluators, on the other hand, are more likely to process a persuasive appeal more holistically, focusing on the overall proposition.

So is the recommendation here simply for you to
not
provide extra information or features when making a case? Certainly not.

Instead the recommendation is to adopt the best parts of both these strategies. Rather than investing additional resources to add a small extra feature for
every
customer, the advice here is to make a small shift by investing the same amount in a more significant feature for
fewer
selected customers. Doing so affords you two potential benefits.

First, you avoid wasting resources providing extra benefits that, as in the case of adding warm water to hot, might only serve to reduce the temperature of your overall offer. Second, you bring to bear the principle of reciprocity by providing customized, personalized, and significant additional benefits targeted to your most cherished customers.