To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others (16 page)

Finding Your Frames

Rosser Reeves, an American advertising executive from the middle of the twentieth century, has three claims to fame. First, he coined the term “unique selling proposition,” the idea that any product or service in the marketplace has to specify what differentiates it from its competitors. Second, he was among the first ad men to produce television spots for American presidential campaigns—including a 1952 ad for Dwight D. Eisenhower that included the singing refrain “I like Ike” (a forerunner of the rhyming pitch we’ll discuss in Chapter 7). Third, Reeves is the protagonist in one of the most famous stories in advertising, one that exemplifies the enduring power of clarity.

The precise details of the story are somewhat in doubt. As it’s been retold over the past fifty years, the particulars often change. But the broad contours of the tale go something like this:

One afternoon, Reeves and a colleague were having lunch in Central Park. On the way back to their Madison Avenue office, they encountered a man sitting in the park, begging for money. He had a cup for donations and beside it was a sign, handwritten on cardboard, that read:
I AM BLIND
.

Unfortunately for the man, the cup contained only a few coins. His attempts to move others to donate money were coming up short. Reeves thought he knew why. He told his colleague something to the effect of: “I bet I can dramatically increase the amount of money that guy is raising simply by adding four words to his sign.” Reeves’s skeptical friend took him up on the wager.

Reeves then introduced himself to the beleaguered man, explained that he knew something about advertising, and offered to change the sign ever so slightly to increase donations. The man agreed. Reeves took a marker and added his four words, and he and his friend stepped back to watch.

Almost immediately, a few people dropped coins into the man’s cup. Other people soon stopped, talked to the man, and plucked dollar bills from their wallets. Before long, the cup was running over with cash, and the once sad-looking blind man, feeling his bounty, beamed.

What four words did Reeves add?

It is springtime and

The sign now read:

It is springtime and I am blind.

Reeves won his bet. And we learned a lesson. Clarity depends on contrast. In this case, the begging man’s sign moved people in the park to empathize with him by starkly comparing their reality with his. Robert Cialdini, the Arizona State University scholar and one of the most important social scientists of the last generation, calls this “the contrast principle.”
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We often understand something better when we see it in comparison with something else than when we see it in isolation. In his work over the past three decades, Cialdini has recast how both academics and practitioners understand the dynamics of influencing others. And one of his core insights is that contrast operates within, and often amplifies, every aspect of persuasion.

That’s why the most essential question you can ask is this:
Compared to what?

You can raise that question by framing your offering in ways that contrast with its alternatives and therefore clarify its virtues. The academic literature on framing is vast and sometimes conflicting.
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But the following five frames can be useful in providing clarity to those you hope to move.

The less frame

Everybody loves choices. Yet ample research has shown that too much of a good thing can mutate into a bad thing. In one well-known study, Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University and Mark Lepper of Stanford set up booths at an upscale grocery store in Menlo Park, California, and offered shoppers the chance to taste and subsequently purchase different flavors of jam. The first booth offered twenty-four varieties. A week later, Iyengar and Lepper set up another booth with only six varieties. Not surprisingly, more customers stopped at the booth with the vast selection than at the one with fewer choices.

But when researchers examined what customers actually purchased, the results were so “striking” that “they appear[ed] to challenge a fundamental assumption underlying classic psychological theories of human motivation and economic theories of rational choice.” Of the consumers who visited the booth with twenty-four varieties, only 3 percent bought jam. At the booth with a more limited selection, 30 percent made a purchase.
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In other words, reducing consumers’ options from twenty-four choices to six resulted in a tenfold increase in sales.

Or take a more recent study. This one asked participants to imagine they wanted to learn German. Then the researchers divided people into two groups. One group had to choose between a $575 online German-language course and a $449 German-language software package. The other group had to choose between that same $575 online course and the $449 software package
plus
a German dictionary. Forty-nine percent of people in the first group picked the software package over the online course. But only 36 percent of the second group made that selection—despite its being a better deal. “Adding an inexpensive item to a product offering can lead to a decline in consumers’ willingness to pay,” the researchers concluded.
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In many instances, addition can subtract.

This is why curation is so important, especially in a world saturated with options and alternatives. Framing people’s options in a way that restricts their choices can help them see those choices more clearly instead of overwhelming them. What Mies van der Rohe said of designing buildings is equally true of moving those who inhabit them: Less is more.

The experience frame

Economists categorize what people buy in the marketplace by the attributes of what they’ve purchased. A lawn mower belongs in a different category from a hamburger, which belongs in a different category from a massage. But social psychologists often categorize what we purchase by our intent. Some things are
material purchases
—“made with the primary intention of acquiring . . . a tangible object that is kept in one’s possession.” Others are
experiential purchases
—“made with the primary intention of acquiring . . . an event or a series of events that one lives through.”
¹⁵

Several researchers have shown that people derive much greater satisfaction from purchasing experiences than they do from purchasing goods. When Leaf Van Boven of the University of Colorado at Boulder and Thomas Gilovich of Cornell University surveyed Americans and Canadians and asked them to reflect on what they’d bought recently, respondents overwhelmingly reported that experiential purchases made them happier than material purchases. Even when people ponder their
future
purchases, they expect that experiences will leave them more satisfied than physical goods.
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Several factors explain this phenomenon. For instance, we adapt quickly to material changes. That spectacular new BMW that so delighted us three weeks ago is now just how we get to work. But that hike on Canada’s West Coast Trail lingers in our mind—and as time goes by, we tend to forget the small-level annoyances (ticks) and remember the higher-level joys (amazing sunsets). Experiences also give us something to talk about and stories to tell, which can help us connect with others and deepen our own identities, both of which boost satisfaction.

As a result, framing a sale in experiential terms is more likely to lead to satisfied customers and repeat business. So if you’re selling a car, go easy on emphasizing the rich Corinthian leather on the seats. Instead, point out what the car will allow the buyer to do—see new places, visit old friends, and add to a book of memories.

The label frame

If you’ve studied economics, lived through the Cold War, or played a few board games, you’re probably familiar with the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The basic scenario goes as follows: A and B have been arrested for a crime, but the police and prosecutors don’t have sufficient evidence to convict them. So they decide to apply pressure by interrogating the two suspects separately. If A and B both keep mum, they each get only a light sentence—one month on unrelated charges. If they both confess, each will receive a six-month sentence. But if A confesses and B stays quiet, B gets ten years in prison and A walks free. Conversely, if B confesses and A stays quiet, A gets ten years in the slammer and B walks. Obviously, A and B would both be better off by cooperating—that is, by keeping their mouths shut. But if one party can’t trust the other, he risks a lengthy prison stay if his partner betrays him—and that, in short, is the dilemma.

In 2004, social scientists from the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and Stanford University recruited participants to play this game. But they changed the name. For one group, they called it the “Wall Street Game”; for the other, the “Community Game.” Did a maneuver as innocuous as changing the label achieve results as significant as altering behavior?

Absolutely.

In the Wall Street Game, 33 percent of participants cooperated and went free. But in the Community Game, 66 percent reached that mutually beneficial result.
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The label helped people answer the “Compared to what?” question. It put the exercise in context, hinted at what was expected, and changed behavior by a factor of two.

Something similar happened back in 1975 in three fifth-grade classrooms in the Chicago Public Schools. There a trio of Northwestern University researchers randomly assigned classrooms to three groups. Over a week, students in one group were told by teachers, janitors, and others that they were extremely neat—in fact, they had one of the neatest classrooms in their school. Children in the second group were simply used to be neat—told to pick up their trash, tidy their desks, and keep the classroom clean. The third group was the control. When investigators later measured the litter in the classrooms, and compared it with litter levels before the experiment began, the results were unmistakable. The neatest group by far was the first—the one that had been labeled “neat.” Merely assigning that positive label—helping the students frame themselves in comparison with others—elevated their behavior.

The blemished frame

Can a negative ever be a positive when it comes to moving others? That’s what three marketing professors investigated in a 2012 study. In one set of experiments, they presented information about a pair of hiking boots as if the study participants were shopping for them online. To half the group, researchers listed all the great things about the boots—orthopedic soles, waterproof material, a five-year warranty, and more. To the other half, they included the same list of positives, but followed it with a negative—these boots, unfortunately, came in only two colors. Remarkably, in many cases the people who’d gotten that small dose of negative information were
more likely
to purchase the boots than those who’d received the exclusively positive information.

The researchers dubbed this phenomenon the “blemishing effect”—where “adding a minor negative detail in an otherwise positive description of a target can give that description a more positive impact.” But the blemishing effect seems to operate only under two circumstances. First, the people processing the information must be in what the researchers call a “low effort” state. That is, instead of focusing resolutely on the decision, they’re proceeding with a little less effort—perhaps because they’re busy or distracted. Second, the negative information must
follow
the positive information, not the reverse. Once again, the comparison creates clarity. “The core logic is that when individuals encounter weak negative information after already having received positive information, the weak negative information ironically highlights or increases the salience of the positive information.”
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So if you’re making your case to someone who’s not intently weighing every single word, list all the positives—but do add a mild negative. Being honest about the existence of a small blemish can enhance your offering’s true beauty.

The potential frame

So far we’ve looked at selling gourmet jam, German-language software, and a pair of awesome but slightly blemished hiking boots. But which frame is best when selling ourselves? Our initial, and very sensible, instinct is that we ought to use an achievement frame—and emphasize the deals we’ve done, the divisions we’ve turned around, the awards we’ve accumulated.

But in a fascinating and wide-ranging 2012 paper, Zakary Tormala and Jayson Jia of Stanford University and Michael Norton of the Harvard Business School suggest a different approach. What we really should do, they say, is emphasize our
potential
. For example, these researchers put participants in the role of a National Basketball Association general manager tasked with awarding contracts to players. Some participants had to offer a contract to a player with five years of experience who had produced some impressive stats. Others had to offer a contract to a rookie who was projected to produce those same statistics during his first five seasons of play. Participants, on average, gave the veteran player with solid numbers a salary of over four million dollars for his sixth year. But they said that for the rookie’s sixth season, they’d expect to pay him more than
five
million dollars. Likewise, the researchers tested two different Facebook ads for the same comedian. Half the ads said the comedian, Kevin Shea, “could be the next big thing.” The other half said, “He is the next big thing.” The first ad generated far more click-throughs and likes than the second. The somewhat peculiar upshot of the research, the scholars write, is that “the potential to be good at something can be preferred over actually being good at that very same thing.”
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