A study done by Canadian Psychologists on people at racetrack reveals that just after placing a bet, the punters are more confident of their horse’s chances of winning than they are immediately before placing the bet! What is interesting here is that the horse’s chances of winning in reality just before placing the bet and just after placing the bet has not changed. The change only occurred in the betters mind.
This behaviour is NOT unique to the racetrack
“We would do anything to be consistent with what we have already done”. That is once we take a stand on something, we will do our utmost to behave consistently with that commitment to justify our decision. The drive to be consistent can compel us to do what we normally would not do.
Why?
It is understood that our brain wants to conserve energy. Rather than expend energy on making complex decisions on everything we do, once a decision is made, our brain conserves energy by motivating us to be consistent with the decision we made. This allows the brain to happily be excused from the pain of having to think too much.
How Toy companies use this to their advantage
Toy companies make most their money during Christmas period and go quite for the rest of the year. They not only wanted to maintain their healthy festive season business but also wanted to maintain reasonable business in the following months. And this is what they did.
Prior to Christmas, toy companies place several ads for popular toys to whip up massive demand for them. Kids than put pressure on their parents to get these popular toys as Christmas presents. Parents agree (make a commitment to their kids) to get these toys for Christmas.
These Toy retailers intentionally under supply the popular toys of the season. Very soon, these toys are ‘sold-out’. Parents are under pressure. They made a commitment to their child. So they end up buying the best possible alternative just to get by the festive season. The parent, in order to be consistent with their original commitment, visits the Toy stores again during January sales to buy the original toy they promised their kids.
Voila! The Toy retailers doubled their profits, just by understanding that parents have behave consistently with their commitment to their children.
The key here is “Commitment”
Social psychologists know the key to this behaviour is commitment. Once we commit, take a stand or go on the record, we tend to behave in ways that is consistent with our commitment. What is interesting is that when we commit to even the smallest request, cause or stand we tend to extend this commitment when the request becomes bigger. Here are some examples:
How Chinese Communists got the best out of American POW’s during the Korean War!
During the Korean War, some of the US soldiers were held in camps run by the Chinese Communists. Whereas North Korean POW camps were treating its captives very harshly, the Chinese Communists took a different approach. They appear to take a very ‘lenient’ approach. In fact, the Chinese Communists were using sophisticated psychological techniques to get their prisoners to collaborate
Their challenge: How to get the Americans to collaborate without resorting to torture. When captured the US soldiers were trained simply to recite their name, rank and serial number.
Their approach: Start with small commitments and build on those little commitments. The prisoners were asked to make what appears to be a harmless anti-American statement such as “The United States is not perfect” and “In a communist country, unemployment is not a problem”. Once the first commitment is made via these statements, the prisoner was asked why he thinks America is not perfect and indicate some examples. This will carry on until the prisoner might be asked to write an essay expanding is explanations. The Chinese then will use his essay in an anti-American broadcast.
Dr. Edgar Schein who worked with these POW’s later said “only few men were able to avoid collaboration altogether. The majority collaborated at one time or another by doing things which seemed to be trivial but which the Chinese were able to turn to their own advantage. This was particularly effective in eliciting confessions, self-criticism and information during interrogation”.
The Lesson:
Small agreed commitments can manipulate that person’s self-image towards that commitment.
How is this used in business
Amway Corporation at some point in time had a big problem with refunds. When legislation was passed to protect consumers from door to door hard sell, Amway started receiving large amount of refunds during the cooling off period. What Amway sales person did was, instead of filling in the sales agreement, got the customer to fill it in. The simple act to committing to fill the sales agreement, increased the customer’s commitment to own the product and significantly reduced refunds.
Proctor and Gamble (USA) encouraged public to send 25,50, or 100 word essays about their products to win some glowing prizes. The contestants were encouraged to write simple statements starting with “Why I like … product X.” This exercise was designed to cement the commitment of the participant.
How to use the ‘commitment consistency’ in our business
First of all let me be clear. Many businesses including so called reputable larger corporations use this to manipulate customers in to buying their products. This is definitely NOT about manipulating your prospects and customers.
Influencing is ethical persuasion, where you genuinely know and believe that what you are offering is the best solution for your customer. It builds trust and loyalty. The aim is a win-win outcome. Whereas manipulation is forcing your customer with tricks and techniques to make a purchase where only YOU benefit from the transaction.
Here are some points for you to consider:
- Can you get your prospect to agree with the smallest benefit to them?
- Can you facilitate the meeting in such a way that your prospect can write benefits down?
- Can you get your customer to publicly commit to your business? (Testimonial is a great way of doing this)
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