Last Updated on 05/04/2010
I recently read a story about how when customers were offered several dozen tastes of jam sales decreased compared to when potential buyers were offered a mere four choices. This has been an intuitive finding of many marketing and sales professionals. Put yourself in the shoes of a customer given too many choices. Too many options often lead to paralysis. One goes back to the drawing board. One figures that there is a need for more research. Perhaps more investigation is needed? Should I consult friends? Read up more on the Internet?
In other words, choice is bad. Capitalism loses. Do not confuse your customers by offering too many choices.
While I am here, another counter-intuitive nugget is how companies want their salespersons to sell their top-of-the-line and most expensive offering. In that case, that option needs to not be the most expensive option. What? Precisely that. This is a sales technique that Starbucks perfected years ago. When faced with $6, $4 and $2 options most customers opted for the $4 option. Knowing that most customers would shy away from choosing the most expensive option and would also avoid the cheap option, most Starbucks customers picked the quasi-coffee product the company really wanted them to buy in the first: the $4 option. It was just that Starbucks had added a ‘luxury’ $6 alternative of which it didn’t expect to sell too many.
If your goal is to sell your ‘gold’ or top-of-the-line option then be sure that your offering includes a ‘platinum’ or topper-of-the-line choice for your customers to not choose.
