If you’ve heard me speak, read my books or had me do sales training, then you certainly know about the power of the choice of two. If you want someone to make a decision, you need to give them the perception of choice, while at the same time limiting their choices. That’s a balancing act, for sure, but not as difficult as it sounds. Once you can get their choices down to one or two, you can ask for the sale, and it won’t feel pushy or aggressive at all.
Listen to this new 10-minute episode for some ways you can use the power of the choice of two in you business and even in your personal life!
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– The magic of the choice of two. Listen to this episode or don’t.
Hi, it’s Alan Berg, welcome back to another episode of “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast”. When I’m doing sales training, I very often run into people that are not natural salespeople. That’s kind of what the wedding and event industry is filled with, people that are creatives and came in because of a skill, or a product, or something that they have, but sales is not their number one thing. And what I very often teach, and it’s in many of my books, “Shut Up and Sell More”, “Stop Selling and Help Them Buy” and others, is if you can get someone down to a choice of two, you can ask for the sale, because it’s simply, “Do you want this one or that one?” And what a lot of people do is they present too many choices and you make it harder for someone to decide. You’ve probably heard me talking about the book “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz, who talks about how people make decisions. Great, great book, highly recommend it, was the second audiobook I ever listened to twice, right?
So choice of two, if you have three packages, which a lot of people do, and it’s something that I’ve advocated because it’s called the center-stage effect by “The Journal of Consumer Psychology”. If you put three things together in an array, the one in the middle is perceived to be the best option for you. And the way that I say it in kind of plain language is, the low choice is probably missing something that they want, the top one is going crazy with everything, and then the middle one is the safe choice in the middle, more people will go to the middle. If you label the middle your most popular, or the best value, or something like that, more people will go for that just because of that.
So if you have three choices, you could also say the bottom choice is not available on a very popular date. If you’ve heard me talking about the A dates and the B dates and the C dates in terms of supply and demand, that you don’t have to sell your bottom package on a very high-demand date. Matter of fact, a lot of you are only selling your top package or should be only selling your top package on a very popular date because you only need one person to say yes, especially if you’re a solopreneur.
So what is the magic of the choice of two? This choice of two is not just about sales, this is about decision making. We’re human beings, and if we have more than two things in front of us to choose from, we can’t decide. That’s why the TV show, or the game show, “Let’s Make A Deal”, makes you eliminate a door, right? If they have door number one, door number two, door number three, eliminate a door, and then the next thing is choose between these two. The TV show “House Hunters”, where people are trying to find the perfect house, they show them way more than three houses, but they cut it down to three. And the second to last scene of the show is eliminating a house. And people are always torn, “Oh, I don’t want to eliminate a house,” and then you have to eliminate one, you have to cut one, because it comes down to, do you want this or that? Now, this decision making works for almost any kind of decision.
So let’s say you and your friends or your partner, you want to go out to dinner, and you say, “What do you feel like having?” Say, “Well, I don’t know, I kind of had salad for lunch.” “Yeah, yeah, me too, what do you feel like having?” “I don’t know, what do you feel like having?” No, no, you tell me what you feel like.” If you’ve ever had that conversation, and you’ve probably had it today, about anything with someone, it’s because there’s an unlimited number of choices there. But instead, if you say, “What do you feel like for dinner, pizza or sushi?” And they could either choose pizza or sushi, or they could say, “You know what? I don’t feel like those, but what if we went for,” and then they give another choice, right? That is what you do with any decision you want someone to make. If you’re making an appointment with someone, assuming you’re not using Calendly or something like that, and there are times I think you should and times I think you shouldn’t. I don’t like using it for many things because I lost control of when they’re going to make the decision.
If you’ve ever sent somebody your link for making an appointment and then they just don’t do it, it’s, “When are you going to do it?” There’s no sense of urgency there. So what I prefer to do is to say, unless I’m trying to make appointments with many, many people at the same time, and I know some of you are, I prefer to say, “Were you looking to meet on Tuesday or Wednesday?” or, “Tuesday at two, Thursday at four?” or, “During the day or in the evening?” or, “Is during the week or on the weekend better?” right? So if you’re trying to arrange a meeting with someone, say, “Were you looking to come in during the day or in the evening?” or, “During the week or on the weekend?” or, “Is Tuesday at four or Thursday at seven better for you?” And that choice of two will get them to a quicker decision ’cause they can still suggest something else. They can say, “I can’t do seven on Thursday, but can you do six?” right? And now you get to that decision faster.
So whether it’s your kids, whether it’s your partner, whether it’s your business partner, whether it’s a client, right, whether it’s a current client or a potential client, what you want to do is try to get to any decision you want ’em to make, try to get that to a choice of two whenever you can. Now, many of you have way, way more than two things for them to choose from, and that’s why it’s your job to eliminate choices before you present them to them. So rather than saying, “Here’s everything that we have, what do you want?” say, “Let’s talk about the results you want, let’s talk about the experiences you want, and then I’ll suggest to you which of our services, packages,” however you’re selling, “is going to get you to those results.” And I think that’s why you’ll do that a lot faster with someone, get to them, instead of confusing them with all the options. An example of that would be my speaking topics.
There is a page on my website with the speaking topics, and it used to be on the top-line navigation menu and I took it off there. It’s still on the site, you can still get to it, but you have to get to it from my speaking page. And the reason is, people would go to it, see all of this, and then be like, “Gosh, there’s so many choices here. Let me figure out what I want before I reach out to Alan.” Now, that used to be an 11-page PDF that I cut down to one page on my website. And it’s not a long page because it uses tabs and toggles to make it shorter. And if you want to see it, just go to alanberg.com/speaking-topics, alanberg.com/speaking-topics, and you’ll see that you scroll down a little bit and there are headings of the different categories, and then toggles, which is that little plus sign. So you see the title, you click it, it opens up that section. Used to be an 11-page PDF, now it’s one short page on my website.
But the reason that I moved it so it’s not as accessible, it’s not hidden, that’s different than a hidden page, because a hidden page has no links from the site. This is linked, but you go to the speaking page first, then you can go to the topics. And it’s because I want someone reaching out and saying, “Hey, we’re having an event,” or, “We’d like to create an event around you.” And then we’ll have a conversation, and I’m never talking about topics, I’m talking about who’s coming, I’m talking about who else might be speaking, when the last one was, who spoke at that one? What are the things that their members, or attendees, or whatever, are talking about on social? What are the things they want? And why me? Why do you think I’m the right fit? And then what other conferences maybe have they seen me at, these people? And then I’ll say, “Well, based upon that, here are some topics I suggest.”
So instead of them saying, “Hey, I’ve looked at these 20 topics,” or whatever, whatever it is there now, I’ll say, “Here’s a couple,” depending on how many times I’m speaking. If I’m speaking once, I’ll suggest two topics. If I’m speaking more than once, I’ll suggest usually one more than the number of times, right? If it’s three times, if it’s a couple of days, I might suggest a little bit more than that, but never so many more that they’re be like, “Ah, I don’t know what I want.” Usually, I’ll try to get it down to just the ones that I think are right, and I’ll say, “From my podcast, I can tell you these are my popular topics, I would go with these two.” And most of the time, they defer to me, right? I’m the expert, I’m the speaker. And sometimes they say, “I saw you give this speech at another conference, I want you to come give it to our group.” I’ll say, “Great, who else was with you there? Who else might’ve seen this?” And if it’s nobody, I’ll say, “Fine, you think that’s great for your group, let’s go with that.” And this way, they’re not confused by the whole list of things.
So the choice of two, which, listen, if you can get ’em down to one thing, if it’s one service, or one package, or whatever, and say, “Well, it sounds like what you’re looking for, right? This is the package that has everything you need, nothing you don’t, right? If you go with the one below it, you’re missing things. You go with the one above it, it’s stuff you really don’t need. I’d go with this one. Should we do that?” It’s kind of still a choice of two, “Do you want it or don’t you?” But it’s really still a one-choice thing and you’re asking for the sale.
So the choice of two is a really easy way to ask for the sale. If you’re not comfortable asking for the sale, this is your friend, just get ’em down to two things and say, “Did you want to go with the,” fill in the blank, “feature or without?” right? “Did you want to go with the save the dates or without the save the dates? Did you want to go with the hand-fasting ceremony or not? Did you want to go, right, this package or that package?” It’s just an easier way to do it and it won’t feel like selling. So I hope that helps you, I hope it helps you get more people to see that you’re the right fit and to help you close some more of those sales. Thanks for listening.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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