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How To Boost Sales In One Simple Step

Author: Ryan Healy   |   December 20th, 2010

Improve Sales by Taking Away Their Freedom
More choice is better… right?
Wrong.
That’s the conclusion of Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice.
Common sense says increased variety and more freedom of choice will make people happier. But studies show it does the exact opposite. It actually makes them unhappy.
Why Is This?
It’s because if they make a decision, they will continually contemplate all the other choices they “sacrificed.” They will wonder if they would have been happier had they made a different decision.
This paradox of choice not only affects happiness; it affects the bottom line as well.
The rule is simple. The more choices you give a buyer, the less likely it will be that he will actually make a decision to buy.
Choices overwhelm people. Too many choices offered at once lead to inaction.
In other words, if you give a person too many ways to say yes, you will make it easier for the person to say no. Making a decision is hard work. It’s emotionally taxing. The more choices and variables involved, the harder it becomes to decide.
Make Choosing Easy!
Instead of offering a bunch of choices, offer one choice only. The choice is to either buy or not buy. The prospect must then decide yes or no. That’s it!
In almost every case, you want to make the decision to purchase as easy and simple as possible.
Buy or not buy; call or not call; request more information or don’t.
What Joe Sugarman Says…
One time Joe Sugarman wrote a newspaper ad selling a watch. His client wanted to sell three styles in three different colors for a total of nine different watches. Joe wanted to only sell one watch: the men’s watch in black.
Joe and his client agreed to an A/B split-test. The results were surprising…
When both versions ran, the ad that featured only one men’s watch out-pulled the other version that featured nine models by a surprising 3 to 1 ratio. In short, for every watch we sold from the ad that featured the nine styles, we sold three in the other ad that showed just the one black watch. (Advertising Secrets of the Written Word, p. 162)
Even prior to this split-test, Joe had told his client, “…offering a customer too many choices [is] a dangerous thing to do.” (p. 161)
This only serves to illustrate the point I’m making. If you want to improve your sales, take away your buyer’s freedom by giving him fewer choices. Not only will he be happier, you’ll make more sales, more money, and more profit.
– Ryan
P.S. For more copywriting tips than you can shake a pen at, skip on over to Copywriting Code.

More choice is better… right? Wrong. That’s the conclusion of Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice.

Common sense says increased variety and more freedom of choice will make people happier. But studies show it does the exact opposite. It actually makes them unhappy.

Why Is This?

SalesIt’s because if they make a decision, they will continually contemplate all the other choices they “sacrificed.” They will wonder if they would have been happier had they made a different decision.

This paradox of choice not only affects happiness; it affects the bottom line as well.

The rule is simple. The more choices you give a buyer, the less likely it will be that he will actually make a decision to buy.

Choices overwhelm people. Too many choices offered at once lead to inaction.

In other words, if you give a person too many ways to say yes, you will make it easier for the person to say no. Making a decision is hard work. It’s emotionally taxing. The more choices and variables involved, the harder it becomes to decide.

Make Choosing Easy!

Instead of offering a bunch of choices, offer one choice only. The choice is to either buy or not buy. The prospect must then decide yes or no. That’s it!

In almost every case, you want to make the decision to purchase as easy and simple as possible.

Buy or not buy; call or not call; request more information or don’t.

What Joe Sugarman Says…

One time Joe Sugarman wrote a newspaper ad selling a watch. His client wanted to sell three styles in three different colors for a total of nine different watches. Joe wanted to only sell one watch: the men’s watch in black.

Joe and his client agreed to an A/B split-test. The results were surprising…

When both versions ran, the ad that featured only one men’s watch out-pulled the other version that featured nine models by a surprising 3 to 1 ratio. In short, for every watch we sold from the ad that featured the nine styles, we sold three in the other ad that showed just the one black watch. (Advertising Secrets of the Written Word, p. 162)

Even prior to this split-test, Joe had told his client, “…offering a customer too many choices [is] a dangerous thing to do.” (p. 161)

This only serves to illustrate the point I’m making. If you want to improve your sales, take away your buyer’s freedom by giving him fewer choices. Not only will he be happier, you’ll make more sales, more money, and more profit.

– Ryan

P.S. For more copywriting tips than you can shake a pen at, skip on over to Copywriting Code.

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2 Responses to “How To Boost Sales In One Simple Step”

  1. Pete Moring Says:

    This post was a bit of an eye-opener I have to say, but as my website is totally focused on actually giving it’s visitors multiple (THOUGH LIMITED) choices do you think I’m shooting myself in the foot?

    Pete.

  2. Ken Siew Says:

    Thank you Ryan for explaining the power of limited choices. I agree with you on limiting choices to your prospects to prevent analysis paralysis. I’d also want to add that it’s perfectly fine to have 2 to 3 choices, instead of just one, because many times you might be leaving money on the table if you only provide one choice. It’s the classic “The Power of 3” in marketing.

    E.g. many fantastic online courses provide 3 levels of membership, basic, premium, super duper premium, and they pull in a lot of sales because of that. If they only provide the basic membership, you might be missing the additional revenue from those who are willing to pay more for personalized attention.

    I’m pretty sure you meant to limit your choices to just a few. I just wanted to clarify that 3 or fewer choices might also do the job.

    Keep the good stuff coming man!

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