Boy what coincidence.
I get the Whizbang tip of the week and here it is........... Hot off the email this am
Everyone can agree that having a choice is good. A choice
about where to live, what to eat, which car to drive, what to
wear, who you hang out with, when to go to bed...
The interesting thing is that social science research has shown
that TOO MUCH CHOICE can actually be a BAD thing!
It turns out that when people choose between many options
they end up being less happy with their decision than are
people who choose between far fewer options. That’s right –
LESS happy - even when having lots of options gets them a
better outcome!
Why?
I suppose you could call it the “grass is always greener”
phenomenon. Too many choices lead to regret, remorse, and
what-if thinking.
“What if the other widget would have been softer...”
“Maybe the green one would have matched my eyes...”
“Should I have gone with the more powerful version?”
It’s the uncertainty that leads to dissatisfaction. And you don’t
want customers dissatisfied with their purchase from YOUR
store!
To top it off, when people are forced to choose from too many
options they most often choose NOTHING. And that’s a very
bad thing for your sales statistics!
Here’s what all this means for you...
You should limit your customers’ choices of products or
services. In fact, they want you to.
Your customers are counting on YOU to be the expert, the
arbiter of good taste, the guru of good sense. They want YOU
to be the one to look at all the available options, pick the best
assortment, and offer only those options.
How many choices are too many? It depends. Sometimes
only ONE choice is the right number.
At the Mackinaw Kite Co. we sold more 50# kite line on a spool
than any other item in the store. Makes sense – you can’t fly a
kite without line and all our best selling kites used 50# line. But
we didn’t offer a wide variety of 50# line; we offered ONE. The
one we thought was the best combination of price and
performance.
Can you imagine if we sold the kite and then tried to make the
customer choose from between ten, or even two, different
kinds of line?
Of course, offering only one choice is the exception, not the
rule. More often than not you’ll be giving your customers many
options to choose from. When you are deciding how many
choices to offer, ask yourself the following questions:
>> Can I clearly distinguish between differences in
performance, style, function, or value in all the items or
services I am offering? Or is there a lot of duplication between
them?
>> Do my sales statistics prove that I need a large variety
choices (my customers are buying lots of all the options that I
offer) or do they tell me that I need to trim my assortment (they
buy a lot of one or two items in an assortment but a very few of
the others).
>> Can I offer a bundled “everything” option so that your
customers don’t have to decide which separate components to
choose?
>> How many sales would I REALLY lose if I offered fewer
options? Would my customers simply choose something that I
AM offering?
>> How much easier would it make the customers’ buying
decision if I trimmed my assortment? How often does the
variety of options keep my customer from buying TODAY?
Like the famous modern architect Mies van der Rohe, adopt
the saying “Less Is More” as your guide and you won’t often go
wrong. Because more is often less.
TIP******TIP***** TIP***** TIP***** TIP***** TIP***** TIP
If you like this Tip, you’ll love the first 260! Get ‘em all at
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Bob and Susan Negen
WhizBang! Training
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