Wizard of Ads Partners

"Your goal should be to remove as much friction as possible from your sales process. Friction is anything that prevents the customer buying from you. Smart business owners know the secret to success is not to make it easier for the seller, but to make it easier for the buyer."

Adapted from the best selling business book, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, by Bryan & Jeff Eisenberg. Chapter 3, page 21, Friction and Customer Experience.

Together they come under the Big Top called Marketing. 

 

By Craig Arthur

"You must have staff designated to implement the process. Everyday. Not just when business is slow."

Regular dental check-ups are something my wife and I want for our little girl, Bridget. (2-yrs)

Six months ago, we booked Bridget in for her first dental appointment. It was with 1300SMILES. Why? They have a dentist who specializes in children’s teeth. More importantly, this dentist makes visiting the dentist fun.

Bridget had a ball at her first visit. She came home with a dental mask, gloves, a toothbrush and toothpaste. For the next week, when brushing, we had to put on the mask and gloves while Bridget wore sunglasses… just like at the dentist.

Six months later, we receive a post card in the mail addressed to Bridget, reminding us to book her in for a check-up. This immediately went into the must-do-basket.

However, life got in the way and we failed to pick up the phone and make an appointment.

Not to worry, 1300SMILES called us as a follow-up to the postcard. This time we booked Bridget in.

By Steve Clark, Wizard Partner & CEO of New School Selling

So, in essence, [price] is changing people's experiences with a product and, therefore, the outcomes from consuming this product."

The lesson says Baba Shiva is that: "there's a temptation among marketers to keep reducing prices. We're saying be careful before you embark on that strategy."

Image from "the most expensive Journal"Does the price you paid for that expensive wine at dinner influence your satisfaction with that wine? The answer to this question may reside in the folds of your medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain that registers pleasure.
 
In what should be music to the ears of marketers, the old adage that you get what you pay for really is true when it comes to that most ephemeral of products: bottled wine.

The Research

A recent study by Baba Shiv, an Associate Professor of Marketing at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and a group of researchers at California Institute of Technology concludes that people will experience an increase in activity and pleasure within the brain when they consume wine that they perceive to be expensive even though the part of the brain that interprets taste is not affected.

In an article, co-authored by Baba Shiv, titled "Marketing Actions Can Modulate Neural Representations of Experienced Pleasantness," published online Jan. 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, students were placed in a MRI and given sips of red wine-including the same one twice, with different price tags: $5.00 (the actual price) and $45.00 (a fictional price). The subjects reported that they liked the expensive wine more than the cheaper wine even though it was the same wine - a preference that was mirrored by an increased activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex of their brains as measured by the MRI. While many studies have looked at how marketing affects behavior, this is the first to show that it has a direct effect on the brain.

The Marketing Implications

While you may not be able to implement all of these ten strategies, read each of them carefully and ponder how you might creatively use them in your business or practice.

1. Raise your current prices and fees
This is a no brainer and requires little skill. However, it does require a lot of  courage. The reality is that people will pay you more than you are currently  asking. Maybe not 50% or 100% more but certainly 10% - 30% more. All you  have to do is convince yourself of this and transfer this conviction and  confidence to your buyers. 
 
2. Change your target market
Start going after the type of clients who are not price shoppers. While price is a consideration in most buying decisions, research shows that less than 10% of buyers buy strictly on price. You must retrain yourself that price is not the reason most people don't buy from you. It may be that they don't trust you or they don't  see you as an expert or they don't see the value in what you offer. Whatever the reason, it isn't price.
 
3. Stop giving stuff away for free
Sales people are notorious for giving away products and services for free. Some where in their head they have the idea that if they will be nice and give "more value" (that usually means the company's resources) they will be elevated and achieve exalted status in the eyes of the buyer. That's rubbish. The reality is that the more you give away the more they want for free and the harder it becomes to get them to pay for future products or services. The solution: Charge for everything.