-Where we're going she's a two.
- You're being an asshole.
My name is Alex Berman and you’re watching Selling Breakdowns.
Probably all of you out there have wondered at some point: how much choice do I really have?
Whether you’re working or studying, it often feels like you’re just jumping from one
obligation to the next.
There are appointments you have to go to, deadlines you’ve been given, people you
must deal with and most of this is out of your hands.
We like to think that at least we control the small, everyday choices, like the sandwiches
we eat or the clothes we put on, but even those are strongly influenced by marketing,
advertising and social trends.
Westworld is one of the best TV shows of the 21st century and its appeal lies in its core
question: do I have free will?
If you’ve not seen the show, it’s about a huge theme park, designed like a classic
western movie; cowboy hats, saloon bars, roaming prairies and farms.
The park is filled with completely human looking androids who follow certain storylines and
can interact with guests as if they were real living people, from the wild west.
Guest are free to do whatever they want; there are no laws and no repercussions.
It’s all about choice and the show examines this brilliantly from both sides: the humans
attending the park, who are suddenly free of the social and legal restrictions of the
outside world, and the android park hosts, whose interactions make them appear alive
and intelligent but are actually controlled on many levels.
-What is it that you want?
- I don't know.
If you strip everything away, the reason choices are important to us are because we want to
feel in control of our own lives.
We want to feel we are the guests in the park, although we sometimes suspect we are the hosts;
programmed and obedient.
Today we’re going to look at two sides of choices: how everyone makes them and how we
offer them to customers.
The first step is working out; what's the goal of this choice?
And it’s never as simple as it appears.
Let’s say you’re trying to decide what to eat, a choice you make numerous times every day.
There are a huge number of factors here, such as: hunger, cost, time of day, body image,
health issues, availability, culture, and on and on and on.
It’s too simple to say “we eat so we stop being hungry”, it’s much more complex
than that.
In Westworld, when a guest disembarks the train, they walk into a bustling town centre
that is designed to help them decide what their goal is.
There are bars, brothels, bandits and noisy conversations, so guests can hear various
plans being made and potential scenarios being hinted at.
With this overview, guests are able to better understand themselves and realise what they
want out of their experience.
This is the perfect balance and one that reflects exactly what customers need.
Without any kind of guide, they will probably be paralysed, since you’re forcing them
to come up with their own solution to their problem.
And even worse, if they later think of a better option, they’ll feel dissatisfied with what
they chose.
Imagine a 50-page menu with every possible dish you could ever imagine; how would you
ever select something on that menu?
And how would you feel when you saw the waiter walk past, carrying something far better than
what you just ordered.
On the other hand, giving very limited options means you force most customers to compromise.
American psychologist Barry Schwartz released a book in 2004 called The Paradox of Choice.
The core concept is that happiness… (and for our purposes we can call this customer
satisfaction)…is affected most strongly by the success or failure of achieving your goal.
People running to the stores on Black Friday are looking for a discount, that’s the goal
they are all hunting for.
It doesn’t matter so much what the actual price they pay is, it’s the difference between
the discount price and the original.
But a mom hunting for a Christmas present for her kid: her goal is the maximum joy it
can bring to her child.
Of course she has a budget, but her satisfaction will be related to how much the kid loves
the gift, not what she paid for it.
So how do you help customers set their goals?
In Westworld, Dolores talks of “Choices hanging in the air like ghosts.
And if you could just see them, you could change your whole life.”
Your job is to make these choices visible, without overwhelming them.
It’s all about asking simple questions; whether that’s in person or on the early
stages of the sales funnel like on social media or a cold email campaign.
And try to keep these questions as open as possible, rather than just offering A or B.
As long as you keep a good database of your customers, you will be able to use their open
answers to work out which products or solutions will best fit their needs and which factors,
such as price, quality, speed etc are going to make them most satisfied with your service.
This is the work behind the scenes, that makes the sales process come together.
Obviously, you’re not actually offering people an unlimited range of options.
Once you’ve helped the customer set their goals, then you can begin to push solutions
and really begin selling, because they dictated the terms, they controlled the process by
talking about what they needed.
You’re just here to help them out.
Barry Schwartz also discusses how you want to avoid forcing the customer into thinking
about missed opportunities, or “fear of missing” out as we often call it today.
In Westworld, when William meets beautiful park host Delores and follows her off on an
adventure, his future brother-in-law, Logan, is dragged along with them.
Logan hates it, and is constantly frustrated as he lists all of the other things they could
be doing.
His experience is terrible, not because what they are doing is unpleasant, but because
he knows there are other experiences happening that he would enjoy a lot more.
So, when you’re helping a customer to set their goals and make choices, make sure that
you frame everything in terms of what benefits they are getting, not on what they would lose
if they chose something else.
Wanna learn more about business theory and pop culture?
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