Successful sales professionals in any field realize that they can improve the odds of making a sale by offering their customers more than one option of a service or product. But how many choices should you offer?
This week I’ve been invited to be the keynote speaker for a successful retailer with more than 800 stores. As I prepared for the presentation, I learned something from the retailer that I’d like to share with you because 1) it reinforces an important concept from some of my previous columns and 2) it applies to sales in almost any category.
This particular retailer coaches its employees to offer their customers a choice of more than one item. As long as the the second item has the features the customer said were important, it increases the likelihood that the customer will find the right product and, of course, purchase it.
The retailer has found the magic number of choices to be two or three, but no more. If a salesperson offers a customer more than one item, it demonstrates that the salesperson is an expert in the product and has actively listened to the customer’s needs. Here’s what I found really interesting: when the customer is faced with too many choices at once, it leaves the customer confused and less likely to buy from any of the choices! This retailer has discovered that giving a customer more than three choices at one time actually confuses customers and makes them frustrated.
As I’ve written in a previous column, the rule of three is a powerful weapon in the communication arsenal. It simply means that people can only remember about three “chunks” of information in short term, or working memory. If you give people too much information – or offer too many choices—they either won’t remember a thing or they’ll become frustrated, even mad.
In their famous study, “Why Choice is Demotivating,” professors Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper disputed the popular notion that having more choices was a better sales strategy. In several experiments they discovered that people are more likely to purchase products (jams or chocolates) in a store when offered smaller number of choices (6) rather than more (24 or 30). They even studied college students and discovered that students were more likely to do an essay for extra credit when they when presented with a smaller list of six topics instead of 30 topics to choose from. Those students who chose an essay from the smaller selection even wrote higher quality essays.
Scientists call it “choice overload.” In many product categories, reducing the number of choices you offer a customer will improve the odds of making a sale. It might sound counter-intuitive, but it’s best not to mess with the way the human mind is wired. We’re wired for simplicity and fewer choices. Don’t overload our circuit breakers.