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You’d likely get a lot of really confused looks, some rude comments, and maybe a few kisses if you’re not too creepy.
However, built into each one of us is a sub-conscious desire to be consistent that is so strong that it could get strangers to kiss you and clients to book you that might have otherwise said no.
Don’t believe me? Watch this video and see if you can figure out how they did it. It’s worth a few minutes of your time.
Besides being ridiculously entertaining, this demonstrates the principle of consistency, which can be super powerful in converting people into clients. Let’s talk about what’s happening here and how you can use these same principles to get more clients, specifically by making sure you’re showing your pricing at the right time.
We hate being inconsistent
People LOVE to be consistent.
So if they use a product and love it, they’ll defend it like mad to anyone who says it’s crap because they want to think that they made the right choice and that it will always be a good product.
Similarly, if we have a bad experience with a product, we’ll write them off and likely not give them another chance.
But this affects more than just our product usage. If we even just say we’ll do something, we’d rather do it than go against our word and come across as inconsistent.
So in the video above, we see them asking people if they’d kiss if mistletoe was there. This is an easy thing to agree to because there’s no mistletoe in sight.
Suddenly, when it shows up, they have to make a choice. Do they kiss a stranger, even if it is uncomfortable and not something they’d otherwise have done, or do they change their mind and come across as inconsistent?
Many of them kiss.
The power of saying “yes”
That’s not the only thing at work here, though.
I’d wager that if they did this exact same experiment and just started with the kissing question, they’d have had significantly less success.
The questions they asked at the start about other holiday traditions weren’t just to trick them. It was to get them to start agreeing to the things they were asking for a little bit at a time.
First, they had to agree to take the survey.
Then they were asked questions about things that they likely did at some point in their lives as they are widely celebrated by the people at their college.
So they got people to say “yes” at least a few times before asking about mistletoe and kissing.
This is why spammy telephone salesmen often ask you if you support a cause that you clearly would never say “no” to because they know that if you say you support something, you’re more likely to actually send a donation their way because you’ve already said “yes” once and don’t want to be inconsistent in your responses by not supporting.
While I’m not encouraging you to manipulate people into working with you like they do, I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with using some of these same principles to help you turn interested prospects into clients.
From kisses to pricing…
So how do we apply this to our businesses without crossing the line and becoming manipulative?
First, ask your clients to take little steps of commitment at a time and don’t just start out by asking for the kiss.
For example, I like to only list a starting point for pricing on our website instead of our full pricing and have them contact us for full pricing details. Not only does this give them an idea of how much they will be spending with us, it asks them to say, “yes, I’m interested” by taking an action.
It’s a small action, but it’s a start.
Then, in my response email, I give them the information they need and then link to our entire pricing guide that has all the details in it.
This asks them to take a second action – clicking on the link – which is another subtle way of saying “yes”.
In the pricing guide and in the email, I give them a call to action so they know what the next step is, which for us is asking them to chat with us either in person or via Skype or the phone so we can hear more about their wedding and they can get to know us a bit more. We still aren’t asking for the sale. We’re just asking them to say “yes” to getting to know us and to see if we’d be a good fit for them.
If they set up a consultation with us, they’ve now said “yes” three times, and they have become increasingly invested in working with us.
In the consultation, we ask more questions to see if we’d be a good fit for them, and if they keep saying “yes” and are a good fit for us, we ask about mistletoe (which in this case is asking if they think we’d be a good fit for them). If they say “yes”, we ask for the kiss (the booking). The desire to be consistent and keep agreeing with the fact that we’d be a good fit for them will make them more likely to book than not.
They’ve already said “yes” several times, invested time in checking out our work and making sure we’d be a good fit for us, and they’re far more likely to book us than if we simply had a “book us now” form on our website and asked for the booking without any of the lead-up that we do.
Not only does this help them to determine if we’d be a good fit for them, it helps us to see if they are our ideal clients. Since our business model is a low-volume, higher price point model, we want to make sure that our clients are as ideal as possible, so it’s a great system for both of us.
Want to learn more?
I highly recommend Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence” (affiliate link) which will help you understand how people make decisions and how you can influence them to work with you.
Also, if you’re interested in exactly what we say in our consultations to prospective clients, sign up for our weekly email newsletter. You’ll receive an email a few days after singing up with a link to the exclusive content sharing exactly what we say to our clients in our wedding consultations. Enter your email here:
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