scoring a whopping 55 percent positive response rate.
A third way of communicating information prior to the
introduction of your message is through context. For this example,
a French experiment was conducted in which an attractive male
approached a woman walking through a shopping mall and boldly
asked for her phone number to arrange a date for some future time.
This gentleman didn’t score too badly on this task, with around 13
percent of women offering their phone numbers when the
invitation took place in front of an ordinary clothing boutique or
shoe store. But would his results improve when the request was
staged in front of one of the most romantic of shops—a flower
store? You guessed it. Our tester received phone numbers from 24
percent of the women he asked in this scenario, nearly double that
of the first scenario. Essentially, the study found that even a hint of
romance can beat risk under the right circumstances.
I experienced this effect firsthand some years ago when
approaching a contract renegotiation with a particularly thorny
vendor. As usual, the meeting was slated to take place at the
vendor’s office with groups in attendance from each of our two
companies. Arriving early for the meeting, I made one simple
change that dramatically altered the tenor of the meeting from
contentious to cooperative. What was that change? Rather than
our team sitting in a row on one side of the table, leaving the
opposite row for the vendor’s team, we alternated seating, leaving
spaces available for them in between our own chairs. What
resulted was a complete sea change in how we worked together to
get the job done—an approach that stemmed from a feeling of
collaboration rather than contentiousness.
One person that does this better than anyone is the business
tycoon Warren Buffet, who in many of his letters to shareholders
will issue a “mea culpa,” taking responsibility for some mistake he
has committed during the previous investment period. The effect
of such a disarming statement is to immediately instill a sense of
trust in the reader, as in, “If he is admitting to his mistake up
front, he must be an honest guy.” Once he has connected with his
reader in this humbling way, Buffet could practically sell his reader
the next Brooklyn Bridge.
The takeaway from my research is that advertisers and other
businesspeople are missing out on a golden opportunity: those
critical moments before you actually deliver your message.
Everyone with something to sell—and that’s all of us, frankly—
should invest in some simple research to see what messages
motivate our customers to buy. Would a change in your website
background images do the trick? A new headline for your
advertising campaign? What kind of trigger words, images, and
situations do the best job in getting your prospective customers to
convert?
18 | CARLEPUBLISHING.COM