PRESS RELEASE
The Melbourne-based best-selling author of “Financial Foreplay®” has launched her third title, “Sales Seduction”, which claims that contrary to the prevailing wisdom, less choice is often significantly better for sales.
For Immediate Release
February 1, 2013
Ever since Amazon, Target and Wal-Mart began offering customers every product under the sun, the prevailing wisdom in retail has been that “more is better.” If shoppers are not interested in one product or service, then surely they may be interested in option two, three or four? According to Rhondalynn Korolak, author of Sales Seduction and small business marketing expert, “this mistake has led to an insatiable compulsion to offer too many choices. When the economy and sales are down, business owners tend to increase the number of products, services and offers they put out there, hoping that more choice will mean more opportunities to close sales.”
But often with more options comes more confusion. Scientific evidence now exists to suggest that most businesses (large and small) are actually losing sales by giving customers too many choices.
In 2000, a researcher from Columbia University conducted a study to determine what impact the number of choices had on sales. Her team set up a table full of exotic jams outside an upscale grocery store in Menlo Park, CA. Over the course of two days, they offered a selection of either 6 or 24 flavors for sale to 502 shoppers — 242 encountered the 24 flavors and 260 were presented with only 6 choices.
For every 100 prospects that passed the table when the display had 24 flavors, 60 stopped to look but only 2 purchased. Surprisingly, when choice was reduced to 6 flavors, 40 shoppers browsed and 12 purchased. That’s a 600% increase in sales.
So why don’t more choices lead to more sales and what are the implications for small business marketing?
According to Korolak, “neuromarketing research has proven that the part of your brain that decides is a very primitive beast which is only concerned with solving pain and your survival. In order to keep you alive, it has been hard wired to make decisions very quickly and it is easily overwhelmed when too many choices are presented.”
In fact, short term memory only allows humans to process about three to four chunks of information at once in the form of letters, words, digits or numbers. On most websites or in-store environments, consumers are now presented with ten or more options at every encounter. This is exhausting and confusing for the brain.
“And when the old brain (the decision maker) cannot decide,” says Korolak, “it kicks all the information it sees up to the new brain for processing. And all of this thinking and new brain processing takes up a huge amount of time and energy, which prolongs the decision making process.”
Does this mean that every business should cut the number of products and services by 75%, as was the case in this study?
Not necessarily, but based on neuromarketing research, your small business marketing message will be more effective if you make it easier for customers to decide.
Choice is wonderful in theory but in most cases, less choice will boost sales significantly.
To learn more about Sales Seduction, visit: https://imagineeringnow.com/products/sales-seduction/
About Rhondalynn Korolak
Korolak is a lawyer, chartered accountant, business Coach, best-selling author and small business marketing expert. She provides advice on profitable growth to corporations and she contributes to well-known publications such as Yahoo, CNN ireport, Sky news, Kochie’s Business Builders, bNet, Fast Thinking, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire. Her recent books include Financial Foreplay® and On The Shoulders of Giants.
To find out more, contact Rhondalynn Korolak at:
info(at)imagineeringunlimited(dot)com or 1300 892 984 (in Australia)
