Compare and Contrast to Get Good Business Fast: Best Practices in Offering Choices

In a recent article* I wrote about the importance of providing customer choices, but limiting them to two options or ideally three. Doing so will lead to more sales and happier customers.

Now I’d like to share the best practices on how to do it:

1. Make it standard operating procedure to offer three choices. Require it of your sellers in all they do--from making suggestions during initial discussions to outlining three options in formal proposals. Customers like it, and are more likely to buy if you offer three alternatives.
2. Craft your three options based upon value potential that is easily discernable by the customer. Your comprehensive option should be both broad and deep, and hence will be the most expensive. Your bare-bones option should be the minimum offering that you are still confident in to meet customer requirements. This leaves your high-value option somewhere in the middle. Assuming that all three of your options are strong on value, about two-thirds of your customers will choose your middle choice.
3. Always start with your most expensive, comprehensive option, followed by your high value option, then finally your bare-bones option. This goes against a “logical” sequence from low to high, but this high to low approach has strong emotional appeal. Starting high makes your other two choices seem much more affordable by comparison. I am sure that you have seen this before in other scenarios. For example, if you go into a clothing store to buy a suit, shoes, and a belt, the savvy store clerk will always sell you the suit first. Once you have laid out $1,000 for the suit, paying $250 for shoes seems very reasonable, and a $40 belt seems like a bargain.

*Alexander, James. 2011. “Less Is Better than More: Offering Too Many Choices Is Bad Business.” http://www.alexanderstrategists.com/art_less_is_more.html

Tags: professional services, selling services