The first Monday Mindhacks: discover the psychological triggers that create demand for your company & products.
Why is it so dang hard to get buyers to change their behavior? I mean, my product is way better. It’s more cost-effective, their lives will be easier, what gives?
Well, there’s a psychological trigger about that – it’s called STATUS QUO BIAS.
People don’t like change. They’ve done things a certain way for a while. Change is scary. Consumers? They might not trust you. Businesses? Why go to bat for your product, when what they’re using now is fine. Why buy your product (or company)?
They’re afraid of losing what they already have. So what’s the strategy?
It’s about positioning – positioning their current situation as a loss that’s already happening. That by NOT making a change, they’re continuing to dig a deeper hole.
That will nudge them more than if they feel their current situation is fine.
Pair that with positioning your product, not a radical change, but just an option. An alternative, not a replacement. Alternatives are less scary than something wholly new.
And, it can work in an acquisition context with strategic buyers.
So … There’s your first Monday Mindhack. Take a beat and think – how could you use it?
Transcript:
Raj: Hi there, Raj Jha here, and I’m starting a new series, which you’re going to see the first one of today, it’s called Monday Mindhacks. And this is a series on the psychology that you can apply to everything having to do with how you’re marketing, how you’re selling in your business. If you are raising investment for your business, or even if you’re looking for acquirers for your business. And why are we doing this? Because there are so many psychological principles that you can use, hopefully ethically for good, for not evil in order to get more of what you want in your business life. So here’s the thing. If you’re not using these, then you might be losing out to someone who is someone who does understand how to use psychology, better to get people interested in their products, to get investors, to want to invest in their business, where to get acquirers, to want to acquire their business.
So it’s really, really important that you understand these, and hopefully let’s have some fun in the meantime. The first one we’re going to talk about today is called the status quo bias. And if you’ve ever sold anything or tried to get someone to switch behaviors, whether it’s a customer or your children, you know that this is really hard that people tend to not change their behavior. They tend to take an easy route. Maybe it was something that was recommended to them or a pattern they just fell into and they just stick with it. They keep on doing the same thing again and again. In other words, inertia is really strong. It’s hard to overcome it. Let’s say that you’re selling your product. What would you do to overcome status quo bias? Well, one of the things that you might do is to position the status quo, what they’re doing now as a loss.
For instance, you’re selling a product and the status quo that you’re trying to get them to change systems from, let’s say you’re selling a SAS product and they’re doing things one way and there’s a lot of inertia changed to using your new product. But if you can position the new way of doing things as something great, and especially the status quo as a loss, that is one of the most effective ways to do it. Whenever you’re thinking about positioning something, think about status quo bias, and whether or not you can position something as a loss. And you’ll notice that at the beginning of this video, I did exactly that. I positioned it not knowing this as a loss. Your status quo is going along your merry way and not really thinking about the psychology of what you’re doing, but I positioned this as well. Guess what? See competitors might know this, and if you don’t, then it’s going to be a loss, which is true. But I also use the principle. So in any way today’s psychology, Monday mindhacks; It was about the status quo bias, and stayed tuned every Monday. I’m going to be releasing more so you can learn how to do better with your sales, your marketing, your getting investment, or getting your company acquired. See you next time.
