Appeal only to a prospect’s reason, and you may have no appeal at all.
How Prospects Decide: Choosing the Familiar
In 1988, two telemarketing companies began business.
In Omaha, Nebraska, Steve Edleman established Edleman Telemarketing
with a hundred stations, some contacts, and a full-page ad on the back of
Telemarketing magazine. The ad was a huge investment for such a small
company, an investment that Edleman has continued to make every month for
what is now seven years.
Three months later, in Minneapolis, Gary Cohen and Rick Diamond opened
ACI Telemarketing with superior technology and a strong pitch.
Today, Edleman Telemarketing is the giant of the industry. ACI is just as
competent, but much smaller.
Edleman’s success suggests how prospects make decisions. They rely on
familiarity. From ad after full-page ad, prospects had heard more about Edleman.
So whenever they were in doubt—which was often—prospects chose Edleman.
People choose what seems most familiar. It’s the same bias that makes people
think that more people die from motor vehicle accidents than from stomach
cancer. We tend to choose the one we hear the most about—even though the
truth is that stomach cancer kills twice as many people as car accidents.
Another small surprise: The evidence suggests that it is better to be known
badly than not to be known at all. This is due to a human trait called attribute
forgetting. Let’s say you hear something negative about a company. As time
passes you tend to forget that negative information—you forget the attributes—
and remember only the company name. Then, asked which company you have a
better opinion of—that first company or another company you have never heard
of—you choose the familiar company, even though everything you heard about
that company was negative. Familiarity wields that much power.
You need to make yourself familiar to your prospects. You need to get out
there.
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