Joe Sugarman's Triggers - The Ice Cream Ordering Sequence
People are funny. And the way they respond sometimes makes for some very valuable insights. That’s the basis of this true but crazy story of how I ordered ice cream and discovered a very valuable psychological trigger, even though I didn’t realize what I was learning at the time.
In the late 1950s I was working in New York selling printing equipment. One day after
dinner, I decided to stop by a small ice cream parlor to have a dish of ice cream. I sat down at the counter and the waitress asked me for my order.
I requested my favorite dessert, “I’ll have a dish of chocolate ice cream with whipped
cream.”
The waitress looked at me with a puzzled expression, “You mean a chocolate sundae?”
“No, I want a dish of chocolate ice cream with whipped cream,” was my response.
“Well, that’s a chocolate sundae without the syrup,” replied the waitress.
“Isn’t it just chocolate ice cream with whipped cream? What’s the difference?” I inquired.
“Well, a sundae is 35 cents and plain ice cream is 25 cents. What you want is a sundae without the syrup,” replied the waitress, with a rather smug expression on her face.
“OK, I want chocolate ice cream with whipped cream, so if you have to charge me 10 cents more, go ahead,” was my reply. (This took place in the ’50s when a dollar was worth a lot more than it is today.)
The ice cream arrived and I ate it. It was delicious. Chocolate ice cream was my favorite dessert in college, where I had just completed two years before taking off a year to work in New York. I had always heard that New Yorkers had a different way of expressing themselves, so I guess I wasn’t surprised at my first experience.
A few days later I went out to dinner at a small diner on the lower West Side. When the waitress asked me if I wanted dessert, I responded, “I’ll have a dish of chocolate ice cream with whipped cream.”The waitress looked at me and put her hands on her hips, “You mean a sundae?”
Here I go again, I thought. “No, not a sundae but a dish of chocolate ice cream with whipped cream.”
The waitress responded, “Well, that’s a sundae without the chocolate syrup.”
After a few exchanges back and forth, I finally agreed to get the chocolate ice cream with whipped cream and pay an extra 10 cents, just like I had had to at the ice cream parlor.
And for the next few weeks, each time I ordered my favorite dessert, regardless of the restaurant, I’d still go through the same hassle.One evening, after having worked really hard during the day, I was finishing my meal in a restaurant in mid-town Manhattan when the waitress looked at me and asked, “Would you
like dessert?”
I really wanted my favorite, but I just didn’t feel like going through the entire verbal routine that I had been experiencing for the last few weeks. “I’ll have a dish of chocolate ice cream,” was my response. I didn’t ask for the whipped cream. This was a simple request—one I didn’t expect a hassle over.
As the waitress was walking away, I thought to myself, in what must have been a fraction of a second, how much I really wanted chocolate ice cream with whipped cream and that I should not let myself be intimidated by a waitress. “Hey, miss,” I called, as the waitress was still walking away, “could you put whipped cream on that ice cream?”
“Sure,” was her response. “No problem.”
When the check came, I noticed that I had been charged just 25 cents for the ice cream and whipped cream—something that I had been charged 35 cents before. I also remembered that the whipped cream had been an afterthought—something I ordered as the waitress was walking away. Would this work again? Was this the way I would have to order in the future?
The next time I ordered ice cream was the following day. But this time I went to one of the restaurants where I had ordered ice cream and where the waitress had given me a hard time.
I had a nice meal and then when I ordered dessert, I simply said to the waitress, “Chocolate ice cream.” She wrote it down on her check pad and as she walked away, I injected, “Would you also add some whipped cream?”
With a slight glance back to me, she nodded her head and walked away. A dish of chocolate ice cream brimming with whipped cream was brought to my table. I asked for the check. Sure enough, the amount on the check was only 25 cents. The ordering technique worked again.
I tried it again and again, purposely going to restaurants where I had previously been
charged 35 cents—only to be charged 25 cents simply because of the way I was ordering. I even reverted to my old way of ordering—as a kind of reality check—and sure enough, I got trapped in my old pattern of having to explain that I didn’t want a sundae and ended up paying 10 cents extra anyway. But the ultimate test was yet to come.
While I was having lunch with a friend one day, I told him of the new way I had been
ordering ice cream and how the way that I ordered it determined the price of the dish I got.
He found it hard to believe and then said, “Why don’t we do a test? I’ll order chocolate ice cream with whipped cream and after I go through the sundae routine, you order just chocolate ice cream. As the waitress is walking away, you call out to her and have her add some whipped cream to your ice cream. And then we’ll see what we both get and how much she charges each of us.”
And that is what we did. Sure enough, the waitress gave my friend the same argument I had been getting. And my friend finally agreed to accept the sundae without the chocolate syrup.
I ordered just the ice cream, but as the waitress was walking away, I shouted, “Would you put a little whipped cream on my ice cream as well?” The waitress nodded and continued walking away.
When the ice cream arrived, both dishes looked identical. But not the check. Sure enough, my friend was charged 35 cents for a sundae and I was charged 25 cents for a dish of ice cream, even though both desserts looked identical.
What in human nature would allow the same product ordered in a different way determine the price? The answer is the first psychological trigger called consistency.
The waitress committed to accept my original order of just the ice cream but allowed the addition of the whipped cream because she had already accepted and committed to my initial request. How can this be viewed and made useful in the selling process?
As a direct marketer, I have determined that the most important thing you can do to turn a prospect into a customer is to make it incredibly easy for that prospect to commit to a purchase, regardless of how small that purchase may be. It is therefore imperative that the commitment be simple, small, and in line with the prospect’s needs.
Once the commitment is made and the prospect becomes a customer, the playing field suddenly changes. There now exists a level of commitment and consistency, directed in your favor, to encourage future purchases.
A good example of this can be seen at car dealerships. The salesperson tallies your entire order, gets approval from the general manager, and then has you sign the purchase contract. As she is walking away to get the car prepped and ready for you to drive it away, she turns to you and says, “And you do want that undercoating, don’t you?” You instinctively nod your head. The charge is added to your invoice. “And you’ll also want our floor mats to keep your car clean as well, won’t you?”
Once a commitment is made, the tendency is to act consistently with that commitment. The customer nods his head.
A good example of this phenomenon was told to me by Jon Spoelstra, the former general manager of the Portland Trailblazers basketball team and president of the New Jersey Nets.
“I would personally visit a prospect, sell him a simple yet basic ticket package, start to leave and then turn around, just as I was about to walk out the door, and offer something else.
Very often my customer would simply nod his head and say under his breath, ‘Yeah, sure, add that to it too.’”
One of the important points to remember is to always make that first sale simple. Once the prospect makes the commitment to purchase from you, you can then easily offer more to increase your sales. This is very true for products sold from a mail order ad or from a TV infomercial. I have learned to keep the initial offer extremely simple. Then, once the prospect calls and orders the product I am offering, and while the prospect is on the phone, I offer other items and end up with a larger total sale. An additional sale occurs over 50% of the time, depending on my added offer.
Once you’ve committed to the original purchase, you are committed to a course of action consistent with what you have already undertaken. In the case of buying, you are now primed to buy more by virtue of the original commitment to buy. In the case of ordering ice cream in New York, you can even save a few bucks.
Trigger 1: Consistency
[Via - Triggers]
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