BUSINESS MATTERS Persuasive head starts


time they visited the car wash they would get their card stamped and when they completed the card they would receive their next car wash free. However, unbeknown to the customers there were two types of card. One of the loyalty cards required customers to collect eight stamps to claim their free car wash. The other half of the cards required customers to collect 10 stamps. However, while customers in the second group were told they had to collect 10 stamps they were immediately given two stamps to set them on their way.


In essence, the required purchases and the rewards were exactly the same in both groups. What wasn’t the same was the number of customers in each group who stayed loyal, completed the card and claimed their free car wash.


Steve Martin


When it comes to influencing and


persuading colleagues and customers through the use of loyalty and incentive schemes a small head start could mean the difference between success and failure, writes Steve Martin, co-author of the New York Times best seller ‘Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion’.


E


veryone knows that the hard work doesn’t stop just because we have persuaded colleagues


to support our initiatives or our customers to do business with us. In an environment where there are so many distractions it can be a challenge to keep our colleagues’ attention focused on projects, and our customers to stay loyal and continue to do business with us. To help overcome these issues many businesses employ a variety of different incentives and schemes in an attempt to keep staff focused and customers loyal. But when it comes to such loyalty and incentive schemes a question arises – which features of a scheme are most effective at persuading people to remain loyal and committed to you and your company?


Persuasion researchers think they may know the answer – those schemes that give people a head start. In a series of loyalty experiments cards were handed out to hundreds of customers at a local car wash. Customers were told that each


In the first group only 19 per cent of customers made enough purchases to claim their free car wash. However, in the second group, which had been given a head start, the purchase rate rose to 34 per cent. The effect of giving customers a head start without actually reducing the required purchases almost doubled the effectiveness of the promotion.


Getting ahead


The head start also increased the speed of purchases. Customers who were asked to collect 10 stamps and who were given a head start completed the loyalty cards quicker than those required to collect eight. Termed the ‘endowed progress effect’ social scientists suggest that there are two fundamental reasons why more people in the second group completed the task compared to the other and in a quicker time. Firstly, they claim that people are generally more willing to commit to tasks that are already underway but incomplete rather than to begin a new task from scratch. This can occur even, as in the case of the car wash study, the absolute goals in both conditions never changed. Secondly, the closer that people get towards completing a goal the more effort they tend to exert to get the task completed.


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As well as providing food for thought when creating customer loyalty and incentive schemes this ‘endowed progress effect’ should also be effective when used to persuade colleagues to support and stay loyal to new company projects, or when used in employee incentive schemes. Simply put, when persuading other people to say ‘Yes’ to your requests, providing people with a little head start can do wonders for your effectiveness.


Find out how persuasive you are by taking the free test at: www.influenceatwork.com


ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Steve Martin is the New York Times best selling author, business columnist, speaker and Managing Director of Influence at Work UK. He is co-author of the international best seller ‘Yes! 50 Secrets From the Science of Persuasion’, a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week best seller. Yes! was nominated for the 2008 Royal Society annual prize for science writing and in 2009 the Harvard Business Review listed the book on its prestigious ‘Breakthrough Ideas for Business’ list. To date Yes! has sold almost 400,000 copies and has been translated into 25 languages.


Steve regularly features in the media and the national press. His popular business columns appear in magazines and online all over the world. As well as his monthly ‘Persuasion’ column in the British Airways in flight magazine he is a regular columnist for the Harvard Business Review blog and a staff writer for Inside Influence and the Institute of Leadership & Management. His columns are read by over 1.8 million people every month, and he will be providing Comms Dealer readers with information and advice on the science of influence and persuasion and its application.


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