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The Psychology of Winning Business

by: Admin on Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 Time: 2:48 PM

Are you getting the desired feedback from your targeted Marketing campaigns? How do you get a potential client to assign importance to the Marketing materials you send? I hope to provide a guiding principle to know when enough is enough.

In Marketing, people are often surprised to hear my background is actually in Psychology. Though, it’s not so surprising when you consider that we are transmitting information to people for them to process in a desired way. I am constantly referring back to my education and training during strategy planning.

Recently, my company was asked to present our benefits to a potential client. Along with a hard copy of the presentation, we planned to leave some Marketing materials. Packed into folders were multiple case studies, brochures, and all other non-kitchen sink items. I remembered the notion of shared responsibility in Social Psychology, particularly, the Bystander Effect. Shown in a classic study by Bibb Latane and John Darley, the Bystander Effect disturbingly shows an inverse relationship between the number of witnesses to a tragic event and the likelihood of an individual offering assistance. In other words, the more people around to witness a situation where someone needs help, the less likely any one person will actually help. A famous and tragic example is the fate of Kitty Genovese, whose story I will not recount here. The effect is that the level of individual responsibility each person feels on a moral level is shared among the number of people present.

Now you know why people think I am odd when I bring up stories like that in a Marketing context! I used this, however, to develop my own theory of Shared Importance. The theory is that a finite level of importance is placed on information you send to a potential client. The more you send, the less importance is given to each individual item. For example, if your targeted client is a grocery store, then don’t you want them to read your great case studies of what you have done for other grocery stores? They don’t need to hear about your endeavors in the shipping industry. Odds are that you most want them to look at the most relevant information. So why sacrifice that goal to tell them your life story? Unless you present something as important, most people will not identify it as important. Consider attending a conference and you are handed a packet with reams of paper. Most people will skim through these and lose interest. Now imagine you were handed a single sheet of paper upon registration. Do you think you’re more likely to read it in its entirety? I know that it has my attention.

So think about the items you send to potential clients. Are they too long, too many, too dense or complex? Are there just too many items that aren’t relevant at this stage? All of these things can take away from the importance given to your key selling point, whatever it may be. Send less, if you want them to read more.

About the Author

Michael is responsible for new business development through proposals, case studies, advertisements, and other Marketing materials for a leading transportation management company. E-mail: mgage@mtm-inc.net

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