The Secret behind Regret as a Compliance Techique
On one of Kim Klaver's multi level marketing blog there is a series of podcasts talking about the customization of scripts in order to assist a seller into making more sales of the product that they are distributing. Although the podcasts cannot by their nature "give away" any secret compliance techniques, mainly because Cialdini has published most of them, there are a number of interesting insights which are valuable as due diligence tips when purchasing a business opportunity. I want to focus on one of them: the use of regret.
In podcast one, there is an exchange between Ms. Klaver and Ms. Medlock, a distributor for an weight loss product. Ms. Medlock apparently lost a great deal of weight using this program and appears to be genuinely enamoured of the product. But Ms. Medlock was having difficulty selling this great product to her customers. Ms. Klaver made a number of suggestions to Ms. Medlock about the words, or compliance techniques.
As I said, the one that interested me, because of its obvious misuse in business opportunities frauds, was this: Ms. Klaver admonished Ms. Medlock not use the phrase "this product will help you" because the implied promise is not lived up to and the general public is wise to this. So the response to this skepticism is to say instead, "if don't know if it will help, but what if it does?"
This reframing does work. We know that if a decision problem is framed with avoiding regret as the goal, individuals seek more risk to recover the status quo ante, than they would otherwise. So by framing the buy question as not what will you gain, but rather what you might lose if you don't make the purchase, the individual is focussed regret. And regret is a great motivator.
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