What Can Batting Practice Teach us about Persuasion
Sport is a useful training ground for those of us who want to be more persuasive.
Have you noticed at a Baseball game players before stepping up to the batter’s box swing with 2 bats or use a heavier bat with rings on it to swing with before going to bat
Why?
Repeatedly swinging a heavier bat makes the unweighted bat feel lighter in comparison.
This underlying effect in social sciences is known as “perceptual contrast”. Simply put, characteristics of objects are perceived in comparison with others. E.g. If you were asked to pick up a 10kg weight in the gym, it would appear lighter if you had picked up a 20kg weight first.
This holds for any judgement you might make.
Social psychologists applied these principals to show how contrast effects can influence persuasion. They looked at how the amount of information people think they have about something can be influenced by the amount they learn about something else.
For example: People were asked to look at a persuasive message about Browns department store. But only after reading different persuasive messages from Smith’s store.
It described 3 departments in Browns store.
In the Smiths store – they altered the message from a small amount (one department) to a large amount (6 departments)
They found that when a prior message contained a great deal of information, the target message was seen as less persuasive and produced less favourable attitudes.
The opposite occurred when the prior message contained very little information.
It seemed people felt more knowledgeable about Browns store after learning a little about Smiths, and less knowledgeable about Browns after learning more about Smiths. This is Perceptual Contrast in action.
How to apply this to sales:
If you’re confident a particular product would provide the best fit for a prospective client, then discuss the merits at length, after spending a shorter time discussing some other product.
Sometimes people think it’s too costly and too time consuming to change the products, services or requests.
An example was a Home Improvement Company which increased sales of hot tubs by 500%. They told the clients (honestly) that many of their clients reportedly said that having hot tub was like having an extra room in house. They then asked them to consider how much it would cost to add extra room on. A £2,000 spa seemed less costly than construction of an extra room.
