Own, rent or timeshare?

Cars and handbags are both much of a muchness. Anyone who spends more than $10,000 on a car is interested in something other than mobility and comfort. Anyone who spends more than $100 on a handbag wants something other than quality and functionality.

Yet many of us clamour to spend over ten times, in some cases over one hundred times, what we need to for essentially the same product. Is a badge or a designer label really worth that premium?

The answer is yes, otherwise we wouldn’t spend the extra. We are, after all, rationale human beings. And luxury brands are as recession proof as canned pet food; Bentley and Dior have been around over 100 years; come famine or flood we still want what we don’t need.

I’ve given up fighting the corner for the dependable Smirnoff when arguing with my daughter that all Vodkas are the same. When I’m paying, she still insists on premium Grey Goose, right before she drowns it in slimline tonic and throws in a slice of lime. “For pity’s sake,” I used to say, “the damn thing is colourless, odourless and tasteless, it’s simply impossible to tell the difference.” That’s just before I ask the waiter to run through what draft lagers he has, because as any guy will tell you, no two beers are the same. And she says, “listen schmuck, Grey Goose comes from France (not Russia) and is made from wheat (not potatoes), and apart from that I’ll drink what I frigging want, so make it a double.” In the words of the man in black, the great Johnny Cash, you gotta know when to hold, when to fold, and when to walk away.

When the Siren Calls

In When the Siren Calls, a satire of the lifestyle of the jet-set, a tale in which infidelity is ubiquitous, suave marketer Jay crosses swords with his hard nosed business partner Andy on why we want luxury:

“Andy, that is a very fancy watch you are wearing. A Hublex, I believe. The Timemaster model if I’m not mistaken. How much did you pay for that?”

“It was an anniversary present from Kate,” said Andy, narrowing his gaze.

“Well, just so you know, last time I looked that particular model cost the same as a small family car. That is for a few ounces of pressed steel, weighing no more than one of the wheel nuts on your Skoda. And, by the way, the car comes with a clock too.”

Andy did not welcome the digression, but felt obliged to defend his wife’s generosity. “This watch has one of the finest Swiss movements. It is a masterpiece of craftsmanship.”

“You read that on the box I suppose?” said Jay. “The fact is you are wearing that watch because it makes you feel good, not because it keeps good time. That is intangible value. That is why we have freshly squeezed orange juice, why we have Egyptian cotton sheets, and why we have brochures made with parchment paper, not toilet paper. Because we are selling a luxury product, just like your Hublex. Surely you can see that?”

And Jay, amoral alley cat that he is, has it about right. Despite what the glitzy advertising would have us believe, we want luxury products because of how they make us feel, not how they look or what they do.

If you’d like more of Jay’s pithy insights while you’re being entertained by his bedroom and boardroom antics, then now’s the time to sample When the Siren Calls, it’s one click away on Amazon

Have you noticed the increasing trend in supermarkets where they offer you a product at the check-out? “We’re doing a promotion on xyz, it’s half price today?” Many people find it annoying, particularly if xyz is a candy bar and you have a tempestuous two year old in the trolley cart. So why do supermarkets do it?

Well the reason they do it, of course, is that it works. Some people walk out with the candy who otherwise wouldn’t. It’s the same reason the bread and the milk and the eggs are the furthest point from the entrance, so that you have to walk the length of the store even though you only want to make an omelette. And it’s not just supermarkets; this particular sales technique is as old as the casbah. It’s the same reason we’re offered leather cleaner when we buy shoes, a tie when we buy a suit, a warranty when we buy a fridge. The economics for the store are compelling. It can mean an extra 10% profit. Imagine for a second you were a management consultant, like I used to be, and your client wanted to know how to quickly and easily boost sales and profits by 10%. That’s a huge margin increase, and if we had the solution for every store we’d make a shed load in consulting fees. Yet the little check-out stunt can do exactly that. Think about it, you’ve spent 30 minutes in the store agonising about whether to buy the $300 suit, yet you agree to buy the $30 tie on impulse.

And the reason we fall for it is not just because the $30 tie feels like an incidental purchase in the context of the $300 suit; take my example of the fridge and the extended warranty. The store probably makes more money out of selling the warranty than it does out of selling the fridge. That’s why if you resist the offer, you will be subjected to pressure selling techniques. Next time you pick up a hire car at the airport, count the number of ‘sell-on’ offers the assistant presses on you – an upgrade, a sat nav, additional insurance, tyre damage waiver, the list goes on.

It really is all about timing. And the most important aspect of the timing is not the physical location we are at, but the mental state we are in. Take the suit example. When we finally decide on the suit we have gone through a thought process that has put us in a buying state of mind. And that is generally a positive mental state, a state where we are open to further buying suggestions.”The tie? Sure, I’ll take it (it’s only 30 bucks).” Wait till you’re overcharged in a restaurant by 30 bucks and you’ll see that, in a different mental state, 30 bucks can seem like a whole lot of money.

What I want to do here is not to put us on our guard about stealth selling techniques, but to remind us that we need to be conscious of the importance of other people’s mental state when we are “selling” to them; and that includes everything from asking for a pay rise to persuading our partner which restaurant to go to, because every day each and every one of us is involved in selling – getting other people to buy something, or do something, or simply to see something our way.

When the Siren Calls

The problem is, unlike the check-out girl, we can’t always choose the perfect timing. So I’d like to suggest what we need to do, whatever the place and time, is move the other person’s state of mind from whatever it is – indifference, boredom, hostility – into a buying state. People expert in the art of persuasion know how to do this, skilfully , smoothly, and subtly. And the most important dynamic in the process is their behaviour, and how they come across to you and me.

Now, there was a time I used to teach this stuff, but people generally prefer to be entertained than to be taught. Which is one of the reasons I wrote When the Siren Calls, and created the character of Jay Brooke, a master persuader in the boardroom and the bedroom. Love him or hate him, Jay understands the art of letting other people have his way. So if you’d like to be entertained while you explore this persuasion game malarkey, now would be a good time to sample the book for free, it’s one click away on Amazon http://amzn.to/T5pZCA