Here’s something interesting. This has come across my attention several times recently, so I thought I’d blog about it. In The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell writes about how he meets someone at a restaurant (p.46) and the person recommends a change of seating to another table.
Then I remember reading about a womanizer whose main strategy is to get the women to change locations. This could mean moving to a different area of the place where they have just met, this could mean having the lady meet up with him at a subsequent club in the same evening, etc.
I’ve read and tested what I’ve read in sales literature that in a retail environment one of the toughest things to overcome is the fact that the prospect has just met you and therefore doesn’t feel that they know you. I’ve found that an effective technique to get a person to experience the subtle emotion of familiarity is to find a reason to leave the prospect a couple of times and and rejoin them. Any reason will do. Checking stock, giving them a moment to talk amongst themselves, helping another showroom visitor, etc.
I have found positive results from this. The first two examples, the restaurant and the womanizer seem to revolve more around controlling the actions of the other and the retail example is a more focused example.
