, 2013

Los Angeles, CA - How jujitsu marketing is used on today’s sophisticated, social and “in the know” customers is revealed in Selling Outside the Square, a book by Los Angeles real estate sales expert and author Bob Boog. In his book, Selling Outside the Square, Boog offers 12 psychological “triggers” for salespeople and likens them to “marketing jujitsu”.

Today’s customers are very sophisticated. She has a voice and that voice is loud, far-reaching and social. Let’s face it, customers today are smart.

Today’s customer is always connected. 24/7. They assume that everyone else is too! The fact that there are 150 million conversations transpiring daily on social media bears this out.

Customers today are mobile. They never go anywhere without their smart phones. Over 700 million smart phones were sold in 2012.

Customers today are “in the know”. They are resourceful and adept at finding useful information on the fly. More than 40% of them will compare prices, ratings and reviews on their smart phones while in a store.

How can salespeople deal with these smart, demanding, vocal, socially savvy customers? After all, 4.5 billion people are connected to social networks. And more people will buy from family and online friends than from salespeople. 57% of buyers nowadays will have made up their minds about buying a product before even visiting a salesperson. How is a salesperson able to compete?

Boog claims that psychological triggers like “The Principle of Contrast” amounts to a jujitsu marketing tactic that any salesperson can use today. The following experiment best illustrates how this effective psychological trigger works.

In the experiment, subjects were asked to rate the taste of cookies coming from two containers. They were told that both of the cookies had been freshly baked earlier that morning. It’s now 3:30 in the afternoon and Container A contains 13 cookies in it while Container B has 87 leftover cookies. Which container holds the best-tasting cookies?

Here is the Amazon link to the Selling Outside the Square book. The new, perfect-cover version costs a whopping $11 on Amazon while the electronic version runs about $5 on Kindle.

Back to the cookie experiment: Which cookies tasted better? Answer: Subjects rated the cookies in Container A as better-tasting. Why? Because more cookies had been taken from Container A than Container B. The subjects believed that because there were fewer cookies in Container A, they must taste better! The truth is the SAME EXACT cookies were in BOTH containers. Holy marketing jujitsu! Because there are fewer cookies subjects not only assumed that the cookies in Container A tasted better but that they cost more money too.

How can this trigger be used against today’s smart consumer? Using the principle of contrast, a salesperson might explain to a savvy shopper: “We started this morning with 100 cell phones. We now have 83 Apple iPhones but only 13 Samsung Galaxy smart-phones left. Don’t you think it’s obvious which phone is the “cooler” phone to buy?”

About Selling Outside the Square
Published in Santa Clarita, Ca. by THS International, the book is 122 pages.
ISBN: 978-0-9666130-7-0
For more information, please visit http://www.sellingoutsidethesquare.com

About Bob Boog
Bob Boog is the author of several books on selling, including Selling Homes 1-2-3, Finding Killer Real Estate Deals and Real Estate Sales from Hell. He is the owner/broker of Bob Boog Realty located in Newhall, California and has even written a few songs including Thanks, The Well Dressed Man and “The Meaning of Christmas” which will debut December 5, 2013 on YouTube.

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