The 3 Box Selling Strategy

I’ve been using this simple but powerful sales technique that has been proven to work in my various companies for years. The 3 box strategy allows you to convince your customers to buy more from you.

When you’re selling your product or service don’t just offer one choice, price or type of service. If you do this the only option you are giving the consumer is, do I want to buy this? Or do I not want to buy this? A yes or no response. They are only focusing on price and affordability.

Cinemas do this all the time, say you want to buy some popcorn, they will give you the choice of the regular popcorn, the large popcorn or the extra large popcorn. The regular popcorn (really small popcorn) makes little to no sense to purchase so you automatically go to the higher priced large popcorn or extra large popcorn option.

Why is this you ask? Because now you are focused on value and not price. Anytime you can let a customer focus on the value, you win! This is called contrast pricing.

How can you implement this today in your business? Offer the following

1. Biggest offer – so outrageous, luxurious, most people won’t go for it unless they really want the best (Platinum)
2. Make your small offer so stripped back that it makes little sense to go for it unless they don’t have the budget for the Gold (Silver)
3. Make the middle one very compelling, the most valuable offer. (Gold)

Now you will find that typically 20% of people will go for the biggest offer, 60% will go for the medium most value offer and 20% for the small offer. Remember 2 choices is good, 3 choices is best. When you offer them 4 choices it’s a little bit confusing and becomes a barrier in itself.

You want the majority to go for the middle offer, so the big offer (Platinum) might have 10 benefits, the small (Silver) might have only 2 things, but the middle offer (Gold) will have 7 things! Therefore the most perceived value to the customer. Platinum is the decoy!

Try it for yourself and see. Let us know how you have got on in our comments section below!