The Power of Now!

Hello

We're just back from Steve Foley's eConfex Buy to Let and HMO Summit at Heathrow, where we were helping Steve with some of the 'back of the room' stuff and a bit of fetching and carrying.

Needless to say, there was no time for reading while we were there, but I am halfway through an absolutely fascinating book by Daniel Gilbert, called 'Stumbling on Happiness'. It won the Royal Society's award for Science Book of 2007, no less. Although it is about happiness, it's also about a whole lot more and, being about how people think, it's full of lessons for all of us. That's whether you're interested in people generally or specifically interested in marketing.

One thing Professor Gilbert teaches us is how difficult we all find it to imagine accurately how we will feel about something in the future. In fact, it's an impossible feat. Today is so much more real than tomorrow, and even more so than next week, and so on.

Given a choice of getting something now and getting the same thing next week or later, we often value the instant gratification much more highly, in simple cash terms. Which is an important thing to consider for anyone selling his or her product from the stage at an event like the one we just helped at.

Because, as a general rule, those items are sold at a generous discount on the day. Organisers like to maximise sales on the day, because they're the sales they get a cut from, so the temptation is to encourage maximum sales by cutting prices. The usual message is that the goods will be back to full price tomorrow.

But from what the good professor has said, what should be happening is more like this:

'Buy my product today, and you can take it home with you, get right on with using it and have it working for you while everyone else is still awaiting delivery of theirs. And for only an extra ten percent! But I only have twelve here. If you order now for delivery by post you can get it for the normal price, but you will have to wait about a week for delivery. Remember, I only have twelve to take away today, for just ten percent more, and it's first come first served.'

In other words, instead of giving stuff away cheaply on the day, maybe canny marketers should be charging an appropriate premium for instant gratification. If the theory is correct, they ought to sell just as many and both they and the organiser will actually make more money.

It would be fascinating to see this tried for real and I'll be interested to hear your views or, indeed, your experience of someone trying this at an actual event.

It could be revolutionary...

Have you seen it or tried it? Let me know!

Roy Everitt, Writing For Results

PS Professor Gilbert's 'Stumbling on Happiness' has a whole lot more to teach us about how the human brain works (and sometimes doesn't quite work). I'll be returning to it and a few more of his revolutionary lessons, and how I think they might be applied to marketing, in the near future. Subscribe to this site (top right of the page) and you'll not miss a thing!