1. A store labyrinth.
Ikea does this masterfully; you have to walk through the entire store before you find your way out.
2. Find it for less and we’ll match the price.
Nearly every retailer can advertise “Find the same product for less and we’ll take 25% off”. Why? Because the manufacturer gives every major retailer their own specifically named “lines”. So nobody but say, Sears, sells “PilloSoft II by Serta”, even though Nordstrom’s “SleepKing III by Serta” is exactly the same thing, with exactly the same specs, but with a different name and fabric pattern.
3. Anchoring.
During the presentation you’d always say you have 3 programs; Average, agressive, and conservative(and always in that order). The average program would be just at the edge of what they could afford, the agressive would be WAY out of their price range, and the conservative program would be what we’re actually going to try and sell them on. That way it doesn’t sound like “this product costs $8,000. Cash or check?” Instead they think “well we obviously can’t afford the agressive program, and the average is a bit much, but the conservative program is much more affordable. Let’s do that one.”
4. Leave the money out of it.
In retail, people will tend to leave the “$” sign off of price tags because the “$” sign reminds you it’s costing something, and not just the numbers. Like on certain restaurant menus, the price for a steak will just be listed as ’19’.
5. Names matter.
A friend of a friend runs a pretty popular deli/eatery in Auckland, New Zealand. They’re famous for their pies, which are made fresh right there every day.
After being open for around 6 months, they noticed that the worst-selling pie was the Mexican one. They always had at least 2 or 3 left over at the end of the day.
So, for no other reason than a social experiment to see how easy people were to influence, he renamed the pie “The Lady Gaga”. Exactly the same ingredients, same location on the menu and the pie rack, just a different name.
The Lady Gaga pie now sells out first, every single day. They rarely have any left by 1pm, let alone by the time they close. He told me that when people come there for the first time, the pie they usually have is invariably the Lady Gaga.
6. False scarcity.
Another friend worked in sales at a Smith & Hawken store that was in liquidation. They would get a shipment of, say, 20 chairs, all the same model. When the store got busy he would carry one through the store while yelling to his coworker “we only have two left now!”. People snapped these up, thinking they were scarce. An effective sales technique that works on the bargain hunter.
7. Mess with the A/C.
At certain nightclubs, one of the things they use was to turn off the AC to heat the place up. People packing the dance floor would start to get really hot and decide to cool off by buying another drink. In some restaurants they would purposefully keep the temperature chilly to turn tables faster. People would eat and not stick around to have coffee afterwards.