Humans tend to have a desire to be consistent with their previous actions. This happens because of three main reasons;
- When you make a choice, you experience personal and interpersonal pressure to commit it and your mind quickly succumbs to that pressure. All information that comes after the choice is made won’t easily change your mind. You become more confident in your choice.
- We don’t understand ourselves. Sometimes, we might say or do something without thinking. For example, forcing yourself to smile
when feeling sad makes you less sad because your brain gets the information from the physiological action you made. - Sometimes we’ll decide on our identity by just looking at what others think about us.
Such ease of decision-making and the consistency to stick with a decision is a gift to anyone who wants to influence your behavior.
How Can Consistency Be Used to Persuade Customers?
1. Testimonials
Most product testimonials are sometimes not written out of personal love for the product. Usually, most people have hope that they will get something out of it. This doesn’t matter unless their opinion differs significantly from what they write. People end up liking a product more after writing a testimonial. The readers of that testimonial will just believe the testimonial despite knowing that it is probably not honest.
2. Foot-in-the-Door Technique
Salespeople often start small and then continue big. This has proven to be very effective, as long as the large is consistent with the smaller request. Charities often use this technique. They will ask you to donate a small amount of money, then they’ll ask for a monthly contribution of that amount and finally, they’ll ask you to increase the amount you contribute.
3. Reliance on Consistency
Sometimes, we need to long term influence people’s behavior and an easy way to do that is by relying on consistency. We just have to learn to motivate people well so that they do the right thing once, then in their mind, they’ll become a person who does that particular thing that is, their self-image will change and the reliance on consistency will do the trick for their future behavior. The way to motivate is often about self-image and consistency.
Conclusion
For marketers, it is often a gift for people to strive for consistency. This is because it facilitates brand loyalty which makes people say “yes” before and also “yes” after. This technique is employed by gifted salesmen everywhere that are, from door-to-door sales to Apple. It’s something that every marketer should include in their strategy.
Something to keep in mind as a consumer is that, if you’re feeling like you’re agreeing to something that you couldn’t agree to a week ago, it might be because of the strive for consistency with a particular service or good which just happened before talking. Sometimes, you don’t have to listen to it.
