Blog

Are you making a simple formatting mistake that stops people clicking?

How you format a web link in your emails needs to change according to the relationship you have with the recipient.

If they know you, it’s fine to hyperlink.

If they don’t know you, don’t hyperlink.

For example, because you know me, I can hyperlink like this.

But when I am sending information to a new client, I instead provide the web URL address like this: www.briwillia

How you...

What is your customer really asking for?

Customers often use “how” questions to find you,  like “how to increase sales” or “How to improve conversion?”

But not all “how” questions are alike. 

In fact, there are two types of “hows”.

If you’re answering the wrong type of how, you won’t capture their attention.

The first type of “how” question is procedural.

Questions like “how...

When I worked at White Pages, we'd encourage businesses to list their trading hours in the phone book so customers wouldn't have to call simply to ask "Are you open?" 

Many opted not to. 

They preferred being interrupted because it reassured them that people were interested.

What they couldn’t see was the time they wasted answering such calls.

What they couldn't hear were the customers who went elsewhere because they didn’t want to call.

In your role, are you...

What does a jigsaw puzzle have to do with selling?

Researchers successfully used visual representations of a jigsaw to sell more wine and more banking products.

We can encourage customers to buy more products across our range by changing the way we visually represent them.

In this video I explain: 

• How to visually represent your product suite
• What completion bias is and why it's so powerful
• How an online retailer and bank used these techniques to drive sales 

We’re happy to do the hard thing…later.

Back in 1999, researchers had people choose some DVDs to watch.

They were either choosing something to watch now or something to watch in a few days time.

When people chose something to watch in the future, they tended to choose earnest, highbrow movies. Schindler's List, for example.

When they were choosing something to watch that day, they opted for something more like an Adam Sandler movie.

If ever you’ve tried to change...

Cooking shows are seductive.

But they’re also a lie.

They don’t show you the preparation.

They don’t show you the cleanup.

Behavioural science can seem seductive, too.

You read a book or watch a clip and it seems so simple. Fast results! Easy fixes!

But try to do it yourself and suddenly reality dawns.

To really impact behaviour you can’t just throw some ingredients in a blender.

You need to go to cooking school.

Image by Mohamed Hassan from...

To proceed with a purchase, we need to help our customers do two things.

1. Justify it to themselves, and
2. Justify it to others.

We usually just think about the first one. Helping our buyer convince themselves.

We forget that they usually have to tell someone else about their decision.

That could be a spouse or their boss.

So when you are talking about reasons to buy, try to give them soundbites to use with others.

For consumers, that could be letting them know they got a great deal....

Telling someone no can feel uncomfortable.

So we might put it off.

Let it drift.

Convince ourselves that they know it’s a no because we haven’t given them a yes.

It gets easier as time passes. The guilt subsides. The awkwardness. New pressures and decisions steal our share of mind.

But what about theirs?

As someone who has to often wait for others to make a decision - will we proceed or not? - a thoughtful no is all I want.

I want to hear the no, not so I can talk you out...

The dung beetle is small but mighty, pulling 1,000 times its own body weight. That's powerful!

And that's how I like to think of my Little Books range.

Small and mighty 

So I am thrilled to share I have made four of my little books available in the Amazon Kindle store.

• The Little Book of Letters and Emails $1.99 USD
• The Little Book of Pricing and Payment $5.99
• The Little Book of Behavioural Economics $2.99, and
• The How of Habits $4.99.

I've also just...

Customer not interested in proceeding?

When persuading customers, your work is less about moving them TOWARDS something, and more about getting them to MOVE AWAY from something else.

To get someone to buy, for example, we need to move them away from not having the product at all or using a competitor’s. 

That means not only talking up the benefits of our product - but planting the seed that they’ll be worse off if they don’t proceed. That they’ll be going...