Touch Down on Early Gains for You & Customers

My message for today has to do with the front-line employees of football franchises and the front-line employees of your retail business. But what I have in mind isn’t some motivational mumbo jumbo about teamwork. It’s about the commercials.
     I’ll take it as given that you’ve everything in place for a full sixty minutes of world class Super Bowl XLV performance by the front-line employees of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers today. Are you also ready for the forty-five minutes of commercials Bleacher Report estimates will be broadcast from the pre-game through the post-game shows?
     The Bleacher Report article predicts you’ll largely forget the content of the commercials, and that’s where I derive the message for you and your front-line employees. Here’s the Bleacher Report argument in brief: Ten automobile companies have scheduled Super Bowl commercial slots. Ten years ago, a parallel situation occurred when twenty Internet-related companies ran commercials, some of those companies using multiple spots. A survey showed that only about 40% of the viewers recalled at least two of those commercials.
     But which Super Bowl commercials are recalled best? Researchers at University of Miami answered that question in terms of the memory lasting long enough and in ways that increased the probability of product purchase for commercials shown during the 2006 Super Bowl. Here’s what they found and how it applies to you:

• The earlier in the Super Bowl a commercial was shown, the stronger the influence on purchase behavior later. When your front-line sales employees recognize that a person is shopping for more than one project, start out by helping them with the project that will produce the highest profit margin for the store and the highest degree of relief for the customer.
• When a group of commercials is shown, the earlier the commercial comes in the group, the more likely it is to influence purchase behavior. When your front-line sales employees are presenting a group of alternatives to a customer, the one they present first will have extra influence. It serves as a reference point against which the following alternatives will be compared on price, quality, and ease of use.
• The Miami researchers found that when a group of commercials had a fewer number of ads, each ad was remembered better. When your sales employee wants to guide a shopper toward a particular choice, limit the number of alternatives.

Click below for more:
Guide Choice by Sequence of Presentation
Make It Easy to Choose Two