S1 Ep4 Words that change value

The same offer can feel expensive or cheap based on one sentence. That's not hype, that's how the brain works. Today we're unpacking the framing effect. If you write copy, pitch or price anything, this matters. Welcome to ThinkShift, the podcast where neuroscience meets business. This episode is for you. If you sell product services, subscriptions or retainers, you will learn why framing changes perceive value. And you'll learn how to use framing without sounding mini-billion. How are you going, man? Yeah, I'm good. How are you? I'm very good. So, Liam, when two authors are identical, why can one feel like better value? So, even though they may be exactly the same, they are psychologically world-apart. It depends on how something is written, how we interpret that word, and how the brain then interprets the offer. So, something that would be framed in a positive way, we will interpret it as a positive offer. If there is a negative frame, we would instantly see it as a negative offer. So, the brain looks at how we interpret words to make a decision of how we want something to see. Also, we're very good at picking and choosing our words and our interpretation. Something called heuristics, which is a very good word. It's called heuristics, which is cognitive shortcuts or mental shortcuts, where we have a whole lot of information that we need to make a decision, yet we pick and choose certain things within the frame that we want because it suits our narrative and it suits our story. So, another might be our identity. You and I, for instance, might be the same offer, but I see it very differently to you and vice versa. And you will pick something out, Clint, and go, "Oh, did you see that this was also available?" No, I didn't even notice it because I was too busy looking at something else that fitted my narrative. Makes sense. So, the value is not only what you sell, it's how the brain experiences the choice. That's right. So, decision, experience, feeling. So, we talk about that emotional connection to a decision. And we've mentioned Daniel Kahneman's work, and 95% of all decisions are emotional. So, how does a particular, how does wording or copy make us feel when we're reading it? How do we interpret that? So, it's very much a holistic experience rather than just reading words and making a decision. Yeah, all right. Let's dig into the science people now. What is the framing effect in layman's terms? Framing effect is how we read and interpret a particular sentence, and how we interpret that, and what the outcome is. So, something can be framed in a certain way that makes us feel a certain way. We can read words in a certain way that makes us interpret something and see an outcome in a certain way. Also, we can frame something using other senses. So, whether there's patterns, memories, colors, feelings, and that also gives us an interpretation of where we are. So, the way something is positioned or what we call framed is how we then make a decision. So, as we were just saying, the same offer could look very different to you and I and to the listener, even though essentially it's the same thing. Okay. Risk feels more urgent than reward. Why does a void losing beat gain more? Okay, so, I mean, you're pretty competitive, right? I'm competitive. So, and we are competitive species, believe it or not, we are. No one wants to lose. And it's not in a bad way. We want to be the best versions of ourselves as well. And we technically, good people want the best for each other. We really do. So, we avoid losing at all costs. So, we put so much emphasis on losing that it consumes us rather than what we've got to gain. And that's just how the mind operates. It's just how it is. Our brain is there to protect us. So, it's primary function, although we think it's there to keep us alive, it's primary function is to protect us and keep us safe. So, if we're going to lose something that's going to impact us, it will stop it. But, are we, if we're going to gain something, that's okay. That's just a bonus. It's a necessary not really, especially if we're in a status quo of safety. So, we put so much emphasis on loss that it can create this competitiveness. So, framing something where we're potentially going to lose will be much more effective than framing something if we're going to gain something. And bringing loss aversion into the framing effect is really important. And you think about it yourself, Clint. If I said to you, well, if you don't leave by four o'clock, then the chances that you will not make the gym or you won't be able to wear, if I say, if you leave by four o'clock, you will make the gym. The fact that you are not going to make the gym is very, very different to the fact that you will make the gym. Interesting. Yeah. So. And you like the gym. Yeah, it's not bad. It's not a bad place. Talking about safety just before, what frames make people feel safe? Certain frames in regards to potential boundaries, having guard rails around what is okay and what isn't. Also, yeah, predictable outcomes, risk reversal language, things where we can take out the uncertainty. People feel comfortable. There's that lack of, oh, what happens if I don't know. So something that is pretty solid and also trust within a person can create good framing environment for someone. Yeah. If I can shoot my own business. I think during my own sales process, I add in a really critical frame and that is around the trust aspect. So making sure my process is super clear in a language that my customer can understand. That gives them a sense of, yeah, that trust, you know, holistically trusting what I'm going to produce for them. In the way that I've given them a stepped process, they know that it's the same every time. It's not cookie cutter. It's bespoke. But they know that my process is done over and over and over again. Match that with my expertise and what I've got in my portfolio. Therefore, they feel like there's a massive trust there. 100%. And also the brain wants to be told what to do. Believe it or not, we think we want choice. We do not want choice. We want to be in control of the choice, but we actually want to be told what to do. So by you, I'm not going to say hand holding. It sounds like it, but it's guiding. You know, when when you go in business with someone, it becomes a partnership, right? So you client and yourself, you come a partner. You go along these together. Their input is just as important as your import. They've got expertise. You've got expertise. You work together. So stepping through together, making sure you're comfortable with it. They're comfortable with it provides a phenomenal experience emotionally and logically. And it frames your process in a way that reduces risk and gives them more of that commitment and then encouragement. That they are going to be in a safe place. And I don't believe enough businesses actually do that. I think there's a certain assumption that the customer is just going to know what happens or they don't need to know what I do in my business. And that's a fallacy. It's actually not right. If I am engaging, especially if I'm investing, you know, doesn't even matter. Consider a considerable amount of money. But even a small amount of money, I want to know what the process is. And I want an expert to guide me through it. And I want that framed in a way that I understand. Yeah. I mean, in years gone by, some of the language and jargon I put in my proposals would be catastrophically detrimental to me achieving an outcome of a sale. And at the time, you just assumed everyone knows what you're talking about. But it is actually not the case. Is that correct? Yeah. 100%. So we do assume. And often, and you hear people saying, if I've said this, just let me know what you know what, that's okay. People would rather hear things twice three times and not hear it at all. And it's actually much safer position to be in. So even if you're saying it again, and often framing and marketing, or what we what Clint and I do in terms of neuro marketing. So apply neuroscience to marketing and to sales. So people clients will say to us, but I've already posted that or people have already seen that. I mean, the analog space, face to face. I mean, the digital space, but not everyone will consume the information at the same time. Not every frame will be seen at the same time, but it has to be consistent. So consistency around framing is important too. And that's also risk reversal and get makes people comfortable. They're you're taking people on a journey. It needs to be a safe journey for them. It needs to be comfortable journey for them. And it needs to have an outcome. A question now on intelligence. Why does smart people still get framed? Because they're not smart. No, I'm saying. Because guess what? The human. Yes. They're human. And we it's a bias. And unfortunately, we get influenced by biases. And no matter what the intelligence level is, smart or not, you still succumb to the bias. One thing though is if you are aware, like, you know, what we do, if you're aware of it, then afterwards you go, aha. Now I know why I made that decision. I was influenced by this, but we're still, we're still human. Everyone is human. It's still the same type of brain making the decisions. So do they understand what they've done? Sure. Will it stop from happening again? No, no, it still will. So it doesn't matter. It's just the way that we operate. And that's why it's so powerful. However, it needs to be done in the right way and used in the right way. Framing is very powerful. And to particular framing affects presence versus absence and time versus money can be used very successfully in the right way. But it's still something that people of any intelligence can succumb to. Yes. And he included. Before we move into business application, I just want to lead into that now with what is a common business frame that people tend to get wrong? Yeah. So one-- and you would know this too, and have experienced this is around the lack of value around time. So people think money is more important than time, where in fact, people spend a lot of money to save themselves time. So giving money, the priority, is actually false. And quite-- it's a bit of a blind spot I see in businesses, where time is really important. And as we've always said, everyone's time is very important. No one's time is more important than anyone else's. Same as no one's busy. It's more important than anyone else's busy. But we need to value that. So yeah, one of the biggest boo-bos I see, and I see this a lot, is around concentrating on price, concentrating on money rather than time. So being able to frame that you're saving someone time is great, taking to a whole other step further, saying I can save you three hours per week and quantifying that time is a really powerful tool. But most businesses don't utilize framing that way. OK, let's lead into that now with some mistakes, brands, make. I've got a couple here that are overcleaning without proof vague promises with no boundaries. What are some of the most common framing mistakes that you see businesses make? Saying they're going to deliver something that they're not going to, they weren't even intending to. So it's around action-speak-loud on the words. So are you actually going to do what you say? So framing in a way that isn't actually true or it's not a deliverable. Saying that you're going to save a certain amount of time or a certain amount of money, and it's actually not right, or just outright facts that are incorrect. Also not being able to guide people in the right way during the process and creating a sense of expectation that you can't live up to. Let's say as well using internal language instead of custom-facing language. Yeah, acronyms. Yeah. And again, it comes back to what you were saying with the Schum knowledge. So certain acronyms, jargon, a little bit of fluff. We're all about no BS here and making sure that everybody understands because we do get caught up in that. Some people, unfortunately, frame it on purpose because they think and makes them look good or sound intelligent or sound smart. Yeah, backfires. And backfires. It really does. I mean, I've called people out and said, you know, they've said an acronym that might be, I don't know, I'm just going to make up, you know, ABC. And I go, can I just ask, what is ABC? And it might be, you've named or mentioned ABC three times now. What is it? What actually is it? Oh, and then it makes you full silly. Yes. You've got to be really careful around industry jargon and framing things that are holistic and good for everybody, no matter what their intelligent level is or what their industry is or what their expertise is. It actually makes you look silly. I pull myself up on that all the time. Oh, that's good. Constantly looking at acronyms in my proposals and then having to spell them out, even though I feel silly. And they should know what this is. Yeah. But actually, why should they know it is? You are the subject matter expert. They are not in your industry. I have no idea what you're talking about. So why should they? And in fact, you're the expert, not them, otherwise, why do they need you? There is a study in Oxford University. It's very interesting. They've got an Oxford University professor to write two papers, published two papers. One was written and framed very industry direct. So using industry words, not so much acronyms, but the jargon and the language of the industry. And the other paper was written, so a 12-year-old could understand. They then took the two papers to the faculty, so to the staff and to students, and they asked them out of these two papers, which person do you think was the most intelligent that wrote these? And the majority of them was the 12-year-old. Interesting. Because the one that was written with all the jargon, an industry jargon, they felt that-- they didn't know what they were talking about. They had to hide behind the acronyms and the jargon. They deliberately tried to force themselves to seem intelligent, and they couldn't understand it. There you go. So there's two ways of-- complex different ways of framing something with two different outcomes. I just think about that when you're using your industry language. And also, Clint, in the work that we do in new in particular, and in terms of neurodesign, there's a lot of jargon, and there's a lot of industry language that gets tossed around and thrown around. And you need to be really careful. One of your differentiators is the fact that you do actually consumerize what you say, so people can understand it really well. Correct. Yeah. It's just constant reprogramming, though, from years in years of abusing the acronym. Yeah, yeah. Before you spoke about frame time, not just money, how do you do that? What's a really good use case or example of doing that in your marketing? OK. I've actually got another example. It was a Walmart experiment in the US where they were testing a home delivery service. And they had two examples, or two things you could choose. It was save yourself two and a half hours per week, or save yourself $150 per year. So at first, you go, oh, save $150 per year, that sounds great. The majority of people chose time. I want to save two and a half hours per week. Those that chose the finite or the money first thought about it and went, well, hang on a minute, there's about 50 hours in a week. There's $150 here, which means $3 per week. But you can save me two and a half hours. Are you saying that two and a half hours of my time is worth $3? And then they change camps and went over to the true one. Yeah. So things like where we automatically think-- and again, we've talked about this in our previous episodes-- that's not about the price where people think, well, you throw money at someone and they're going to go, yes, that is a misuse of using the money framing. If you had positioned yourself better around time, much more successful. OK. I just want to get a little granular now on pricing and in particular on a page, a web page. How should framing change on a pricing page? OK. What do you recommend? So you want to frame what you offer and the value that you offer. So you don't need more in-peace, especially on a pricing page or a pricing schedule. You want a summary and a bullet point of what is involved. So you're framing the picture of what's included. But the other thing that you can do is frame absence versus presence. Now, let me just explain absence versus presence. So two types of yoga. You have one that's 20% fat. And you have another one that is 80% fat free. Both are technically 80% fat free. And both are 20% fat. Well, the one with the 20% fat sounds amazing. I'll take that. So which one do you think most people would choose right? Definitely the 80% fat free. So it's framed the absence versus the presence, 20% fat. Now, they're exactly the same. But the impact was totally different. So the majority of people chose that. So same sort of thing that you can do on a proposal. And also when you're verbally articulating what you offer is by highlighting if you don't engage with this service or if you don't include this option or don't include this product, you won't be able to achieve these results. We're all about for some reason that drives me bananas, features, and benefits. But we do this. And we can do this. And we can do this. And we can do this. And you get this. But how about what you don't get? So reframing it that way is much more powerful. So leading with outcomes over-- Yeah, 100%. 100%. Yeah. Were you specifically talking about pricing, as in a proposal or pricing on a landing page or it doesn't matter? Both. Probably both. Both. Really? In fact, a landing page-- because there's more explanation and description on a landing page. You've got way more opportunity to use framing. I don't say way more power. but also. power to overwhelm the user. - That too. - So quite often in some of the use cases that I look at, cognitive load is very detrimentally affected by the amount of copy on a page. So leading with a hero headline and then 50 pages of war and peace isn't going to get a conversion. So sort of back here less is more. How do we guide the user towards a sale? And so I would say that the framing in that case is yes, get the story into the page, but also be very cognizant that it could deter a reader away from your sale if it's too long and too wordy. - And that's why framing is so important because you can say a lot in a little bit of space if you frame it correctly and 100%. If cognitive overload you're right. So the minute that people see that this is going to be complex or it's going to be long or it's going to be hard for them to compute, they'll walk away. Absolutely walk away. So yeah, a landing page is very effective if you get it right. - Lot of testing. How do you use a testing? - That's okay. That's okay. Right, we learn from our boots. - And that's a set for you. - And then the shift. - No, no, that's not right. - That's one of the biggest things I think in all, particularly in website design and development is that there's a perception that it is build, set, forget, leave, done. It is never that, it is test, test again. What are your users doing? How do I increase, improve conversion rates? Is it a headline? Is it what I'm saying? Is it how I'm saying it? How am I framing the user to make a decision? There's so many different aspects to it, but it's like, continue, never stop. You never stop learning and changing. - Yeah, good. What is a clean framing test that you can run this week, do you think? - So I think for a lot of businesses, they could probably actually put out there around an outcome driven headline or outcome driven blog or outcome driven post around by doing this, you can achieve this. By looking at what you offer during the week, is there something that you can actually frame where we've got this for a particular week, this is on offer or this is available for a week. That's using a little bit of scarcity bias as well, but you still frame it in a way that with absence, that if they don't engage this week, that they might miss out or be less effective. But certainly around how you position your outcomes, how you position your skill, and what's in it for the consumer? What's in it for them? So yeah, right, quantitatively, right, what is it that they're going to gain or what is it they're going to lose? By doing this, you will save three and a half or three hours per week or by not doing this, you will lose three and a half hours per week, whatever, yeah. That's kind of things. - They are so powerful and I use this all the time in my sales decks, proposals, it's, what does the result look like? What does the end goal look like? Can you paint the picture for me up front before I go on the journey of figuring out how you're going to do it? Tell me what success looks like. - Yeah, so what's the future state? - Future state. - Compared to where I am now. - That's it. - Yeah, this is what, yeah. And then what is that? What does it look like? What do I want it to be? Right, then worry about how I'm going to get there. - That's it. - Yeah. - That's it. How does framing change in sales conversions though? Like what's the difference? - Well, number one, it increases them. (laughing) - It does. - So just putting it out there. - It's significantly right. And again, using that language around, again, lots of version and the framing bias is really important. So lots of version twice as much power and losing something, then gaining something. So what we don't want to lose, we don't, we're competitive. So using that kind of language. - And going to risk reduction, right? - And going to risk reduction, perfect. Yeah, I love that. And so we want to stay safe. We want to make a safe decision. We want to risk reversal language. We want to frame it in a way that we understand. And we want to trust. - Yes. - So you do all that and then conversion rates just fly through the roof. That's why we work on such a high conversion rate, especially as around biases and nudges. It's not just by chance. - Yeah. - Yeah, but and it can be done. And it can be implemented really easily. And you can see the change. You can see the differences that it has in your sales process. - So framing isn't wordplay, it's decision design. Here's the shift. People do not buy what you sell. They buy what it means. The frame decides meaning. A meaning decides value. One practical action for the listener, this is episode. Pick one key page or one key pitch. Re-write the first two lines. Lead with the outcome. Add the boundary, remove the fluff. And that's it. Off you go. That's ThinkShift. I'm Clint. - I'm Leanne. - One idea, one shift in under 30 minutes. If this change, how you think, share it with someone who makes decisions for a living. We'll be back in the next episode. (upbeat music) - This is a much made media production.