One of my least favorite restaurants in the world is The Cheesecake Factory. It’s not that I don’t like cheesecake – my belly will tell you that I do. My issue with The Cheesecake Factory is the sheer size of the menu and the absurd amount of choices available. As its website states, “with over 250 menu items and more than 50 signature cheesecakes and desserts, there is truly ‘something for everyone’ at The Cheesecake Factory.”
While accurate, I find the amount of choices to be overwhelming, which makes it difficult for me to ever decide on a dish. In fact, I feel more pressure trying to figure out what to order by the time the server comes back for a third time than Sgt. Martin Riggs did trying to figure out the correct sequence to cut the wires to diffuse a bomb in Lethal Weapon 3. When a decision is finally made, I feel a brief sense of relief which is quickly overshadowed by the feeling I ordered the wrong thing. In other words, I have buyer’s remorse before my food is even delivered.
I much prefer a “less is more” approach to a restaurant experience – and I’m not alone. Over the past five years, the nation’s 20 fastest growing restaurants (Five Guys, Chipotle, BurgerFi, Shake Shack), have developed focused, almost minimal, menus. This “less is more” approach leads to lower costs, efficient service, higher profits, and an overall excellent customer experience.
In the promotional products industry, distributors have access to well over 1.2 million different products from more than 7,000 suppliers. Because of this, distributor salespeople often inundate their target audience with dozens – if not hundreds – of merchandise options in the same product category with the belief that more choice will generate more sales. The reality is that the prospect becomes so overloaded with options that the sales journey grinds to a screeching halt.
The more options that are added to the sales process, the more questions that are likely to be raised in the mind of the client. The more questions that are raised in the mind of the client, the slower the sales journey becomes.
Instead of burying your target audience with options, limit merchandise offerings to only the most popular, necessary options – the ones that you believe will truly help them solve their marketing problem. If your client wants more choices, they will ask for them. Conversely, clients will rarely ask for less choice and instead will remain silent even as they are overwhelmed.
At best, too much choice in a sales transaction slows down the journey of the client because they will be overwhelmed and be unsure of which product to choose. At worst, the client will experience the feeling of buyer’s remorse after the purchase as they regret their decision. In either case, an overwhelming amount of choices does the opposite of the intent: it increases the amount of friction in the transaction and makes the purchasing journey painful for the client.
In a sales transaction, too many choices will stall the purchasing journey. By focusing on being Five Guys in a Cheesecake Factory world, you accelerate the sales process and significantly decrease the possibility of buyer’s remorse.
Bill is president of PromoCorner and has over 17 years working in executive leadership positions at leading promotional products distributorships. In 2014, he launched brandivate – the first executive outsourcing company solely focused on helping small and medium sized-promotional products enterprises responsibly grow their business. A featured speaker at numerous industry events, a serial creator of content marketing, president of the Promotional Products Association of the Mid-South (PPAMS), and PromoKitchen chef, Bill has extensive experience coaching sales teams, creating successful marketing campaigns, developing operational policies and procedures, creating and developing winning RFP responses, and presenting winning promotional products solutions to Fortune 500 clients. He can be reached at bill@PromoCorner.com.