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Imagine this…

You’re in the market for a new car.

The last time you bought one, a smooth-talking salesman convinced you to buy the second car you looked at and upsold you on a bunch of extras you later regretted.

Determined not to make the same mistake again, you spend 30+ hours doing research so you can choose the exact vehicle you want before stepping foot on the car lot.

Before heading to the dealership, you meet up with an old college friend for lunch.

She arrives in a sexy sports car and spends the whole lunch dropping not-so-subtle hints about how successful her business is.

You can’t help but feel jealous.

Back in college, she never went to class and would then beg you to tutor her before each mid-term. Now she’s clearly making more money than you—it doesn’t feel fair.

You part ways with the old friend and head over to the car dealership. Along the drive, you keep replaying stuff she said in your head and getting more and more annoyed.

When you walk into the dealership, you see the car you plan to buy—a sensible and safe compact SUV—parked next to a bright yellow sports car.

The sports car is even nicer than your friend’s car AND it’s on sale.

What do you do?

In today’s edition of Why We Buy, we’re taking a look at the Empathy Gap—why we often underestimate how much a buyer’s emotional state can influence their behavior and decisions.

Let’s get into it.
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🧠 The Psychology of Empathy Gap

The empathy gap describes the tendency to underestimate the role our current emotions play in decision-making. It’s related to the projection bias, which refers to our tendency to overestimate how much our future self will share the same tastes and preferences as our current self.

Sometimes referred to as the “hot-cold” empathy gap, when people are in a ‘cold’ state—not feeling any negative emotions—they assume they’ll make rational decisions in the future. Yet, when in a ‘hot’ state—such as being hungry, tired, afraid, sad, jealous, etc.—those negative emotions can drive them to make poor decisions.

If you’ve ever committed to eating healthier and then gone grocery shopping hungry, you’ve likely experienced the empathy gap.

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🧐 Inside Your Buyer’s Mind

Your buyers are lousy at predicting how they’ll behave in the future.

If you talk to buyers when they’re in a ‘cold’ emotional state and ask them about the future, their answers can be misleading. They assume that they’ll make logical, balanced decisions. Yet, when negative emotions creep in, they’ll often make choices that go against their best interests.

Both buyers and businesses often fail to account for the empathy gap. As a result, buyers provide misleading intel when asked about the future, which leads brands to design products and customer experiences that miss the mark.
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🤑 How To Apply This

Alright, so how can you apply this right now to sell more?

E-commerce​
Use pre-sales to hedge big bets

It’s great when your buyers reach out and tell you exactly what they’d like to see from your brand.

It’s not great when you order that inventory and they don’t buy it.

What gives?

Remember, buyers aren’t great at predicting their own behavior. Be careful making expensive decisions based on survey results.

Hedge your bet with pre-sales that ensure your buyers mean what they say.

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(In case you didn’t know, Shopify has a pre-sale feature.)

Alex Lieberman recently used a pre-sale to gauge interest on a new backyard game he’d planned to bring to market.

As Alex explains on Twitter, the pre-sale flopped so he killed the product. Rather than seeing this as a failure Alex saw it as a victory because now he could invest more time in more lucrative projects.

Tech​
Provide customer support that’s actually helpful

When customers have a question or problem they want answers… fast.

AI-powered chatbots promise access to a 24/7 customer support team. Sounds great! But unfortunately, many brands haven’t figured out how to deliver helpful support quite yet.

Case in point:

​SOURCE​

Audit your customer support experience regularly to ensure it’s actually helpful. Creating unnecessary friction (aka “sludge“) is a surefire way to annoy customers. And what do annoyed customers do? They churn.
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Retail & Hospitality​
Design for “hot” emotions

There’s a reason why grocery stores put candy bars and chips next to the checkout.

They want one more chance to tempt hungry buyers into spending a little more.

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But, when you understand your buyer’s emotional state, you can design positive interventions too.

For instance, a hospital cafeteria moved the french fries to the end of the buffet and put the desserts below eye level.

These small changes encouraged people to make healthier choices.
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Service Business​
Create a timeline for your upsells

Let’s say you have a social media agency.

You create organic content for your clients. Your first package creates the content and they post it.

Like clockwork, your clients end up asking if you could help them post it as well.

But, they don’t ask until you’ve worked with them for about 30 days.

It takes them 30 days to realize that even though they thought they’d be on top of posting… they actually need support.

Yet, when you try to upsell them to the package that includes posting, they always decline.

No biggy—time your upsell 30 days after you start working together. ​
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Create a templated message that you can send out that reminds them that you’re available to write and post their content.

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💥 The Short of It

People, yourself included, are bad at predicting how they’ll act in the future.

If businesses want to get better at designing marketing campaigns, products, and customer experiences that customers enjoy, we must consider their future actions AND also their future mental states as well.​

​Until next time, happy selling!