🚪 The door in the face technique, how to make a magical event, ...
I listen to 10 hours of podcasts a week, so you don’t have to.
This is the 25th edition of Best 3 Podcasts of the Week 🥉🥈🥇, featuring Nudge, Limited Supply, and My First Million.
What you need to know
🚪 The door in the face technique
😬 Be embarrassed or launch too late
🧞♂️ How to make a magical event
🚪 The door in the face technique
🥉 Third place (4 min read vs 30 mins listening)
Before we begin, kudos to whoever named this technique. It’s a head turner. As is the podcast it was featured on, Nudge. Phill Agnew has risen to prominence with arguably the best marketing podcast. He sat down with Zoe Chance to discuss how to make someone say yes by anchoring your request against an even bigger ask.
What they say
The door in the face technique
There’s a study I want to share with you with a caveat. This is different to most of the techniques that I teach or talk about. With this one, if you overuse it, it can seem manipulative and transactional. So, it’s something to use rarely. Maybe once with each person.
This is what researchers call the door in the face technique. Just asking for something huge that you don’t expect to get and following up with a request that’s small.
It’s very powerful for a lot of reasons. The main one is we don’t have a way of judging value or size. Except, in comparison to something else.
People see you as reasonable. They feel more inclined to help you out because they’ve already said no to the initial big request.
Zoe Chance
Robert Cialdini’s study
Researchers approached people who were walking along and going about their day. They said ‘Sorry to bother you. I’m working with an organization that helps troubled youth. We’re taking some teenage criminals to the zoo next week and we’re down one chaperone. I’m looking for someone who can help us. It’s Thursday afternoon. Can you come and do this?’
To me, the idea of chaperoning anybody at the zoo, let alone teenagers, let alone teenage criminals, is my worse nightmare. Also, I’m super busy so there’s no possible way.
In this study, one of the surprising things was 17% of people said yes right away. One of the things this illustrated is that people are so nice. They’re nicer than we imagine.
That’s not the door in the face part. This was with another group of similar people. Rather than first asking about going to the zoo, they asked another question.
They explained the organization they worked with and said ‘We’re looking for tutors for teenage criminals. Are you willing to commit 2 hours a week for the next 2 years?’
In this study, no one said yes to the first question but more than 50% of people said yes to the second request to go to the zoo.
In isolation, the zoo request sounded crazy, but in contrast to 2 hours a week for the next 2 years, it sounded small.
Zoe Chance
What I say
Why it matters: For e-commerce merchants: One Click Upsell helps you to apply this technique on Shopify. After checkout, customers are shown a similar product that they can buy with one click. If you skip the offer, they’re presented with another product at a deeper discount. Having used this at Medicspot, I can vouch that it’s an amazing plug-in that pays itself back 1,000 times over.
For everyone else: Build your own version of One Click Upsell. The door in the face technique helped Medicspot achieve £500K+ in additional sales. I guarantee it will make a difference to your bottom line too, if built correctly.
Speaking of tips and tricks, Phill and Zoe shared a few tidbits of advice that didn’t quite make the cut for What they say. Honorable mentions include:
Minimise time between your asks
It’s even better to have no time at all between your asks
Asking in person will improve results
Between the lines: In the spirit of the door in the face technique, I ask you this:
(1) If you’re getting value out of my newsletter, can you forward this to one friend/colleague?
(2) If you don’t have close friends or colleagues who love business podcasts, can you please help me raise awareness on Twitter by giving this a retweet?
I realise this isn’t the scientific way of applying this technique. You shouldn’t see (2) until you’ve answered (1). But, this is the quickest and easiest way to try it out!
😬 Be embarrassed or launch too late
🥈 Second place (3 min read vs 46 mins listening)
This episode has a place close to my heart. Why? I have a bias to action. You’ll hear about the importance of shipping something, anything, to validate if you’re following the right or wrong path.
This is the first time Nik Sharma and Moiz Ali have broken into this newsletter with their new podcast Limited Supply. They discuss the two things you need to test a new concept. (1) A fake brand. (2) Paid ads.
What they say
Speed is everything
You should launch privately and quietly.
Don’t spend $2M on a marketing agency building a really nice website, great packaging and launching to crickets. You are going to be disappointed with your sales.
No brand launched and said ‘Guess what? We just did $500M in sales today. Great idea. We were all right about everything.’
Reid Hoffman was like ‘If you were happy with the first iteration of your website, you waited to long to launch.’
Moiz Ali
Hims example
The guys at Hims did this really well. They launched as a viagra seller under a different brand.
They started running paid ads to it and after spending $10K they were like ‘This was the best idea we’ve ever had. Let’s stop running paid ads to this site that doesn’t work. Let’s take down this brand and actually go and build out Hims because we’ve proven this works.’
Moiz Ali
Kettle and Fire example
The other guy who did this really well is Justin Mayers at Kettle and Fire.
He launched Kettle and Fire and started running ads. People bought the product on Shopify. He didn’t initially make the product.
He emailed them instantly and said ‘Look, we don’t have this product. I will give you a 100% refund right now or we will launch this product in 6 weeks and I’ll give it to you for 50% off.‘
A bunch of people would take the half off but more importantly, even if people asked for the refund, he knew people would buy this product and he knew what his customer acquisition would look like. That’s a much better way to launch.
Moiz Ali
What I say
Why it matters: Paid ads get a bad rep. Partly, because VC funded companies used ads to grow unsustainably over the past few years with the goal of doubling their valuation every 6 months. However, ads still have a part to play, particularly for early stage startups.
Paid search and paid social can accelerate the growth of your business but they can also act as a sandbox to learn and test your audience, positioning, messaging and creative.
Between the lines: The same way many Americans are proud to use less than their allotted 10 days vacation, many solopreneurs bear anti-ad banners like a badge of honor. Jakob Greenfeld wrote a great post about why ads can help validate ideas earlier.
🧞♂️ How to make a magical event
🥇 First place (5 min read vs 1 hour listening)
Shaan Puri bends the world to his will. He hates conferences and traditional networking so he created his own event in his image - Camp MFM. Shaan invited 25 entrepreneurs and creators to a weekend filled with basketball and board games, and gave everyone who didn’t attend a healthy dose of FOMO.
What they say
(1) The feeling
We invited Alex Bazzell who’s a trainer to a bunch of NBA stars. He came from training Kevin Durant to us the next day.
During the first 5 minutes he had us doing very simple drills. We were all dribbling the ball accidentally in unison like that old Nike commercial.
There were little moments like that where it just felt special. We gave people a feeling that they’re a part of something bigger than themselves.
Shaan Puri
(2) The curiosity
You invite people who are inherently curious. Everybody there had an ego. They couldn’t get to where they are without it. But, bigger than their ego is their curiosity.
You need to create the curiosity factor where you’re like ‘Who’s this person? Oh, they’re interesting. And this person’s interesting too.’
Even the quote on quote celebrities or big hitters that we had in the house, I picked specifically because they are very curious.
Shaan Puri
(3) The immersion
You couldn’t get away. For better or for worse. Normally, you go to a dinner and you sit there for 3 hours. It’s a safe space. You know the routine. Then you leave and go back to your place. You can stay surface level with people.
With this, you’re sleeping in the same room with somebody else. We’re all under one roof in the house. We’re eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. We’re figuring out logistics like ‘Do you want to shower first or me?’
At some point, you’re just going to be your real self. You can only fake the funk for so long. You can do it for 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours. By hour 5, you’re just sitting there tired and cranky and you’re going to be your real self.
Shaan Puri
(4) The focus
You [Shaan] pulled this off perfectly. You nailed the important stuff and you failed and ignored the non important stuff.
The non important stuff is the nice to haves. Most people would spend their time on that. You had:
No website
No invitation
No details
You just DMed people and said Venmo me money. I didn’t know what I was getting into but I trusted you. On the way to the airport you told me the address of where I had to go to.
There was this amazing trainer at this awesome high school gym. I was like ‘Are there any drinks here? What do we do for food?’
You were like ‘There’s a water fountain and some Cliff bars.’
I was like ‘Ok, that’s less than ideal. But, you know what? That doesn’t matter. That’s not the important shit. You focused on the important stuff.’
Sam Parr
What I say
Why it matters: Shaan said you can copy and paste 80% of what he did and change 20% to suit your needs. I don’t disagree.
However, there are a few things that will automatically sit within the 20% you need to adapt unless you also have 312,197 followers on Twitter. You need a trusted audience and a track record before you can organize an event, receive payment, while withholding all relevant details.
Between the lines: Surprise adds to the magic of feeling part of something bigger than yourself. The level of surprise you can build is dependent on your relationship with the attendees.
You can copy Shaan’s approach of waiting until the day of the event to reveal the destination if you’re booking for your family. Possibly even friends.
If you’re organizing an offsite or party for employees, you’ll need to communicate the address, unless you’re organizing travel to and from the office, a train station or an airport.
Customers, investors or acquaintances will need to know more information before committing their attendance. They’ll need to know the value they’re getting for their time. But, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t focus on the moments between the moments and use Shaan’s playbook for a more intimate, engaging event.
Shoutouts
When I find newsletters, podcasts, or books worth sharing, I’ll feature them here:
How to Take Over the World is a fantastic historical podcast by Ben Wilson. He focuses on some of humanity’s greatest leaders, from Thomas Edison and Napoleon to Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar (my favorite episodes). Ben is a wonderful storyteller and brings history into the present by sharing lessons you can apply today.
Note, these quotes were pulled at different points of the episode. Some sentences were left out to make the narrative clearer and more concise. Podup is not associated or affiliated with any podcast (unless otherwise stated). All roundups are independently written and do not imply any sponsorship or endorsement by the podcast.