In the Outsold sales system, for Planting SEED, these are the basic concepts you need to know before someone can decide.
1. Loss Aversion, Kahneman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory, 1979.
This theory means that losing something, hurts roughly twice as much, as gaining the equivalent feels good. So people are far more motivated to avoid a loss than to chase a gain of the same size.
Example: A bakery telling a wholesale client “you’re currently losing about $400 a week in stock that goes stale before it sells” lands harder than “you could save $400 a week with better ordering,” even though it’s the same $400.
2. Scarcity, Cialdini, 1984.
Things feel more valuable the moment they seem limited or about to disappear, even when nothing about the thing itself has actually changed.
Example: A vet clinic creating a wait list, saying they only take on a set number of new patients a month, purely to keep appointment times realistic, they are finding people book faster once they hear it.
3. Social Proof, Cialdini, 1984, drawing on Solomon Asch’s 1951 conformity experiments.
Just understand that when people are uncertain, they look at what others like them are doing and copy it, because it feels safer than deciding entirely alone.
Example: A plumber mentioning “Oh, you still have this water heater, most of the other places in this estate have already had theirs replaced” rather than simply stating the recommendation outright.
4. Authority, Cialdini, 1984, and Stanley Milgram’s 1963 obedience studies.
They say in the absence of true leadership, people listen to any idiot on a soapbox. This means people defer to whoever seems most knowledgeable or credible in the room, often without closely checking the substance behind that impression.
Example: A mechanic showing a client the actual worn part pulled out of their car, rather than just describing it, because seeing the evidence in a trusted expert’s hand carries more weight than the same words alone.
5. The Decoy Effect, Huber, Payne and Puto, 1982.
By adding a third, clearly worse option next to two others makes one of the original two look like the obvious right choice, even though nothing about it changed.
Example: A hairdresser’s price list with a “deluxe” package priced only slightly above the “standard plus colour” package, which makes the standard plus colour option look like the smart pick, when it was the target all along.
6. The Pratfall Effect, Aronson, Willerman and Floyd, 1966.
This is why the most trusted Google rating is not 5, it is 4.7. Basic human error. When someone already seen as competent becomes more likeable, not less, after admitting a small, harmless mistake, because it makes them seem more human rather than less capable.
Example: An accountant openly telling a client “we actually missed a deduction on last year’s return, here’s what we’ve fixed and what we’re doing differently,” rather than staying quiet about it.
7. Inoculation Theory, William McGuire, 1961.
By getting in front of an objection by deliberately raising a mild version of that objection ahead of time, and handling the objection ourselves, makes them far more resistant to that same objection when it’s raised by someone else later.
Example: A brewery telling a new wholesale account upfront, “some people think craft beer are too expensive to bother stocking, but our customers state they usually find the opposite.” The prospect kind of mentally checks off that point before it comes out of their mouth.
8. The Peak-End Rule, Kahneman, Fredrickson, Schreiber and Redelmeier, 1993.
We tend to judge an entire experience mostly by its most intense moment and by how it ended, not by the average of everything that happened along the way.
Example: The Holywood ending. A boring movie with a great ending will make us think the overall experience was good.
9. The Pygmalion Effect, Rosenthal and Jacobson’s famous classroom study, 1968.
understand that people tend to rise or fall to meet the expectations openly placed on them, especially by someone they see as credible.
Example: A manager telling a new hire on day one, “you were picked because we think you’re going to be one of our best,” tends to produce a stronger first quarter than saying nothing at all.
What this means in Planting SEED
None of these nine principles are about pressure. Loss aversion and scarcity raise the cost of standing still. Social proof and authority lower the perceived risk of moving. The decoy effect and the pratfall effect shape how the decision itself is framed. Inoculation and the peak end rule protect the decision once it’s made. The Pygmalion effect carries it forward past the sale. At no point does any of it involve pushing.
That’s how Decide fits inside Planting SEED, and why it’s the last post rather than the first. By the time someone reaches this stage.
1. Spark Curiosity has them leaning in
2. Explore has them naming their own problem
3. Expand Ownership has them helping build the answer.
4. Deciding, at that point, is not a hard close. It is the smallest, most natural step left in a process they have been driving themselves the whole way through, which was the entire idea behind Planting, all the way back at the start of this series.
Like I said, at the start, sales is easy, you just make them think it was their idea.
The Full Planting SEED series (Victory without battle)
Planting why the best salespeople never argue anyone into anything. Here
Spark Curiosity looks at how you get someone leaning in before you’ve said anything persuasive at all. Here
Explore covers the exact questions that get a buyer to discover their own need. Here
Expand Ownership looks at why people value solutions they helped build over solutions handed to them. Here
Decide covers how you get someone to commit without ever applying pressure. Here
More thinking like this at www.outsold.com.au/blogs.
