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Persuasion Through The Competitive Spirit
The gym I attend is by no means a meat market. There are few mirrors, and the clientle appears to be there to maintain and/or work on their health, not to see and be seen. And I noticed something amazing at the gym that I want to share with you.
The gym I attend is by no means a meat market. There are few mirrors, and the clientle appears to be there to maintain and/or work on their health, not to see and be seen. And I noticed something amazing at the gym that I want to share with you.
On occasion, despite this not being one of ‘those’ kinds of gyms, I notice that I’ll be on a stationary bike or elliptical machine going at my pace and then someone will get on the machine next to me. My response is not conscious. I automatically pick up my pace a little. It could be that my other than conscious wants us to show off a little at how good we’re getting. Maybe it doesn’t want to be out done.
I’ve noticed this happening in the other direction as well. When I step on to a machine next to someone who’s been working out, I notice their pace pick up, maybe even slightly. We have an innate desire for competition and some of us embrace it, others don’t. I love it. When I was working in sales, I constantly challenged myself with others’ records—doubling and tripling what the very highest achievers were doing.
Watch any show on Animal Planet and you’ll see how competition escalates as resources become limited. Animals (like humans) will compete for food, water, mates, territory, status. Humans further compete for money, oil, parking spots. Our economy is not based on trade or cooperation. It’s based on the survival of the fittest. And once our long day of competing is over, we go home to watch other people compete—football, reality TV, game shows, beauty pageants. . . we can’t get enough of competition.
In the case of my observation at the gym, it shows how competing can be incentive for self improvement. If I work out harder, show them what I’m made of, ride that bike to nowhere faster than they can, then I am only doing myself good (unless I get fanatical about it and pedal myself into an injury). Now, a drinking competition. . . that, obviously, is another story.
So how can this base instinct be used most effectively for selling our products or services? Well, we see it all the time. . . two gas stations across the street from each other with slightly different prices, the lower of the two deciding to take that much less for the product. I’m not suggesting you lower your prices by any means, but through framing, we can show ourselves, our products, our services, as the answer in the minds of our affluent prospects and clients. ‘I am by no means the cheapest, and in fact, I may be one of the more expensive realtors, but you really do get what you pay for.’
What is your relation to competition? Do you embrace it or shy away from it?