Announcing new behavioural techniques webinar series for finance professionals

As someone who has worked in finance, I know only too well that the numbers don't always speak for themselves.  

In fact, now more than ever finance professionals have to influence their customers and stakeholders to take action and that means knowing how to influence behaviour.  

That's why I've created 5 self-contained webinars for finance professionals. Learn to how to navigate the maze of human behaviour using techniques from behavioural science that will make a difference to how decisions get made, and make a difference to your career success.

LEARN, APPLY AND EMBED BEHAVIOURAL TECHNIQUES IN 5 X 30 MINUTE WEBINARS

Structured over 5 self-contained sessions, the Buyer Behaviour coaching for finance professionals is perfect for people who specialise in influencing financial decisions, want to gain advantage for your business and who need the flexibility of a program that works around your business demands.

By the end of each webinar you will be ready to apply new behavioural techniques in your business.

Each webinar is self-contained which means you can choose to attend one, multiple or all sessions.  What a great way to get CPD hours!

Topics in brief

1. Walking away: Why we hold on too long to bad investments Fri 30 Nov 2012 
2. Mental accounting: why money means different things in different contexts  Fri 7 Dec 2012
3. Information biases: why we have a blinkered view of information Fri 14 Dec 2012
4. Number psychology: why presentation matters  Fri 11 Jan 2013
5. Calculating gains: Why gains that are short-term and separate are more persuasive than those longer-term and combined  Fri 18 Jan 2013 

More information about each session is included below.

How the sessions work

Scheduling: webinars are 30 minutes and will run on the stated date. Recordings of each session will be available to registered participants.

 Content:  Each session will include;

•  Definitions of key behavioural principle(s)
• Illustration of principles in action
• Time for question and answers

Flexible pricing

Pay as you go:  The webinars are available on a pay-as-you-go basis at $125 (incl gst) per session.  ***November special: Book before 29th November and pay only $50 (incl GST) per session.  Quote promo code "November" in the registration form***

Request your seat

Registrations are now open and limited to 25 participants.

1. Walking away:  Fri 30 Nov 2012  Book now
2. Mental accounting: Fri 7 Dec 2012 Book now
3. Information biases:  Fri 14 Dec 2012 Book now
4. Number psychology:  Fri 11 Jan 2013 Book now
5. Calculating gains:  Fri 18 Jan 2013 Book now

Details of sessions

Session 1. Walking away: Why we hold on too long to bad investments 

Friday 30 Nov 2012   11am - 11.30am 

We are all prone to hold on to something too long.  Suits that don't fit anymore, shoes that hurt to walk in, and of course investments that we should have ditched long ago.

As a finance professional you encounter this behaviour all too often. It may be a client who just won't sell bad shares, a client who simply can't be convinced to move to better performing options, or a stakeholder who refuses to close down a project that has no hope of generating a return. The numbers don't lie, but rational analysis is not what's holding your customer back.

In this webinar, we'll use behavioural economics to unmask the secrets of why people hold on too long to bad investments and what you can do to break through. 

Click here to register for Session 1

Session 2. Mental accounting: why money means different things in different contexts    

11am - 11.30am Fri 7 Dec 2012

When Hungry Jacks ran a $2 Groupon deal for a $6.95 meal package they received over 120,000 downloads in three hours.  When ATMs started to carry a warning about a $2 fee for 'foreign' bank transactions, activity plummeted from 50% to 40%.  If $2 can change behaviour, imagine what larger amounts can do! 

If you've ever wondered why some people like rebates whilst others prefer discounts, why money for utility bills is treated differently to money for entertainment, then this webinar is perfect for you.  Learn why 'mental accounting' matters and what it means for you when you are influencing your customers or stakeholders to take action.

Click here to register for Session 2

Session 3. Information biases: why we have a blinkered view of information 

Fri 14 Dec 2012  11am - 11.30am 

Ever found that your client or stakeholder seems only to hear information that supports their position and ignores anything that is contradictory?  We are all prone to Information Biases; filters that distort, accept or reject information according to our view.

As a finance professional, the challenge is how to understand and deal with these biases so that your client or stakeholder makes the most appropriate decision. Join me for this important webinar and learn how to address biases.

Click here to register for Session 3

Session 4. Number psychology: why presentation matters 

Fri 11 Jan 2013  11am - 11.30am 

A number is a number, right?  Well, no.  After all, we prefer 97% fat free yogurt rather than yogurt with 3% fat!  How you present a number can have dramatic ramifications for how your audience receives it, so rather than leaving it to chance, why not learn the techniques to use when sharing information?

Join me for this webinar on number psychology where you will learn about framing and anchoring numbers to maximise your communication.

Click here to register for Session 4

Session 5. Calculating gains: Why gains that are short-term and separate are more persuasive than those longer-term and combined  

Fri 18 Jan 2013   11am - 11.30am 

Seems strange doesn't it?  When people receive two smaller gains rather than one gain of the same amount, they are more satisfied.  Time horizons and frequency of reward can have significant impacts on your customer or stakeholder's behaviour.  If you are in the business of convincing people to buy financial products like shares, annuities or superannuation, or advising your workplace on how best to incentivise staff then these concepts become hugely significant. 

Join me for this webinar to understand the behaviour of gains.

Click here to register for Session 5

More information

If you have any questions or would like more information, simply email info@peoplepatterns.com.au

Image credit: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mhixRCW/Maze

The Behavioural Economics of Melbourne Cup Day

You have spent hours hunting for the right frock, shoes, bag and hat. You've been primped, plucked and spray tanned, waxed and blow dried.  You have dieted, exercised and cleansed. You've been up since the early hours, battled traffic snarls and endless queues. And now here you are.  Standing in the car park which has been claimed by heels rather than wheels, crammed in amongst sweaty strangers, sipping sour bubbles and nibbling soggy sandwiches. Ahhh, Melbourne Cup Day...proof irrefutable that we are not entirely rational beings.

In celebration of the famous Melbourne Cup, let's take a sneaky peek at the behavioural economics at play.

Overconfidence bias: 
We can be too confident in our abilities which leads to risk taking.
"I've studied the form and of course I know more than the Bookies."  

Illusion of control: We think we can control events that we can't.
"My horse always/never wins."

Actor-observer bias: 
We attribute our own positive behaviour to our character, and the behaviour of others to the situation.
"When I get drunk it's the mix of wine and bubbles that did it; when you get drunk it's because you drank too much!" or "When I win it's because I am super talented in selecting winners; when you win it's luck."

Endowment effect: 
Don't get too excited guys, endowment is about us overvaluing what we own.
"Sure I randomly drew that horse out of the hat, but it's mine and you can't have it."

Restraint bias: 
We underestimate our ability to avoid temptation.
"It's ok, I'll only have a couple of drinks."  

Remembering self: 
Our memories of an experience rather than the experience itself is what persuades us.
I remember the fun of previous Cup days rather than the reality of sore feet, sun burn and expense.

Mental accounting: 
Money is allocated to different 'mental' bank accounts.
I paid for my outfit out of a different 'mental account' than my power bill. Any money I win will be 'free' money to be used on fun stuff.

Focusing illusion:
Whatever we focus on has more importance at that moment than any other time.
"What, there's a race after the Cup??"

Clustering illusion:
We see patterns where none exist.
"The jockey is wearing my lucky colours."

Hindsight bias:
We knew it all along.
"I knew it was going to win!  I just didn't get around to placing a bet."

Sunk cost fallacy:
Once resources have been invested, we find it hard to walk away.
"I better just finish this last drink. Can't let it go to waste" or "Of course I'll wear that fascinator again!"

Sounds like fun doesn't it?  And one for the road, 

Hedonic framing:
Separate, smaller gains over a stretch of time are more pleasurable than one large win of equal value, but smaller separate losses hurt more than a once off.  In other words, the more times we are interrupted by good or bad news, the better/worse it is.
"This is the best day of my life!" or...

No. Don't worry. Your horse always wins.  Have a good one.

PS Why not join like minded colleagues by signing up to the People Patterns mailing list?  Every month you'll receive a short wrap-up of behavioural tips for business. Click here for the 20 second sign-up.

Image from http://www.rgbstock.com/images/horses/2

LinkedIn lesson in engagement: keep the number fresh

LinkedIn do a lot of things well when it comes to influencing the behaviour of their market, and today I thought it worthwhile to point out one of the tricks they are using: keeping stale information fresh!

Change the number by changing how it's calculated

Every few days the number of people who have viewed my profile changes...but not necessarily because the actual number of viewers has. What do I mean?  LinkedIn cleverly update the count of viewers by changing the time period over which the viewers have been counted.  Where today I may have been viewed by '6 people over the last 3 days', tomorrow I might see that I have been viewed by '10 people over the last 7 days'.

Is this important? You betcha!  It keeps my interest because the number looks different and so I feel compelled to click through to see what's changed.  This interest keeps me engaged with LinkedIn both emotionally and transactionally, in other words, I don't just clock the number, I click through (where they then try to upgrade me to premium).

What's the behavioural technique?

This is the same tool that can be used to make mortgage payments or car finance seem less scary. For instance, you may have seen car ads like this Lexus example that diminishes the purchase price by promoting a weekly repayment instead.  


What trick are they using?  It's called Denominator Neglect, where we focus on the numerator (ie the thing that we are getting like 'viewers') rather than how it's calculated (ie over how many days).  Like a muffin, it's what's on top that counts!

Lessons for your business

Three lessons from what we've covered.1. Your buyer is most likely to be persuaded by the numerator rather than the denominator, so consider how you can best utilise this in pricing,2. Don't underestimate the benefit of putting a new spin on some otherwise unchanged statistic because it may reengage your audience and3. Make sure that you are improving the life of your buyer with any of these tactics because influence is about win/win whereas manipulation is win/lose and a fast track to failure. 

PS Why not join the People Patterns mailing list?  Every month you'll receive a short wrap-up of behavioural tips for business. Click here for the 20 second sign-up.

Why team training falls over and how behavioural economics can help

I sat in a seminar last week on team development and it's prompted me to think about how behavioural economics can be used to improve team performance.

The presenter started by sharing the characteristics of high performance teams, citing the 2012 AFL premiers the Sydney Swans as an example.  What elements of team dynamics were called out? Process, shared vision and values, playing for each other, clarity about the contribution each individual was expected to make and so on. People in the room had no trouble listing these elements, and yet we seem collectively to struggle on a day to day, hour by hour, decision by decision basis to make it happen.

Perhaps I'm jaded, but there seems to be an intractable disconnect between high performance teams and the rest of the world.  For every Sydney Swans there is a Port Adelaide. Where the Swans are the exception, the rest of us are the rule.  And in spite of team dynamics being one of the most studied and trained aspects of organisational performance, an area we spend a fortune on, we scratch our heads and mutter "if only".

So what's breaking down?

Insights are fleeting, behaviour is entrenched
There's no doubt that team profiling tools and team building sessions can improve performance. It's the sustainability of that performance that is at issue.

In a previous life when I facilitated induction days and team building events, and in other lives where I've participated, I've seen light globes go off.  People gain insights into their colleagues and the walls get broken down between right-brainers and left, between introverts and non, between instigators and concluders.  The team members see why they approach issues from a particular perspective and with that, develop an understanding of how their colleagues may see things differently.  Finally! We have a shared understanding and common language that means 'conflict' is not necessarily personal, it's simply a function of us not being empathetic.  Hurrah, at last we can be a high performance team!

But then something happens.

It's called habit.  We revert to old patterns of behaviour and as the weeks go by, we forget that Jo is a right-brain, introverted, polkadotted, instigator and we just think Jo is an idiot.

How can behavioural economics help?
The core reason that team training fails to deliver sustainable performance is down to behavioural change.  And for effective behavioural change, you need to understand human decision making and for that, there is behavioural economics.

Here is a taster of where behavioural economics can explain the breakdown of behavioural change.

We are more motivated to avoid loss than seek gain.  The gain in this situation is that if everyone performs, we become a high performance unit.  But that's not enough on a day to day basis to keep people behaving differently.  Why?  Because of what I have to lose.  Change means I have to give up what I'm used to (loss aversion), it requires more thinking and self-control than I can afford when I'm just trying to get my work done (depletion effect), and whilst the downside of having to spend time empathising with my colleague's style of thinking is blatantly obvious - I mean, who has the time?! - the payoff - "if this stuff even works" seems both ambiguous and way off on the horizon (short-term bias).  And anyway, why should I if no one else is (social norming)?

To embed high performance you must design for it
To embed high performance, this is what you must do. Design for the behavioural change.

First, use behavioural economics to understand the reasons inhibiting change, and on the flip side, will facilitate change.  In the example above "why should I when no one else is" can instead become "I will because I see others doing it", "If this stuff even works" can instead become "I know what I need to do in small interaction to make a difference overall".

And second, ensure that you have strategies to support both the motivation to change as well as ability to change.

In other words, when the team come back to the workplace all pumped up, when motivation is at its peak, that is the time to get them to commit to new processes and policies, do the hard stuff like moving their office to be closer to their colleagues, schedule meetings they don't like having and so on.  Then, when motivation levels drop, the hard changes have already been taken care of so all that you require is the easier tasks.  Morning teas, 'thank you' post-it notes...whatever you and your team have designated as 'easy' things should be rolled out so that even if no one really feels like it, you do it anyway and before you know it, you are on the path to high performance.

So by all means, learn from the best and aspire to create a high performance team; after all, the Sydney Swans did it.  But don't leave team performance at an intellectual level, assuming team members will change their behaviour on a rational basis because you'll be wasting your money. For a team to perform differently than they have been, your task is one of behavioural change and for that, you need behavioural economics.

PS Why not join the People Patterns mailing list?  Every month you'll receive a short wrap-up of behavioural tips for business. Click here for the 20 second sign-up.


Image credit: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/meZ98Fc/Broken+Chain

22 Minutes to a Better Business: The slide pack

My slide presentation from recent seminar on how behavioural economics can be used to tackle everyday business issues.  If you are interested in hearing more, let me know bri@peoplepatterns.com.au.

22 Minutes to a Better Business from Bri Williams

Innovative packaging bridges analogue and digital divide

How to simplify the experience of using unfamiliar technology?  This was the question resolved by Vitamins Design Consultants on behalf of Samsung who were interested in selling more smart phones to older consumers.

The answer lay in the packaging.

The roadblock to purchase
When you are unfamiliar with a piece of technology - could be a phone, oven, car, DVD player - it can inhibit your willingness to purchase.  After all, we all hate feeling like we are stupid, and not feeling capable to use something that other people obviously can is extremely off putting.

Removing the mental barrier
With this in mind, Vitamins determined that more could be done to support consumers in the initial stages of setting up and familiarising themselves with their new phone, and that this promise of support would inspire more people to purchase. 

Out of the Box
In a brilliant lateral move, Vitamins turned the packaging of the phone - the box it came in - into a storybook of what to do when.  As the user flicked through each page they were instructed to complete a stage of the set-up. For instance, the SIM card was embedded in the page with the instruction "This is your SIM card, the heart and soul of your phone, please lift it out".  

From there, the user was asked to physically slot the phone into the book, like placing a picture in a frame.  Each page took the user through the phone's interface - what to press to make a call, how to email and so on.  A perfect blend of analogue and digital!

Behavioural techniques
I love what Samsung and Vitamins did with their Out of the Box packaging because they used key behavioural insights and techniques;

• Overcoming loss aversion - we hate to feel stupid because it reduces our sense of identity. They created something that supported even the most nervous of new users. 
• Vividness - clear, concise steps meant that there was no confusion as to what to do in which order.
• Completion - once started, there was no giving up but also no need to.  Simple instructions lead the user through each stage so they ended up with a fully functioning phone and the confidence to use it. Contrast this with technology that you get home, try to set up, get lost in the manual and therefore leave it sitting as a white elephant.  My multi-function printer springs to mind as an example.

Lessons for your business
A few blog posts ago I talked about "consumption design'; that part of the product experience that relates to how the product is consumed.  Vitamins have demonstrated that the product (the phone) doesn't necessarily need to be changed, but the context in which it is 'consumed' can be.  We often limit our thinking about packaging to its functional benefits ie keeping the product free of damage and/or sexy of the shelf, but we should be thinking about how packaging can be behaviourally improved to enhance consumption.  Here's to thinking out of the box!

For more on Vitamins, visit http://vitaminsdesign.com/projects/out-of-the-box-for-samsung/

PS Why not join the People Patterns mailing list?  Every month you'll receive a short wrap-up of behavioural tips for business. Click here for the 20 second sign-up.

Learning from a botched loyalty program request

I was at a well known tea retailer the other week, at the register ready to pay.  "Would you like to join our loyalty program?" asked the sales assistant.

Here's how it went down...

• Assistant: "Would you like to join you loyalty program?"
• Me: (exasperated sigh to infer my purse was already groaning under the weight of loyalty program cards). "What's involved?"
• Assistant: "You just need to provide some information."
• Me: "How much information?"
• Assistant: "All of it."
• Me: "What's all of it?"
• Assistant: "Name, address, phone, email..." (she went on but I'd closed off long ago)
• Me: "And what do I get?"
• Assistant: "10% off once you reach $500."
• Me: "No thanks"

Pretty simply this assistant and/or the store's policy had botched the opportunity to engage me in their program because effort exceeded reward. The effort/reward equation is one I've flagged before as a useful distillation of what you are requiring of your buyer compared with what they receive.

Both effort and reward should be assessed on financial, psychological and social terms as well as time and physical commitment.

In this scenario I was being asked to complete a seemingly endless registration form (time & cognitive effort) for a distant and insignificant payoff (10% after $500).  Note the significance on the payoff is scaled in terms of effort.  Had I been automatically granted 10% discount on the day for nothing more than an email I would have been rapt.

Here's how it could have gone down (because as my purse attests, I have been known to join such programs);

• Assistant: "Would you like to join you loyalty program?"
• Me: (exasperated sigh to infer my purse was already groaning under the weight of loyalty program cards). "What's involved?"
• Assistant: "I just register your name and email and as a thank you I can take 10% off today's purchases"
• Me: "OK sure. My email is..." (immediate benefit, negligible effort)

From there, the company could and should send me a welcome email from which point they can establish a relationship and ask me for more personal information.

It's easy to go wrong when seeking to engage your buyer, so remember to keep effort/reward in balance and you'll see your conversion improve.

PS Why not join the People Patterns mailing list?  Every month you'll receive a short wrap-up of behavioural tips for business. Click here for the 20 second sign-up.

Image credit: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/miNOLyq/Mag+Card++2