But what unfolds is different than what you expected. Your emails go unreturned. Your calls are ignored. You’re left scratching your noggin at the radio silence.

Usually you start by pitching one person. What I’ve come to realize is that even when this person is the decision maker they still might need to get buy-in from multiple people. This could be the rest of their team, an adjacent department, or even the CEO. It’s great to make this person you’re champion, but that doesn’t mean you should let them sell for you.

No one will ever be able to pitch your product effectively as you do. By letting someone else circle the wagons after a phone call that’s effectively what you’re doing. You’re betting that someone who’s heard your pitch once over the phone can convince their colleagues you’re offering is worthwhile. This is bad for a handful of reasons:

1. You’re jeopardizing your value proposition being conveyed most effectively
2. You’re subjecting a decision to internal forces that are out of your control. Maybe the person pitching your product internally is someone everyone hates. Maybe they’re coming off a recommendation that went poorly. Maybe they smell like fish so no one likes standing next to them long enough to hear them out.
3. You’re missing out on the valuable data collection that comes from conversations with the other involved parties. What are the roadblocks? Who are the roadblocks? How can I dismantle the obstacles preventing this from moving forward?

Here’s how to avoid this:

The end of the pitch is always about next steps. This is where you need to find out exactly what their process is and supplant yourself in it…with force!

Determining the process is usually finding out the other people that are involved in the decision-making. Once you do this, you want to schedule a time for you to pitch them instead having the person you just spoke with do the pitching.

You can accomplish this by saying something like this at the end of your pitch:

You: “So what are the next steps on your end?”

Them: “I’ll need to go over this with my colleagues and we’ll go from there”

You: “Sounds great. Just so I have some insight into how I might be able to best help you, who are the other people you’ll be speaking with.”

Them: “Our marketing director Jim and CEO Tom”

You: “I imagine they’re probably going to have some questions, so why don’t I make your life a bit easier and just briefly explain what we do to Jim and Tom myself. That way if they have any questions, I can answer them right there. Let’s hop on a call next week at a convenient time for the 3 of you. Do you have your calendar open and are you shared on theirs?”

Them: “Yes. I am”

You: “Great. Does Thursday at 2, 2:30, or 3 look good for you guys? Why don’t you confirm with Jim and Tom that this works. Once I get confirmation, I’ll send all three of you a calendar invite.”

Them: “Sounds good.”

There is a chance you might encounter some resistance here which will require calling an audible, but often you won’t. People like to be told what to do because they’re lazy. So when you imply efficiency and tell them what to do, they’ll usually go with the program.

The most important takeaway here is to try and control the sale the entire way. An awesome pitch to the decision maker isn’t always enough. You should strive to be pitch everyone who is involved instead of having someone who’s heard about your product for 30 minutes be responsible for pushing the sale forward. You’ll give yourself the best chance for success as well as arm yourself valuable information on why someone might not be moving forward. Even when it doesn’t work out, this information saves you the time and energy spent we often spend treading water in a pool of BD ambiguity. And there’s never cute girls in the pool of BD ambiguity : )

Training

Dude 12 miles!? – The average Tough Mudder is around 12 miles, but you don’t need to be able to run 12 miles straight to finish it. Between the rocky terrain, obstacles and bottlenecks, it was next to impossible to run the entire thing. If you’re goal is to finish completing all the obstacles doing light jog the entire time, you should be able to pull this off if you can run 6 miles straight.

Strength Training is Important – The main focus of my training was cardio. I trained for the event like I was doing a half and scattered in strength training just to maintain what I had.

To be honest, I was surprised how strong you needed to be to complete some of the obstacles. The challenging ones that come to mind were scaling 10 ft high walls and carrying a log on your back for about a ¼ mile. To complete these without help or sandbagging the log you chose, you need to be pretty damn strong.

To prospective mudders: don’t just focus on “12 miles” and forego strength training. It’s definitely important.

The Race

For Most People, It’s Not A Race – The folks at Tough Mudder explicitly say “This is not a race.” It’s a challenge to be completed with friends for 99.9% of contestants. I’d say 90% of contestants didn’t run the entire time between obstacles due to injuries, terrain, cramps, waiting for teammates, endurance, etc. You can also skip any obstacle if you want. I didn’t see many people skipping the obstacles though. They’re the best part.

Rocky Road – The course included pretty rocky terrain. At times it seemed like we were running in a ravine. This made it nearly impossible to run at times unless you wanted to willingly sacrifice your ankles to the Mudder gods.

When I saw guys before the race with their ankles taped, I felt like saying handing them a gym class all star handband. In retrospect, these guys were smart and I definitely advise people with poor ankle history to get their tape on.

Bottlenecks – Apparently 5,000 people run the course each race day. As a result, some of the slower, more individual obstacles ended up being bottlenecks. You’d get there and have to wait 10 minutes before doing it.

If your goal is to run this competitively and fast, you should try to get a start time first thing in the morning. There should be less of a log jam at some of the obstacles.

Coal Miner Cam and Photos – Many of the coolest things we saw were off the grid. If you want to capture these, I saw a few guys rocking cameras on their heads. I’m not sure how comfortable these things are or if you’ll make fast friends wearing them, but seems like the best way to get some great photos on the fly.

Note there are designated “photo zones” scattered with camera men. You’re given a number prior to the race which is canvased on your forehead, arm, and chest. You can use this to find the photos of you online.

Cramps - 2/3 of my team got muscle cramps during the race. When you’re moving for 3+ hours it’s bound to happen. Prior to the race it’s probably a good idea to take some potassium or eat a few bananas. I’ll definitely be doing this next time.

Logistics

Starting Time – You’re assigned a starting time according to your preferences when you sign up.

You’re not bound to this time. Once you’re at the event you can really start at whichever 20 minute interval you want. I highlight this because we were a bit stressed out about our entire team getting there on time. We ended up running 40 minutes later than we were supposed to and it was no big deal.

For everyone’s sake its probably best to start at your recommended time, but don’t sweat it if you can’t.

Parking – Parking was a 25 minute hike from the actual course. We definitely didn’t allot time for this in our planning. If you’re going to stiff-arm the recommendation to arrive 2 hours earlier, you should see what the parking situation is. It will save you some unexpected headaches/stress when you get there.

PostGame

Things I wish I brought for afterwards:

• Towel – Following the race there’s an area you can hose yourself off. This was great, but we all forgot towels…nothing feels better than being dry and warm after this race.
• Sandals – Putting on socks and shoes is a bad move when you’re still wet and muddy.
• Gum – Your mouth is pretty nasty after the race

Overall it was an awesome experience I highly recommend to anyone. It was a ton of fun and reinvigorated my workouts for the months leading up to it. This will definitely not be my last one!

Rapportive

For those that aren’t familiar, Rapportive is a gmail plugin that populates social profile information attached to an email address in your inbox. It sharpens my BD blade in a variety of ways:

Context/Rapport Building – People are constantly eliciting relevant events or things they’re interested in through facebook and twitter. Rapportive helps me identify these signals which can be used to add a personal touch to an email.

For example, if someone was writing me an email right now, rapportive might inform them that Mashable just covered the newest release of the YP App and the extension of our partnership. This is news they might have otherwise missed.

They can take this and start an email with “Hey Scott – Congrats, I see you guys are now powering itemized search on the YP App. That’s awesome.” instead of “Hey Scott – Enter impersonal hope all is well.”

Finding Emails – Inserting popular email syntaxes until you’re returned social profiles is one way to determine someone’s email address. I outline this and other ways you can find anyone’s email address in full here.

Reverse Lookup – Ever get an email and have no idea who on earth that person is and whether they’re request is actually relevant? Rapportive helps me trace these people back to their social profiles providing context to move forward accordingly.

FollowUp.CC

As an email warrior, one of the most important things you can do is followup. Staying on top of you’re hitlist is a great place to start, but I like to take extra precautions by using FollowUp.cc.

It’s pretty simple. In the BCC field, you enter the following syntax “timeperiod@followup.cc”  and an actionable reminder will be pinged back to you in the given time period.

If I entered 4days@followup.cc, I’d receive this email in 4 days which acts as a trigger to me following up if neccesary.

I add these reminder notices to any email I deem important that requires a response. Not only does this keep me accountable to following up on a air-tight schedule, but it also makes the process much more efficient. Instead ofhaving to look through my hit list and identify who I need to follow up with, it automates the process. I still look over and update my hitlist in tandem – it has just become the 2nd line of defense which is very valuable as your funnel scales.

I also use FollowUp to send personal reminders. If I know I need to pick up my dry-cleaning on Thursday I’ll just send myself an email cc’ing Thursday@followup.cc with Laundry in the subject line. I live in my inbox so funneling reminders there at actionable time intervals has proven to be very effective.

Boomerang

Fact: There are bad times to email people. If I’m trying to get a hold of someone, shooting them an email at 6:30 on a Friday is probably a bad call.

Enter Boomerang for Gmail. Boomerang allows me to schedule emails to be sent in the future. With this I can optimize outbound emails around the time windows that I think are most effective. Por ejemplo, if Tuesday at 10am is when I believe the optimal response rate will be, I can write 20 emails on Sunday night and they will sent on Tuesday morning. This is super useful and allows me to be productive during hours that would otherwise be less than ideal.

Note Boomerang also has some similar reminder functionality to FollowUp. I think FollowUp is more lightweight though and my buddy Chris built it.

Google Alerts

Staying on Top of People Talking About My Company – Nuff said.

Staying on Top of Companies in My Pipeline – Good BDers build rapport. One way to do this is identifying touchpoints you can use to stimulate conversation and cultivate a deeper relationship. Events or news about a company is an excellent touchpoint to build rapport. I’ve contracted GoogleAlerts as the search party to help me identify these opportunities efficiently.

For companies that I want to get a deal done with I’ve set up google alerts for the company name. This helps me stay on top of what’s going on as well as how I may be able to help as their needs evolve.

To be honest, for every 25 pieces of irrelevant news, there may be one thing that’s important which is why you might want to limit this to big game hunting. But that one thing just might be the point of contact that revives a lead that’s gone silent or pushes a deal over the edge and it’s my job to seize these opportunities

TweetDeck

Again, effective BD people recognize the value of rapport.

I’m about to reveal some potentially shocking news….people on the other end of the conversation have interests just like you do. Identifying, understanding, and engaging with these interests is an excellent way to build rapport. Monitoring people on twitter is a great way to accomplish this. To manage this, I create twitter lists for the people that I’m speaking with and approaching. The goal is to to learn about these people and their needs. I use tweetdeck to monitor this list and engage in continual learning/actively seek out opportunities that I can help.

You’ll want to create a column of who is tweeting at your company as well. Captain obvious strikes again!

Job Change Notifier

Managing your professional network is a beast, but it’s really important. Maybe your contact just left a company you’ve been trying to do a deal with. Maybe someone you know just started at a company you’ve been talking to and can help push something through. JobChangeNotifier is one tool to stay abreast of this type of information. It’s pretty simple. Every few days it sends you an email if people in your network change jobs or their headlines on LinkedIn.

In addition to providing relevant color on your business contacts, this is also a really fun way to see the people that maniacally fret over their professional headlines and change them weekly. It’s hard not to smile when someone goes from Chief Ninja Officer to Chief Ninja and Product Samarai. How come Pirates never get any love?

Google Docs + Google Reader

I use a google spreadsheet to manage my pipeline and google reader to stay on top of relevant industry publications. Nothing too fancy here.

One less obvious practice is to add the corporate blogs of all potential competitors and companies in your pipeline. Great way to stay informed and keep a pulse on the parties you need to.

*I’m leaving out LinkedIn because I spend enough time with her as is and our relationship has been out in the open for awhile now.

These are some of the more sharper arrows in my BD quiver. I’d love to hear any other tools people use to be effective. Please feel free to share in the comments

Dinner at Gracefully – The market at my house has 30+ different sandwich options. I looked at the menu chock full of interesting combinations for 5 minutes and ended up ordering a boring italian hoagie.

Restaurant Recommendation App – This app recommended 10 places to eat dinner in East Village. After looking at each one, I ended up going to someplace I’ve been before that wasn’t even recommended by the app.

Why does this happen?

My mindset as a consumer is to look for the option that offers me the greatest utility/happiness. I hesitate to pull the trigger until I feel like I’ve thoroughly investigated my options and feel confident that one choice likely yields the optimal outcome.

When I’m faced with too many choices, the investigation process becomes exhausting. I get frustrated and opt for the path of least resistance. Almost always that choice resembles familiarity. I know what I’m getting with that sandwich or at that bar – the choice is de-risked, thus easier to make. It’s almost like there is a fatigue threshold that when crossed, the potential upside of something new takes a backseat to the pain it takes to decide.

How do you prevent this?

Simple. Limit choice or if you’re going to present a consumer a ton of options accompany them with gradients to make the decision process easier. The most obvious gradient is popularity. There’s a million choices on amazon, but picking something is always really easy because of the ratings and filters. Gradients aren’t limited to the online world. If you’re a deli highlight what the most popular dishes are or put little chili peppers next to the ones that are spicy. The bottom line – when there’s a litany of noise, I want a signal.

Regardless of whether you’re building an app or running a restaurant, understand the pitfalls that come with choice. Too many choices can leave a consumer paralyzed and put a blemish on the experience.

This week was about letting internal signals direct eating instead of external cues.

As an undersized college football player, I ate constantly. My 5’10 frame was not going to stop me from trying to look like Lattimer from The Program. I didn’t stop eating when I was full and didn’t wait until I was hungry to start. I’d end up eating 4-5 meals a day. In retrospect eating seemed almost more like part of a regimen than an act to satiate my hunger.

Despite the fact that I’ve hung the cleats up, I’ve noticed I still behave this way. Between the hours of 12-2 I’ll go eat lunch – not always because I’m  hungry but because you’re supposed to eat lunch then. Old habits die hard? I think my proclivity towards efficiency also compels this behavior. If I have a free 20 minutes between two calls during lunch hours I’ll “get lunch out of the way.” It’s almost like I pre-empt hunger. It’s easy to rationalize because when unaddressed, hunger is inevitable. Why not take care of it when you have some down time?

This week was about letting my body dictate consumption instead of the external cue provided by meal-time. Practically, this meant eating only when I was truly hungry and stopping consumption when my body told me I’d eaten enough. I was amazed by the degree that paying to my body changed my behavior. In general, I ate later, slower and less than usual.

I think these changes occurred due to the shift in how I framed meals. This week meals weren’t just a checkbox that I happen to enjoy – they were a response to an internal signal that was continuously calibrated throughout my day. When something is not viewed as a task, you give yourself permission to enjoy it vs. the need to execute it as fast as possible.

Other things I learned about myself

• My love for efficiency is why I’m not a foodie.
• I can easily last till 2 before I need lunch – I did not think that was possible.
• Anytime I put something on a list or bundle it as a to do, I’ll unconsciously attempt to execute it as fast possible.
• This one reason I eat really fast
• Sometimes I eat just to feel like I’m doing something productive because it’s on a list.

Practically eating like this moving forward will be impossible to pull off. However, it was cool for a week and it’s beneficial to have in the back of my mind moving forward.

Not buying ice cream I just saw in the deli = -1 energy
Writing this post instead of cruising facebook = -2 energy
Going to the gym instead of drinks = -3 energy | +5 energy tomorrow

Regardless of  the choice I make, so long as I’m struggling with temptation, I’m exerting energy.

As our energy diminishes, so does our willpower because it requires energy to exercise self-control. Think it’s coincidental that people eat sweets, skip the gym, or overindulge in alcohol at night vs. the morning? It’s partially because a day of decision making causes the tides to fall in our energy reservoir. And when we lack energy, we opt for the path of least resistance as to preserve the little we have left.

So how do we stay on track and avoid succumbing to temptations like eating ice cream, skipping the gym, or cleaning your room instead of doing something hard?

Two ways to approach conquering this:

1. Enter the battle-dome with more energy in order to promote self-control
2. Make each difficult decision more doable so that you can accomplish it with less self-control and when willpower is diminished

One practice that draws upon both approaches to increase self-control is creating a “No Thanks List”. I learned this from Peter Bregman’s book 18 minutes. His list outlines a set of scenarios where he’s determined that saying “no thanks” is the best response. His goal is to eliminate distraction and help him maintain his focus.

My “No Thanks List” consists of things which I have decided I will try to never do. Mine is more focused on cultivating willpower. The goal of the list is to create good habits and strengthen them by repetition.

Habits take an if-then form. If I encounter X, I will react by doing Y. Decisions become automatic eliminating the mentally taxing cost-benefit analysis. Thus, a habit requires far less energy than having to make a decision, especially when the optimal choice requires greater resistance.

Building habits around what were previously challenging decisions accomplishes two things:

1. It leaves you with more energy, thus more willpower following the interaction
2. It makes things that were tough more doable which means you can accomplish them when you have less willpower

The general theme for all these items is that abstaining from the action serves my long term best interest. Ideally you get to a point where you won’t even consider opting for the less beneficial decision – you just react. Getting there is not easy though. Its reminds me of when someone first told me drinking water is better than soda as a kid.  Whether I was out to eat or had my paws in the fridge, choosing water was so hard in the beginning…dude where’s the bubbles? But eventually the pain that came from that decision became an afterthought, and the decision to order water felt pretty automatic. Ordering water went from a challenge to just something I did.

Is it really necessary to make a list? Yes, it is, because it establishes rules. Even when the consequences lack enforcement, rules make it incrementally easier to stay the course versus than when things are ambiguously defined. And again, consistently staying the course makes it easier to…well, consistently stay the course : )

It’s easy to lump cultural traditions as a gimmick to make work seem more fun or interesting. But I think they’re so much more than that.

One aspect that separates one company from another are the people and the things that you do together. When you do fun, rewarding things as a company, it’s awesome. And when those things feel unique to your company, I think they’re all the more powerful. Just like a distinctive uniform, uniqueness emphasizes that you’re part of a team. No one gets to wear Yankees pinstripes on the diamond unless you’re a Yankee. And when you feel part of a team, it inspires the feeling that you’re a part of something bigger than yourself. This cultivates a far more authentic allegiance than a fat paycheck and pushes you to press on when faced with adversity. That’s why engendering a sense of  team is so important.

Unique Cultural Traditions -> Greater Sense of Team -> Serves Employees Both Individually and as a Team Well -> Serves the Business Well

I wanted to highlight a couple of unique cultural traditions I think are pretty cool:

SinglePlatform

We do a lot of cool things at SP, but there’s no doubt the staple is our Gong. Every time a team (Product, Sales, BD, etc) hits one of their monthly goals, they get to hit the gong. A new employee’s first sale or exceptional accomplishment also warrants hitting the gong.

Celebrating each other’s success is something we all really enjoy and has definitely brought us closer together as a team.

We’re also starting a guest speaker series. Each month, a guest speaker who is doing some cool things will come in and speak to the company…A few of us also do pushups.

Greatist

Fittingly, every friday the good folks over at Greatist do a fitness, health, and/or happiness activity together as a team. Examples of this have included ice skating, parkour, crossfit, tai chi, dyeing easter eggs, and even a hike with intermittent wine tasting. They call these  ”gractivities.”

This pretty cool version of a happy hour that aligns with their goal to live the life they champion. Pretty cool stuff.

Tough Mudder

When they’re not building kickass mud runs, Tough Mudder employees get to partake in the “Tough Mudder University.” Each month employees read a Harvard Business School case study then come together to as a company to have an intellectual discussion in the style of an HBS classroom.

You can read more about Tough Mudder University here.

Savored

One cool thing about being in the MLB is that your theme song plays when you step up to the plate. Turns out you don’t need to be able to hit the long ball to have a theme song.

As a member of the savored sales team, you get to pick a theme song and every time you get a sale, they play your song for the company to hear. They might have a gong too…

Signpost

Every Friday the Signpost team has an all hands on deck meeting. At the beginning of the meeting they hand out small pieces of paper for people to write notes or props to each other. They fold up the papers, put them in a hat, and at the end of each meeting, two people read the “Signpost Snaps” aloud. They can be serious or jokes.

Lawline

The entire Lawline company holds a “Huddle“ to start the day every morning. A different employee each morning is assigned to present something motivating or interesting for 5 minutes to their fellow employees.

I believe they also have a quick Q & A for the presenting employee in order to promote transparency within the company across departments. More about the lawline company culture can be found on their awesome company culture blog here.

• Motivate employees to excel
• Encourage personal and professional development
• Recruit employees

Creating a place where people love to work may be the most important thing you can do. And cultural traditions are one way to enhance this.

I’d love to hear other examples of unique company traditions or elements of culture. Please share in the comments if you have any.

Big thanks to Nicola, Derek, Andrew, and Sam for their help with this post.

Here’s how I approach asking for an email introduction:

Step 1: Preliminary Request for An Introduction

You’ve identified that someone in your network is connected to the person you’re trying to reach. Send them a brief preliminary intro request to gauge the strength of their relationship and willingness to connect.  An example script:

Hi X,

I was looking to get introduced to Johnny Dealmaker from Project X and saw you were connected to him. Not sure how well you’re connected to him, but if the relationship is strong, I’d really appreciate an intro to chat about ways to work with my Project Y. Please let me know if you feel comfortable doing this and I’ll forward over a proper request for introduction that you can forward to him.

Thanks!
Scott

Key elements of this email:

The Ask – ”I was looking to get introduced to Johnny Dealmaker from Project X and saw you were connected to him”

If you’re asking for an introduction, skip the dog and pony show and ask for it in the first 2 sentences. A clear understanding of how someone can help is always appreciated.

Consideration of the Connecting Parties Relationship – “If the relationship is strong; Please let me know if you feel comfortable doing this”

As the person being asked for an intro, I never like to make introductions when I don’t know if both parties will benefit.

There are people that I’ve met for 48 seconds at a networking event who connected with me on LinkedIn. When someone asks to be introduced to these people, I lack the context to asess how mutually beneficial an introduction will be. As a result, I don’t feel comfortable making introductions to them.

Alternatively, maybe I do know them well, but I just had an awkward interaction with them. The last thing I feel like doing is emailing them for an intro request.

The bottom line is I appreciate when someone acknowledges that not all connections are people I feel comfortable making an introduction to. Framing the request with this in mind makes the ask a whole lot more manageable and is just a courteous practice.

The Why – “I’d really appreciate an intro to chat about ways to work with Project Y”

The why gives me the ability to determine whether both parties will benefit. Everyone has demands on their time, so its important as a brokering party to make sure you’re adding value when connecting someone.

Make It Easy for the Connecting Party – “I’ll forward over a proper request for introduction that you can forward to him.”

The connecting party is doing you a favor by making an introduction. The least you can do is make it as easy as possible for them to do this.  Making them formulate in their own words why they’re connecting you guys requires effort. Sending something that they can forward along with appropriate context limits the work.

Step 2: Proper Request For An Introduction

After you’ve got confirmation that the connecting party feels comfortable making an introduction, it’s time for the proper request for an introduction. This email contains similar elements to the first one, but with some additional context because it will be forwarded to your target. An example script :

Hey X,

Was hoping that you might be able to introduce me to Johnny Dealmaker at Project X?

I wanted to connect with him because our email list targets a similar demographic with limited overlap. Seeing as our products are non-competitive, I wanted to touch base to see if he was up for brainstorming ways to leverage our existing user bases to grow both of our lists.

We did this with Company R in the past, and both parties received a 15% lift in new subscribers.

Any help is much appreciated.

-Scott

Key Elements:

Explicit Ask - This indicates to the target that someone approached them about connecting.

Compelling Context Why - Here you should expand upon why this person should spend time connecting with you. This serves to legitimize the ask from the connecting party and provides context for the target to assess whether connecting is worthwhile. Your goal is to put your best foot forward in a concise manner.

Strengthening Example - I think it’s always effective to mention a past success or current partner. It provides credibility. In an era of cyborg spam filters, this is very important even when an introduction brokers an interaction.

Appreciation - Again this person is doing you a favor.

At this point, the hope is that the target indicates they’re interested in connecting and you’re mutual connection proceeds to make the introduction.

I like this methodology because it respects the time and circumstances of all parties. Because you’ve given each party the option to opt in, obligatory feelings are limited (to the extent they can be). This makes for a better conversation with the target and relationship with the person you’re asking an introduction from.

*If you’ve pulled the ol shotgun intro on me or asked me for an introduction with little to no context, don’t feel bad! I simply thought I’d share what I find to be a more effective practice for everyone involved. Big ups to Kenny Herman for helpen me tighten up this practice when I started at SP.

The first week of this project I wrote about my experience getting rid of 5 things a day. In the spirit of shedding materialistic tendencies, a reader Brandon Rennels suggested I put a sticker on my wallet that forced me to think about the necessity of my purchases.

I never buy myself “things” like clothes or gadgets. Most of my discretionary income is spent on experiences like going out with friends or skillshare classes. I also make some what I call “convenience purchases” – things that I enjoy and make my life easier, but don’t necessarily need. Coffee brewed by someone else, bottled water, and taxis fall into this category.

My hope was that these stickers would inspire greater self-awareness and help me reduce my convenience purchases. I’m disappointed to admit that I didn’t really see much of a change in my behavior. I still bought that coffee I didn’t really need and took a cab or two home when I could have hoofed it back to my apartment.

What I realized was that in most cases this self-awareness mechanism was too late in the purchasing funnel to be effective. By the time I’m in the checkout line the cost-benefit analysis for a purchase has already passed. I’ve made up my mind that I need this.

A product that made me ponder the necessity of a purchase earlier in the decision making funnel might be more effective. It’d have to know my behavior or location to a degree that allowed it to pre-empt these decisions. It’s not that far-fetched considering location aware technologies such as Shopkick omit push notifications when you enter stores.

…Or I could just improve my willpower and forget all these band aid solutions. Working on it ; )

When multiple units of virtual currency are assigned to a single dollar it can inflate the amount of value we perceive. Getting 100 points for every dollar spent seems better than 10 points even if they possess the same purchasing power. This phenomenon is the crux of why virtual currency alters our spending behavior.

Here’s a few behavior changes I’ve noticed when I’m dealing with points instead of dollars:

Allocation

The inflated perception virtual currency inspires can change spending allocation. Specifically, when we have a greater number of units to spend, we’re likely to engage in a greater number of small transactions (vs. fewer more expensive ones). This is rooted in both practical and psychological grounds.

A specific example that comes to mind is the first time I used my buddy Adrian’s philanthropic platform GoodKarma. On GoodKarma, users can purchase 100 Karma Points for every $1 to donate to their favorite local charities.

The first time I took GoodKarma for a test drive I purchased 1000 Karma Points ($10). I donated 600 points to RestoreNYC and 400 points to StartSmallThinkBig. Outside this site, I’d never cut a check to a charity for $4.00 or split $10.00 amongst two.  I’d feel like Cheapo Felipo. But with a war chest of 1000 Karma points, I felt good about each contribution…so much so that I wanted to spread my points out.

In this instance, virtual currency changed my allocation preferences from 1 to 2 transactions. The greater volume of monetary units distracted me from the true value which facilitated the additional transactions. It also made me feel better about a micro transaction which is pretty sweet.

Less Attachment

I don’t play Facebook games but I’d venture a guess that part of the reason people are spending $20 on digital tractors has to do with the departure from dollars to points. Points are less tangible. I never subject myself to viewing the leather fold of my wallet pocket because I spent all my points last night. Less tangible => Less attachment => Blowing $$ faster on less meaningful purchases.

An alternative explanation for the decreased attachment is that points are later in the purchasing funnel. I spend $20 to get points to spend on something. Though the actual exchange of currency for the final good hasn’t occurred, people may already feel “bought in” after they’ve purchased points. The cost-benefit analysis of the purchase, which is where we endure feelings of attachment, may be long gone by this point.

The Need to Spend Them All

Regardless of whether points are refundable or transferable to cash, I can’t help but notice my desire to spend them all when I’m cashing them in. Yet when I have $100 and spend $70, I’m perfectly content saving $30 for a future purchase. I can save leftover points for when I actually need to buy something just like dollars. But for some reason, I always want to immediately spend them all. Many times this results in impulse buys. I’ll even buy something that needs supplemental dollar spending just to use the points…what’s a few extra bucks right? So stupid, yet so hard to resist! Make sense why corporate rewards programs work with virtual currency instead of dollars.

*This may revert back to decreased attachment, but hey, 5 bullet points looks better than 4.

Spaving

As consumers, users, and players, we’re incentivized to relinquish a resource  in order to earn points.

If you’ve ever hung out with management consultants odds are you’re familiar with the allure of credit card/travel points. Credit card providers tell consumers they use points to “reward” their customers. This is true. But they also use points to maximize the amount of value they extract from customers. Spend $1,000 for the next 3 months and get 50,000 points! These type of offers sound amazing. Sometimes they are. Other times our inflated perception of value distracts and convolutes our perception of return. We end up justifying extra and unnecessary spending by saving on future purchases. Spend to Save = Spave = A definite No No

Do you ever feel better about spending an extra $50 to to get $.05 back? Probably not. Five points however, definitely helps ease the pain.

Influencing Purchasing Decisions

In the same way that points are used to extract value from existing customers, they’re also used to attract new ones. At times  we don’t really understand the scale or value of points when making a purchasing decision, but we know we want them and whichever offering provides the most.

I’m guilty of this with credit cards. I’ll forgo a slightly lower APR for an additional 10,000 points without a comprehensive understanding of the points value and/or the scale which I’m comparing them on. The funny thing is usually the point scales aren’t the same. Maybe I’m the only one out there who feels this allure. As a consumer, I guess I like feeling like I got a deal and points are very effective at engendering that.

Prior to a transaction, we initiate a cost benefit analysis. Is giving up X amount of currency going to be worth Y return? It’s really interesting to me that our assessments can change so much by manipulating the unit of currency  holding the value constant. There’s no shortage of entrepreneurs and big companies that have realized this and are taking advantage of it. As consumers it’s important to be aware how this can affect our choices.

Anybody else have additional observations about how points affect our behaviors?  I’d love to hear them