Salience Bias

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There’s a Protection Plan Top Performer who asks customers “Do your items at home work as well as the day you bought them? No? You don’t have to put up with that anymore with our Protection Plan.” It’s a very successful approach for her, but isn’t it strange that it took her pointing out the loss of performance for her customers to notice it?

Behavioral Scientists call this salience bias: we pay much more attention to what’s noticeable—like when our products break—but we ignore less prominent but more relevant ones, like degradation of performance that happens over the long term. Think of it like a basketful of old red apples that includes one bright yellow lemon. We can’t help but stare at that lemon, even though we may miss the fact that the old apples are rotten inside. While it’s important for our customers to know that we cover the big product failures—that bright and shiny coverage that grabs everyone’s attention—they’ll likely miss the additional features and benefits of our Protection Plan that can improve their enjoyment of their products. Helping them to see the full picture will not only improve how much they’ll enjoy their new purchase, it will also help you to…Make It Happen!

Quick read: Humans tend to only focus on things that stand out, a behavior called ‘salience bias.’ It can help customers to know the full value of your Protection Plan when you share other, less known features and benefits of your Plan.