Keeping the cat alive and happy
We’ve all heard that curiosity killed the cat. Most of us have also heard that satisfaction brought it back. And that’s what you want for your customers – satisfaction. And you can achieve this through the use of open loops in your sales material.
I have had the good fortune to be a trainer in a past life and the even better fortune to have attended a training for trainers program run by Dr. Richard Allen, educator and master trainer with a PhD in Educational Psychology. Rich explained the importance of open loops. An open loop is a hook that captures your reader’s attention. Quite simply, the human mind seeks completion. Writers of serials understand this so they create cliff hangers. The episode ends on a breathless note, a dramatic event, and you wait impatiently for the next episode to find out what happened. That’s an open loop. The mind returns to it over and over seeking closure. As I see it, open loops can work in two great ways for getting and keeping your customers’ attention and helping them make the decision to purchase.
Open loop one is the attention grabber working on emotions like curiosity, fear, wonder, and insecurity. Open the loop by using a great headline, like a recent one I read that simply said “hamburger as weapon”. The mind leaps into question mode…what? how? huh??? Gotta know what happened! What Dr. Allen made clear is that if you open a loop, you can keep your audience focussed by dangling the loop in front of them but eventually, if you want to be credible, you must close the loop, give them satisfaction. This makes you trustworthy, someone who delivers what they say they will. Give completion and then invite your readers to go further with a call to action. This is the second type of open loop and helps move your prospective customers to satisfied purchasers. Pose such a great open ended question that the only way they can create a sense of completion is by taking action. Again, you start by opening a loop…only instead of the response being what the? huh? how? This sort of question gets the response of....yeah, why am I not happy? Hmmm why can’t I have what I want? And there you are with the “Of course you can and here’s how!” answer. Boom, you have action. These questions are non judgemental and open ended – how? what? when? why? These questions give the power back to your readers, it puts the solution to what is keeping them from being fulfilled right there in their hands. They can close the loop themselves! This is different from the burger as weapon because that loop must be closed by the writer. Leave these open and your prospect will lose faith in you. And don’t keep them dangling too long or they may give up. And if they do they’ll hate you for it. They’ll view you as a broken promise and they will mistrust you, no way will they want to buy from someone who doesn’t deliver. Remember the need for credibility? Leaving a loop open will blow your credibility for sure!
PS As to the hamburger as weapon, apparently someone did assault a restaurant worker with a hamburger in New Hampshire. The police found the mayonnaise smeared worker and the hamburger but the assailant had fled before the police arrived and as far as I know is still at large.