There are several very good axioms in marketing, some of which you already know, some of which I am betting that you don’t.  And there are some axioms you know which are just flat wrong.  It is misknowledge. You have heard of misinformation; well, this is misknowledge.  Kind of like, at one time everyone believed that the earth was flat. It was not flat, of course, but everyone had some misknowledge.  Even today, there are people who believe that going out without a coat in the winter time will give you a cold.  Even though it has been proven over and over in medical study after medical study that all you get is chilly, people still believe that you can catch a cold be being cold.  It is just not the case.

        Always sell consequences over savings!  Customers will always choose to not lose something rather than to save something.  This is an important marketing principal and one that is very frequently misunderstood.

        Marketing the consequence of not using your product or service, will in the long run, bring in significantly more business than emphasizing the savings of using your products.  Here are a couple of real world examples of what I am talking about.  Both of these were the subjects of some intense marketing studies and proved this little known principle.

        A storm windows company launched two rather remarkable marketing campaigns, featuring the exact same products, but under different brand names.

The first campaign was the traditional:

   Save $2.00 a day on your energy bills by installing our double pane energy efficient windows in your home.  They had modest returns on their effort.

The second campaign, which ran almost simultaneously with the first one but under a different brand name, offered the following consequence type approach:

   Stop wasting $730.00 a year of your hard earned money!  Install our energy efficient windows today and keep your money in your pocket!  Sales with this approach nearly tripled what the traditional ‘Save’ campaign did.

        Remember I said a few moments ago, that customers will always choose to not lose something rather than to save something.  A big reason this is true is because customers are, for the most part, savvy enough to realize that in order to save money they have to spend money first.  Such as: "Save $3 when you buy today!"  Or "Save 10%!"  Yes, you can save money, but you have to spend money first, and that is an option that the customer has, whether to spend $25, in order to save $2.50.  But with consequence selling, you are simply pointing out that the customer is already spending the money, they will simply be spending less once they buy your product.

        Every benefit of every product can be shown with a dollar amount loss, or the consequence of going without the solutions that you offer.  It is always more effective to show the customer the consequence of going without, than trying to show the savings.