The "Just Noticeable Difference"

I learned a lot of stuff in college, and there’s at least 3-4 things that I can still recall. One lesson from a psych 101 class I took has stuck with me, something called “Weber’s Law.”

Weber’s Law, in short, addresses how humans perceive a “just noticeable difference” between one stimuli and another.

An easy example of this: Suppose you are outside and it’s 75 degrees. You are unlikely to notice a change of 1 degree, but if the weather warms up to 85 or down to 65, you’re going to perceive that. In this situation, we could say that 10 degrees is the “just noticeable difference.”



This gets used in commerce all the time. The example I was taught in college is “the $200 belt.” If you walk into a store to buy a new leather belt and see one for $200, you’d probably think that was pretty expensive. However, if you have just spent $1,000 on a new suit, bought a new pair of shoes and a couple dress shirts, your brain doesn’t see a $200 belt as so outlandish. You’ve already spent a bunch of money on clothes, and it somehow seems logical to pay more for a belt than you normally would. 



This applies to your business both in terms of sales and operations.



We all have some additional service that our clients could be buying from us. One key to capturing additional sales is to figure out what extra work is at a revenue level below the client’s just noticeable difference for their current spending.
  • If you have sold a $50,000 patio project, suggestively selling a $30,000 entryway project is probably not going to fly, but a lighting package might seem like a very reasonable add-on.
 
  • If you have a year-long maintenance program scheduled, adding some annual color can sound like a good way to enhance the investment they are already making.
 
  • For the lawn care operators, add-ons like aeration, perimeter pest, or mosquito control all fit into homeowners thinking “Well, we are already paying for the lawn, we might as well get the mosquitoes dealt with, too.”
It’s easy to see how Weber’s Law applies to sales, but it’s an operational concept, too. While it’s good to sell an extra visit to a property, it’s even better to sell services that can be added on to an existing visit. What additional-revenue services can your maintenance crews or lawn care technicians perform without making an extra trip? Ideally, we can sell additional services that don’t create a just noticeable difference in terms of our operational time budget. 



In both sales or operations, understanding this psychological principle can help you increase revenue per client and revenue per property visit.

 

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