So yeah, thanks everybody for having me here with you this morning. As, as Anthony mentioned earlier, we're going to be looking at this through the lens of, life in veterinary clinics, but I'm hoping that there will be plenty in here, that will also be relevant to your world as well. So.

I'm a veterinary surgeon by training, I've spent a long time, working in industry, in pharmaceuticals, and latterly in my time in, in, in the, in the sort of animal health industry. I trained in behavioural science, and that's kind of the, I guess it's kind of a squiggly, a squiggly route to where I am today. But it was that, it was that training in behavioural science that felt like a bit of a lifting of lid for me, you know, like a, like a, a sort of sudden, light bulb moment, really, where I felt That actually understanding a lot more about how the human brain works, how we make decisions, could actually be a complete game changer for veterinary businesses in, in terms of being able to guide people towards better decisions that create better outcomes for patients.

So that's really why I set up Inside Minds, and that's, and that's the work that I've been doing for the last 18 months or so. And I'm just gonna start by getting you to, to, try and say out loud. You don't have to do it sort of audibly on, on camera now, but just sort of quietly in the background, say out loud the colour of these words.

And I'll do it, I'll do it, kind of with you. It's quite straightforward for this list. I'm just gonna say it as it is.

So, green, yellow, red, black, red, green. So quite straightforward. And the reason that my brain finds that easy is because the colour of the word and what the word says are completely matched.

So I'm not really having to use any of my kind of conscious mind. I'm not really having to crunch any of the data. My brain can just sort of glance at it and offer up the answer very instinctively without really having to think about it.

If I change that list to this one. Then things start to get a bit trickier. So I'm gonna do the same again.

Green, yellow, red, black, red, green. So, you can sort of see that my cogs are having to wear. I'm doing it more slowly.

It's not as instinctive. My brain's not moving as fast. And that's simply because the colour of the word.

And what the word says no longer match, so my brain can't kind of offer up an instinctive reaction. I'm having to actually look at the word and think, oh crikey, what colour is it? My brain's having to crunch the data.

And that's a really important difference that that sort of shift between subconscious mind where it's all very instinctive and very fast and very easy. Unconscious mind, where it's all very slow and effortful and challenging. And that's the thing that we will look at today is how can we, communicate price and how can we guide people's decisions in a way that makes it feel really easy for them, that keeps them in that kind of subconscious mind, the, the sort of easy, fast, part of their mind.

And everything we'll talk about this morning will come from the world of behavioural science. So, just in case some of you aren't familiar with what behavioural science is, essentially, it's the study of how our thoughts and our feelings, our beliefs and perceptions affect our behaviour. So it's really kind of lifting the lid on what drives people's behaviour, what really drives their behaviour, not necessarily what we think drives our behaviour.

The two are often very different things. So what we'll look at today is to look at some of those key drivers of clients' minds, of people's minds, of any person's minds. And we'll look at how we can apply that knowledge to making prices feel more comfortable to people.

And also to guiding them to being a bit more persuasive in the way that we communicate with them. So let's start by looking at how the human brain thinks, and we've already touched on this slightly already, with those colours that we read out loud. But essentially we've got two modes that our brains can shift into, and this is of course an oversimplification, but I find this a really useful foundation to sort of build all the behavioural science knowledge from.

But basically, we can either be living in subconscious mind, which is super fast, you know, really automatic, instinctive. It, you know, when you're doing something in flow without thinking about it, then you're pretty much, operating in your subconscious. So things like tying shoelaces, you know, if you're an adult who's been tying shoelaces for your whole life, you don't have to think about.

How you're folding the laces, or where your fingers are, are moving, you just kind of do it and it's done. The other classic example would be the school run that I did this morning. You know, unless something happens that's unusual to snap me out of my subconscious mind, then I'm, I'm doing that school run basically on autopilot, not rethinking about it at all.

On the flip side, we've got a conscious mind, which, as you saw when you saw me trying to read those, the colours of those words, is much slower. It's, it requires a lot more deliberate effort. It's hard.

And so, we've evolved to spend as little time as possible using our conscious minds because it's effortful and it's hard. And, you know, we've evolved to try and minimise the amount of energy we spend on doing things. So typically, we will massively overestimate the amount of time we spend consciously thinking about stuff.

Most people will say, you know, I made that decision because, and therefore, they'll think it's a conscious decision that they've made. But the reality is that somewhere between 90 and 97% of all of our behaviour, all of our decisions is driven by our subconscious. So, basically, the decision is a feeling, an instinctive feeling.

And then we use our conscious mind to post rationalise it afterwards. So I did that because, but the because that I've come up with, it may well not be the real driver of that behaviour. So, the real driver of that behaviour is in my subconscious.

It's just created an instinctive feeling that's made me think, right, that's the right thing to do. So it's our job really, when we're trying to guide clients to make better decisions for patients, or if we're wanting to help them feel more comfortable with the prices that we need to charge, then it's our job to try and make it feel instinctively right to them. And the more we can do that, the more we can help the subconscious sort of instinctively feel like, yes, this is the right choice, then the more likely we are for them to feel like the decision is the right one for them.

So the, the big question is, you know, how do we do that? What are the things that drive our subconscious mind? So, essentially, these 4 things are the 4 things that we need to tap into if we want to keep people in their subconscious.

So emotions, huge, powerfully, a hugely powerful driver of our decisions, you know, how we're feeling that day, how we're feeling about the person stood in front of us, how we're feeling about this issue, how we're feeling in our health in general, you know, all of those emotions will. The, very powerful drivers of decisions that we make. Heuristics, which we'll talk a little bit more about this morning, heuristics are basically mental shortcuts that we've evolved to have to economise on our thinking.

So, like, mental if then rules, and, again, very powerful drivers of, of our decisions. Cognitive biases, you no doubt will have come across, you know, they're basically like the lenses that we see the world through. So, an example would be confirmation bias, you know, where we will actively seek out information that conforms with our beliefs, but we will be very quick to, to to, disregard information that contradicts our beliefs.

So biases are lenses that sort of affect how we perceive the world and what information we take in. And then of course habits, . They don't really need any introduction.

We've all experienced, trying to ditch bad habits or create new good ones, and it's very hard to do. But if we can do it successfully, then they're very powerful subconscious drivers of our behaviour, because we're just in it. We, we, we do the habitual thing without having to think about it.

So with that knowledge, you know, that, that's, that's a big area, and there's a lot in there to unpack. So, you know, what can we learn from this in that we could, in a very practical way, apply tomorrow or today when we go back into our day jobs. And that's what I want to look at this morning is to look at 3 ways to make prices feel more comfortable, and 3 ways to be more, more influential in the way that we, we speak with people.

So let's have a look at how we perceive price first off. Because it's very subjective, right? We've all experienced probably a time when, we've been prepared to pay for something and felt comfortable with it, but maybe less prepared to pay for something else.

And it may not feel completely rational. There's one example actually from my life when I had to buy a car at the beginning of last year. And we very excitedly went to go and pick up the car.

I had, in my wisdom, decided to spend 750 pounds changing the colour of the car, because the only option that was sort of free was flat white, and I decided I didn't want a flat white car. So I paid for a nice metallic colour on the car. I was quite happy to do that, and I was all very excited about picking the car up.

But when we drove off the forecourt, I realised that the car was pretty much empty and that I wasn't gonna get home without stopping at the garage to fill up. But when I thought about where I could fill up, I knew I had two choices on the way home from, from this forecourt. One was actually on our route, but priced at a point which I thought was a bit over and above.

And the other was slightly off the route would involve a bit of a detour, but a price that I knew would feel more comfortable to me. And I decided in that moment to take the detour and to fill up at the, at the garage where it was a bit cheaper. So, in that one day, and, well, in the, the space of an hour really, I'd spent 750 pounds changing the colour of my car, something that, you know, doesn't change its performance or, you know, the, the experience of driving it in any way.

And yet, I'd gone out of my way to save a few pence per litre on some petrol. So it just goes to show that the way that we perceive price is very subjective. It's not entirely rational.

Any economist would have told you I would have been better off keeping the 750 pounds in my pocket and maybe paying slightly over the odds for my, for my petrol on the way home. But it's not rational, you know, we make these decisions emotionally. The other thing it's really important to understand is that, when we pay for something, there is a physiological pain response.

So functional MRI studies have shown that the insular cortex in the brain will fire up when we think about pain or when we actually pay for something. And one of the roles of the insular cortex is pain perception. So, when we think about paying, there is an actual physiological pain response.

And the worse the perception of that price, or the, the, the sort of, the less comfortable we are with that price, the bigger the pain response will be. So there's a lot that we can do through the way that we communicate price to make that feel more comfortable and to dampen down that insular cortex activation, to reduce the physiological pain response associated with the same price, so without actually changing the number at all. So ways that we can reduce the pain of paying, cover a whole myriad of different, different things.

We can use psychological pricing. So I don't mean actually kind of reducing the price necessarily, but changing the numbers so that they feel different. We can change how people pay.

So, you know, paying on direct debit would be very much less painful than paying with cash, for example. We can look at when they pay. When in the experience, the whole sort of consumption experience that they pay, and we can also look at, when we present the price to them, you know, at what point in the process do we explain to them what the price is.

And I guess, you know, the, the, the point there is about whether we communicate the value or the price first. And we can then look at how we present the price, how do we communicate it. So there's a, you could spend a whole day workshopping this topic alone, but I've picked out three tips which I think are really practical and easily applicable in practise.

So the first tip would be to use words and actions which show that the belief in the price. And this would be the same whether or not we're talking, you know, in-person communication, or whether we're talking about communicating it in the written form, you know, on a website or in marketing materials. It's really important that we, that we make sure that we're communicating with confidence.

And the reason for that is because of the principle of priming, so. Our brain will kind of activate different pathways depending on what we've been primed to think and feel. And it can have really profound different really profound impact on how clients perceive numbers and prices.

So this was a study that was done through showing people a video of a car accident. And there were 2 groups of people, both of which saw exactly the same video, exactly the same car accident. No difference in that at all.

But the difference was in the question that they, they were asked. So one group was asked, how fast do you think the cars were going when they contacted each other? And the other group were asked, how fast do you think the cars were going when they smashed into each other?

And just that difference in language, literally just the shift of one or two words, had a really profound difference, impact on the speed at which people thought those cars were going. So when they said what speed were they going, were their cars going when they contacted each other, people said, you know, around about 30 miles an hour. When we asked them what speed were they going when they smashed into each other, then there was a dramatic increase in the perceived speed of those cars.

So the language that we use will prime people to open up particular pathways in the brain and to perceive things really differently. Another example, this was a study done with an online store. And People were, asked to they sort of access two different forms of the, of the online shop, and people were asked to either pay a $5 shipping fee or a small $5 shipping fee.

Now, I don't know about you, but $5 doesn't feel like a small shipping fee to me at all. But just the addition of that one word onto that, online sales site increased sales really dramatically. You can see there's a 20% uplift in sales just by describing it as a small fee.

And the reason for that is that that the word small kind of primed people to feel that the price was going to be small. So if we translate this across into the veterinary context, of course, it would be inauthentic for us to sit there and say, you know, this is just a small 500 pound veterinary bill, because that's never going to feel small to somebody. And we also need to be careful using language like small on the basis that, what's small to one person may not feel small to another.

So there needs to be some care taken here. But what we can take from this is that the words we use have a really powerful impact on the people that are receiving them and can actually change the way in which they perceive the same number. So.

When we're, you know, if we're in the consult room and we're communicating price to a client, it's really important that we check ourselves and, you know, we check, am I, am I feeling apologetic about this price? Do I personally feel like I'm delivering good value with this price? And if there's any question about that, then you know, there needs to be a kind of check to, acknowledge that feeling and to and to appreciate that what that person is feeling, what I'm feeling, may not be what the other person across the table would perceive.

And so we need to make sure that when we're communicating price, we do it with confidence that our body language says, you know, I, I I believe in this, that this is good value, and that the words we use don't negate that, you know, that we are delivering the price with confidence. And the more that we're able to do that, the more we'll be priming people to believe that, that the price is, is, acceptable and it's comfortable. The addition of small words that might prime people to think in the other direction is gonna have a really damaging impact on how the client perceives that price.

So it's really important to think about the language you use and the body language that we that we use as well. The second tip is to think about the order in which we deliver prices. And that's because of a principle called anchoring.

And anchoring shows us that it's actually better to deliver higher priced options first so that clients will feel more comfortable with options that come afterwards. So anchoring is basically a human tendency to rely really heavily on the first piece of information we're given when we make decisions subsequently. Because our brains are really just comparison machines.

We tend not to see numbers, in particular, as kind of objective things. We tend to sort of see things in comparison to, to other things. So when we're given a pieces of information, we're given a number, we're given a price, anything that we're given after that, we will subconsciously compare to that first thing that we've been given.

And this was shown in a study, well, it's been shown in lots of studies, but my favourite study that this has been shown in is, a study of students in America who were asked to write down the last two digits from their, Social Security number. And then they were asked to put a dollar sign in front of it. And they were shown a list of items, including things like this that you see on screen.

And they were asked, Would you pay what you've written down, that number from your Social Security number? Would you pay that for these items? And what would the highest bid be that you would make if we were to go to auction?

And they took it to a real closed bid bids auction, so people had to, you know, genuinely part with the money that they said they were gonna pay. So it was made to feel as real as it possibly could be. And the students were reminded before they wrote down their bids that, you know, the number you've written down is from your Social Security number, it's completely random, it's not anything linked to the, the sort of the value of these items.

So they wrote down their bids, they handed them in, and as they were handing them in, they were asked, do you think that the number you wrote down had any impact on the amount that you bid for these items? And without exception, they all said absolutely no way, that was a completely random number, it had no impact on my bids at all. And yet, what we see when we look at the actual bids that they made, and you can see on this graph that the, the range of their Social Security number that they wrote down is along the bottom.

And as that increases, the bids that they were prepared to make for those items, exactly the same items, grew substantially. And there's a really strong statistical difference here between the sort of bottom group and the top group in terms of the bids that they, that they were willing to make. And yet those students all thought that.

That this had zero impact on their behaviour. And this is something that I see in workshops all the time when I get people to experience this practically. So they will all tell me that, that anchoring doesn't affect them.

We all think it doesn't affect our thinking. And yet, I can show to them again and again and again that, yes, it absolutely does. We're just not aware of it.

And so, this needs to be used carefully. It needs to be used in an ethical and an authentic way. But for one example of a way in which I've seen it used, very authentically and very effectively is at the point where an estimates being built for a client.

And as it's being typed up and we start to see, you know, perhaps it's gonna land around about 350 pounds. And as that typing's happening, then, then the vet or the nurse, whoever's creating the estimates, turned to the client and said, OK, it's gonna come in at less than 500 pounds. I'm just finalising the, the actual number for you now.

Here it is, it's 350. And by giving them the anchor of 500 pounds, they've made that 350 pounds feel so much more comfortable to the client than it would have done if 350 had been the first number that the client had heard. And of course, it doesn't change the affordability for the client.

It doesn't change the actual number that they're going to have to pay. But what it does is make it feel much nicer to them. It makes it feel much more comfortable, and they're much less likely to have that really big insular cortex activation that makes them feel bad about the price that they need to pay.

So that's anchoring, so wherever possible, if there are, you know, other numbers that can be communicated first which are higher than the price that the client needs to pay, then it's worth doing that just to help it feel more comfortable to them. The third pricing tip is one which quite a lot of practises are already doing in relation to certain products, but there's a, there's an opportunity to do it more widely. And that's to break costs down.

So it's really common, isn't it, for us to sell like chronic medications or pet food or something that has a benefit that's spread over a long period of time. But the sticker shock of making that initial purchase can feel really painful. And so by breaking the cost down to a cost per month or a cost per week, or a cost per day, we help the subconscious brain put it into context and help it feel more comfortable.

And, you know, you could say, at a, on a completely rational level, you could say, Well, can't the client do that themselves anyway? But the point is that doing that themselves involves conscious work. It involves them engaging that conscious brain, which we've already said is really effortful and it's really hard, and we avoid doing it at all costs.

So clients generally won't do it for themselves. But if we do it for them, we help give the subconscious a really strong signal that this is OK, it's not as painful as you think. And this has been shown in a number of different studies, this, this concept of small chunking, as it's called, has been shown to be a really effective way to reduce the pain of price, dampen down that insular cortex activity.

One other way that has been shown in studies to, be a really useful way to reduce the pain of price is also to compare the cost per day or the cost per week to a, to a small expense. So the example that's often used is, is something like a cup of coffee. But I've put this in brackets on the slide, because although it has been shown to be very effective, I think in current times, there's some caution required here.

In that for many clients, and for many of us, you know, what previously we might have thought of as a minor daily expense or a minor weekly expense may well have been something that has now been cut out of the, of the kind of family budget to try and save a few pennies. And so, by telling somebody it's, you know, it's less than a cup of coffee a week or a cup of coffee a day. We might actually have the opposite effect of what we're intending to, because the reaction may be, well, I, I don't spend any money on a coffee anymore, I can't afford that.

So we want to avoid that. So I would say that that's still a tactic to, to use, but maybe to use it with people you know really well. So if you're wanting to influence your partner or your family, and you know that they buy a newspaper every day, or they buy a cup of coffee every week, comparing it to that minor expense that you know is comfortable to them is a really useful way of making the price feel more comfortable to them.

But I would keep that to people who you know where you absolutely know that they feel comfortable making that minor expense. But there's definitely an opportunity in veterinary clinics to look at anything that has a long-term benefit. So, you know, chronic medication that's maybe by 3 months' worth and it's given slowly over that 3 month period.

Pet food where a bag might last a long period of time. There are all sorts of examples in the veterinary space where the client receives the value, the benefit across many days, weeks, months, and then small chunking the price down to help them understand that and put it in context for their subconscious will be a really helpful way of making it feel better to them. So those are 3 tips on communicating price.

And I'm gonna move on now to look at how we can influence people and use the knowledge of how the brain works to be more influential in our communications. And obviously, this goes hand in hand with that communication around price, because often we're trying to guide people towards a decision that's in the best interest of the patient. Around about the same time that we're having to have that conversation about price, so the two, the two are linked.

And when it comes to influence, there are a number of really useful heuristics that are predictable across people, across all of us, that we can tap into to help influence people and guide their decisions. So these are mental shortcuts. They're kind of, If then rules that our brain uses to economise on energy, basically, because, you know, we live in this crazy world.

If we, if we pause to take in every single piece of incoming data, we'd be paralysed. We wouldn't make any decisions, we wouldn't do anything. So our brains have evolved to use these mental shortcuts to, take in a single piece of information and then shortcut through to a conclusion, to a decision.

And it doesn't mean that they, they're incorrect or that they're wrong. It just means that we're economising on thinking we're not making the decision based on all of the available information. So there are 3 examples that I'm gonna pull out for you, that can help us tap into these mental shortcuts that we have.

And the first one is to give genuine compliments to people. And I, I, I major on the word genuine because it's really important that they feel authentic and that they are genuine, because people can see through a lack of, a lack of kind of authentic belief in compliments very quickly. But it's also a very nice way to go around the world.

You know, we, we tend to, well, I guess in, in the UK, it's not uncommon, is it, for us to think things, think nice things about people in our heads, but not to vocalise them. So going about the world and saying the nice things that we're thinking, can actually make someone's day. It can also help put some currency in that influence bank for when we need to guide their decision towards something that's, that's in their best interest.

And that's because of this heuristic, which is I like you, so you must be right. It's kind of a shortcut that we all have. We're much more inclined to want to agree with, to believe, to say yes to people who we like.

Of course, that's irrational just because I like you, it doesn't mean that you know what you're talking about, it doesn't mean that you're an expert, but I'm much more inclined to agree with you, believe you, say yes to you if I like you. And we tend to like people who are similar to us, who are familiar to us, who we deem to be attractive, and who like us. And giving compliments is one way of basically communicating, I like you.

And so, if we give people compliments, we're saying, I like you, I like your clothes. I like the the behaviour I just saw you do there. I like the performance that you did just now.

We're essentially saying to people I like you and therefore they're much more likely to like us in return. So that simple small thing of going about the world, vocalising the, the kind of complimentary things that we're thinking. In a genuine and authentic way, can really dial up the likelihood that people are likely to agree with us, believe us, see us as credible, all the good things that we want to be the case.

The second tip when we're trying to guide people towards a decision is to think beyond the the sort of rational reasons why it would be good for them is to think about what would other people choose in this scenario. And if we know that the choice that we're trying to guide someone towards is actually the choice that's likely to be the most popular with other people, that we know that other people have chosen it, or that when they choose it, we know that they've been really happy with it, it's really important that we share that with them, because that is much more likely to push them over the line and decide that it's a good idea, instinctively than explaining the kind of the rational reasons why it's a good idea. And that's because of this heuristic called social proof, which is the principle that if everyone else thinks this, then they must be right.

You know, it's that kind of sense of all of those people can't be wrong. And I've got on screen there one example of, of social proof which has driven behaviour in a really powerful way, and that's the green strip on number plates in the UK for electric cars. And what we see if we look at any of the graphs of electric car usage, massively shoots up the moment that green strip was introduced.

And the reason for it is really simple. It's just that we started to notice electric cars on the road more. We started to notice the green strip.

We started to see them and realise that there are more electric cars than we thought around us on the road. And it engendered this sense of social proof, you know, that all of these people. Must be right.

They can't all be wrong, because, you know, the, there were sort of early adopters taking on electric cars, and then there's a whole tranche of people who then felt nervous about it, you know, range anxiety, infrastructure worries. And actually, actually seeing more and more electric cars on the road created this sense of, well, if, if all of these people are driving around successfully in electric cars, then my worries can't be that, that real. You know, I must be worrying about nothing because they can't all be having those problems.

And so, social proof is a very powerful way to, to drive behaviour. And we all sort of experience it at different points in our life. You know, if you go on holiday to a town where, you don't know any of the restaurants, for example, and you've got the choice between one that's full and one that's empty, most of us, not all of us, but most of us will be drawn towards the restaurant that's full on this principle that if everyone else is in there, it must be a good restaurant.

So thinking about not just the rational arguments as to why something's a good idea, but what would other people choose in this scenario? How many other people have walked this path, and communicating that will help lower the sense of risk. It helps to sort of communicate that this is a path well travelled.

It's a safe route for people to go, and it's likely to sort of unlock that instinctive feeling of, this is a good decision. This is the right thing to do. And then the final trick, tip here on, on influencing is to make sure that we communicate if there is a sense of urgency, or if people stand to lose something by not making this choice, then making sure we tell them is a really good idea.

And that's because of this heuristic of scarcity. Which is that when something becomes limited, then I want it more, and we saw it all the way through the lockdown period with people panic buying pasta and toilet roll and all sorts of strange things. And it was this sense of scarcity that drove that behaviour, this sense of, you know, if I walk down the supermarket aisle and I see a packet of toilet roll, even if I don't need any at home currently, it takes a very strong will to overcome this heuristic of, you know, what if I don't see it next time I, and I really need it?

What if this is my last opportunity to get this? And, and there's this very strong desire to want to buy it now. So where there's a kind of limited opportunity, or where we stand to lose something, it's a very powerful motivator.

And again, this is something that needs to be used genuinely and authentically and ethically. It's not about scaremongering people into decisions that they're gonna to later regret, but where there is a genuine sense of losing something, or, or, missing an opportunity. Then it's really important that we do communicate that because again, it will help drive the decision making.

And this has been shown in a number of different ways. And one way that it can be used in practise is to think about gain framing versus loss framing. So, what I mean by that is communicating what someone stands to gain as or communicating what someone stands to lose.

And the two will have very different effects. And in this study, two groups were were offered what is basically at an economic level, exactly the same thing. So either a 2 pounds discount for paying in cash.

So that's your kind of your gain framing, you gain a 2 pounds discount if you pay with cash or you get a 2 pounds charge for paying with card. That's your loss framing, you know, that's what you stand to lose. It's exactly the same scenario, you're 2 pounds better off if you pay with cash.

But what we see again and again is that by framing it around what they stand to lose, the 2 pounds charge, we drive behaviour in a much more powerful way. We're much more likely to get people to pay with cash if we charge them for paying with card. And the same is true if you think about cafes where they've tried to introduce reusable cups by charging people for not bringing in a reusable cup, as opposed to giving them a discount for bringing one in.

Much more likely to to drive that behaviour. So in clinical practise, it's worth thinking about not just what are the things that we stand to gain by making this decision, but do we stand to lose anything? And if we do, then it's worth communicating that.

So, I'm gonna quickly recap, just what we've covered this morning, because there's a lot that we've been through. So I just want to highlight the, the key points again before we close. So, the first one is around what drives the subconscious.

So, those 4 things, emotions, heuristics, those mental shortcuts, biases, and habits. And if we can tap into those, then we're able to guide people's instinctive decisions. If you remember, We make up to 97% of our decisions in our subconscious mind without any conscious thought at all, and then we post rationalise our decision using conscious thought.

So by tapping into these four things, then we can drive behaviour in a much more powerful way. And 3 ways in which we can do that to make prices feel less painful. First one would be to show your belief in the price.

So think about how our words and our actions, our body language communicate, a priming effect. So thinking about what mental pathways we're unlocking in the other person through the way in which we communicate it, and making sure that we're communicating confidently to, to avoid priming people in the wrong direction. Tip number 2 would be to communicate higher priced options first, so remembering that anchoring principle that we will compare all the numbers that are communicated to us back to the first one that we hear.

And so trying to make sure that that's higher than the price that will actually need to be paid will help to make that feel more comfortable. Tip number 3 is about breaking costs down, so small chunking them so that we help the subconscious get to the point of putting the price into context without having to dip into that hard conscious thought to do it. And then if we look at how we influence people, the first one would be to say out loud the compliments that we think inside our heads in a genuine way, so that we helped people to feel more inclined to like us, and therefore more inclined to want to agree with us.

To let them know what others choose, so to remember that principle of social proof to guide them towards what most people would decide in that situation. And then tip number 3, if there's a sense of urgency, if there's gonna be a lost opportunity if we don't do it, or if there's just something that we stand to lose, which is likely to be important, then if that's real, to point that out is likely to drive behaviour in a much more powerful way. So that's it from me.

Thank you very much.