What Sales Can Learn From Las Vegas

It’s tempting to believe that Sales can’t change how receptive customers will initially be to your company’s offerings. Customers are more receptive to ideas from a brand they like, after all, and brand is in Marketing’s purview. While this is true, recent experiences in casinos suggests that customers are more open to new ideas when they are in a particular emotional state—a state that Sales can help create.  If you want potential customers to break their habits and buy from you, you need to make them feel comfortable.

Steve Wynn has made billions by making customers feel comfortable, at ease, at home.  The designer of luxury casinos like the Wynn Las Vegas and the Bellagio, Wynn bucked the standard casino ethos that places customers in dimly lit mazes of slot machines and blackjack tables.  Instead, he filled his casino with skylights and vaulted ceilings, keeping his customers relaxed, unstressed, and abnormally profitable.

Generally speaking, when people are comfortable, they are more willing to entertain new, risky propositions.  In a casino, unstressed people are willing to think about how they could win that big jackpot—and they’ll spend a large amount of money trying to win those jackpots.  In a sales interaction, unstressed people will consider what they might gain from switching to a new supplier—and they’ll be more likely to convert as a result.

If you’re in the business of convincing people to give up something familiar for something unfamiliar, it’s in your interest to make those people feel comfortable.  When people are stressed out, they avoid risk, holding on dearly to their money, their supplier relationships, everything moderately valuable that they have.  Even if a potential customer likes your brand, they won’t be amenable to your new proposal unless they they’re in a calm state of mind. 

Fortunately for anyone who acts on this insight, a small change in comfort can lead to outsized effects.  Wynn found this out at one of his high-stakes slot machine rooms that wasn’t producing the anticipated revenue.  After an investigation, the problem came down to a mismatch of décor and clientele.  The room, filled with heavy curtains and dark mahogany, had been designed to fit the predilections of older men.  The clients, however, were mostly older women.  After a redesign aimed to create, in the words of the designer, “a place where a lady might feel comfortable,” the room began to produce the higher level of revenue it was designed to generate.

Making customers feel comfortable does not seem, at first glance, compatible with being a Challenger sales rep.  However, these goals can actually go hand-in-hand.  It’s likely important to make your customers feel comfortable precisely when you’re about to challenge their preconceived ideas, something that is always a bit stressful for customers.

When you’re proffering penny slots or a transactional sale, you can afford to stress out your customers.  But when you’re offering high stakes gambles or complex solutions, you can’t afford to make your customers stressed.  Stressed people hunker down for safety.  Comfortable people, on the other hand, are willing to explore new ideas, to double down on an 11, to entertain the idea that your company is offering exactly what they need right now.

Since most of the research in the area has focused on changing a person’s physical environment, it isn’t clear precisely what salespeople should do to get their customers into a comfortable state of mind.  That said, it is clear that whether a salesperson is positioning a product’s benefits, preempting a common concern, or sharing an anecdote about a current customer, they are affecting how comfortable their potential customer feels.  The connection between these things—how a salesperson’s actions lead to emotions that lead to a purchase—is something that we’ll be exploring in the coming months.

What do you do that helps your customers get comfortable with you and your company?

CEB Sales Members, learn more about Challenger Selling that leads with insight and challenges customer assumptions to mobilize customers around a purchase. For more about the designer of Wynn’s casino, see the New Yorker article “Royal Flush.”