What are you giving out for free? Learn from the Suya Seller

Selling and buying decisions are highly psychological. Sales and advertising explore the art of influencing human behaviour to make desired buying decisions.

Almost everyone who grew up in Nigeria must have patronised a Suya seller. Suya id beef khebab. The Suya seller, despite not attending any business school has mastered this art effortlessly.

When you stop to buy Suya, the seller welcomes you by offering you a piece of the meat to ‘taste’. He cares less if you leave after ‘tasting’ the Suya. He knows from experience that you will most likely buy from him. This is the ‘law of reciprocity’ in action! It states that if someone does something nice for you, you will have a compelling psychological urge to do something nice in return.

Since people want to be sure of always making the right purchase decision, they are afraid of a “what you ordered” vs “what you got” situation. It’s nothing personal about your product but an issue of
trust. Offering them some of your product/services for free is probably all you need to close a sale or skyrocket sales.

The big corporations also understand this strategy. A lot of them give free trials. They know everyone likes freebies.

Customers always want more than they pay for and are usually very happy and excited when they get one. Whatever you have got to do to close that deal, do!

You can use bonuses to help push undecided customers into making a purchase. The easiest thing to offer as a bonus is a free complementary product or service popularly called Buy One, Get One Free or BOGOF.

You can see why the Suya seller is willing to offer a few pieces of meat as Jara. He knows you will likely come again because of that offer.