In the 1990s, a kitchen catalog had a problem. Its home bread maker, a solid machine at $275, wasn’t selling. They tried new copy, better placement, a different page. Nothing moved the number.
Then someone suggested something that sounded backwards: add a second bread maker. Almost identical. Slightly bigger. Priced at $429.
Sales of the $275 machine nearly doubled.
Nothing about the cheaper machine changed. Same price, same features, same photo. What changed was its neighbour. Before, customers looked at $275 and thought: that’s a lot for bread I can buy for three dollars. After, they looked at $275 and thought: that’s far less than the fancy one, and it does basically the same thing. Smart choice.
The brain doesn’t do math. It does comparison.
The part of the brain that actually decides (in my book it is a giant fish: your feelings, fast, old and in charge) has no idea what “expensive” means. It knows “more than that” and “less than that”. And “that” is whatever it saw first.
This is anchoring, and it is absurdly strong. In one classroom study, students wrote down the last two digits of their social security number before bidding on ordinary items, including a cordless keyboard. Students with high digits bid around $56 for it. Students with low digits bid around $16. Same item, same classroom, prices more than three times apart, because of two meaningless numbers they had just looked at.
Two meaningless digits. Now imagine what your first slide does.
The ribeye isn’t there to sell
Look at a good steakhouse menu. An $85 ribeye sits at the top. Below it, a $52 strip and a $38 salmon.
The ribeye’s job isn’t to sell. Its job is to make $52 feel sensible. Take it off the menu and suddenly $52 feels like a lot for a steak, and $38 feels steep for salmon.
Your pricing page works the same way. So does your proposal. The first number in the room sets the shore, and everything else is judged by how far it is from it.
Customers want the feeling of a deal
A celebrated retail executive once took over a large department store and looked at its pricing with horror: fake “original” prices, constant sales, coupons nobody understood. So he did the logical thing. He removed the theatre and replaced it with fair, simple, everyday prices.
Customers stayed away. They didn’t want fairness. They wanted to see a high number crossed out and a lower one circled in red. The store brought back the sales. He was fired.
He was right about the theatre. He was wrong about the audience.
Where it becomes a trap
Anchoring works, which means it can be abused. “Originally $999, now $299!” when it was never $999 is not framing. It is fiction, and people eventually notice.
The honest version: the expensive option is real, people can actually buy it, and the difference in price reflects a real difference in value. Showing it first isn’t manipulation. It’s context.
Try this before Friday
Find the first number your customer sees: on your pricing page, in your proposal, in the first minute of your pitch. That is your anchor, whether you chose it or not.
Then ask: is there a real, higher option we could show first? A genuine premium version, a bigger package, the full-service plan. Put it at the top. Mark the option you actually recommend as the sensible middle.
If more people choose your target option next week than last week, you moved the anchor. If nothing changed, the frame was never the problem. Something bigger is.