Foot In The Door Technique

Telemarketers use different techniques to get you to listen to them. Here is a subtle psychological techniques names foot in the door.

Getting That Initial “In”

A while ago, I got a telephone call from a telemarketer. Generally, they’d try to impress me with a grand sales line when I answered, but this one was unlike the others.

The second I answered the call, he told me that he was only doing a fast phone survey, one that would only require 30 seconds. There was no personal information being gathered, he said. Altogether safe and anonymous, and he isn’t attempting to sell me anything. Generally, I’d have made a polite apology, but 30 seconds didn’t appear like such a long time, so I said ok.

And that was the beginning of the snare. He began with little, innocent inquiries. What is your age bracket? What is your job? Where do you go for vacations? These questions weren’t intrusive, so I replied happily.

Before long he was expanding to some really personal questions. Midway through the survey, he started assuring me there was only

―one last question‖. I was becoming irritated and suspicious as the questions got more personal, but his speedy assurances and non-stop blabber left me little time to think the right way, so I kept answering. At the close of the interview, he thanked me courteously and hung up. The survey had taken 5 minutes, and the data I had given was very personal indeed.

―Geez,‖ I thought. ―At any rate, he didn’t try to sell me anything.‖ Well, this wasn’t really the case.

Somebody phoned to follow up a couple of days later. Instantly she called me by name and referred to some personal data I had given. No more was she a stranger, now she seemed to be a friend. I believed it was somebody I had met but blanked out.

All of a sudden she reminded me of the first telephone call and congratulated me – I was among the lucky 10 people to have qualified for a limited gift. All I had to do was to attend a seminar (why I got the feeling there won’t be only 10 individuals there, I don’t know). I had gone to one such sitting before – and this one was in all likelihood to be the equivalent: a long, awful, sales talk.

It was then I, at last, realized I had been fooled – fallen for one of the most primary tricks social hucksters practice!

This strategy is known, slightly informally, as the ―foot in the door strategy‖.

And there’s a reason for the long telemarketer story. ―This is simply a kindergarten trick – any four-year-old child will recognize this!‖ That was my first thought when I first encountered this simple strategy.

But when I closed the textbook, closed my eyes, and recalled a few examples from my past – I recognized just how effective it was in the correct hands.

This plan of attack involves getting an individual to agree to a little request, and then bit by bit presenting larger ones. The telemarketer used this when I agreed to respond to a brief impersonal survey. He then dragged it on with incessant amounts of ―just one more question, sir!‖ Till I completed the full survey, which took 5 minutes and necessitated a lot of personal information.

This much is clear – if he had called for a full 5-minute survey initially, I’d have said no. A lot of individuals would have done the same.

As a whole, individuals are far more probable to comply with a request that costs little in time, revenue, effort, or bothers. But, once you’ve agreed to the initial request, they’d start to ask for more.

An intriguing point: In the follow-up call, they reminded me straight off of the first survey. How come? A lot of reasons – but one I would like to discuss here: they were hoping to cue me about my prior commitment. Quite an effective technique.

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