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Do you want to confuse the heck out of your dog?

Do a little test.

Place two bones in front of your dog. And watch.

He'll sniff one bone. Then the other. Then go back to the first. And back to the second. Back, forth, back, forth and back again. Like he's watching the finals of the US Open.

You've just witnessed the curse of choice. And, not surprisingly, human beings are not a whole lot different from dogs.

Curious? I bet you are. Because the concept of choice can dramatically increase or decrease your sales. What are you doing wrong? And how can you fix it?

Done? Good!

Now do you realize what your brain just did? Your brain went through dozens of choices in one fraction of a second. It whipped its way through at least a dozen possible flavors. In a blinding flash it went through what is known as the “elimination factor.”

Contrary to what you believe, the brain doesn't think by choosing what it wants.

No it doesn't; the brain “eliminates” what it doesn't want.

Think about it for a second. When you're in the ice-cream store looking at all of those choices, you seem more confused than ever. You think you want choice, but when faced with one hundred-squillion flavors, your brain goes a little waka waka.

You become “the dog” all over again.

You struggle to choose, and finally when you do choose you actually do it through a system of eliminating what you don't want.

Ergo: more elimination means more brainwork.

It's logical, isn't it? If your brain goes through elimination to get to a single choice, then the more things it has to eliminate, the more difficult it becomes to choose one thing.

Often the brain just gives up. Yes, goodbye, sayonara and hasta la vista, baby! And customers faced with innumerable choices head rapidly for the “goodbye, see ya later, I need to think about it” door.

It's ironic, isn't it?

We want choice, but we don't want the nuisance of having to choose. Aaaaaaaargh, isn't this irony driving you bananas?

Now, now... don't get so antsy. No one is suggesting you do a Henry Ford. Henry, the inventor of the Model T, was probably discredited with a quotation attributed to him: “People can have the Model T in any color--so long as it's black.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean D'Souza uses age-old psychology, marrying it to modern technology, on his Web site, psychotactics.com. Can "psychological tactics" make a difference? Go there and find out.