Dear Kevin,

I want to share with you a recent experience with a client of mine:

I offered the client the following two options (verbally and in writing) to complete a project:

Option A: Project costs 2100 pounds ($4000) and he gets 800 back through a government grant for which is qualifies. The final cost to the customer is 1300 pounds. If the customer wants he can pay 2000 up front and he will qualify for a 5% discount reducing his final cost to 1200 ($2300). (100 pounds is the grant application fee)
**Customer would pay about $2300 and fills out a short five minute form.

Option B: The same project as above costs 1600 pounds, but there is no money back from the government. As in Option A if all the money is paid up front he gets a 5% discount reducing his final cost to 1520 ($2800) pounds.

To my surprise the customer chose Option B with the discount even though he only had to fill a form to get the government grant (form would take 2 minutes to fill) and all the bureaucracy would have been taken care of by me (hence the 500 dollars difference in price).
**Customer preferred to pay $2800 and not fill out the 5 minute form!

After reading your book I have an insight to the possible reasons the customer chose Option B even though Option A is the most 'logical' and everyone I've asked later said the customer would have chosen the A option.

There is one more detail to add. When I asked the customer as to why he has chosen option B he said that the difference between the two was not big enough to justify choosing Option A.

This does not make any sense to me at all since he is giving away free money, which is a big proportion of the total sale!

Best Regards,
Polyvios Gregoriades