1.GENERAL FACTS
We picked a 25 year old handsome guy for this experiment. First we dressed him business style, nice hairstyle, confident attitude. He had to approach 5 stores and ask for a quality strong bag considering the fact that he has no money… After that we dressed our guy poorly and dirty with the same confident attitude and repeated the experiment.
We use two observers; one of them is me, the writer, so I can get the real feeling of the situation and the other one a member of our team.
We enter the stores before our subject and watch the whole conversation and reactions. Our subject is wearing a tape recorder in order to record every piece of conversation in case we get distracted or approached by the store staff.
The photographer is outside the store, waiting to catch our subject in action. We follow the staff’s reaction, approach feedback, type of bag we get, age of the stuff, time necessary to complete the task, reactions after the subject leaves.
2. TYPE OF STORES
We made sure our subject approached the same type of stores in both scenarios:
- Shoes store
- Women clothes store
- Second hand store
- Pharmacy
- Universal store
3. FUNNY MOMENTS DURING EXPERIMENT
- Angry woman refused to give us a bag: Man, this woman was crazy. She was so mad on our target that he was well dressed and asking for a free bag, that even if he had money I don’t think she would have sold the bag to him . After he left, she was telling us, regular clients that he is coming with that clothes and that hairstyle and attitude and asking for something free and he should be ashamed.
I will try an experiment with my big boss (50 years old) when I will ask for the next salary raise. Last time I’ve done that wearing a shirt and a nice jacket he told me that we – young people, we want to gain a lot, all of the sudden. I will go to him wearing modest clothes, who know maybe I will get a substantial increase of my salary
- Nice lady telling Alex how to buy the perfect gift for the girlfriend: In one store while watching the subject, I and Alex were asking the seller about a pair of girl shoes as a present. It was a women’s store and we had no reason to be there except searching for a present. The nice lady told Alex very clear to come back with the girl if he wants to have nice winter holydays: D. She told us it’s almost impossible to guess her tastes in shoes; She was telling Alex :”Go get the girl, come back and maybe… something nice will happen to you”.
Very nice lady, I guess she had some experience on high heel shoes
- Alex asking for medicine without prescription in order to buy us some time in the Pharmacy: We went in a Pharmacy and it was… empty. It was not the place to look around and look for something new and trendy so Alex improvised and went to the selling lady and told her very confident, like he was really suffering: “ Lady, I really need some antibiotics but without prescription”, and they went on and on about this subject buying us time to do our little experiment.
You should start acting man, maybe you’ll get an Oscar. The selling lady was really worried about you
- Our subject picking up a plastic glass when wearing poor clothes: Someone told him the money he collects with that glass and clothing is his tip Imagine him a really proud guy… it was a really funny joke
4. GRAPHICS AND STATISTICS
a. Well dressed
In Figure above you can see FEEDBACK dependence with staff AGE when our subject was well dressed. As you can see we got the best results when the staff’s age was between 25-35 years old. These young ladies looked at our subject with charm, they were excited to have a client good looking and well dressed like our subject. Immediately they reacted and offered him the best bag available. I heard two of them mentioning that they are offering the best bag available in their store, and do not have something better. After our subject left the store, the staff continued talking about him with interest.
Also you can notice the interest for our well-dressed subject faded along with the age. 40+ladies were a little reticent to his proposal. Some of them gave him the bag only to get rid of him and considering their reactions, I could say that if he would have asked for a bigger favor, he would have been turned down. This actually happened with a 50 years old lady (Universal store) who got mad on our subject. She sent him to go and get the money if he wanted the bag; you could see her being very disturbed by his approach. After our subject left the store she opened up to us (we were supposed to be regular clients) and manifested a disagreement with his nice clothes and style while asking for a free bag. She was a little proud of herself that she turned him down.
b. Poor/dirty dressed
In Figure above you can see FEEDBACK dependence with the staff AGE when our subject was dressed poorly. He was still confident and kind but wearing dirty and cheap clothes. Our best results were obtained when the staff age was 45+ years old. In this case when our subject approached a Universal store and the lady selling there was offering him multiple alternatives; she even looked in the back to find a suitable bag for his needs. In this case he got a premium bag with no effort , but most important, after the subject left , the lady was satisfied with helping the poor guy. It seems in this case bad clothes are quite an advantage when asking for a favor.
Also an interesting aspect we can notice is 25-35 years old staff feedback. The poor looking guy was not refused at all. Young staff offered him a bag with indifference but not with reticence. It seemed when approaching young staff he still got good results whilst wearing poor clothes.
5. CONCLUSIONS
It’s very important to study your target when asking for a favor. It’s like when you want to seduce somebody, you cannot go unprepared. If he is handsome and you want to blow his mind, probably your short skirt and high heels are not enough. You need some style and attitude. If he doesn’t seem to be so popular in woman’s world, probably your long legs will solve the mystery you see in his head. I haven’t seen a man or a woman that suits everybody’s tastes, you need to adapt according to the situation.
When I could watch Discovery (my TV provider recently removed Discovery from my program list and I am not very satisfied) one evening I saw a documentary regarding jellyfish. This jellyfishes were trapped in a glacier. It was not their usual climate. During a period of time this organisms lost their tentacles and began to use photosynthesis to feed themselves. They needed to adapt to the new climate in order to survive. In the real world it’s the same, like Darwin natural selection theory: It’s not the most powerful who succeeds but the one who adapts better to their environment. It is crucial to read between the lines and approach a situation from the best angle.
We made this experiment and noticed the way you look should be closely linked with the objective you want to achieve. Off course, you should keep a shadow of your personal style in everything you are wearing but adapting to the environment is important.
When approaching a new target you should watch it for 1-2 minutes and gain the main indicators. Age is important, married or not is also a good indicator, children, clothes, posture, mood are key aspects for your approach. If you are doing business you should know your partners and clients. Sometimes it’s better to send someone else to the meeting if you consider it unsuitable for you. They might get better results than you, just by showing another clothes style or attitude.
To make a long story short: When asking for a favor we get best results when looking good for young ladies and modest for older ones.
