Can You Spot The Difference Between The Designer & Chain Store Shoes?

Have you seen this week’s version of “The Dress“? Rather than splitting the internet down the lines of whether a frock was blue-black or gold-white, this head-scratcher concerns shoes.

Which one of these two (pictured above) is the designer label, at a eye-watering £325 a pop, and which is the global fast fashion high street alternative, for just nine quid?

One costs 2¾% of the other. Or if you prefer, the designer ballerina flat comes in at 39-times the price of the mass market chain.

Can you spot which is which?

When I encountered this, I became struck with the reasoning behind selections.

How people made their choice became fascinating.

Did they make an instant call, in the manner of Malcolm Gladwell’s famed Blink expertise? Or did they take a moment then isolate specific elements that combined to support an overall judgement?

Mostly, people went for needing some time to assess, with gut reaction secondary to sensing more than one contributing factor.

Leading me to wonder how many differences make people plump for a particular pump?

I found that this magic number was three.

Which in itself was revealing. For if the initial pair seemed to cancel each other out, the third was the tiebreaker.

But in the main, all three backed up a single shoe.

So if you’ve an internal team meeting this month, show these footwear, and see who gets which is which. Then use as a platform to talk about how you help your prospects to know which option suits which pole. Tailored to whether you’re offering the hugely unique inventive label, or the amazing instant value.

And if you’re unsure about how a prospect is leaning, then ask them which they feel right now are the three main elements (differences) of your bid. If they come straight out with three, then you may well be on good ground…

spoiler alert – here’s just two of the determining trios, which demonstrate what people might look to… what would your prospects look to when rating your bid against both their requirements and other options is one of the vital pieces of intel you must uncover on a sale.

i – because the wave distinct – front does not go up – heel at the back looks more elegant

ii – more prominent wave (‘scallop’) – inner and sole matching colour – best photographed (no grey background)