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Endowment Effect: The Ownership Sales Hack
Why people tend to overvalue things they already own
Good Morning! It’s National Work From Home Day. So if you're reading this in pajamas, halfway through your third iced coffee, you're celebrating properly. There’s nothing better than pitching a $100K deal while mastering the mute-unmute because your dog’s barking in the next room over. This is sales in 2025. 😄
Do this before demos or presentations ☝️
The Ownership sales hack 🤯
The 3 eras of B2B sales as we know it 🔍️
Sales jobs & a meme 😂
Sales Tip of The Day 💡
When you're about to give a demo or presentation, ask what they want first.
❌ “Let’s walk through the platform and I’ll explain as we go.”
✅ “Before I show anything, want to quickly align on what a win would look like for you by the end of this call?”
This allows you to focus on what really matters to the prospect and avoid what they don’t care about.
Ending soon…
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The Psychology Hack That Makes Prospects Not Want to Give Up Your Product
People value things more just because they own them.
It’s a crazy phenomenon that’s a part of human psychology.
In 1990, behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch, and Richard Thaler wanted to find out why that is. So they ran a simple experiment at Cornell University.
They gave half the students a coffee mug and asked how much they'd sell it for.
Then asked the other half of the students how much they'd pay to buy the same mug.
It turned out that the students who owned the mug wanted roughly twice as much money to give it up compared to what the non-owners were willing to pay.
This phenomenon is called the Endowment Effect. And it's a psychological hack for sales.
What Is the Endowment Effect?
The endowment effect is our tendency to overvalue things we already own (or even feel like we own).
It's closely tied to loss aversion. Giving up something you possess hurts more than the pleasure of gaining something new. It’s why homeowners always feel like their house is worth more than it probably is (you know what I’m talking about).
But here’s the hack… Even brief ownership triggers this effect. In the mug experiment, the students who held the mug for just 30 seconds wanted about twice as much to give it up.
Thirty seconds. That's all it takes.
How to Trigger the Endowment Effect
Here are three proven tactics to make prospects feel ownership before they buy:
1. Offer Free Trials or Pilots
Let prospects use your product with full features enabled. No strings attached.
This hands-on time creates psychological ownership. The prospect who's used your solution for 14 days has data, projects, and workflows set up. Walking away becomes painful.
Dropbox mastered this with their team plan trials. Companies could fully integrate the tools before paying. Not surprisingly, many didn't want to give them up after the trial ended.
It's the B2B equivalent of the "puppy dog close." Car dealerships let you take a car home for the weekend, knowing you won't want to return it.
Give prospects a taste of the premium features. Allow full access to higher-tier functionality during trials.
This creates fear of loss when the free period ends. Users who've grown accustomed to those premium features will feel they own them. Many will choose to pay rather than lose the added features.
Think about how many software trials hook you by letting you experience the top tier, and then downgrade you back to the free tier.
Even if you weren’t using all of the premium features, it still kinda hurts.
3. Use Ownership Language
Small wording changes reinforce the effect.
In your sales copy and conversations, refer to the solution as "your new platform," "your account," or "your team's dashboard."
This subtle nudge plants the idea that the product already belongs to them.
Many onboarding emails say "Get started with your account" for exactly this reason. It makes customers feel it's theirs to lose.
Real-World Examples
Companies use the endowment effect every day.
Amazon Prime's free trial lets you experience all the benefits before you commit. And then trial users get hooked, and don’t want to give it up.
B2B SaaS companies are known for giving free trials that convert users. The key is to get the free trial users to actually use the tool, and then they’ll have the "owner" experience.
Car dealerships will send you home with a car for a weekend so you can really feel what it’s like to own it. And once you see that shiny new car parked in your driveway, it’s a lot harder to say no.
TLDR:
When a prospect starts to feel like your offering is already theirs, the sales battle is half won.
Lower the barriers to try. Personalize the experience. Let them hold the "puppy" for a while.
Because people value something much more once it's in their possession, and you can use that to your advantage.
What 'try before you buy' strategy have you found to be most effective? |
