In the 1930s, a newspaper advertising salesman named Elmer Wheeler kept hearing the same complaint from the stores he sold ads to. His ads brought people in the door, but they didn’t buy. So he went behind the counters to listen to what the clerks actually said.
At the soda fountain of Abraham & Straus, a big department store in Brooklyn, the clerks asked every Coca-Cola customer, “Large or small, sir?” Most people said “small” without thinking. Wheeler had the clerks ask “Large one?” instead. He wrote that five thousand tests were made, and seven out of every ten people said yes. Same drink. Same counter. Two words different. His book called it “Two Little Words That Turned Nickels into Dimes.”
I’m Damon Nelson. I have built marketing software for more than twenty years, and Wheeler’s first rule still fixes more sales problems than a price cut does. The idea dates to 1937, and marketer Frank Kern made the same point in a recent post. Here’s how it works, in plain English, and how to use it in your own business.
Wheeler’s word lab
Wheeler built what he called the Wheeler Word Laboratory to test sales phrases. He claimed his team tested more than 105,000 words and word combinations on upward of 19,000,000 people. Those are his own numbers, and nobody ever checked them. But the examples he wrote down are hard to argue with.
In 1937 he put the results in a book called Tested Sentences That Sell. Its first rule is the one people still quote today: “Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle!”
“The sizzling of the steak starts the sale more than the cow ever did, though the cow is, of course, very necessary.”
What “sell the sizzle” really means
The steak is the job you do. The sizzle is what the buyer gets out of it. Wheeler’s advice to vacuum cleaner salesmen shows the move clearly:
| Don’t sell this | Sell this instead |
|---|---|
| Suction | Cleaner rugs |
| The price tag | Fewer backaches |
| The motor | Comfort |
| Ball bearings | Ease of use |
Nobody wants suction. They want a clean rug and a back that doesn’t hurt.
One sentence, worth $555.55 a word
When Texaco launched a new motor oil, gas station attendants had a problem. Drivers who were asked if they needed oil almost always said no before they even thought about it. Wheeler’s team tested different ways to ask and landed on a single question about whether the driver’s oil was at the proper level.
In 1938, The New Yorker reported that Texaco paid Wheeler $5,000 for that sentence, which the magazine worked out to $555.55 a word. In his book, Wheeler said the line helped 45,000 Texaco dealers get under a quarter of a million hoods in a single week. That last number is his claim.
The same magazine article describes a soda fountain clerk who held an egg in each hand and asked, “One or two eggs today?” The customer was no longer deciding whether to buy an egg. They were only deciding how many.
Most price objections aren’t about price
Here’s where Kern’s post comes in. When you describe the job, the buyer compares it to the cost. When you describe the result, they compare it to their life.
Look at the same service at the same price, said two ways:
| Describe the job | Describe the result |
|---|---|
| Alterations | Your favorite suit, wearable again |
| A photo session | A memory that lasts |
| A cooking class | A new weekly ritual |
| A checkout fix | More sales |
| A music lesson | Playing a song you love |
| Mowing | A free weekend |
Nothing about the work changed. The reason to buy did.
How to use it this week
- Read your sales page out loud. Do it before you discount anything.
- Circle every line that describes the job. Look for features, hours, steps and parts.
- Rewrite each circled line as the result. Ask, “What does the buyer get when this job is done?”
- Try it on real buyers. Use the new words for a week before you touch the price.
If you still need a lower price after that, fine. But try the words first. They cost nothing.
Practice this with us
This is the kind of thing we work through at GeekOutFridays, our mastermind that meets live every other Friday. Each session is 30 minutes of strategy and 60 minutes of building one system you can use. Bring your sales page, find the steak lines, and leave with the sizzle.
Join the GeekOutFridays mastermind group.
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