Foot in the door is a persuasion technique used in both sales and marketing, its objective is to influence people to agree to requests or commitments that they would not otherwise make.
The Foot-in-the-door technique consists of first making a small request, which most people will accede to without difficulty, followed by a second request of greater impact or that requires greater commitment, the latter being your main action, the one you are most interested in your customers or prospects taking.
This technique works to establish an initial commitment, which increases the likelihood of convincing the customer to agree to further commitments, so it is important that both requests are related.
Example: When you ask visitors to your website to leave their email address and later in an email you ask them to leave more information to try your product.
This concept comes from social psychology and has been studied and validated by several researchers such as Freedman and Fraser (1966), Snyder and Cunningham (1975), Lamberth, (1986), Burger and Guadagno (2003), among others.
The Sales Glossary is a compendium of all the most commonly used terminology in sales strategy. Many of the concepts listed here are used when implementing a CRM system or a digital sales funnel, no matter if they are legacy systems or an online CRM. See also our blog that deals with sales techniques, marketing and sales culture.