Don’t Always Wear the Blue Suit

I’m reading one of the most popular Business books ever written, the E-Myth Revisited.  In the book, author Michael Gerber discusses doing a sales test.  The test is simple:

For two weeks, wear a brown suit, brown tie and nice brown shoes.  Track the people that come into your establishment, your sales, and your overall profits for the period.

Then, for the next two weeks, wear a blue suit, light blue shirt and polished black/matching shoes.

Gerber insists that you will sell 10-16% more items while wearing the blue suit.  “So why not always wear the blue suit?” he asks.

The blue suit (to you) is the symbol of increased profits.

But here’s where I think this test goes bad.  He simply concludes the experiment by suggesting that the blue suit should be on your everyday list of things to wear.

Ah, but you could be missing out on the real top-seller – the black suit.  What happens if  by wearing a black suit, your profits go up 20%?

If you never wear a black suit, you’ll never know.

A good website owner never stops testing.  Testing is imperative to fine-tuning results and increasing leads and sales.  Sometimes testing produces bad results, sometimes testing produces good.  But if you’re stagnant and not testing, you’re stuck in a rut.  You’ll never know if you could increase your sales by another 2 or 3 percent by changing to a black suit unless you try.

Get out there and test.  Measure results accurately, and modify your behavior accordingly. Don’t always wear the blue suit.