Shortcuts Are Not Mistakes

Imagine a surgeon named Dr. Ama Bello who wants family portraits taken before her son leaves for college. On a Sunday night, she writes to two photographers. Idris Lowe replies the next morning with a short note, one price, and a link to his work. Leon Hartley replies with three packages and a paragraph on how each one is priced.

That evening, Dr. Bello asks a friend whose family portraits she admires. The friend names Idris. Dr. Bello looks at his page for two minutes, sees a price close to what her friend paid, and books him. Then she sends Leon a short note to say she has booked someone else.

Dr. Bello does not set the two replies side by side, or ask a third photographer for a quote. She makes a sound choice by a method that might look lazy on paper. It is how she makes most of the choices in her week. She has more choices to make than hours to make them in.

A shortcut is a good decision made cheaply

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman calls shortcuts like this one heuristics. He shows how the fast part of the mind often answers an easier question than the one it was asked. “Will this photographer be worth $6,000?” is a hard question. “Does my friend trust him?” is an easy one.

For a long time, the usual view was that a shortcut leads to more errors than a careful method. In 2011, Gerd Gigerenzer and Wolfgang Gaissmaier reviewed the research and found otherwise. People and organizations often use simple shortcuts in a way that suits the situation. Ignoring part of the information can even lead to better judgments than weighing all of it. That is most likely when the outcome is hard to predict.

In an earlier study, Gigerenzer and Daniel Goldstein held a contest on a computer. A rule that decides on one good reason competed against standard statistical methods that use all the information. The one-reason rule matched or beat every one of them, for speed and for accuracy.

Kahneman’s early work with Amos Tversky studied the errors these shortcuts can cause. In a 2003 paper, he looked back on that work. He wrote that studying those errors fits with a view of intuition as generally skilled and successful.

So a person who decides on one good reason often decides as well as a person who weighs everything, and decides faster.

Here is why that matters for you. A wealthy client often has more decisions than hours, and no way to test your judgment before hiring you. For that client, a shortcut is a sound way to hire. So do not argue with the shortcut a client uses. Change the fact behind it, so that the shortcut points to you.

Each of the five shortcuts rests on a fact you can change

A client choosing a service professional can lean on any of five shortcuts. Each one rests on a fact about your business:

Your price. A client often takes a higher price as a sign of better work, before seeing any of it. So set your price inside the range that the clients you want already pay for this kind of work.
Your name. What people say about you in the places where your clients talk does for you what a brand does for a company. Put the name your past clients use for you on everything a new client finds. Then do each job as if the next client will hear about it.
A limit. A limit is a fact about who you take, or when. It might be the number of clients you take at a time, or a minimum size of job. It might be a rule that new clients come only through past ones. People want what is hard to get, so a real limit can make you worth waiting for. A limit makes a client want you more only when the limit is true and you can explain it. So state the limit you already have, and its reason. If you have no limit, do not invent one.
A friend’s word. A client trusts a friend’s word more than a stranger’s review. The friend can say what you were like to work with. When you finish a job, give the client two sentences to repeat if a friend asks about you. Make one about what you are like to work with and one about a result, because two sentences are easy to remember. For example, a private chef can say, “If anyone asks about me, you could say that I planned the menu around your guests, and that every plate came out hot.”
How your work looks. A client judges your work by what they can see, such as your first reply, your proposal, and your clothes. Make everything a client sees before they hire you as careful as your work. Start with any mistake a client could find, such as a misspelled name.

A travel agent’s clients hand over a trip in one sentence

Jaclyn Sienna India runs Sienna Charles, a members-only travel agency for ultra-wealthy clients. In 2024, she told The Cut about a call she had just had with a client who is a tech billionaire. “They told me they want to go to Europe in August for nine days, just the couple, no kids. And that’s all they said. This is pretty common.”

Most of her clients, she said, “have a vision for what they want, but they can’t Google for it.” Many of them “have had successful business careers that require them to delegate, so it’s easy for them to delegate in their personal life, too.”

When a client insists on a famous restaurant, India may suggest a newer one instead. “People want to be guided,” she said.

In the course’s view, a client who hands over a trip in one sentence may also hire on one good reason. Weighing the options is the work they pay India to take off their hands.

So when a client gives you one sentence, take it as enough to begin. Come back with a plan you have chosen for them.

A stylist chooses every piece before her client sees it

Elsa Boutaric is a personal stylist who works in Miami, Palm Beach, and Aspen. On her firm’s blog, she writes that her clients often share one challenge, “decision fatigue.” Many ultra-wealthy clients, the page says, give it as their main reason for hiring a wardrobe stylist.

Boutaric does the choosing first. When she shops for a client, she picks every piece before the client sees it. As the page puts it, “the client never sets foot in a store unless they choose to.”

So find the decision your client least wants to make, and be the person who has already made it well.

Why arguing with the shortcut goes wrong

Imagine a personal trainer named Beatriz Soto whose rate sits in the middle of her market. A founder named Mr. Achebe comes to her for a first session. Near the end of it, he mentions that a colleague pays twice as much for a trainer who does similar work.

Beatriz has her next client waiting at the door, so she answers quickly. “My clients get the same results, and honestly, my rate is fair for what you get,” she says. “You’d be paying double for the name.”

Everything Beatriz says may be true. Mr. Achebe thanks her, and that week he books his colleague’s trainer.

Beatriz argued with the shortcut Mr. Achebe was using, which was price. The trainer who charges twice as much does not have to defend her rate. Reasons added to a price make it sound less sure. So Beatriz’s reasons told Mr. Achebe that she was not sure of her rate.

Suppose instead that Beatriz answers with one fact and stops. “I keep eight clients, and each of them trains at the same hour every week,” she says. Mr. Achebe asks whether she has a Tuesday at seven. She does, and he books it.

Beatriz did not win the argument about price, because she did not start it. She gave Mr. Achebe a fact, and the fact gave him a different shortcut, her limit. If most of the clients who call her still go by price, the fact to change is her price.

How to be the easy answer to a client’s shortcut

Ask your three best clients how they chose you. For example, you can ask, “When you were deciding, what made you pick me?” Write down which of the five shortcuts each answer points to.
Find the one shortcut that points away from you today. For example, your price may sit in the middle of your market. Then a client who goes by price may pass you over for someone who charges more.
Change the fact behind that shortcut, not the words you use about it. For example, a dog walker whose website shows blurry photos might replace them with clear ones of the dogs he walks.
When a client mentions a shortcut aloud, answer with one fact and stop. Do not explain why your price is fair. For example, a home organizer who hears “My neighbor’s organizer charged half that” can say, “I work on one house at a time, from the first closet to the last.”
Make as many of the small choices for the client as you can. Then offer the one option that fits what the client told you, not a list. For example, a tutor can write, “I would see Ella twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, until the exam in May.”

Next: You will see how a higher price makes a client expect better work before they have seen any of it.