The cognitive bias that’s costing you sales — and how to break through it

I’ve only walked out of a movie theater before the ending once in my entire life.

But on Netflix or Prime, I’ll stop watching in a heartbeat.

Not because the movies I watch in theaters are so much better. (They aren’t.)

But because I already paid to be there.

That’s me falling prey to the sunk cost fallacy — the cognitive bias that makes smart people do illogical things.

We throw precious time after wasted money, even when it makes ZERO rational sense.

My $14 in a theatre was gone whether I stayed or left, but my brain couldn’t let go of that investment.

Your customers are doing the EXACT same thing with products they hate.

They’ve spent time learning your competitor’s system.

They’ve trained their team on the workflow.

They’ve integrated it with other tools.

They’ve customized settings and built processes around it.

Even when they know something better exists, the sunk cost fallacy whispers: “You’ve already invested so much. Don’t waste all that effort.“

This is why feature comparisons and rational arguments often fail to convert prospects who are already using competing solutions.

Logic says your product is better. Psychology says their current investment is too valuable to abandon.

In I Need That, I discuss how successful products must trigger emotional desire strong enough to overcome rational resistance. The sunk cost fallacy represents one of the strongest forms of that resistance.

Breaking through requires more than proving superiority. You need to paint a picture of a Coveted Condition so compelling that staying with the status quo feels like the real waste.

Instead of focusing on what they’ll lose by switching, focus on what they’ll NEVER achieve by staying.

Show them the opportunities they’re missing while they’re stuck managing workarounds.

Demonstrate the competitive advantages their competitors are gaining with better tools.

Make the cost of inaction feel heavier than the cost of change.

Contemplating my movie theater experiences has taught me something important: we’ll endure terrible experiences to protect investments that are already gone.

But we’ll also abandon those same investments when something genuinely better captures our imagination.

Product Payoff: Back when Slack was competing against established email-based communication, they didn’t focus on migration complexity or training costs. Instead, they demonstrated how teams using Slack were collaborating in real-time, making faster decisions, and building stronger culture.

Slack made staying with email feel like watching the world move ahead without you. The FOMO of missing out on better teamwork proved stronger than the comfort of familiar tools.

Your breakthrough strategy: Identify the biggest opportunity cost of staying with current solutions in your market. What achievements become impossible with status quo tools? What competitive advantages are being lost every day prospects delay switching?

Make the future vision so attractive that protecting past investments feels like the real mistake.

Have you ever stayed committed to something terrible just because you’d already invested in it?

Tap that reply arrow and share your own sunk cost fallacy moments — we’ve all been there.

Or reach out to my team of product marketing experts at Graphos Product.