Instead of going away, this year I spent my Easter weekend redecorating our living room. I love a bit of DIY and I really enjoyed getting stuck in. The finished result looks great but it took me quite some time to decide on a paint colour.

I knew I wanted a neutral colour but I had no idea how many shades of cream and off-white there are… Buttermilk, Stonewash Cream, Country Cream, Neutral Pale, Clotted Cream, Eggshell, Crumpled Linen, Crushed Cotton…

It took me about 3 hours (much to my partners dismay!) to finally choose a colour before we could go home and get painting.

When we were all finished I got a cup of tea, put my feet up and settled in to read my copy of the Evening Standard magazine from a week or so ago. Now if you read the Evening Standard magazine you’ll know the article that caught my attention.

In the issue for 14 March, Helen Kirwan-Taylor talks about the sheer indecision that can occur when faced with 25 plus shades of off-white paint. Her experience as a design writer has shown that when faced with too many choices, consumers simply freeze and very often walk away with nothing because they can’t make up their minds.

This also applies to therapy and well-being businesses. When faced with too many solutions, very often clients will put off booking because they can’t decide what option to book in for.

How many of your potential clients have walked away not because they don’t want to book, but because they can’t decide which appointment type is best for them? When a client asks about further treatment options, do you give them 2-3 options that you think are the best solutions for them? Or do you hand them a price list with 30 options on it?

It’s certainly something to think about!

Something to do this week – go through your price list with an objective eye and see if there is anything you need to clarify or remove to make choices easier for your clients.

So how did my paint mission turn out? In the end I got Magnolia.