I’ve talked about the cognitive bias known as the “above average effect” before and I’ve talked about the need to “de-average” when thinking about our members, I’ve also encouraged you to dare to be different today because you can always be average later.
People are hardwired to think of themselves as above average… even when they’re not (by any objective standard). Seth Godin said it best when he said, “Average is for marketers who don't have enough information to be accurate."
And yet… there are still so many average clubs catering to average members.
We are all distracted today… too much to do and to little time to get it done.
But distraction isn’t always a bad thing.
It’s long been established that music provides enough distraction that it allows exercisers to perform longer and report lower ratings of perceived exertion.
Sure music provides a distraction and now everyone uses music… but what other distractions can you use?
CrossFit uses timed workout sessions and beating the clock turns out to be a distraction from the typically gruelling sessions.
Boot camp uses partner and team exercises, timed bouts, and peer pressure (in a good way) to distract exercisers from their demanding sessions.
All too often many people in health clubs are just going through the motions… clocking in and clocking out without a sense of purpose to their workouts.
Purpose is a powerful distraction.
What can you do to give you members a sense of purpose and get your members distracted from their exercise sessions… organize a 5k run (to get people focused on improving their times rather than simply watching the timer on the treadmill count down)… organize a strength training clinic (to help people increase their lifts and improve their physiques)… organize a nutritionist to come and speak at your club (to get people focused on healthy eating and losing weight)…
There are a lot of things that you can do to give you members a greater sense of purpose and distract them from the tedium of their daily workouts.
Pareidolia is the psychological tendency to perceive vague and/or random stimulus as significant. For example, remember that grilled cheese sandwich that had a likeness of the Virgin Mary on it… I think it sold for something like $28,000 on eBay in 2004. Similarly, remember the supposed “hidden message” in certain songs when they are played backwards.
Psychologists explain this existence of this phenomenon in terms of our preference to find order in chaos (often necessary in ancient times for survival).
It turns out that our brain doesn’t like randomness or chaos and therefore will work to ascribe some meaning to it… even if the result is completely nonsensical.
So why the psychology lesson…
…well because I see owners and managers falling victim to pareidolia all the time. One CEO that I know berated her health club manager because he didn’t implement spinning classes until a couple of months after a local competitor.
Why all the angst?
Well it turns out that the CEO’s club was struggling and she seemed to have formed the view that her much more successful competitor (who did have spinning classes) was actually much more successful because of those very spinning classes.
Of course, it wasn’t the case (it’s rarely about one thing and never about one class) and even when she did eventually get her spinning classes up and running her club was still unsuccessful… and her tenure, it turns out, was rightfully quite short.
Obviously, we have to make judgement calls every day but we have to be careful that the reality that we construct reflects reality as it is… or as business luminary Peter Drucker more eloquently put it, we must have ” …the ability to see the world as it is, not as we want it to be”.
You might recall the parable of the old man with the leaky roof… he would curse and complain every time it rained because of his leaky roof, “If only I could get up there and fix those leaks… they’re driving me crazy!”
But when the rain eventually stopped and the sun came out the old man no longer felt the urgency or discomfort and so never bothered to fix the roof… but like clockwork the very next time it rained he was cursing and complaining again about his leaky roof.
As the New Year’s rush starts to die down and you are patting yourself on the back for all of your good work, remember that the sun is shining brightly right now… so there’s no better time to fix your marketing.
Don’t wait a few months when you are desperate for new members, it might be too late by then… the sun won’t shine forever.
Motivation can be defined as the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviours. Motivation is affected by a number of factors both internal (values, beliefs, knowledge etc) and external to the individual (rewards, praise, recognition etc).
However, situational factors can have a profound affect on motivation. For example, otherwise rational, law-abiding, people can get swept up in herd mentality or peer pressure and engage in antisocial behaviours such a stealing, rioting, and even murders.
Recognizing the importance of situational motivation is important for how you run your business. I’ve spoken about the downside of the practice of incentivizing the sale with freebies and gifts (sometimes referred to as buying the sale). Effectively what you are doing is providing situational motivation… as long as you can replicate the situation (freebie high) the behaviour will be maintained.
Obviously, you can’t give away free stuff forever… and in the absence of that situational motivation there is no motivation.
Of course, the freebies are just to motivate the sale…I guess you can always worry about retention later... right?
The Semmelweis effect is the tendency (a cognitive bias) to reject new evidence that contradicts an established paradigm.
It is named after Ignaz Semmelweis who, in 1847, discovered that child mortality rates could be significantly reduced if doctors simply disinfected their hands (rather than just wash with soap and water as was the practice at the time).
Semmelweis’s peers roundly, and quite viciously, criticised his findings as unscientific (this was before germ theory was accepted in the late 1800’s) and Semmelweis ultimately suffered a serious mental breakdown and was committed to an insane asylum where he died in 1865.
What does all this have to do with customer service? Watch the video below and see if you can spot the Semmelweis effect in action…
Now I don’t know Kevin Hedley personally but from his presentation he seems like a successful, intelligent, and articulate guy and I apologize if he went on to discuss this in greater detail than is shown in the video…
Kevin reveals his significant findings: (1) 40% of health club members don’t consider personalized interactions an important part of their health club experience, and (2) 64% of health club members considered that their membership consultant took a real interest in making them feel comfortable in their first few weeks as a new member.
He then goes on to draw this conclusion… the results show the importance of continued customer service by the membership team and consistent, positive members interaction from all staff.
It seems that (like most consultants) whatever the data showed he was going to come to the same conclusion… we need to improve our customer service (i.e. rejecting evidence that contradicts an established paradigm).
The real significance of this data, to me, is if 40% of health club members don’t consider personalized interactions an important part of their health club experience we need to be able to identify them so we can commit our, very limited, resources to the 60% of our members that do consider it important.
In my assessment these 40% are most likely to be more advanced health club members who are basically in control of, and have taken responsibility for, their own health club experience and therefore don’t require input from health club staff. Of course, more advanced members are interacting with their peers in the health club and because they basically know what they are doing are not reliant on health club staff.
However, in my experience, more advanced health club members naturally attract more than their fair share of attention from health club staff because of their regular attendance, quasi-celebrity status, and generally higher levels of comfort in the club. Basically they are easier to interact with and so they get interacted with more… a critical, yet common, misallocation of resources that can contribute to new member attrition.
The point is this... if we are going to take the time, and invest the resources, to enquire into our member’s health club experience we owe it to them, and ourselves, to use those findings more intelligently than to form a conclusion that simply supports the status quo… and not the available evidence.
Having done quite a bit of research on industry advertising and marketing in the process of developing our latest Business Development Report, The Lead Box is Dead… Long Live iPOS: The Humble Lead Box Concept Reinvented for the Twenty First Century, we noticed quite a bit of advice focused on rewarding behaviours through positive reinforcement (free t-shirts, free guest passes, free personal training, free water bottles, free towel, free… just about anything).
Most people without a background in psychology understand the concept of positive reinforcement pretty well. Positive reinforcement is the presentation of an appetitive (gratifying) stimulus to increase the probability of a desired behaviour. Importantly, the stimulus is presented after the desired behaviour. For example, when the new member walks into the club the front desk staff greets them warmly… reinforcing the desired behaviour i.e. coming into the club.
Pretty straight forward right?
However, when most people think of negative reinforcement they are actually thinking of punishment i.e. the presentation of an adversive stimulus, or the removal of an appetitive stimulus, that decreases the intensity or probability of a particular behaviour.
Punishment is intended to reduce the intensity or probability of a particular behaviour. For example, as part of their “No Judgement Zone” philosophy Planet Fitness both ridicules bodybuilder types/behaviours in their clubs (presentation of adversive stimulus), and limits the weight of their dumbbells (removal of an appetitive stimulus) to actively discourage more advanced health club members who are, typically, heavy users. Of course, given their business model it makes sense for Planet Fitness to actively discourage heavy users in their clubs.
Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, is the removal of a noxious or aversive stimulus to increase the probability of a desired behaviour. For example, Curves don’t have mirrors (or men) in their clubs because their members don’t like them… by removing the adversive stimulus their members are more likely to use the club.
Thom Plummer wrote an insightful Blog post recently that recommended new members be allowed to have a guest work out with them, free of charge, for the first 30 days of their membership.
While this, ostensibly, appears to be a typical positive reinforcement scenario (i.e. offering something of value to increase member’s likelihood of using the club) it is actually a negative reinforcement scenario.
By allowing beginner/new members to have a friend in the club with them it reduces/removes their anxiety, stress, apprehension, and fears of looking stupid, out of place, and being the only out of shape person (negative stimulus) and increases their likelihood of continuing to use the club (desired behaviour).
Remember that, above all else, beginners are focused on their own survival… and there is definitely safety in numbers.
By focusing on the negative you can influence your beginner’s behaviour much more than any amount of, well meaning, freebies.
It seems like obvious advice to start from the beginning and yet we rarely do. I’ll give you an example… a few years ago a friend of mine wanted to set up a health club on the bottom floor of an apartment building he had in the works. We had been working out together for a while and had both been around gyms for many years. So when he asked me about what I would recommend for the layout I enthusiastically took on the challenge.
I started with the usual ideas based on what I already knew, had seen, and had experienced.
However, over the weeks and months I realized that because I was essentially starting with a blank canvass I didn’t have to be constrained by existing practices, trends, or thinking.
To make a long story short virtually all of my original ideas based on what I already knew (what is) were eventually supplanted by newer and substantially better ideas based on what should be.
Now if that sounds a bit Zen… it’s because it is. Zen Buddhists have a word for approaching a task with an attitude of openness, eagerness, and a complete lack of preconceptions it’s Shoshin (meaning the beginner’s mind). The advantage of the beginner’s mind is that our “expertise” doesn’t get in the way and our options are vastly increased. Or as Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki puts it, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
It turned out that my friend sold his interest in the apartment complex and the health club never got built. But I did keep tinkering away with health club design and it eventually became the basis for Experiential Health Club Design: Engineering Customer Experience Management into Facility Design my soon to be released follow up to The Evolution of a Health Club Member.
Today I was excited to vacuum the floor. I usually hate to vacuum but I just bought a brand new, 2400 watt, bagless, vacuum cleaner. I am sure that it won’t take very long for me to hate vacuuming again but for today, with my shiny new vacuum cleaner, I was excited.
This is what I call New Toy Syndrome. It’s the reason we wash our new car more regularly when it’s new than when it’s older (and probably needs it more). It’s the reason the first scratch is a much bigger deal than the 10th scratch. It’s the reason we try and keep our new pair of shoes scuff free but will walk through puddles with our old ones.
New is exciting, it’s unlimited potential, it’s exhilarating… for a while anyway.
Too few businesses in our industry leverage the added excitement of New Toy Syndrome. Beginners are easy to get excited with a few cheap freebies like water bottles, gloves, T-shirts, even their name in the newsletter etc. New classes, programs, and equipment can also have the same effect. The added excitement/motivation could keep them engaged a little bit longer and get them a little bit closer to developing the exercise habit.
Many people view a visit to the health club somewhere between a tax audit and going to the dentist… a bit of new toy excitement can go a long way.
Lets face it our industry is notorious for the upsell. The whole pricing structure of term memberships is designed to extract more money from the prospective member. A one month membership is $100, a three month membership is $250, a six month membership is $450, and a twelve month membership is $600 (18,24, and 36 month memberships also represent better and better value).
An experienced/advanced health club member will purchase a longer term membership because they know that they will still be exercising in 12, 24, or 36 months. No big deal (barring death, injury, or relocation).
However, the inexperienced/beginner has a decision to make… buy the cheaper but lowest value membership just in case they don’t go the distance, opt for the six month to extract greater value, or go for the twelve month and hope for the best.
Of course it’s the salesperson’s job to assist the prospective member to see the better value/longer term commitment as the most attractive option and therefore produce the greatest revenue for the business (and the greatest commission for themselves).
It’s all about the upsell. We know it and the prospective member knows it too.
The first downside comes when, after the salesperson’s best efforts, the prospective member begins to feel pressured. The salesperson has to take care to represent themselves as having the best interest of the prospect in mind at every stage of the sales process.
The second downside comes when, after the salesperson’s best efforts, the prospective member has to think about it. “Hmmmm what to do? Maybe I should go home and think about it?” The salesperson has to take care to discuss only the best options for the prospect. Too many options are too confusing.
The final downside comes when, after the salesperson’s best efforts, the prospective member decides to take the lesser option that has been now been actively discouraged as the worst available option… buyers remorse anyone? The salesperson has to reassure the prospect that their purchase is still a very astute purchase and that they are doing the right thing even if it is the lesser commitment.
Upselling is an undeniable part of our business but you’ll be more successful if you can avoid the downside of the upsell.
We’ve got the GFC… industry consolidation… national and international franchises…hyper-competitive markets… commoditization… new business models… it’s all happening baby.
The natural tendency is to try and match complexity with complexity. A complex problem requires a complex solution… right?
Not necessarily… in fact not usually.
Have you heard the saying ‘the simplest explanation is usually the correct one’? It is the popular, although not entirely accurate, interpretation of Occam’s razor. Essentially, Occam’s razor says that, all things being equal, the hypothesis which introduces the fewest assumptions is to be preferred.
Assumptions are like links in a chain. The more links the greater the complexity. However, when one link breaks so does the entire chain. Therefore, the greater the complexity the greater the vulnerability.
Owners and managers often deal with increasingly complex issues such as member acquisition and retention, marketing, branding, staff training and retention etc by formulating, or seeking, increasingly complex strategies.
And the answer to a failed strategy is to formulate an even more complex strategy.
Many owners and managers (industry associations, consultants, and publications too) like to develop complex strategies because it makes them feel more necessary, competent, intelligent, and sophisticated.
However, you should remember what Leonardo da Vinci said… ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.’
There’s an old brain teaser that goes like this… there are only two hairdressers in a small town. One has a beautiful salon, spacious, modern décor, spotlessly clean, and the hairdresser himself is stylish, well dressed, and perfectly groomed with an impeccable haircut.
The other hairdresser has an average looking salon, kind of cramped, outdated décor, a little bit unkempt, and the hairdresser herself looks professional but far from stylish, and slightly disheveled with a so-so haircut.
Which hairdresser would you go to for a haircut?
It’s a no-brainer right… hairdresser number 1.
Wrong!
Think about it… there are only two hairdressers in town and they can’t cut their own hair so hairdresser number 1’s hair is cut by hairdresser number 2, ergo, hairdresser number 2 is responsible for hairdresser number 1’s impeccable haircut and hairdresser number 1 is responsible for hairdresser number 2’s so-so haircut.
The point is that as customers we all make inferences about the businesses we deal with based on what how they present themselves to the world… sometimes those inferences are positive and sometimes they are not… sometime they are correct and sometimes they are not.
Most businesses within the health, fitness, and wellness industry operate in a similar manner to hairdresser number 1… all style and no substance.
Of course all substance and no style is not a good strategy either because some customers (particularly unsophisticated ones) need to see the style to infer the substance. They can’t necessarily recognize the substance without the style.
Having style and substance is the only way to ensure that your customer’s inferences will be positive and correct.
‘Better the devil you know’ is a rationalization we use to maintain the status quo. Unfortunately it requires us to ignore the fact that the devil we know… is still a DEVIL.
The reason I ask is that it is hard to do the things that we don’t really care about. Let alone do them well or do them for extended periods.
A friend of mine, who is having difficulties with his girlfriend, was recently complaining to me over a few beers that she expects him to like all her friends. He went on to say that he is always polite, courteous, and engaged (or at least pretended to be) when they come around but he pretty quickly loses interest. And despite his best efforts it becomes very apparent.
I have to admit that I have been accused of behaving similarly in the past.
It sounds harsh but the reason is obvious… we just don’t care… we don’t care about their new mobile phone case… we don’t care about their latest hairstyle… we don’t care about their new promotion… we don’t care about how big their butt looks in that…
…and we can only fake it for so long. Sorry ladies. But to be fair you don’t care about our football team… our X Box… our latest high tech gadget… our….
We don’t all care about the same things… and as hard as we try we can’t fake it.
I see this is a lot in owners and managers who begin with big aspirations to be the best but, decision by decision, become very average very quickly.
A big part of the problem is that they try and be the best at everything (for everybody) only to spread themselves too thin and ultimately fall short.
Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to care about everything and everybody all the time. As businesses begin to struggle their delusions of grandeur give way to more modest aspirations… paying the bills… making payroll… getting equipment fixed… filling shifts…
The problem is what you care about (and don’t care about) shows.
Eventually, many of these businesses end up only caring about making money (i.e. themselves).
Guess what… no one wants to do business with someone who only cares about making money.
I took my own advice over Christmas… spent time with family… caught up with friends… enjoyed some terrific food… imbibed one too many alcoholic beverages… ignored my e-mail… tried to be a good son, nephew, uncle, brother and friend.
During the process of enjoying myself I discovered something (even when I am not working I am working)… my favorite relatives and friends make it easy for me to fit in. Even if I had not seen them for years (decades in some cases) within a few minutes of conversation we were right back in the grove… as if we had just talked the day before.
It’s a rare thing.
It is based on shared experiences (a feeling of having been through it together), knowing someone (and knowing that they know you), understanding where the limits are (and respecting them), appreciating them (imperfections and all) and engaging with them on a personal level (getting beyond the superficial to the meaningful stuff).
There is a lesson there for owners and managers. Research by IHRSA revealed that as few as 15% of members felt like they fit in right away. That’s a massive problem. No one wants to be somewhere they don’t fit in… and they will not stay if the cost (financial, personal, time…) of fitting in is too high.
There is a huge opportunity to stand out from the competition by helping members fit in.
There are a lot of very average businesses out there. Interestingly, if asked, the majority would describe themselves as ‘above average’… even the ones that are failing.
The reason people overestimate their positive qualities (and underestimate their negative qualities) relative to others is a cognitive bias known as the above average effect.
Of course the problem with the kind of illusory superiority we get as a result of the above average effect is that it promotes complacency, apathy, and inertia… and complacency, apathy, and inertia is a recipe for disaster.
Don’t let the above average effect adversely affect your business!
Compassion fatigue is the gradual lessening of compassion over time… usually due to prolonged exposure to a particular situation or circumstance. Compassion fatigue is most commonly associated with traumatic events (natural disasters, conflict zones, third world tragedies, professions where death occurs routinely…). As people are exposed to these traumatic events their reactions to them lessen over time.
Compassion fatigue occurs in your business too.
Frontline staff are exposed to the same (often ridiculous) questions, members forget the basics and have to be re-shown techniques, members complain about almost everything, members often bicker amongst each other…
It can be extremely difficult for staff to deal with these issues compassionately and empathetically over and over day in day out.
Owners and managers are themselves not immune to compassion fatigue either especially in dealing with their staff. Of course staff who are not treated with compassion, understanding and empathy find it very difficult to treat customers with compassion, understanding and empathy which only exacerbates the situation.
To prevent compassion fatigue owners and managers need to take a broad view of their businesses and not simply counsel staff to improve their customer service. For example:
Better signage may reduce questions at the front desk
Better marketing materials can make comprehension easier for members and prospective members and reduce questions
Staff time spent away from members during shifts can help them decompress
Exercise technique reminders (on program cards or posted throughout the club) may reduce inquiries directed at instructors
Prominently displayed (and rigorously enforced) codes of conduct can reduce confusion and unacceptable behaviour
Reorganizing/redesigning the health club layout can ensure better access and supervision of members
The Halo Effect is the psychological tendency (a cognitive bias) for us to make globally positive judgments on the basis of an initial perception of a positive trait. That sounds complicated but it simply means that when we initially assess someone, or something, if we perceive it to have one positive characteristic we will be predisposed to believe it has additional positive characteristics.
For example, when I started working in a local not-for-profit (whose staff were mostly inexperienced and minimally qualified) I overheard one of the lady members, who was probably in her mid fifties, talking to her friend say with some excitement ‘He looks like he knows what he is doing… I am going to get him to do my programs from now on.’ She didn’t know that I was much better qualified and had much more experience then my colleagues… she was basing her assessment solely on the fact that I had a build that was more representative of what she believed someone in a health club should have.
What does this mean for your business?
It means that you need to make a positive first impression with everything you do. Here are a few examples of how to make the Halo Effect work for you:
Prominently display all staff qualifications and achievements (especially those that exceed industry standards)
Prominently display all positive press/media reviews
Prominently display industry awards, community awards, business awards, testimonials
Prominently display member achievements (selection into representative sporting teams, placings in bodybuilding/fitness competitions, weight losses…)
Hire staff that are representative of your preferred markets (and put them on shifts when your preferred markets are in the facility)
Keep your facility clean and uncluttered
Train front desk staff to be friendly, enthusiastic, knowledgeable (about your business products and services and health, fitness and wellness) and helpful
Sociologically, there is a strong emphasis on learning in its various forms (formal education, training, personal development, through story telling…). Not everyone needs to be a rocket scientist but everyone does need to know enough to perform to a basic minimum standard (at the very least) and that usually requires learning in some capacity.
It is difficult to make a case that learning is bad.
Of course it all depends on what you are learning… learning hatred, greed or intolerance is never good. Unless you need to learn those things to survive.
So if learning is good why is unlearning necessary?
In the martial arts there is a saying that goes something like… ‘it is better to spend 10 years searching for the right master than training under the wrong one’.
The reason is that once we have learned something (or think we know something) it is difficult to behave other than in accordance with that knowledge. Once we have learned something we often rely on that knowledge even after it ceases to be relevant… sometimes long after it ceases to be relevant.
The issue is not just one of needing to learn more (because of various cognitive biases such as confirmation bias where we selectively seek out information that accords with what we already know) it is a question of jettisoning some of our cardinal beliefs… even ones that have led to great success in the past.
It is not an easy thing to do but…
Henry Ford did it to great success when he saw past the horse and carriage to the automobile. The next big winner will be the one who is able to supplant the internal combustion engine.
Curves did it to create the world’s largest fitness franchise surpassing the traditional ‘bigger is better’ thinking that was, and to a large extent still is, the conventional wisdom of the day.
