Clean Up the Prospect’s Hassles

Massage professional Tobi Lessem, who does business in Northern California, comes to the client’s home with her equipment. This eliminates the hassle for the client of driving to the appointment and worse, needing to navigate through traffic to get back after the massage’s therapeutic relaxation.
     But Ms. Lessem’s service delivery method sometimes causes another hassle: Potential clients are ashamed to have a professional come into a messy home, and it would take an effort to clean up. The result? The prospect keeps putting off making the appointment.
     Ms. Lessem’s remedy? A package deal in which she’ll clean your place and then give you a professional massage. “You can feel the weight coming off their shoulders literally and figuratively,” she reports.
     Home improvement retailer B&Q in Sutton-in-Ashfield encountered a similar impediment to profitability and used a similar remedy: Research by the Behavioural Insights Team, UK Cabinet Office, had found that when prospects for installation of attic insulation thought about the need to clear out the loft in preparation, this thinking often was enough to give pause. Cleaning up was overwhelming, and so a cause for eternal delay. People weren’t taking the energy-saving route even though it would save them money and was subsidized by a UK government grant.
     So B&Q cleans up the hassle as part of the subsidized service. Their staff clear out the home owner’s belongings, give the owner the opportunity to decide what items to donate to a local charity or to discard to the trash bin, install the loft insulation, and then put back the remaining belongings. According to The Economist, the additional service resulted in a threefold increase in use of the installation program.
     Were prospects for Ms. Lessem’s massage services and the B&Q installation services aware from the start of the real reasons they were putting off the purchase? Until the offer was made explicitly, many probably didn’t make a clear connection. They were unlikely to say to the retailer, “Listen, if you throw in a cleanup service, you’ve got my business.” It took the retailer’s behavioral insight to achieve this profitability edge.
     Regularly think through what hassles may be getting in the way of more people using your services and purchasing your products. When you deliver to the customer’s home or business, the hassle could be cleaning a messy place. When the shoppers come to you, it could be a messy parking situation.

For your profitability: Sell Well: What Really Moves Your Shoppers

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