Blog 181: Cognitive Dissonance Health Club Marketing

According to www.businessdictionary.com, cognitive dissonance is a state of psychological tension arising from incompatibility among a person’s attitudes, behavior, beliefs, and/or knowledge, or when a choice has to be made between equally attractive or repulsive alternatives.

One example is ‘buyer’s remorse,’ a feeling of guilt associated with doubts about the advisability of a purchase decision that one experiences after making an expensive purchase. Marketers try to manage these doubts with supportive information such as testimonials, money-back guaranties, and after-sales service.

Buyer’s remorse is a serious issue that must be prevented at all costs. Avoiding prospective members from having buyer’s remorse or at least doing your best to prevent them from having buyer’s remorse is a technique that can be learned through professional health club membership sales.

Members join health clubs because they love health and fitness and the amenities are the icing on the cake. The psychological and emotional feelings they have associated to your health club are the reasons that motivate them to join and commit their loyalty to your health club.

But members must be able to justify their emotional purchases with logical reasons. In the definition above, they mentioned in some cases, there is a money back guarantee put in place to avoid buyer’s remorse.

All states have a “three-day buyer’s remorse clause” for most of their agreement. But if you are closing your membership based on that, you are using what health club professional sales people term as a “chicken close”.

A chicken close is when you tell a prospective member to get started today because he/she has three days to think about it and he/she can cancel the agreement any time in those three days.

By doing this, you have not sold the prospective member on committing their loyalty to your club. By using a “three-day buyer’s remorse” close in your presentation, you are basically using a chicken close just to get to the paperwork.

Professional health club membership sales take place when the health club membership director has transferred his or her enthusiasm about the health club to the prospective member and gets him/her enthusiastic about being a member of their health club.

You must get the prospective member emotionally involved with the health club and satisfy their six basic emotional needs. After you engage the prospective member emotionally and you get them 100% committed to joining your health club, you will then give the logical reasons for why they should join the club. By doing so, when they go home to speak with their spouse or their family, they have the logical reasons to justify why they joined your health club today.

For more free tips on increasing your health club membership base through health club marketing, health club promotions, professional health club membership sales, and advancing your health and fitness career visit us today @ www.healthclubmarketingmmc.com or call 904-448-5727.