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Loves Me, Loves Me Not

On Friday, I posted a little proposition. Five brave Affiliates have taken me up on the challenge: find out what your CrossFit Family really things about your coaching, and your Box. Thanks, guys. We'll be in touch shortly with a list of things we need to help you.

Starting next week, we'll be calling members of their gyms and asking the pertinent questions. We'll post the most glaring insights (anonymously, of course; we won't mention the Affiliate OR the responder.) Then we'll invite questions or comments from the mass readership here.

Thanks to those brave enough to face their true reflection. It may be humbling, but you'll gain true insight into potential weakness - and strength.

DropBox - The Drug Dealer's Secret

She had a Mac; I had a PC. She needed video; I had a slow connection. And somehow, we met in the middle....

....well, not somehow. DropBox. I was reintroduced on the weekend, and it's addictive. File storage. Addictive file storage. The mind boggles.

On the weekend, I signed up for DropBox to deliver video of our CrossFit Open Master's competitor, Ted Fryia, to the Canada East Media Director. Thinking about it on the weekend, I knew it would work well for collaboration on the Ignite! textbook. I edit a file, drag it into the DropBox folder on my desktop, and everyone else gets a little icon on their Programs bar. It's automatically updated to include the edits on everyone's sytem. Cloud computing at its best.

And so, I sent an invite to Tyler, the Director of Education for the Ignite! project.

Pop! Up came a little icon - "you've got 250MB more storage!" Sweet.

Now, I won't pretend to understand volume retail. When I'm standing in line for coffee, I'm calculating wage costs against the price of a cup, and the ends don't seem to meet. Giving a service away for free, then, doesn't appear to be very profitable.

Then, pop! Tyler signed up, and my wife, and I got another 250MB of storage. Sweet. Mango, mango, mango. They also got the little icon, like a food pellet in the cage of a hungry hamster. I started thinking about who ELSE I could sign up....

This is the drug dealer's secret: give a little. Find some GFPs, and hand out a little dust. Let them give a bit, and receive the thanks from their friends. Let them feel good - temporarily - about recommending you. Instant, addictive mango.

We sell CrossFit groups in two different ways: the monthly unlimited for $135; or a punch card. Punch cards come in batches of 4, 8, or 16. Rarely does anyone do the '1-month unlimited,' even though it brings the price of attendance down to HALF the rate of the 16-punch card. We advertise the 'unlimited' rate because we needed a size larger than the 16-punch, which is purchased by 99 out of 100 CrossFitters.

What if, though, at 3:41pm today, when you were fighting the late-afternoon blahs, you got a ping? How about a little 'pop' in your inbox? "Congratulations!" it would read, "You've got 4 free CrossFit sessions! Thanks for referring Angie!"

"Why," you'd think, "if I just keep referring people, I can go for free.....forever!"

Of course, you can't. But you can go, for free, for a LONG time. Just invite some others. Instant mango. Press the lever, and the food pellet appears. I'm proof that it works. After all, you're tracking your referrals anyway....right?

Being Big Brother

Part of the overwhelming charm of Constant Contact: you know who's picking up what you're putting down.

A decade ago, I endured a long weekend of 'sales training' with a firm called Frank Foster and Associates.  Frank's idea: the only 'bad' potential customer is the 'maybe.'  A customer who says "yes!" is great, it goes without saying.  A customer who says, "no, thanks" is your friend - because you can move on to the next potential member with your great idea immediately.  But a customer who says, "hey, maybe!" requires a lot of your time and energy to try to turn them into "yes,"  and you'll usually fail.  They're just being polite.

Frank was talking about cold calling (I didn't really like Frank.)  I'm talking about your monthly newsletter.  (If you're not putting out a monthly newsletter, go do that now, and then come back.)

For our first three years, we sent our newsletter to a growing list of recipients without ever removing more than ten people. Though they may have been tired of listening to us, the uninterested audience would prefer to just hit either 'delete' or 'spam' than reply and thus, offend us.  Our first email list was drawn directly from a local Chamber of Commerce website, and chances were good that recipients would eventually meet us.  So they'd trash the newsletter, and we'd never know.  This is not good.

If a client wants to remove themselves from your newsletter list, that's fine.  They should have that choice, so you're not irritating them (they'll find their way back eventually.  Don't worry.)

IF, though.....

Mary receives the email.  She's not interested, but she knows that Sherri will like the sound of OnRamp.  She forwards the email to Sherri, who clicks from the newsletter to our site.  After reading about OnRamp, she clicks the tab for the next Running Group.  Maybe she signs up right away - after all, it's easy, because you're using MindBodyOnline now, right? - or maybe she'd rather call first, just to have her intuition stroked a bit. 

....and you see it all.  With Constant Contact, you know where Sherri got the newsletter.  You know which offering interested her.  You could, potentially, be ready for her when she calls.

Typepad is similar.  Twice per day, I let myself check our hits.  Hits aren't everything, but if there's a major spike, it's nice to know why.  In the new marketplace of paying attention, don't you want to know who's reading the menu?

If I wasn't checking, I would never have known that CrossFitNYC has linked to us several times.  I wouldn't know which type of essays our audience prefers to read and share among their friends.  I wouldn't know who is visiting our site from a friend's facebook page. But I know, because I check.

Call me paranoid, or obsessive-compulsive, but if I'm going to perform, I'd like to turn on the house lights once in awhile to make sure the audience is still there. 

Everybody Loves The Mailman

Before I was old enough to go to school, I spent days with my grandparents.  Every day after breakfast, they'd pack my little sister and me into the "very back" of an old station wagon, and drive to the post office.  The car smelled like rubber bands and Juicy Fruit.  My grandparents delivered the mail along RR#1 in our part of the world.

I don't remember how we spent our time while the mail was sorted, but soon enough we'd be out on the highway, driving slowly, stopping at every driveway.  Grandpa would chew Juicy Fruit and whistle for the entire trip.  Several times along the route, he'd be greeted by country folk, waiting by their mailbox and smiling.  Sometimes they'd give him things, like bread or apples.  Not a tip, just a "hey, I have these!  Want some?"  As if he'd written the letters himself, and they were thanking him.

As much as everyone hates the dentist, everyone loves the messenger with good news.  If you were the one delivering the news - or giving people access to each other in a different way...... what would you expect to happen?

When we considered putting an interactive component into our tracking software, we already knew that Trainer-client interaction was important.  Given our fondness (and our client's fondness) for facebook, it seemed obvious to keep an interactive component to foster groupthink.  It works terrifically well.