If you missed the webinar, here’s the section where I talked about this:

Well…that night I bought a new set of shelves for my closet from Container Store, and had an experience that perfectly demonstrated the point I made in the webinar.

First, some background:

Container Store offers nothing but home organization items. It’s a curated collection. You won’t find generic Rubbermaid storage bins here, or ordinary trashcans. In fact, you won’t find anything here that you can get at Walmart or Home Depot. Everything’s been chosen because it’s exceptionally useful, looks great, solves a particular organizing problem better than it’s ever been solved before.

And they specialize in solving problems – it’s very consultative. They’re not about selling you a plastic storage box or a wooden display frame. They’re about helping you store your shoes so they’re easy to see and grab without taking up a lot of space…or display your treasured collections of “stuff” in the best possible way. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one.

The customer experience is fabulous. Best I’ve ever had in any type of business. They hire smart, interested people who really understand the problems their customers have. They’re friendly, super-knowledgeable, and just plain NICE. There’s a reason Container Store is perpetually on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies To Work For.

So, on with the story:

I went in about 20 minutes before they closed on a weeknight. Felt guilty, but that was when I had time to do it.

Despite it’s being nearly closing time, they instantly produced an expert in the Elfa shelves I wanted. He figured out exactly what I needed, and took time to compare war stories with me about his remodeling project. Was he in a hurry to get out of there? Nope, he clearly loved what he was doing, loved hearing about our bedroom/bathroom/closet remodeling project and sharing his experiences – loved making people’s lives better by helping them rein in their stuff.

They custom-cut one of the items I bought (even though by now it was in fact past closing time), packed everything up, walked me out and put it in my car,  and I headed home at about 9:15 p.m.

The next day I got everything out of the car (prior experience has taught me not to start this kind of project at 10 p.m.!) and here’s what I had:

And here’s what’s inside the little zipper bag:

Key points:

1) Everything is branded and “presented”

The box of shelves. The tote bag they put the various hardware accessories in. The little zipper bag that held small hardware components.

Even the paper envelope that held the instructions (absolutely crystal-clear and idiot-proof, naturally) AND my receipt AND a diagram of my specific shelf layout!

In fact, if you look on the front of the tote bag, you’ll notice that the paper envelope fits in a special slot designed just for that purpose.

The entire thing is a presentation! They’re merchandising their products the way the best retailers do.

How can you apply this to your business? Think about gift certificates. Do you just hand a piece of paper or a plastic gift card to the purchaser? Or do you PRESENT the gift certificate or gift card, in packaging that reinforces everything your wellness business stands for?

2)  Excess packaging? Actually, no.

You might think the two bags are overkill. They’re like that tough recycled fiber that reusable grocery bags are made of.

These bags are TOUGH. I didn’t toss them – I kept them. The zipper one is a great travel size. I’m now using the tote bag for heavier groceries.

Think about the free advertising they get as I wander around the grocery store with that bag. I have actually already had one person say “Oh, is Elfa as great as it sounds?” and the other one said “Oh, I love Elfa, isn’t it wonderful?”.  Now THAT is social media, folks!

And every time I pull out my zipper bag on the road, I’ll have happy thoughts about Container Store and our tidy closet.

3) Continuous improvement

Just one quick example: I first bought Elfa shelves a few years ago, for my home office. So I could easily see improvements in the installation process this time.

For example, now the shelves come with a strip of cardboard cut to size that makes it super-easy to position components at the right points, without having to get out a tape measure. It’s a tiny change with a big impact.

4) Always time for customers

At my favorite local grocery store (Central Market, if you’re from around here), they start putting away the fresh fish 90 minutes before they close! WTF?

At my gym, no one’s around but a front-desk clerk after 8 p.m. Or on weekends or Friday night. During low-traffic periods, they don’t even have someone there who can sell you a membership!

At Home Depot, good luck finding someone who can cut something to size twenty minutes before they close.

At Container Store – no problem. The service is just as good right before closing on a slow weeknight as it is the rest of the time.

5) Problems and solutions, not products

They get the shoe problem. Different shoes for different seasons. Some have heels, some don’t. What about tall shoes, like boots? Tough to find enough space. Some folks want shoe racks that add to their decor, whether edgy or traditional – some just want function at a low price. And no one wants rickety racks. Etc.

So they help you think through all those different considerations – and only then do they recommend product. Some of which is cheap, some of which is expensive. They don’t push you to buy the pricy stuff, either. They just recommend what fits your situation, based on discussion with you.

5) All because of people 

And the real reason all this goodness happens isn’t corporate policy. It’s not because someone made up a rule that said “We will continuously improve our Elfa shelving every 18 months.”

It’s because Container Store’s true competitive advantage is really how it picks people to work there – from the folks in the stores to the people in product development. They’re incredibly good at picking smart people who understand the challenges of organizing your stuff. Paying attention and caring about making customers’ lives better by helping them solve this set of problems is in their DNA.

See what I mean? Total obsession with detail. Everything from packaging to instructions to who you hire…and on and on and on. It adds up to a great customer experience that absolutely no one else can match.

Consider: how obsessed with detail is your wellness business?

1) Are your services and programs fully branded?

For example, look at the welcome kit you provide new clients. Do you even have one? Are you just handing them a bunch of loosely-stacked printouts? Or heaven forbid, faded photocopies? Is it all generic stuff from Office Depot, or branded with your corporate identity – logos, colors, taglines?

2) Are you presenting your services, or just providing them?

For example, lots of wellness businesses offer gift certificates and gift cards. But all they do is hand a piece of paper or the plastic card to the purchaser. Where’s the presentation? Put them in a gift box, in tissue, wrapped, with a bow. Include key marketing themes like taglines or inspirational messages on the box and on the presentation card. Use your corporate identity themes.

3) How do you present client-specific information?

Think about exercise routines, healthy lifestyle plans, nutritional guides – anything you personalize for clients. Think about the excitement of sliding into a new car for the first time. That’s the reaction you want!

4) Do you start with what you want – or with what the customer wants?

Are you focused on selling your highest-priced or most-profitable services and programs regardless of the customer’s specific situation? Or is your focus on finding the best answer for each client, individually?

Is the right answer for every single customer who walks through the door a monthly membership? A ten-visit card? A sixteen-week program?

Really? Every single one of them, without exception? Because that would be pretty amazing.

Or are you really forcing them to fit into what you want them do?

In this complimentary executive briefing webinar, Leslie Nolen, The Radial Group’s president, will explore the eight decisive health trends transforming the race among health and wellness businesses and practitioners for customers, clients and members as they face an increasingly complex business climate.

Nolen is the author of The Health and Wellness Insider’s Guide to Durable Trends, Fleeting Fads & Innovative Ideas. She is a noted authority on health and wellness trends and an expert on the business of wellness who also serves as a source for national media including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.

Readers and reviewers describe The Health and Wellness Insider’s Guide as a “profoundly accurate crystal ball.” It is the definitive roadmap to the most promising opportunities and the most serious challenges in every important health and wellness sector: fitness, nutrition and weight loss trends, conventional, complementary and alternative healthcare trends, diabetes and obesity trends, and longevity and aging trends.

Is your marketing team doing the right stuff at the right time?

And are you really listening to your customers, clients and members?

Assess your wellness marketing practices with this checklist:

Wellness Marketing Best Practices Self-Assessment

Your Score

How many “true” answers did you have? Here’s how to interpret your score:

0 – 7 “true” answers

• Nonexistent or extremely haphazard marketing sinks health and wellness businesses.
• Marketing is all about awareness and generating interest and demand. It feeds sales. Without marketing, sales don’t happen.
• It’s not enough to be passionate about your subject-matter. You need paying customers – and if they don’t even know your business exists, it won’t for long.

8 – 12 “true” answers

• Your wellness marketing activities seem headed in the right direction, even though you probably feel that results often fall short.
• To take it up a notch: focus on more consistent implementation, closer attention to clients, and an emphasis on actually finishing what you start. Remember: 100 projects, each 50% done, isn’t the same as 50 projects, each 100% done.
• Your team probably needs to add some missing marketing skills or new bigger-picture perspectives, too.

13 – 16 “true” answers

• A strong performance that can easily move to the next level.
• Where did your “false” answers tend to cluster? Make those your wellness marketing priorities for the next 6 – 12 months.
• (But don’t get distracted and drop the ball on what you’re already doing well.)

17 – 20 “true” answers

• You’ve assembled a team of marketing geniuses. Stay out of their way and let ‘em go to work!

What best practices did I miss? Feel free to add them in Comments (your email stays private).

The Contest

You’ve seen those Dos Equis ads featuring “The Most Interesting Man In The World”, right?

(tv version or radio version)

But I bet you never heard of…(((drum roll)))….

“The Most Interesting
Health & Wellness Professional
In The World”

The Rules

• Pick a health and wellness profession or activity
• Invent a Dos-Equis style explanation of just how incredibly amazing it is – examples below in the Comments section.
• Post your entries – one or lots – in the Comments section.  Your email stays private.
• Deadline: Fri., December 12, 2011

The Prizes

Of course – we’ve got prizes!  We’ll publish the entire list of entries mid-December in the newsletter, and:

We’ll award one prize for “funniest/most creative entry” and another prize for a randomly-drawn entry.

Prizes courtesy of Z Altug and TF Publishing (anyone can win the contest, but prizes ship to continental US residents only due to ridiculously expensive shipping rates):

Prize #1: A Healthy Lifestyles 2012 spiral-bound engagement calendar – monthly fitness logs, monthly tips, monthly and daily calendars. Nice heavyweight glossy cover.

Prize #2: A Healthy Lifestyles 2012 wall calendar, one page permonth + monthly fitness & health tips, quotes, daily activity logs and personal fitness stats.

(links via our Amazon Associates partnership)

Have fun!

I’ll be sharing my perspective on emerging health and wellness trends in our next free webinar on Thurs., Jan. 19 (register here – limited space).

Meanwhile, I want to get you thinking about some of what’s happening around your business, rather than IN your business.

Myopia is the biggest threat to your wellness business: so much focus on today’s hot buttons that you can’t spare even a thought for what’s coming next.

Have you taken a close look recently at what’s really going on with health and wellness consumers?

Things are changing – and it means both opportunity and risk for many wellness businesses.

Why? Gazillions are spent every year on health and wellness. As times get even tougher over in Healthcare Land, many bigger, better-funded and often better-known healthcare businesses find the less regulated, much more dynamic wellness sector an appealing way to improve shareholder returns.  Think “600-pound gorilla.”

Click the image to download the PDF:

1) Simple Share tool.

Love this. You integrate Constant Contact with your Facebook and  Twitter accounts. Then you can quickly customize what you post to each one.  And a link to your CC email’s automatically included in whatever you post.

I especially like being able to specify a thumbnail image when I post to social networks.

Look for this tool when you schedule your emails. (And on the FB post, be sure you replace the extremely lame boilerplate wording “Check out my latest campaign by Constant Contact” with your own text.)

2) Amazon Associates integration. 

If you recommend products and have an Amazon Associates account (they’re free), this lets you successfully use your Amazon Associates affiliate links in your CC emails.

You add this under My Settings/Email Features.

3) Event marketing module – much improved.

CC’s event marketing used to be a dud, frankly. Now, you can post events directly to your FB page, and the Simple Share tool I mentioned above lets you get the word out on LI and T fast, too.

Very helpful for non-profits – there’s a “decline and donate” feature for folks who support your cause, but can’t make the actual event.

You can charge for your event – say it’s a lunch-n-learn, for example – via either Google Checkout or Paypal.

Nice for smaller businesses who don’t want to dig into more complicated e-commerce platforms.

Here’s our partner page if you want to try out CC’s 60-day free offer or 30-day-moneyback guarantee.

In-N-Out, the famous hamburger chain headquartered in California, has figured this out.

They slip in the year that they were born – by making a much more remarkable point: “We’ve cooked our fries in cholesterol-free oil since 1948.”

Here’s how you can use this technique in  your wellness business:

• 5,000,000 miles run since we started in 1990
• 5,000 lives changed since founding ABC Wellness in 2005
• 125,000 pounds lost since our first client in 2007

And  so on.

The year you founded the business – no one much cares.

Make the connection to the way you’ve made lives better – and you’ve got their attention.

Bonus tip

Notice the references to “fresh Kennebec potatoes.”

Have you ever even heard of Kennebec potatoes? Nope, me either.

But I’m pretty sure that peeling and dicing fresh potatoes daily is a good thing – and “Kennebec” sounds more distinguished and special. Clearly it’s not just any old white potato, but a potato variety with A Name. It sounds fancier, like we ‘should’ have recognized the name.

Ask yourself this: What sounds better: white potatoes…or Russet Burbank, Shepody and Pentland Dell potatoes? ***

The lesson

It’s a good idea to sprinkle in arcane, carefully selected details about your business.

They make it real for customers and set you apart from competitors. Too often wellness businesses rely on fluffy ‘persuasive’ copy – “We offer caring compassionate world-class cutting-edge blah blah blah….” – that just makes your business sound like everyone else.

***Would you have guessed these are what McDonald’s uses for fries? They’re all just russets – but a branded potato sounds considerably higher-quality, no?

1) Which Comes First – Cardio or Weights? Fitness Myths, Training Truths, and Other Surprising Discoveries from the Science of Exercise

• As you can tell from this week’s article, I like facts. Evidence. Data.
• And I especially like this book because Hutchinson actually gives evidence-based answers to LOTS of the questions that your clients and members constantly wonder about.
• Like whether an elliptical is really as good as running.  Or HIIT – the real deal, or overhyped? Probiotics – really? And so on.
• It’s a Q&A format, and he usually gives two “levels” of answers for each question – one for the “regular” person and then information tailored for serious fitness nuts, whether amateur or professional.

2) The Science of Yoga: Myths and Rewards

• Won’t be out officially for a couple months, but saw a preview.
• An interesting mix of yoga history and research, myth busting and some really well-thought-out observations about yoga’s future.
• (And you’ll definitely be hearing more about his data regarding yoga and weight loss/maintenance/gain, although it’s gonna ruffle some feathers.)

3) The Red Market: On the Trail of the World’s Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers

• If you think it’s OK to let the free market regulate the sale of body parts, skip this book – it’ll just make you mad.
• Lots of graphic and upsetting stories here (a whole village that sells all of its kidneys, never gets the money or promised follow-up care).
• The bigger picture here is that this is a growing problem area. Thanks (?) to modern science and medicine, there’s ever more demand for human tissue – whether it’s for organ transplants or surrogate pregnancies.
• And although I didn’t see it mentioned in the book, Big Pharma’s recent use of “Third World” lesser-developed countries as drug study testbeds is part of the same “rent-a-body” phenomenon.

4) 50 Secrets of the World’s Longest Living People

• Based on her personal assessment of “what works” in a whole list of communities known to have very old residents.
• What’s interesting is how consistent her conclusions are, across wildly different cultures. Is her bias showing, or are we really so similar?
• I’m probably leaning a bit towards the first explanation, especially since most of her conclusions have to do with behaviors and lifestyles – she’s got very little to say about genetics or external environmental factors.

5) Overdiagnosed (much better than Worried Sick)

• Especially timely for October, when pink is all around us and the USPSTF just debunked the value of the PSA test for most men.
• Warning: if you believe that prevention = early detection, prepare to have your world rocked.
• Overdiagnosis is a topic that’s always top of mind for me, because my mom is in her eighties and we’re trying hard to let her enjoy the rest of her days without medicalizing every hiccup…and because my husband has Type 1 diabetes, so we’re constantly trying to strike a balance between catching complications early and seeing problems where they don’t actually exist.

Our book links include our Amazon affiliate code, so if you want to buy one of these books, you’ll be contributing a few cents towards the upkeep of our weekly newsletter and mixers.

(My team dressed as cockroaches, a giant can of Raid and the Orkin pest guy.  We had a bit of a bug problem in our office. )

To this day, I still remember how much fun we had – and when I run into folks that were part of our silliness, we still laugh about it.

Good marketing is memorable – and Halloween is a wonderful opportunity to combine fun and business.

Here’s how Chipotle’s “Boo-rito” promotion does it:

In a nutshell, customers who:

1. wear an appropriate costume – something related to family farms, since Chipotle is pushing its locally sourced ingredients message
2. get a super-special deal – a cheap burrito
3. and Chipotle donates the profits to a relevant charity – FarmAid and Chipotle’s pro-farming foundation

Your healthy lifestyles business could do something similar.

Clients or members:

1. Dress like something related to say, fitness or nutrition or healthy living
2. get a super-special deal – an extra month’s membership extension for only $10 or 50% off any combination of a sports drink and energy bar
3. and you make a donation to a relevant charity.

And all you need to do is put together the flyer (or we can do it for you).

It’s fun, memorable, attention-getting – and the odds are good that everyone’ll be talking about the strange sights they saw when they get home that night!

You be the judge. Click each image to zoom:

Meanwhile, only a few miles away (click to see the store names more clearly):