too.
Amazon.com, for example, offers a very high-quality experience, but I’ll make a small bet with you that you’ve nev- er ever spoken to an Amazon employee. People interact with Amazon through its website, through its logistics, and through the packaging. All of these things cre- ate an “experience” with Amazon—it isn’t about dealing with a person.
JF: In your book, See, Feel, Think, Do—The Power of Instinct in Business, you claim that “short-term thinking, analysts, and research have replaced vision, leadership, and pas- sion in many large businesses to- day.” Given that such a large part of the economy is now data-driven and knowledge-based, how do you achieve a balance between those two extremes?
SS: Look at the ways that organizations reduce their costs. One way is to be data- driven and steadily increase the efficiency of your processes and products, making you less reliant on that expensive com- ponent called people. On many low-cost airlines, you frequently don’t receive food or beverages on board, which reduces the amount of cleaning required, which, in turn, reduces the amount of labour. As a result, those companies operate at a much lower staff-to-customer ratio, which reduces overhead. However, if you lower costs in those
sorts of ways, you need to increase the quality of the interaction when some- body does, in fact, deal with one of your employees. And that’s where the passion comes in. When customers interact with people, you have to make sure it’s done very well indeed because, otherwise, you just look cheap. When you take away ser- vice completely, without compensating, it can lead to a low level of affection for the brand… All of which is to say that you can be
a budget operator in the fitness industry, but, to do so, you need great processes.
JF: Tell us a little bit more.
SS: You can also take a much more in- tuitive, passionate, and aspirational ap- proach to building a brand—one in which decisions are made because they’re con- sistent with your vision for the brand, not because they cost less, or because customer research dictates a particular course of action. Apple is a very good ex- ample of this. Steve Jobs oſten made de- cisions that flew in the face of customer
research and short-term profit because it simply “was the right thing for the brand.” In a recession, the market becomes
polarized. Low-cost operators do very well, and so too do the high-quality brands. In the fitness industry, my bet is that the budget operators will thrive be- cause of the low price, and that the very best operators will also thrive because they’ll be offering a great experience for their customers. The dangerous place to be is in the middle.
JF: In your book Bold: How to Be
Brave in Business and Win, you say, “Now more than ever before, busi- nesses need to be bold: to defy con- ventional wisdom, to walk against the crowd, to try out new ways of do- ing things in the full glare of social media.” How do you use social media boldly, without being reckless?
SS: Many organizations make the mistake of not having a social-media strategy. »
Tel: 905-266-0106, E-mail:
info@idealfit.ca Web-site:
www.idealfit.ca September/October 2012 Fitness Business Canada 13
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