A man with a frying pan is trying to negotiate a complicated Italian pasta dish.
He badly misses the help he used to get with his culinary “creations.”
That former helper is now sitting at the kitchen table, arms folded, glaring at him.
She would love to phone a friend.
She has been banned from using her phone.
The man will be making his own supper tonight.
The man’s name is Mr Jones. First names are not important. Not when you’re sweating over a lasagne that is clearly missing something vital.
Whither those missing ingredients?
This is the story of the missing lasagne ingredients.
The Last Deal: Dark Influence and the Mrs Jones Inside Your Head
Poor old Mrs Jones stands with a dazed expression on her face.
That blank, uncomprehending look you’d expect on the blood-spattered survivor of a plane crash. I’ve never actually seen one, which is a tad unsettling, given the level of confidence I showed by lobbing that in.
“Thank you,” says Mrs Jones politely, and walks straight into the glass sliding door.
A door which is still currently completing the rat trap into which she has stumbled.
Her nose smears against the glass like a fleshy bug. She is wondering distantly about the phone call that got her in here. Something about some prize. It made so much sense at the time.
She cannot remember whether she has been given a prize at all. Poor old Mrs Jones has no real sensory acuity or memories about anything right now.
Mrs Jones, like 92% of gym members, will never return to the gym.
Her main concern is what has happened to her nose?
Why is the door closed?
“ a ggumabagggha” she says as her septum deviates into a crumple zone.
“Excuse me” Derek the salesperson says “Is say is that with two O’s before the “bagggha”?. He is still trying to finish up the “agreement” which details, amongst other things, how much Mr Jones has actually paid for her “prize”.
He had not seen the continued commotion at the door involving the now snotty face of Mrs Jones leaving a mess on the door.
“Oh dear!” Derek says, You’re trying to egress before taking your copy of the contract that you may or may not believe that you have just signed. “We can’t have that Mrs Jones, now can we? Tut Tut!”
And we certainly couldn’t.
Derek hands the contract to Mrs Jones (although nobody has asked why she needs a contact when she just came to pick up a free gift. Wonders never cease).
He unclips the child-proof lock holding the door closed from the safety of his desk.
Mrs Jones, like 92% of gym members, will never return to the gym.
Gym Fever and the Art of the Hux
The fitness industry did not arrive with a whimper.
It arrived with a Bang. It kicked the door in. Shot the lights out.
Especially for poor old Mrs Jones.
Almost overnight, the money model flipped from quiet, month-to-month dumbbell-slinging bodybuilders to lifetime memberships that looked suspiciously like golf club contracts:
exclusive status, restricted usage, and “founder” memberships that sounded historic but mostly funded someone’s new car.
The money lenders had arrived.
Gyms now had glass offices and credit card machines.
Gyms were making money.
Gym sales reps were driving Porsches and talking about “targets” instead of triceps.
Why, you may patiently scream, would a gym need a salesperson to sell something people already walk in and ask for?
Good question.
This is not fitness.
This is the Art of the Hux.
What they want is a simple month-to-month membership at a fair price.
What the gym is offering is a lifetime membership, thoughtfully calibrated to whatever obscene amount your extended credit card facility can tolerate without bursting into flames.
It is the early 1990s, and Derek is one of those salespeople, working for a national gym group in South Africa.
This is not fitness.
This is the Art of the Hux.
Do You Feel Sorry for Mrs Jones?
Mrs Jones is unaware of the techniques that have been used on her. Its not the first time they have been used on her. Mrs Jones, like so many of us, has made foolish purchases and decisions before.
She hadn’t been aware of the tricks that have been used on her. But, so what if she had? Would that have made a difference?
Would she have walked away?
Would she have come into this dangerous office in the first place?
You may be surprised at the answers. Perhaps you should not let Mrs Jones off the hook too readily.
“It’s almost too good to be true,” she told her friend Mrs Smith as she left the house.
“I am not stupid, you know. I’m just going to take a look and see what it’s all about. Don’t worry, I won’t buy anything. I am just popping in to get my free gift.”
Indeed you are Mrs Jones! Don't worry, no strings attached.
“It’s almost too good to be true,”
So she does what all good humans do when faced with an exciting offer, free gifts, and a voice in her head screaming “don’t do it”.
She ignores the voice, steps over the red flags, smiles politely at the nice young man with the contract book…
and signs the contract anyway.
In that brief, shimmering moment of insanity, all critical thinking packs its bags and leaves the building.
The salespeople are delighted.
The paid cheerleaders glide in and congratulate her on her wise decision.
She is not particularly happy.
She is not particularly unhappy.
She has, for the moment, almost no recall of what has actually happened.
Poor old Mrs Jones spends the next two hours slowly remembering what, exactly, she has just bought.
The meaning: Just before the close
Just before the close, if we were to sneak a look at the sacred, coffee-stained sales manual “THE HUX: A Complete Sales Guide for Selling Gym Memberships”, we’d probably find something like this:
Reciprocity
- “You’ve won a free gift, Mrs Jones!”
- Start here with the FREE GIFT. People love the word “free” almost as much as they love not going to the gym.
- “Let us give you a free assessment, a free T-shirt, a free body-fat test…”
Keep giving her “free” stuff. The more she accepts, the more she feels obliged to give something back. - “Giving something back” means signing away 60 months of future cash for the privilege of occasionally using a treadmill that smells faintly of regret.
Scarcity
- Your job is to get her excited about the Founder Membership, then tell he she cant have it.
- When you finally “make a plan” to release one for her, you say “This Founder Membership is only available today, Mrs Jones.”
- If she asks for a Founder Membership too early, you say:
“ooooh, I’m afraid those have all gone. You’ll have to wait ten years until those opportunities come around again.” Add insult to injury by offering her the “Scum” membership which essentially bars her from any of the activities she has shown an interest in. - If she replies, “But my friend bought one this morning,” you lower your voice and say:
“That’s because someone died.” - Speak in reverent tones when you talk about the death of a VIP Gym member. When a famous person dies, ensure that you shed a tear and sniff a lot. Say things like “We kept them going another ten years!”
- Scarcity switches off calm evaluation. She stops thinking
“Do I actually want this?”
and starts thinking
“Will I miss out if I don’t grab it right now?”
Social Proof
- Always keep big whiteboards full of names and percentages on display.
Use your premium “Photoshop” skills to make your thinnest clients look like whales in the “before” photos. This is called persuasion. - When you shake each new member’s hand and congratulate them on their wise decision, keep your voice down. There are five other salespeople doing exactly the same thing in the offices next door. No need to ruin the illusion that they are uniquely special.
- Always wear your “Hundreds of members are transforming their lives!” badge.
In uncertainty, humans look sideways:
“What are other people doing?”
Then they joyfully join the stampede.
Authority
- The Regional Manager “just happens” to be in the club today. What a miracle.
- Invite the Regional Manager into the office to apply more pressure to your weak-willed and argumentative victims. Ensure that the Regional Manager remains standing and towering over the victim.
- Your clients have no idea who the Regional Manager is. As long as the chosen staff member is relatively sober and can form complete sentences, you can introduce them as “our Regional Manager.”
- All discounts must, of course, be personally approved by this benevolent king.
- We are wired to obey perceived authority, especially when we feel out of our depth.
- Your job: keep Mrs Jones out of her depth.
Ideally drowning in jargon and options.
But not actually dead*. That’s bad for debit orders. - *If the victim begins showing signs of physical stress, get them out of the building as soon as possible. Dead people are really bad for the business of fitness.
Commitment & Consistency
- “Just fill in your details so we can give you your prize,” you say, casually sliding the contract across.
- “Just sign here so we can start your assessment.”
- Once someone says yes to something small, they feel an internal pressure to stay consistent with that yes, even when the stakes escalate from “free T-shirt” to “60-month contract.”
- Special tip:
When your client looks like they want to whinge and whimper about “thinking about it”, look mildly shocked and ask: - “I did understand you? You did say that staying alive to see your great grandchildren was THE most important thing in your life?”
- Your infallible and inexpugnably effective objection busting questions is “How do you mean?”. Said correctly, this translates to:
“Why would you suddenly become a different kind of person who doesn’t follow through?”
Confusion & Overload
- The contract text is so small it can only be read with a magnifying glass and the eyesight of a young owl. Do not encourage reading. Do not try to read it yourself. None of it actually makes sense.
- If they insist on reading, look at your watch and sigh theatrically. Also keep distracting them with questions about pets, children, sports and their great dress sense.
- You can also say:
“Like all our educated VIP members, you obviously know what’s written here.” - Keep the pace up with fast talking. If you slow down enough for them to actually process anything, you are finished and will receive a written warning. Three written warnings and you will have to return to being an Estate Agent.
- Ensure there is no quiet space for reflection. No silence. No time to think.
- Cognitive overload makes people more compliant.
When we feel overwhelmed, we outsource our thinking to whoever sounds the most confident. - In this case: the smiling salesperson with the contract book…
and the Hux manual in their top drawer.
Meet Your Internal Mrs Jones
It’s easy to laugh at poor old Mrs Jones. You didn’t laugh did you? Shame on you if you did.
We reassure ourselves with:“I’d never fall for that. I’m not an idiot.”
Except we do. Constantly.
We don’t always call it a gym membership. We call it:
- The course we bought and never completed,
- The mastermind we joined because everyone else was in it,
- The financial “opportunity” we couldn’t quite explain to our accountant.
The uncomfortable truth:
We all have an internal Mrs Jones.
She’s the part of us that:
- Wants to believe in prizes and special deals,
- Feels vaguely flattered when a salesperson says “this is just for you”, even though she can smell the stench of commission slobber,
- Secretly hopes there is one decision, one purchase, one final ultimate hack that will fix everything.
We all have an internal Mrs Jones.
And here’s the more uncomfortable bit,
I’ve been on the other side of the desk, looking for my contract pad and pen
I’ve been Derek, and I’ve worked under the Sales Board.
I’ve watched people walk into the glass door.
Mrs Jones Arrives Home
Poor old Mrs Jones pulls into the driveway.
She drives past the white picket fence, the dog called Max
Electric garage door humming open.
Husband in the doorway with a worried look and a serious lasagne deficit.
She left more than two hours ago to buy “a few odds and sods” for supper.
“Where have you been?” asks Mr Jones, in that particular tone reserved for missing spouses and burnt suppers. He notices an absence of any bean sprouts and lasagne ingredients.
“You will never guess,” says Mrs Jones.
“You… won a prize?” asks Mr Jones, somewhat slowly, eyes locked on the total. “So… where is it?”
And she is right.
To be fair, Mrs Jones is also not 100% sure where she’s been, what she’s done, or what, exactly, she has bought. Such is the afterglow of a well-executed bout of Dark Influence.
“I went to the gym up the road… you know, the one with all the offices and no people actually training?” She waves a long, crinkled contract at him.
“I won a prize,” she mutters, handing it over. The amount section has an alarming number of zeros.
“You… won a prize?” asks Mr Jones, somewhat slowly, eyes locked on the total. “So… where is it?”
Mr Jones Goes to the Gym
Twenty minutes later, a lasagne-less and bean-sprout-less Mr Jones comes striding into the gym up the road.
The one with far too many offices.
And so few people actually training.
He has now discovered exactly where his bean sprout and lasagne budget has gone. He is a tad upset. Somewhat ill-at-ease with things. Pissed off.
He is greeted, as all men of a certain age are, by the firmly marshalled cleavage and insipid wink of Jennifer at reception.
Mr Jones, with his puny but proud arms, arranges himself into what he believes is an assertive pose. Mr Jones is a golfer. He has no need for a gym membership.
“I want to cancel this contract,” he says.
“Of course,” she says smoothly. “That was the Platinum Centenary Membership. We have a waiting list for those. In fact, I think there was another golfer in here asking earlier. He had bigger arms than you, though. I’m sure he’ll enjoy it.”
Nobody huxes the Joneses into a gym membership nobody will ever use.
Jennifer leans in, voice dipped in artificial sympathy.
“Such a shame,” she coos. “We all heard what a great golfer you are. You would have loved the computerised golf machine that’s arriving next month.”
But Mr Jones is nobody’s fool. He can sniff out false flattery. Mr Jones has been around the block a few times.
Nobody huxes the Joneses into a gym membership nobody will ever use.
Does Mr Jones cancel his membership?
Tune in next week to find out…
No. I wouldn’t do that to you.
No, of course he does not cancel his membership.
He buys two more.
