How to sell more colonoscopies by making them longer and more painful

Imagine for a second that you are a colonoscopy doctor.

What’s your biggest problem in the world?

Getting your customers to come back!

Everybody knows they need a colonoscopy. And most people bite the bullet eventually. They say “fine, I’ll do it,” and they come to you.

“Come back in 10 years, because we need to do another one,” you say. Then 10 years pass, and you don’t hear back from them.

So you call them. “I know I need to come see you again, doc,” they say. “But last time was too painful. I don’t wanna come back.”

What do you do?

Once upon a time, some psychologists did a study on how to make colonoscopies seem less painful, so people would come back for a second colonoscopy.

They found something really weird. They found that when they made colonoscopies longer and more painful, people remember them being less painful.

Here’s why. When you rip the camera right out, people go from being in extreme pain to not being in pain at all. They go from a 10 to a 0, instantly. So when they reflect back on how painful it was, they remember the 10.

But when you pull everything out slowly, people don’t go straight from 10 to 0. They go from a 10, gradually down to a 5, then gradually down to a 0. So when they think back to how much pain they were in, they don’t remember the 10 — they remember the 5.

Psychologists call this the “peak-end effect”. Basically, when we look back on past experiences, we remember the very end.

This is true for painful stuff like colonoscopies. It’s also true for fun stuff. If you go see the Blue Man Group, or Cirque du Soleil, or fireworks on the 4th of July, they will “save the best for last”. Why? Because that’s what you’ll remember.

You probably see where I’m going with this. I’m about to say that every program you sell — whether it’s a course, a coaching program, a book — is a stepping stone to the next program you sell.

It’s a way better stepping stone if you end it strong.

So finish strong. Give people your most interesting, most useful, and most entertaining tidbit last. That way they come back for more.

-Theo