How do you get salesmen to measure their blood pressure?

For a recent consulting project I was asked to find a way to get medical equipment salesmen to use a particular blood pressure monitoring device.  The problem is, blood pressure monitoring is similar to measuring someone’s weight.  You can’t just run a contest like, “The Biggest Loser” because some people may already be at a low weight and it would not make sense for those people to lose any more weight.  Additionally, there may be particular reasons why it is hard for some people to lose weight or lower their blood pressure.

One solution is to create some incentive for people to use the actual device.  For blood pressure monitoring, people could take their blood pressure and then email the results.  Unfortunately, salespeople are somewhat comfortable providing information even when that information does exactly match actual recorded data.  To enforce integrity, the participants could be required to email a picture of the actual number that also shows some kind of date stamp such as the calendar from a cell phone.

Such methods start to get complicated and more time is spent collecting the data then understanding it.  A better solution is to use the Behavioral Science concept of Overconfidence Bias.  In this bias, people tend to believe that their skills or judgment is better then it actually is.  For example if you ask a room of 20 people if they think they are better than average drivers, more then half of the group will say yes.  Salesmen are particularly vulnerable to this bias.

Here is how the program would work.  Each salesman would be given a blood pressure monitor.  Instead of asking for periodic updates, a contest would be held at defined times.  At the time of the contest, each person would be asked to guess what his or her blood pressure is.  Then their pressure would be measured.  Points would be awarded based on how close the person guesses to their measured pressure.  Under this model, the participants would have an incentive to measure the pressure on their own and to remember that number.  They would also start to learn what impacts that pressure.  Does it go up after coffee?  Is it higher in the morning or in the afternoon?

By creating a competition based on the Overconfidence Bias, the salesmen would not only use the device on their own but they would also have a better understanding of what their own number is and what impacts that number.  Whether the participant chooses to take steps to reduce high blood pressure is up to them but knowledge of a problem is always the first step.