The book store lesson.

This evening, I was checking out at the local book store, and had the following exchange with the sales representative at the checkout counter.

Would you like to join our rewards program and save ten percent? (Response: No, thank you )

Want to buy a chocolate bar? You get one for free if you do... (Response: No, thank you)

Want your receipt in the bag? (Response: No, thank you)

This was certainly a rudimentary, if not scripted, series of questions deployed on every customer. What was interesting to me was as I walked away, it occurred to me that I absolutely did want my receipt in the bag; unfortunately, the clerk had trained me to answer "no" by walking down a pitch-path of negative response inquiries.

Knowing the power of "yes", how much more successful would the store's rewards program enrollment be? How many candy bars (in pairs, mind you) would end up in the bag next to that receipt if the front end staff leveraged affirmative response patterns and that power of "yes"? Even something so simple as flipping the script, literally, and asking the receipt question first...

Granted, many of us aren't selling bookstore loyalty programs or candy bars, but I would bet that each of us have some good or service of potential benefit to our customer set, that they have an active or latent need for. The lesson is universal in that we shouldn't be training our customers to say "no" before we've had an opportunity to discuss those needs.