Say Yes and Apply a Price

Your staff might automatically say no whenever a customer makes a request that requires going beyond normal store procedures. Sure, we can't have our business disobeying the law. And it won't end up well if we violate business ethics. Plus we should help protect our customers from taking actions that are foolish.
     But regarding this third one, what is foolish to us can make good sense to the customer. Art Freedman and I discuss this in Making Money Is Not Illegal, Immoral or Fattening. Art's family owns and operates American River Ace Hardware in Folsom, California, so he talks from that perspective:
     "Why would a customer give us $250 extra for a Weber barbeque? Well, they'll want us to take it up to their home in Lake Tahoe, about 90 miles away, set it up in their backyard, see that it's hooked to a full tank of propane, and it is ready to go. Well, if they ask, we're going to do it. But we're not going to do it for free. It is far better and more profitable to say yes to a customer and apply a price to it than it is to say no.
     "Some of my employees might say, 'With what I earn, I wouldn't pay that much extra, so I'm not going to suggest it to the customer.' I look at those employees and say, 'There are people who come into this store who have a lot of money. They are willing to pay to hear the word yes and know that we will do what we say we'll do. They don't care if we charge them $250 to get the Weber barbeque up to Lake Tahoe. They just want us to say yes."
     Coach your staff on the value of saying yes to customers.