It Takes Two to Say No

Here's some advice from retailer Art Freedman and me about an important standard for store success:
     "It takes two to say no, but only one to say yes. That’s a motto to put on a poster in BIG LETTERS in the employee break room and to show on the BIG SCREEN at every staff meeting and training session for employees.
     "Why is that motto so important? Well, have you ever said no to a customer only to find out a minute, an hour, a day later that the correct answer was yes, but you just didn’t know it? If you have ever worked on the sales floor, I’m pretty sure it has happened to you. You can bet that it happened to me dozens of times."
     Some employees say no because it is the easiest answer. When they say no, the customer goes away, and the employee can get back to doing whatever they were doing before the customer came over to bother them. But you're in the process of pruning out those employees, aren't you? It won't remove all the no's, though. Sometimes we say no because we truly believe that we don’t have the product or we’re not able to provide the service the customer is asking for.
     "Whatever the reason for the no, let’s change things in ways that make the customer happier and make us some money. A customer comes into the store, they ask an employee a question, the employee wants so bad to say no to the customer, but they are not allowed to. We slow down the process. We slow it down to a crawl. That employee must check with another employee before they say no."
     There's more about this starting on page 95 in Making Money Is Not Illegal, Immoral or Fattening.