A while back, my sister Enid showed up at the doctor's office for a sigmoidoscopy. As Enid checked in, the clerk asked for identification. Enid handed over her health plan card. "I also need a picture ID," said the clerk. "You mean," asked Enid as she produced her driver's license, "there are actually people who try to sneak in here to have a two-and-a-half-foot tube with a video camera and set of clippers run up their rear end?"
If it weren't for the value of a sigmoidoscopy in heading off colon cancer, we'd find it easy to say no to doing it. Even realizing its value, too many people say no. That's a major league version of the ways in which retail store customers might resist saying yes to purchases that would be of great value to them. They say no because the purchases involve expense, bother, or risk.
Maybe there's a way to help with this. A way that involves a large body part at the other extreme from the rear end. Consider please what happened when I went in to sign the authorization for my own upcoming screening sigmoidoscopy. Unlike many permission slips I've read, this one was written in three columns on the sheet. As I read from top to bottom to top through the columns, I realized I was slowly nodding my head. That reminded me of findings from an International University Bremen study. People who were induced to nod their heads up and down would then think more positively about purchase alternatives than those who had not done the pre-evaluation nodding.
This works only with shoppers from cultures that associate nodding with agreement. With those shoppers, spiral in on the sale by asking the right questions and nodding your own head to generate feelings of yes.
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