Steal These Ideas!: Marketing Secrets That Will Make You a Star, 2nd Edition

We Are Wired as a Species to Say Yes!

For sure, you never learned this fact in English Literature class and probably not in Psychology 101 either.

Humans hate to say the word no. In some cultures, most notably Japanese, people go to great lengths to avoid saying no to anyone at any time, even though that's the message they would like to deliver.

You can take advantage of this hardwiring of our universal gene pool if you always structure a customer offer with a yes/no option. Not-for-profit organizations were the first groups to use this technique widely. For many years now, it seems to have disappeared from most offers, and that is a mistake.

Here is a hypothetical example of a yes/no option for the Fresh Air Fund, one of my favorite charities. ...