Building customer relationships--getting to "yes".

• Author: Hall, Robert
• Position: Marketing Solutions

It sounds simple, but in fact you could capture all of my research findings with the metaphor of a saltshaker. Instead of filling it with salt, fill it with all the ways you can say yes, and that's what a good relationship is

--John Gottman, "Making Relationships Work. "Harvard Business Review, December 2007

Getting to "yes" in as many ways as possible--yes, that certainly sounds simplistic. Yet the spirit of "yes" is a very empowering thing that can take the sting out of "no" and enlarges "yes." Now in today's subprime real estate environment it is quite easy to look around and see where "yes" has run amok. Yet, it is in an environment of too much "yes" that we are so vulnerable to a pendulum that will psychologically be a repelling "no" to our customers.

If you haven't heard of John Gottman, he is the 15-90-15 researcher in Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink," who demonstrated an uncanny ability to hear about 15 minutes of interaction between spouses and predict with 90 per cent accuracy if they will still be married 15 years later. Initially an MIT math student who got sidetracked into the study of relationships, he has been able to isolate key variables that powerfully predict relationship outcomes. For those of us whose lifetime work is to develop lasting, productive and profitable employee and customer relationships, his learnings are worthy of a look. There are three that stand out.

Leading with "yes"

Yes, the first point is about getting to "yes" in as many ways as possible. One of Gottman's findings is that for a marriage to survive, the ratio of positive to negative emotions in a given encounter has to be at least five to one. We might call it a spirit of "yes," and it is a can-do, positive "yes-if-at-all-possible" attitude. It is leading with "yes." When a customer aspires to do something, focus on the part you can do, rather than on the "no" part that you can't. Sometimes you can't avoid a "no" or a conflict. There will obviously be requests that cannot be fulfilled, but even that can be done in a positive manner.

One of my personal pet peeves is sales or service interactions where representatives in a begrudging, belittling way--in a spirit of "no"--give a "yes" against their will like waiving the fee but not the dirty look. This bothers me because it results in the worst of both worlds. They take on whatever risk was inherent in the borderline "yes" they have granted while eliciting all of the ill will of "no." The spirit of "yes"...