How Saying Yes Pays Off

Founded in Portland, Resource Revival crafts a line of durable products made from recycled bike parts. After 20+ years in business, they share why saying yes has paid off for them. 

Custom finisher medals for bicycle rides and races are a big part of our business but they didn’t used to be (our medals kick butt, but that’s not what this post is about). As obvious as it seems now, it never occurred to us to make medals. We did make keychains though, and one day a customer called and asked if we could put ribbon on our keychain. Our response: “yes, we can do that for you.” And we did. Since then, we’ve shipped tens of thousands of finisher medals to hundreds of customers and they’ve been worn by tens of thousands of deserving bike riders.

“Yes, we can do that for you” is a great business strategy. There’s even neuroscience research on the positive impact of yes on the brain. When you say yes, you are accepting a bid for connection, you are continuing a conversation, you are opening a door. There are so many benefits to being in the yes mindset, especially when it relates to customer service. You can do 9 out of 10 things right on an order and the one thing the customer wasn’t satisfied with can result in a poor review or non-referral or reorder.

At Resource Revival, saying yes is our goal, but there are limits. It is really important for organizations to define those limits and communicate them to customer service and sales staff. We can add ribbon to a keychain, but can we do that for less than the cost of the keychain? No. Can we do it in less than a week? Yes, with a rush charge. Can we get 100 medals with 100 different custom engravings? No. Ten? Yes, for a fee. Can we get a dozen different ribbon colors? Yes!

Usually, I find that when we have to say no, that’s the answer most people would have guessed. Those questions are typically from someone naive or unreasonable. Can you get me a custom, rush order at a discount? No. Can you ship to five different addresses without charging any shipping charges? No. Can I get just one of something that you have listed with a 50 unit minimum for the 50 unit price? Fill in the blank.

Thankfully, our customers are great and almost all a joy to work with. My hope is that by (mostly) saying yes, we’ve earned the same feeling from them.

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Words by Graham Bergh, Founder & Owner of Resource Revival