Sales: The Yes Curve a.k.a. My Favorite Bogus Theory

If you’ve ever bought a car, you’ve probably been subjected to the “yes curve” theory of sales.

I have no idea who invented this theory. Whoever it was, I suspect it was created a long time ago, before people became used to the process of being sold something. It is surprisingly tenacious in its refusal to die.

Here is the theory in essence:

Ask small questions one at a time. Each question should only have one real answer: YES. As you move up the Yes Curve, you are accumulating a “bank” of yes’s. This bank makes customer more amenable to saying YES to the sale you are trying to make. As the bank grows and you move along the yes-curve, you can ask harder questions, but you don’t ask The Big Question (”will you buy?”) until you have achieved a critical mass of yes’s. At this point the customer should be far enough along the Yes Curve that you can simply close the sale.

Lets go back to buying a car to see the yes-curve theory being applied. Ever noticed that car salespeople often asks a litany of stupid questions like “do you like the color”, “doesn’t it drive nicely” and “isn’t today a great day for a test drive”? Yup, you are being yes-curved.

If you are mean-spirited like me, you’ll throw them the occasional random “no” just to break the yes-bank.

But in all seriousness, this theory has some fundamental flaws. Specifically:

  1. Customers buy products because they want them. Not because they’re lulled in to a yes-frenzy.
  2. The yes-curve often misses questions critical to the success of a sale because the person using it doesn’t want a “no” answer.
  3. Using the yes-curve leads to the salesperson talking almost all of the time. This is always a bad thing. If you’re talking, you’re not listening. If you’re not listening, you aren’t hearing what the customer really wants, you’re just making assumptions about what they want. People buy based on what they want. If you haven’t identified what they want, you’re wasting your time and theirs.

For more information on why people buy things, see this article.

My preferred sales theory/approach is The Five Keys.