Saying "Yes" is Ruining Your Business: The Difference Between Serving and Pleasing

If you're saying yes to everything, doing endless favors, and wondering why sales feel harder than they should, you’re going to want to buckle up for today’s episode. We break down why successful business owners say no more often than yes, how asking better questions leads to bigger sales, and why your clients need more guidance than they're asking for. We also share some recent real-life examples of how setting boundaries and challenging assumptions has helped us better serve our clients and grow our sales.

Highlights:

01:03 - If you're not saying no more often than yes as a business owner, you're probably doing something wrong.

03:15 - The client email that taught us why sometimes no response is the right response.

06:20 - Why you don't owe your customers unlimited favors just because they bought something from you.

09:37 - Customers vs. clients and why relationships need to be a two-way street.

13:37 - Why we stopped treating gift cards as the entire bill. 

16:40 - Why most sales are lost by talking too much and not asking enough questions. 

21:53 - Nobody's all set: how assumptions hold back both your sales and your clients.

23:25 - The difference between being salesy and making clients feel genuinely understood.

26:03 - The biggest sales breakthrough we've had: realizing that selling more serves the client better.

27:00 - Inside our Clothier Coaching program and the power of learning from other business owners facing the same challenges.

Resources + Links
Apply for Luxury Clothier Collective Mastermind  HERE
More resources for custom clothiers HERE
Watch on Youtube

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Appointment Only in IG: @appointmentonlypod

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We were, we were there having need meeting conversations. We did have an explicit conversation with him when he sat down and said, Oh, my wife told me this is the this is the suit I should do here. And we simply told him, we said, you know, that sounds great. That can certainly be a part of it. But we don't, we don't like when we are finally sitting face to face with somebody only doing one outfit for them. This is appointment only, the podcast for custom clothiers and entrepreneurs building profitable, high-end businesses. If you want control, profitability, and freedom from what feels like an endless hustle, this is for you. We're Kenny and Danny, twin brothers from day one and business partners for more than 15 years. We're sharing insights from our own experiences as luxury custom clothiers who built our own business from nothing. The highs, the lows, and what we've learned along the way that will help you build a high-end business you actually enjoy running and isn't running you. Clothier Coaching's official podcast. Appointment only starts now. The only thing worse than selling a gift card and having to cash it in is having to cash in an auction item that you donated. Yes. When those leads come in, we we do not say yes to every auction or every cause that reaches out, wanting us to donate something to their silent auction or whatever it, whatever it is that they want us to donate. In fact, we say no or do not respond to the majority of those things. And that's okay as a business owner. It's okay. It's crucial. It's crucial. You have to say no. If you're not saying no more frequently as a business owner than you are saying yes, then you're doing it wrong. You say no so much more frequently. And there are certain things where we used to feel obligated to say to say no instead of just a no response. But the frequency in which we get ghosted from people, we felt like we're well within our rights to ghost others sometimes. I think I don't know when that changed, where no response is now considered a response. You know, where if you ghost, I know the exact moment that changed for us. When was it? We were driving to Milwaukee. We used to do a lot of business in Milwaukee. And so we would we would go there about once a month. Yeah, not to brag or anything. You know, Milwaukee guys. I still pretty good. I still love Milwaukee. Milwaukee's great. I was in Milwaukee over my birthday this year. Yeah, I know. Milwaukee is a great it was my birthday too. It was, but I was not in Milwaukee. Milwaukee's a great city. Shout out Milwaukee, shout out uh Kimpty Kimpton Journeyman, shout out the outsider, shout out Onesto, shout out what are some other good ones? Collectivo, collectivo coffee, obviously. Shout out to carnivores. Yeah. But we were on our way. Shout out uh spotted pig. The beer. No, no, no. The that's spotted cow. Is it spotted pig? It's something pig. Maybe I just felt like a pig because we were eating ice ice cream so much. Yeah, ice cream place. I think we just felt like pigs. Because the ice cream place. I think I'm getting it mistaken with when people were calling me a pig. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Um, we were we were driving to Milwaukee and we had gotten an email from a guy who did a wedding suit for us, or from us. He said that he had this was over 10, this was like 10 years ago. Yeah. He he had put on a little weight, but he was wearing his suit at dancing somewhere and split the pants and wanted us to make him a complimentary pair of pants. He had he had already admitted he gained weight. He had already admitted that he was dancing, being reckless, which also means he was probably drinking, yeah, being careless, and we're trying to come up with this email response in the car while driving. And we're we're coming up with all of these ideas, and it's like there's there's no answer aside from, yep, sounds good. We just placed the order, should be a month or so. Aside from that, there's no answer that we can give him that he will be happy to hear this news. Right. He will receive everything that we say incorrectly, he will read it uh with in a non-intended tone, and he will be frustrated. Whether we say, hey, not our fault, you put on weight and you were being careless, whether we say, you know, take it to an alterations tailor, see if they can work magic, but we're we're not we're not taking this on. Like it doesn't matter how gracious we phrase those types of things. Yeah, there's no good response. They're not going to receive it well. And up until that point, we even even if we were having to deliver news that nobody wanted to hear, it's like, well, we're at least gonna reach out and tell them. But with this one, it's like, actually, I don't know. I feel like there are times where no response is a response, and then we at least don't have to deal with him choosing to read an email with a tone that is not in the email. Because you do run that risk unless you're unless you're running your business on the phone and you're physically actually talking to people. There is a miscommunication risk with emails. You run the risk of it being read in the wrong tone, which can completely change the message of what you're trying to say. Have a great day. Sounds a lot different than have a great day or have a gray day. Sounds a lot different. Big difference. And this was obviously before any sort of AI where you could give prompts to make it sound overly friendly. But it it is one of those things where we get ghosted so much in our business. We'll reach out to somebody seeing if they need anything. Hey, you told me to reach out, come fall, circle back around in the fall. Here I am, circling back around. We just absolute, we get ghosted all the time every single day to some degree. So we can ghost people too. We are allowed to not respond to an email that puts us in a lose-lose situation. We are absolutely allowed to do this. Now, there were some things going on behind the scenes for this one guy. He he was unaware that we had been actively in touch with his husband. His husband had all sorts of issues. We had already, his husband was the one who paid, by the way. His husband had all sorts of issues. We had already issued his husband like a kind of an FU refund. Just like, hey, this is how much I'm willing to give you to stop talking with you. And we had already done that with his husband. He didn't know this. But the last thing I want to do is do anything more for this order. They were just the classic couple where they, because they bought something from you, their assumption was that you owe them for life and that you're going to be at their beck and call, and there's no number of favors that they could possibly ask you to do that would ever reach the limit of what you're willing to do. Well, and here's the deal: we don't owe our clients anything additional. They are paying for an experience paired with a product. Once the product's delivered, that's it. We do not owe anyone anything beyond that. And anything more that we're willing or able or wanting to do is our prerogative. Our prerogative. We can do as much or as little as that. But as long as we've delivered on what we've promised to deliver, that's where it ends, especially when they're a customer rather than a client. And for some reason, I think so many custom clothiers, they have this sense of indebtedness to their clients. They feel like they additionally owe people who bought clothes from them something. Favors, free alterations for life. Don't even be started on it. I'm going to be your stylist 24-7. Uh, here's my phone number. Reach out whenever you have any questions or issues with anything. We don't owe them any of that. And you start running a business that gets to a certain size where you have hundreds of clients of year a year, you can't offer that to everybody unless you don't have any value on your own time and your own sanity, unless you truly are willing to be on call all the time for everyone, no matter what, no limits, no boundaries. Cause that's what ends up happening. Yeah. And the wrong types of clients will take advantage of that. They're the ones who are going to be using it. I mean, if I were to hand out my personal cell phone number to every client we've worked with in the last year, let's just say, you know, I could probably tell you which ones are going to use it and which ones won't. And the ones using it are not going to be the ones that I would have considered to be our best clients. That's just how it goes. It's just how it goes. And all that to say, that was our first foray into being the ghost rather than being the ghosted. And there, there, there are times where no response is a response. And so when it comes to people hitting you up, hey, can you donate this? Can you offer this? Can you give me this? Give me that. Sometimes a no response is as good as anything you could say because at least it won't be, at least it won't be misconstrued. And at least the the wrong tone won't be implied on whatever it is that you that you do or don't say. We have a what have you done for me lately approach, especially with clients, only actually with clients or customers primarily, where we are often willing to do something. If if somebody reaches out having bought something and they need this or they need that, happy to do it. But then the second time they ask for something, that's when they're either getting no response or they're getting a no response. Because this is a two-way street. If we're going to have a client and a provider relationship, it has to go both ways. Why am I feeling like this just happened? Where there was someone who reached out to us after it'd been a while. The most recent thing we had done for them was sort of a favor. Oh, and then they reached out again asking for another favor and we just ghosted. Another customer bought one thing once. That's customer. They bought once. Client is someone who's ever repeated. This customer bought his wedding suit, no surprise there, from us. He came in for his final fitting, everything was perfect. He left with everything. He bought a tie and a pair of socks. A week later, he reaches out and says, Oh, I didn't realize the tie cost what it costs. Can I return it? And at the time at our old shop, we had a no returns of any sort of any type signpost. We talked about that in certainly in clothier coaching. I think we talked about it in the clothier kingdom, where the the implicit and explicit, not explicit, explicit, implicit? What's the word? Now I'm getting all confused. For the messaging, it's the same thing that we were talking about where you have the front-facing clock. Right. You have the sign that says all sales are final. You know, these types of things, those would be the explicit communications, whereas like the implicit communications would be other things. We've there was a there was a training in Clothe Your Kingdom about that. Anywho, he reached out asking us to return the tie, and we told him, like, hey, we don't typically do this. There, we have signs posted, but just, you know, pop it in the mail. He lives, he lived like an hour and a half away or something. Pop it in the mail. When we get it, assuming it, you know, it hasn't been destroyed, we'll issue your card uh refund for the tie. No big deal. So he does. We do. Last week he reaches out, he wants all of his measurements because he's probably buying something from somewhere else, or he's in a wedding and he needs to get his measurements. But we're looking at each other and we're we're like, the last time we were in touch with this guy, we did him a favor. Yeah. What have you done for me lately? No. Sorry. You haven't become a client yet. You're still a customer I had once. This is over. Unless you're married already. You want to come in and buy something new. And while you're here, I'm happy to figure out whatever measurements are that you need for whatever thing you're asking for. And sure, we can knock those out while we're measuring you, but you got to come in, you got to buy something. Right. Like it's over at this point. I'm not on the hook for everything you ever need moving forward because you bought something from me one time years ago. As far as auction items go. What a tangent. That's not at all how I was expecting the beginning of this episode to play out. But all that to say, you can please feel free. In fact, we insist you do. And if you need someone to blame, blame us. Tell us that you're your mentors. Your mentor told you. Do you consider yourself to be a mentor from being the second host on appointment only? Yeah, number two for sure. Yeah. I consider myself to be a big old number two. Yeah, not a big greasy number two, is what I consider myself. But you can feel free when somebody reaches out, tries to hit you up, tries to give them something for free for their auction or their fundraiser or whatever. You can feel free to say no, there's nothing wrong with that, or you can feel free to just let it ghost. If you have no connection to this person and you can tell they're just emailing every business in the phone book or whatever, phone book on Google or whatever, you can feel free to just let it go. You don't need to reply. All that to say, today we ended up doing a fitting for someone who had bought an auction item. You know, I love selling a gift card. But then eventually it comes time to have that person come in. I love selling a gift card. The gift card. I don't like doing the gift card. Yeah. When it when it's time to cash it in, that's when it feels like uh and I'm indifferent to auction items. We so rarely do it that when we do it, it's always for a good cause. It's for someone we like, or you know, there's there's some good reason why we're doing it. And so it's so infrequent that it hardly ever happens. But when it does, anytime it comes time to schedule that person, I'm always just thinking, oh, shoot. Here's the deal, though. When was the last time you got a gift certificate or a gift card to let's just say you got a gift card to a restaurant? When was the last time you walked into that restaurant and you thought to yourself, this gift card is all of the money I plan to spend? I am not going to spend a single penny above this gift card. We kind of had this realization recently. That's not how I haven't operated that way ever. Gift card is is a bonus. It's a it's a thing that gets you in the doors. It helps with whatever it is that you end up buying from that store or that restaurant, but it's never the the whole bill. And up until recently, anytime somebody was coming in to either cash in a gift certificate or cash in an auction item or whatever, cash something in, we were feeling as though we had to uh we had the obligation to get them out the door having spent zero dollars. And we're looking at ourselves this morning, saying, I don't think that's the expectation anymore. As some things have changed in our business, as we've just taken that next level into what we're unapologetically doing for a luxury clientele, that attitude has changed too. Where we're thinking, you know what? When somebody buys a gift certificate or they're cashing something in, I'll bet their expectation is that they're coming in for a reason and they're ready to spend some money on top of this, and that whatever they're cashing in for the gift certificate is gonna make a big impact as far as the grand total goes, but they're gonna have to kick in some money too. So we obviously did the appointment with this person. He ended up buying double what his gift, whatever the thing, it was like an outfit. He ended up buying, he ended up doing a suit, another sport coat pant, and then a handful of shirts versus the one that was part of his like auction item that he bought. And and that felt normal. And we were we were there having need meeting conversations. We did have an explicit conversation with him when he sat down and said, Oh, my wife told me this is the this is the suit I should do here. And and we simply told him, we said, uh, you know, that sounds great, that can certainly be a part of it. But we don't we don't like when we are finally sitting face to face with somebody only doing one outfit for them. Well, you know, you know the other thing that's changed, and uh this is recent. We we never used to ask questions. We used to just talk at people, and I could still probably do a better job in my life of asking people questions. You never ask anything. Well, so that's what do you think about that? I think it sucks. I realize though, from you know how you're you meet people and you're like, wow, they're so inter they're so nice. They're so it's because they're asking about you. When you meet someone and you're like, oh, I had a such a nice conversation with them. Like, well, did I? Or was I everyone likes talking about themselves. And I I know that we're the same way. And on I'm just gonna put this out there our family is not a good question-asking family. Okay. I'm gonna I'm this is something I've realized in the last decade. And it's become more and more aware. I've become more and more aware of this uh, you know, in the last handful of years, but our family's not good at asking questions, just period. And as a result, neither really am I. It takes a lot of brain power for me to think about questions to ask somebody. And I've realized that I'm missing out in these appointments opportunities to connect with people, sure, whatever. You know, when someone comes to us, I'm not expecting to make friends, neither are they. We're here for a reason. What I'm realizing though is by not asking someone questions, I'm missing out on an opportunity for them to feel more comfortable because they're talking about themselves and everybody likes that, and that puts everybody at ease. So putting them in a more comfortable situation where they're sharing something with me gives them an opportunity to feel comfortable, but it also gives me an opportunity, it's a little self-serving, gives me an opportunity to learn about them and to use the information they provided to me to sell them more, quite frankly. And and that realization, I think, of we need to do a better job of hearing from them came when we decided we need to operate from a need meeting mode. Not we we can't just take our cues from the people coming in and do exactly what they say they're here for. We need to hear from them on how they wear things, when the last time they bought things were. Well, and a lot of times too, I'm realizing that maybe in asking some of these questions, it puts our clients and or customers in a position where they're forced to be a little bit introspective. Like our guy today who came into cash in a gift certificate, you know, he's telling us a lot about how infrequently he wears suits. He never does. He doesn't do it, he doesn't like to do it, he never has liked to do it. And he still has a couple suits that he, you know, work fine. You know, he's already kind of on the defense. He does, he doesn't want the sales pitch. He doesn't want to, he doesn't want us to run wild with what he's afraid we might do. Message received. However, I did ask him, when was the last time you ended up buying clothes before you came here? And he had to think about it and he's like, well, it was it was definitely before the pandemic. It was probably 2018. Guys, that's eight years ago. What was the last thing that you bought eight years ago that you're still actively using and it's getting the job done awesome and you love it and it works. And every time you have to reach for that thing, you're reaching for the eight-year-old thing. It's so that gave me some really good information. And so as we were going through the appointment, I just was yeah, I just said, hey, you know, if I if I could just offer a recommendation here, given what I know about what you do, how infrequently you wear suits, but knowing how long ago it was that you bought something most recently, I would recommend that in addition to doing this thing that we're cashing in the gift certificate for, I'd recommend that we think about doing a jacket with a pant, like a sport coat pant combo, that we could conceivably mix and match some of these pieces. Where now it puts you in a position where you have some options. Instead of just buying one new thing, you now have some options of a few new outfits that you could reach for that will now serve you a little bit better going forward. And that to him was a no-brainer. I wouldn't have thought, I mean, I would have thought to recommend that, but I was able to use his own information to get that appointment a little bit closer to what we wanted it to be. Right. And so he, of course, because he doubled what he came in for, he he ended up spending money on the spot, which any money in a meeting where it could be a meeting that you're doing out of the goodness of your heart feels great. Yet it was a substantial needle move needle moving amount of money, which also feels great. And it it's those types of things that I think we went for years. First of all, we went for years operating with a okay, that's They're coming here, so this is their cap. And we're not allowing ourselves to uh we're not giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt at all. We are just assuming that they're coming in with this gift certificate or this gift card or this auction uh silent auction item that they won, and this is the ceiling. Why is that the ceiling? Like you said at the beginning, at the top of the episode, when was the last time you walked into a restaurant with a gift card in your pocket and the gift card in your pocket was the ceiling? It that's that doesn't happen. And that's not the way that consumers behave. And just because maybe you did do that at one point in your life, you're probably not doing that anymore. And it's certainly not how your target demographic operates. Because that's what we've got to think about. How is this person behaving? What's their mindset coming in here? And what are the questions I can ask to get them a little bit closer to where they need to be? We have a much different idea and a much different understanding of what someone's actual needs are than they do, most of the time. And most of the time, nobody's all set. I'm not even all set. I can think of five things that I need in my closet that I don't currently have. Nobody's all set. So our understanding of what that means and what someone's needs are is a lot different than what somebody comes in here wanting. And by asking some of the right questions and by being upfront about your recommendations and by being not salesy, because that's really important that you're not salesy, but being thinking about it in terms of meeting their needs and asking them questions where they really feel understood, and you're then leading with their outcome versus leading with a sales pitch, our experience is that's been going a hell of a lot better than when we used to just talk at people and hope that we could say the right magic thing that was going to land and then cause them to respond in the way we needed them to. Well, and and by the way, if you're frustrated because your clients are coming in, they're only buying one thing, that's not their fault. No, it's your fault. That's your fault. That's your fault. And as soon as we wrapped our mind around the fact that not only do we run the meeting, not only do we steer the ship, but we also, we also meet the needs. We also we also can phrase things with a results-driven uh sales pitch. As soon as we turned that corner and understood like this is how to do that, we don't have clients for the most part coming in and buying their one thing. We still that still happens with wedding clients. But if the person isn't getting married, they are not coming in and buying one thing and leaving. They are always wanting to meet more broader needs that give them some versatility and some flexibility with their closet because they're here. And that's a really important thing, is we as the people who are running this business and the people who have been tasked with taking them through a process, we have got to get out of our own way and just do what we know we need to do and help guide them in a way that actually meets their needs. Because what have we done if we sold somebody their favorite suit they've ever owned? We put them in a position where two years down the road they have a problem. Their pants blew out. Now they don't have their favorite thing anymore. We're creating more problems for ourselves when we take our clients' leads exclusively. We have a better understanding of what their needs are because we're the ones on the receiving end of the frantic phone calls. We're the ones who have heard the words, I have a suit emergency on the phone. They never have. They're not in the same business as we are. They deal with putting out their own fires in their own jobs every single day. We deal with doing the same thing in our business. They have never been on the receiving end of somebody frantically needing something for this upcoming weekend. We have. And we have the ability to take that headache, that frustration, that stress out of our clients' life by selling them more. We have the ability to take that stress away by making more money. How great is that? But we have to get out of our own way and stop saying, well, I don't want to be salesy. You know, they say that they only need a suit. So here's all these conversations I'm not going to have. Listen, they can say no, but we have to make them say no. We have to make our clients say no because if we're not doing that, we're not offering enough of our recommendations. Our clients are working with us because they want to hear our feedback, if they wanted to go and and boss somebody around, they'd go to some store in the mall and they'd pick it out themselves. We're in a really unique spot as custom clothiers where we understand their needs differently than they do, and we owe it to them to communicate. Just some things we've been thinking about, and we wanted to share it with you while it was fresh in our minds. So if this is feeling helpful or interesting, or if you're thinking, yeah, that's a really good point, this is what clothier coaching is. This is what we talk about in all of our resources. There are four resources, well, five, but four that you can get. There's Clothier Kingdom, Mastering the Wedding Suit game, uh, six-figure upsells, six-figure upsells, and the the big daddy is million-dollar manual. All of these things we talk through different scripts. It's like role-play stuff on what happens if this person says this. This is what you do. This is how you get to the point where you're making six-figure dollar amounts uh from upsells in your appointments. You know, all of these types of things are addressed specifically. The fifth offering that we have is Luxury Clothier Collective. That's the one where we're in active dialogue every single week with our clothiers in the group, working through real things like this, where we're talking through these situations, experiences, client expectations, client communications, where it's sort of a group think for running your business. That is not something you can just go and get. That's something that you have to be uh enrolled in during an enrollment period. And unfortunately, uh there's it's it's selective. There's only a certain number of clothiers that are allowed to join, and it's one per market. And uh it's selective intentionally. But if you're interested in being considered for the next enrollment period, you can join a wait list by going to our website, which there is a link in the show notes, link in the bio of our Instagram. And in the meantime, if there's something that you're running your business and you're thinking, oh man, you know what? I could use those geniuses from appointment only to talk to me about pinky and the brain. You know, I could use pinky and the brain. There's a throwback. Speaking of throwbacks, I just thought they're gonna make a wishbone documentary. Ooh, like about the making of the I think so. Yeah, it's gonna slap. I know. I can't wait. Uh, but that's a that's a that's a story for another day. But if you're thinking, you know what, I could I want to hear Kenny and Danny word vomit about this topic, shoot us a DM. We would love to be able to address something that feels particularly fresh in your mind. This episode's over. We appreciate you listening. Thanks so much for coming to your appointment. Uh, we'll see you for your next one. If you're a custom clothier and you want to be more profitable, less stressed, and work with more of your target demographic client who spends more and buys more often, we share our exact strategies on how to do that and our resources available now on clothiercoaching.com, including Million Dollar Manual, our playbook for turning your six-figure business into a custom clothing business that makes more than a million dollars every year. For higher touch, more direct access to us, we have a small mentorship group called Luxury Clothier Collective, where we're actively helping clothiers around the country become their markets leader. If you're serious about finally building that profitable luxury custom clothing business you've always wanted, this is your next move. Join the wait list and we'll let you know when enrollment opens again. Thanks for listening.