The 97 › Strategy 29 › Week 7
The point
Everything most owners worry about happens before the sale — getting attention, getting interest, getting the yes. And an enormous amount of the money leaks out in the ninety seconds immediately after it.
A yield gap is the difference between what a transaction produced and what that same transaction, with that same buyer, in that same moment, could have produced at no additional acquisition cost whatsoever.
The plainest illustration in commerce has been running for sixty years because it works: would you like fries with that. Look at what is actually happening. The person is standing in front of you. They have decided to buy. Their money is out. Every objection, every doubt, every hesitation has already been overcome by somebody else's effort, and that effort has already been paid for. The marginal cost of one more question is zero. The marginal cost of not asking is every additional pound they were willing to spend and were never offered the chance to.
In most businesses I examine, the honest answer to 'what do you offer in the sixty seconds after yes' is nothing. A receipt and a thank you. The highest-willingness moment in the entire relationship, spent on administration.
The mistake almost everyone makes
Putting the highest-margin item in that window rather than the one that makes the purchase work better. At the instant somebody buys they are looking for evidence they decided well; an unrelated offer reveals that the transaction was, from your side, an opening rather than a resolution.
The test: Does this make what they already bought work better? If not, it does not belong in that window at any margin.
| Who | What happened |
|---|---|
| Would you like fries with that | Sixty years, unchanged, because the economics are unanswerable. The buyer is already there and already paid for. |
| Installation with equipment | Makes the purchase succeed. Confirms the decision rather than questioning it. |
| Training with software | The single largest determinant of whether the software is still in use at ninety days. |
| The larger size | Only where the larger size genuinely serves them better — otherwise it is margin dressed as service. |
| A second one | Where people who buy one nearly always return for a second, the second belongs in the first conversation. |
| Extended terms | Offered at the moment of purchase rather than at the moment of failure, when it reads as an apology. |
| A print shop | Added one question about delivery at the counter. Average order rose without a single new customer. |
| An optician | Second pair at the fitting, not by mail six weeks later when the buying decision has cooled. |
This week
Identify the exact point in your business where somebody has just said yes — the signed agreement, the completed checkout, the confirmed booking, the handshake.
Write down what currently happens in the sixty seconds after it. For most businesses the answer is a receipt.
Put one question there that makes the thing they just bought work better. Then measure two numbers: what percentage accept, and what it adds to average transaction.