Then she told me about a special offer: if I bought the furniture, she was able to give me ten percent off the purchase price, that I could apply to my flower bill, which was growing by the minute.

Needless to say, I was delighted when she told me I could take advantage of my ten percent discount for the flowers I bought that night, even though we couldn’t finalize the furniture order until the next day (by then the warehouse was closed).

As I was checking out, the Policy Nazi stepped in. She called my attentive sales person to the cash register and proceeded to interrogate her—and then yell at her—while I watched in dismay as the young sales person crumpled under the berating.

I finally felt compelled to step in and defend my sales person, but the damage had been done. The young woman was completely demoralized. The rest of the customers were agitated, and the terrific value-added customer service experience was ruined. In the end, it turned out, the sales person had done nothing wrong. She merely bent the policy a little and simply didn’t do things in the proper order. She made sure that the company was protected if I decided to change or cancel my furniture order.

Now, in fairness to the woman who was overly concerned with the policy, she was trying to protect the company. But in my view, it’s the young sales person who really had it right.

She knew I could take my $2000 and spend it somewhere else. She also knew that the $200 discount was a big incentive for me to buy the furniture that night.

So, if you were the owner, which decision would you make? Would you take the $2000, or let the customer walk out the door because things weren’t done in the right order without the right form? The answer is obvious.

Sales people need more than training on how to use a cash register. These valuable people are the ones who can make or break a business. Do your employees have your permission to make business-savvy decisions that make it easy to buy from you? Do they know the parameters of their authority to fix a problem for a customer? Do they know enough about the business financials to make the same decisions about customer service that you would make? I hope you said yes—the success of your business depends on it.

Would you like to bridge the commitment gap with your employees? We provide management consulting, executive coaching and customized, skills-based training for managers and supervisors, that changes behavior, creates a healthy culture and builds a customer-focused team. Call us today at (800) 348-1944.