Are you refusing to grow your revenue?

She runs a hot dog shack on the waterfront of a major harbor. She's a tough old bird. Her name is Abbey. She serves hot dogs, burgers and coffee to the industrial workers from around the harbor.

I was standing there along with the workers, last in line, waiting to order. It was obvious that Abbey was often in a bad mood, and always saying, "Nope, can't do that." I had already heard from others that "No" was her favorite word. Someone went to her for a cup of coffee at one point in the day, and she said, "I'm not serving coffee now." He smiled and pleaded, to no avail. She only served coffee when she wanted to serve coffee, in spite of the sign saying "coffee" to the side of the window.

Finally my turn came, and there was no one else around. We struck up a conversation, and I could see that Abbey had a good heart. She asked me what I do for a living, and I told her that I teach people how to make money. "Oh," she said, enthusiastically. "I need to talk to you! So, how do you make money?"

I told her that I could tell her how to make lots of money, but I wasn't sure she'd like what I had to say. Of course, then she really wanted to hear it. So I let her have it, as gently as I could.

"Abbey, if someone is standing here at your window with money, asking for something you sell, you don't tell them 'No.'"

She didn't even argue that she tells people "No." She couldn't. We both knew she did. Instead, she started to tell me all the reasons she had for telling people "No."

"Well, I can't do this and that at the same time," she said. That was the first excuse. There were more, coming fast and furious. I interrupted her. "You're missing the point, Abbey. Or, rather, you are making my point. Your first instinct is to tell me why you can't do it. If you want to make a lot of money, when someone is standing there asking for something, you give it to them. You don't make excuses. You don't tell them why you can't do it. You find a way. You fix the problem. If you really can't fix the problem just then, you tell them you have a problem, and offer another solution. You don't just say no."

Abbey was shaking her head. It was obvious that she didn't want to do what she needed to do to "make more money." Here she was, in a perfect position to take a lot of money home in tips, probably more than she was taking home in salary. Instead she was simply making patrons angry. What she didn't know was that people on the waterfront had very bad things to say about her, and many had sworn off going to her shack entirely, because she was always so rude.

Abbey has made her choice. It's perfectly obvious what she could do to make more money, but she simply refuses to do it.

Abbey's hot dog shack is a miniature of every business I've ever worked with, both the smallest and the largest.

Big companies have their reasons - "It's too hard to change; there are too many people involved; we've always done it this way; it's good enough for our industry; we tried and never succeeded to make it better," etc.

Smaller companies have their reasons - "I don't have enough capital to make those changes now; if I make those changes, I won't be able to do these other, more pressing things; I don't have time; I can't fire that person now, he knows too much - even if he is rude to customers; it's too hard to find new people; my competitor does it, and it works for him, so I'm not going to improve," etc.

Every single executive making these excuses is just like Abbey in the little shack on the waterfront. She is putting more energy into her excuses than she is into making sure her customers get what they want when they come to her.

I see this with even the most "sophisticated" technical companies. Microsoft is a great example. I finally caved and loaded Office 2007 to one of my computers. As a usability expert, I am appalled at how they'd made the Office programs more difficult to navigate. But, oh, there are some "really sexy" things in there, like 3D icons and menus that appear gradually - just like those over-animated PowerPoint presentations. It's irritating to think that so many programmers spent so much time making so many things so useless, when so many truly useful improvements could have been made. Like fixing the problems with embedded bullets and numbered lists. These are issues that need attention, but Microsoft is just as stubborn, rude, and negligent as Abbey in the shack.

Is there something that your customers have been asking for, and you've been behaving like Abbey? Every time they mentioned what they needed, did you kick in with excuses instead of solutions?

Time to face facts. Anyone can make more money when they stop saying "No," and start finding ways to say "Yes."