The setup
Greg Cummings explains the idea with a made-up company he calls Joey Windows. A homeowner has been told about it by a neighbor and is not sure. So they ask, in the way he describes it:
Is Joey Windows a good fit for us?
and then, a question or two later, whether they would be overpaying and whether the warranty is any good. Each question carries the name, so each one is an Affirmation Search.
What a strong answer would do
It would say yes, and it would say why. The reasons would come from places the person can check: customers, third parties, the company's own plain account of its warranty. The neighbor's word and the answer would point the same way.
What a thin answer does
When the evidence is sparse, the wording goes soft. Greg Cummings imagines a reply that opens with this:
They seem like they have a good reputation.
and then:
They're a little bit smaller of a company.
Then comes the part that costs the sale: a suggestion to look at a few other businesses with a better warranty and service. Nobody wrote that to hurt Joey Windows. It is what an answer says when the evidence for one company is easier to find than the evidence for another.
What happened to the referral
The neighbor did the hard part and earned the attention. The answer moved it. Greg Cummings has a phrase for that outcome, hijacked traffic: the awareness belongs to one company and the decision goes to another.
What the example teaches
- A referral does not close a sale by itself. He says it earns the right to sit at the table.
- The loss happened with no bad review anywhere. Thin evidence was enough.
- The fix is not to rewrite the answer. It is to build the evidence that would make a different answer the honest one. What not to do explains why shortcuts fail.
Next A different place the same thing happens: The second kitchen table