Last night during a vision-casting meeting for our church, I was presenting an outreach method to our staff, and heard this phrase that I don’t think I had before. The outreach method involved offering a free dinner at a restaurant with, “no strings attached”. “Statistically the greatest sales hook of all time,” Garret said, “the ‘no-obligation’ obligation”. It appears that in the sales world, people feel even more obligated to perform when they see that there is no obligation involved. Sounds like something my mother used to do when I was little.

“Why don’t you just stay out all night and catch a cold, OK?” Not that she wanted me to, but there is something in that reverse psychology that makes you say, “Hey… I don’t think so!”

It’s a psychological trigger that basically gives you the permission to do something you might have been inclined against (like going in the house instead of staying out and catching a cold).

The outreach method we are trying is a 11”H x 8”W x 8”D registration box like you would see on a store counter somewhere. On the front is a full-color picture of my family with the logos of some nice restaurants along one side, and the text, “Free Dinner? Yes!” in bold at the top.

The rest of the text reads something like this…

“My name is Pastor Jay Jones, and my family and I would like to take you and your family to dinner for FREE. We don’t want to push our religion on you, or obligate you in any way, we just want to make friends with people in this city and do something nice for you. No strings attached… honest!”

So, that’s the pitch. It also invites them to drop a slip of paper in the box with their name and number, or call me directly. But notice the unintentional hook at the end… “no strings attached… honest.” This was merely straight from my heart, but at the same time, I will be delighted if people accept the invitation.

Someone asked me how I’m going to afford such an expensive method of outreach. I’ll let God worry about that… after all, we’re doing it for Him, right?

update: I added a picture of our box… let me know what you think. As a follow up, I put the box out in a laundromat, and in 2 days, had 12 names. We have pulled the box for the time being to give us a chance to react to this great response!