Upselling
Is it a nasty sneaky trick?
Or is it entirely appropriate behavior in something you should be doing?
I hope you won't be surprised when I tell you what my opinion is.
You should be familiar with McDonald's
upsell question, would you like fries with that? I hope you. It would be surprised if you're not. It's a cliche.
It's been mentioned in almost every Sales & Marketing
workshop and sales training course I've been on in the last 20 years.
And the reason it is is because upselling and that question in particular is so useful .
People respond really well to an upsell question.
In other words, some of them say, "Yes, I'll have chips please", so when we asked an upsell question,
some of us buy the new thing.
And that's its power. As a business, that's a lovely thing.
You spend marketing, resources, money or time, getting that person to give your business a call
or getting that person to make an enquiry and then you spend sales time
getting to know them a bit, understanding what they want, making friends a bit, liking each other,
establishing rapport and trust and you got them to a point where they bought something.
You've already established. They're already there. You've already established the like and trust.
It's much easier in terms of resource and expenditure for your business to get them to buy something else.
So from a business perspective, it's great.
You could sell them a bit more.
Of course it would be great
to be an additional sale without that additional expenditure of results like I've said.
McDonald's (I've been told) attributed 20% of their profits to that simple question
and 30% increased revenue. I can't quite remember the numbers. There's loads.
So let's agree that it's good for business. They're having an upsell question and having it asked is a powerful
revenue increase for you.
Now let's cover or address the ogre, the discomfort that you feel
when I talk to you about the upsell question.
Most trades business owners that I know feel slightly uncomfortable when I talk about asking upsell questions.
Most of us like to think of ourselves as ethical
and having integrity and wanting to do a good job for a fair pay
and somehow while we're there saying to people would you want anything else?
feels a bit dirty or manipulative or sneaky or something. I know it does. I felt that feeling myself.
I certainly felt the reluctance to ask the question to myself.
So it does feel slightly dirty I think. But most likely, we're taking advantage of this
friendliness or rapport or trust that we've built
variously, rumbling.
While they blow and their guard maybe.
I don't know that most of my clients, most of people when I first talk to them
will avoid it. They'd really rather not and most businesses would really rather go
and find a new customer
and sell them something that they say they want rather than try and say to this guy,
"Let me sell you another thing as well".
It's a mistake to do that and I'm saying to you
you're leaving money on the table by doing that.
We have conundrum.There's an opportunity to get additional revenue which is great for your business
additional jobs or additional work or additional projects or whatever but you're a bit reluctant to do it.
You're going to feel a bit bad.
So how do we solve it?
I cleverly solve it in my business by only having one product so I can't upsell you anything.
I charge so much already that I feel pretty much like I ought to include everything in it.
So it's not really an issue for me
but how do you solve it in a trade business?
It's a very particular environment. Remember I'm a business coach for tradies.
I almost forgot to mention that.
I helped you grow and scale.
I hope you get over yourself. I hope you get over your reluctance
to do things like this to put your business out there or put yourself out there
and I certainly hope you just stop leaving money on the table which is something I believe this.
I think if you don't ask the upsell question,
you're leaving money on the table for another trade business to pick up later.
so what do you? You start by understanding
that pushy or manipulative is not what we're aiming for here. I'm not going to try and persuade you
that you should be underhand normally play people or be sneaky.
What you should do is ask the upsell question. You should ask every customer.
You should ask appropriate questions. Once they might reasonably want to buy while you're there.
Useful or reasonable upgrades or spot opportunities for additional work.
They might like to do and then ask them if they want to.
Don't try and pressure them or manipulate them into saying, "Yes".
Ask the question, accept their answer. That's what McDonald's does too.
They don't try and persuade you. They know you want chips. They just ask you if you want them and you decide.
I don't know anybody who feels unduly pressured when McDonald's spotty little kid says do you want fries with that?
I know in my experience, all I think is, "Do I? Do I want fries with it?"
You'd say Yes, isn't it? "I do."
So you should make it a process. You should get over yourself
and you should let your staff get over themselves and ask the question and you should make it a process.
You should plan it. You should plan the questions and you should make it a process so that
every person in your business who's in that position to ask the upsell question does so
and has checklists of all the tools to make sure they do so and they can't forget and they don't forget
because the power of the upsell question of course is asking it to everybody and the ones who say yes
by the other thing and the ones who don't, don't.
So you have to ask everybody. The questions will be different
for every business. It will be different if you're maintenance business and you're on somebody's site.
I think the question there or the nice-nice question there is there anything else you want me to do while I'm here?
or even is there anything else you want me to look at while I'm here?
And it's a bit different if perhaps your ability or you're doing a project.
Then it's all about what the scope was and whether you can expand the scope and use variations
to do that and again you shouldn't do it in an underhand way
but if opportunities arise to save somebody. "Hey did you realise here we could do this?"
You might as well and you probably should give them the opportunity to make their project
better if they want to.
They can say, "No, it's alright."
So the trick is to plan it, to systematise it and to do it a lot like McDonald's.
I had an electrician once here in Byron Bay.
He was a client a few years ago and he told me that he got 25 % of his entire revenue
while he was on site by doing exactly that, seeing if there was anything else people needed to know he was there.
So don't leave that money 25% of your revenue on the table for someone else to pick up later.
Call me or book a time with me. I'll help you think through
what your upsell questions should be and how you can plan, how to ask them.
See you later.