This is the first in a series of feature articles on what is probably THE most under-utilized of all marketing strategies.
To reinforce that statement I predict that if you will read these articles slowly and carefully, answer the questions I pose with due care, and equally importantly set aside time and actually implement your answers then you will potentially double (or more) your revenue within twelve months.
And I make that prediction fully mindful of my commitment to keep The 80-20 Center a “Hype Free Zone”.
And whilst the above prediction is NOT a promise of future earnings, the fact that I am making the prediction AFTER you have bought this report and the fact that I am not going to overtly or covertly try to sell you anything during these articles, will hopefully further reinforce the impartiality and trustworthiness of my prediction.
Right now, when it comes to marketing capability you are probably in one of two phases
Working backwards, as I am prone to do, getting new clients in the door of your business is relatively easy once you’ve developed and set up even just a handful of marketing strategies AND you’ve been running them – however imperfectly and inconsistently – for a couple of years.
It’s a good feeling knowing you can turn on the “new client tap” at will and it’s worth persisting through a few failures in order to bring that reality to life.
Prior to hurdling that obstacle, getting new clients is hard work and generally only happens in either an ad-hoc (“oh golly, I have no clients, I better run an ad or do some cold calling”) and/or unpredictable ways (“oh golly, I have no clients, I hope someone will tell someone about me”.)
But regardless of which phase you are in, you leave a lot of money “on the table” if you don’t systemize the following five simple but startlingly effective strategies:
- Up-sell
- Down-sell
- Cross-sell
- On-sell
- In-sell
The 80-20 Center is a Hype Free Zone so I can’t actually say I literally love these five strategies but heck, the emotion comes pretty close.
The reason is that, whilst I’m not actually lazy as such, I do enjoy getting the best possible return on investment (of time, money, energy) for the least possible effort.
If there was a technique where I could snap my fingers and have 10 new sales then I’d invest a lot of money going to the finger-snapping workshop (probably somewhere in California …. that’s where most of these miracle, quantum leap, pixie dust courses seem to be advertised) and then I’d invest a lot of time driving my wife nuts whilst I practiced, practiced, practiced.
As far as I am aware there isn’t such a course but please email me if you know of something similar.
It should be noted however that in my early years I did sink a bit of dough into similar magic-pill type programs but alas the promised land of marketing success did not emerge miraculously and overnight like the adverts said. Instead it took me years to develop marketing capability.
However these five strategies come a lot closer to finger-snapping additional sales than anything else I know.
And in addition to being relatively simple and extraordinary effective, these five strategies are mostly also relatively easy to implement and require very little energy or time.
Please note that the first three of these strategies are well known to most middle-of-the-road marketers but the last two are rarely mentioned.
And for the puritans: yes, I am referring to these as five “marketing” strategies whereas in reality the first two are more accurately described as “selling” strategies and depending on how it’s executed, the third may fall under either description.
Let’s have a look at a definition for each strategy and I’ll also give you examples for each and then a small but potentially growth-exploding assignment.
1. THE UP-SELL
Definition
Successful up-sells occur when a customer has already made a purchasing decision and is offered a related but extra item prior to paying for the first item.
Examples
This is another example of my “Bait Trail” principle where you segment your marketing process into simple, small, easy-to-take steps which eventually lead a prospect to your final sales goal. As opposed to going for the jugular immediately.
The classic example was MacDs when, after you have placed your order, you were asked “would you like fries or a shake with that today?”
Tip for married men: you will lose a lot less Brownie Points if you can resist offering cynical responses such as “if I’d wanted fries or a shake with that, don’t you think I would’ve told you already?” or my personal and very unnecessary favourite: “well, it’d sure be a lot more useful than having fries or a shake with that tomorrow” (at which point, in my experience, your wife will aim a sharp and painfully debilitating elbow towards your ribs).
And whilst Ronald MacD seems to have stopped this irritating practice, it’s still a great example of up-selling and despite how annoying it can be, if it added $25 million a day to my turnover (as it’s reported to have done when MacD first introduced it) then I’d be yabbering it more gleefully and more often than all the 15 year old MacD serfs in Australia put together.
Other examples of up-selling are new car dealers who up-sell to sun roof, roof rack, tow bar, protective polish, leather seats, GPS and/or leather seat protective coatings and the cycle retailer who offers a helmet, puncture repair kits, cycling clothes, clip in pedals and shoes, speedometers, heart rate monitors and so on.
Critical up-sell factors
The most important success factors for a successful up-sell are that the offer must be made AFTER the initial purchasing decision and the offer must be aligned to the original item.
In regard to the latter, you can offer up-sell items that accessorize the original item e.g. a necklace with a dress or a handbag with shoes.
Hopefully it’s obvious that deviating in a big way from the principle of aligning the type of up-sell offer to the original item will not work e.g. the lady buys a dress and is asked “would you like a chainsaw or lawnmower with that today?”
But note carefully that even the smallest deviation from this principle of alignment can, in some cases, result in abject failure.
For example, I invited a client of mine to present to my subscribers a free added-value event on how to create more time in every day.
We agreed that there would be an up-sell offer at the end of the event and I assumed it would be to one of my client’s time management courses. But to my surprise the offer was for a course in office organization.
Now you’d probably think that office organization is aligned because it will create the potential for more efficient use of time.
Not so; that small deviation from the principle of alignment proved enough to produce 2 sales from the event instead of the 10 or more that I would normally have expected.
(Please note that my client did a most excellent job of the presentation and the price of the up-sell offer was reasonable so these were not factors in the low response rate.)
Finally, unless I’m running an event (2D webinar or 3D seminar) where I promised zero-selling, then I always have an offer at the end of the event.
The failure of a presenter to offer those attendees who actually WANT more and who are ready to willingly invest to get more is a clear demonstration of either ignorance (never knew it was possible or doesn’t know how to do it) or laziness (knows how to do it, knows it works but can’t be bothered with the fuss) or both.
In addition to stupid or lazy, one additional factor in the failure of a presenter to offer an up-sell is cowardice.
By that I mean that some presenters (and business owners) fail to offer an up-sell because they don’t want to risk the disapproval of one or two prima-donna attendees who might complain.
Signalling the up-sell up-front
I get around my potential for being gutless by clearly advertising both during the promotion and the event confirmation, that at the end of the event I’ll be providing information for those who want to know how they can work with me.
Furthermore, at the end of the value-add part of all webinars, I actually (politely) invite attendees to stay if they would like to learn how we can work together or to leave if they have got what they’ve come for and would prefer not to know about my offer.
There are tips in here for you: be transparent about the fact that at the end of the event/newsletter/tele-conference/webpage (or whatever) there will be an offer.
And if you are selling cars or cycles or motorbikes or legal services (or whatever) you can be equally clear up front about saying “look, how about we find a solution that’s going to fit your needs and then we can chat about other options that you can add to make the solution even more of a fit for you … do you feel comfortable about that?”
Up-sells don’t have to be like some sort of sneaky ambush. Provided you maintain integrity, whether you flag an up-sell upfront or at the end will depend entirely which one works best.
Test it, measure it and then decide.
A bonus sneak peek into one the marketing models I use for getting new members into the Killer Marketing Club
Many marketers and business owners make the costly mistake of assuming that an up-sell should be less expensive than the original item.
Not so! I regularly and successfully up-sell clients to an item that is precisely three times the price of the item they have committed to purchase.
In the above example, the client has committed to purchase a $97 marketing program for a one-off payment of $97. They are then offered a complementary program that can help them make even more money, even faster, for $291.
Twenty percent or more routinely say “yes” to the up-sell and those who say “no” are offered to purchase the same course for only $97 per month over three months with the first payment not commencing for another 30 days.
Fifty percent of the people who said “no” to the $291 offer say “yes” to same product offer but with payments delayed and then spread over three months.
Please examine the psychology behind this carefully: the client has committed to a one-off payment of $97 so it’s a reasonable guess that they can afford at least that much once per month.
The up-sell then stretches them to consider an additional one-off payment of $291 and if they say no then they are then offered to purchase the up-sell for the same amount but spread over the following three months. So now the offer has gone from $97 in one month to $97 a month for the next four months (including the original item for $97).
Additionally, because the latter up-sell requires no payment for another 30 days I’m invoking the law of instant gratification: get instant access now and pay later. That’s a powerfully appealing psychology that many of us will readily and thankfully opt into.
Here’s what it looks like in flow chart form:
Did you spot the second up-sell?
In addition to the previously mentioned up-sell (three times the price of the initial offer) I then add on a free trial (only cost is $19.95 postage) to the Killer Marketing Club including my “Most Amazing Free Gift Ever” which every reader of this report will have received as an introductory welcome gift (shameless bribe) to the Club.
My end objective is NOT the initial sale and it is NOT the first up-sell ($291) but rather it is to get prospects to accept my offer of a free trial to the Killer Marketing Club.
So why don’t I simply offer the Killer Marketing Club free trial? Why have the first two offers at all?
The answer is 100% of the money from the first offer/sale ($97) goes to the affiliate who invited the prospect to view my offer.
I want a strong, powerful incentive for him/her to expose their subscribers to my Killer Marketing Club and offering the 100% of the first sale seems to do the trick. I call it my Godfather Offer … i.e. an offer you can’t refuse!
And the reason that I have the second up-sell ($291 or 3 x $97) instead of going straight to the final offer (Killer Marketing Club) is that after much testing of having the second up-sell versus not having it the numbers are clear: having the second up-sell makes no difference whatsoever to the number of people accepting the Killer Marketing Club trial offer.
Aside from helping more people with an additional product and making more money from that there is another reason why I have the second up-sell offer prior to the trial offer for the Killer Marketing Club.
There is a cost to offering the free trial.
Despite what some sceptics think, I lose money on the $19.95 that I charge for the free trail period. I use a “fulfilment house” that organize the copying of CDs and Killer Marketing Reports and pack them all and post them out.
And for the very good work they do I naturally get sent an invoice. The cost of fulfilment during the free trial period exceeds the invoice I get from the fulfilment house by around 200% (that varies a bit depending on what I offer as a part of the free trial).
And so the profit that comes in from the first up-sell ($291 or 3x $97) covers the cost of the invoice from the fulfilment house.
So what I’m left with after all of the initial offers and up-sells is a new client in a trial period for the Killer Marketing Club.
And now, the most important part of this article:
Your assignment
Grab a blank piece of paper or your mind-mapping software (I use Mind Jet Manager Lite around once a week) and ask yourself these questions:
- When someone makes the decision to buy what else may they naturally be interested in? Force yourself to make a list of seven options)
- What is a very compelling price for each of my potential up-sells
- How many up-sells will I trial initially (tip: start with one, get it working, then add another)
- Use the Action List on the next page to finalise what you will do and when.
Next Month I’ll continue this series and have a look at the art of the down-sell, why you need a free down-sell and how to use that to turn a down-sell into another up-sell J … I love this stuff!
Done with integrity, marketing is surely the most beautiful of all business disciples!
