This is the third in a series of feature articles on the above subject which covers the following:
- Up-sell
- Down-sell
- Cross-sell
- On-sell
- In-sell
In the previous two parts I covered the subject of up-selling, the down-sell and cross-sell.
I also predicted that if you carefully read the articles and answered the questions I posed, and equally importantly set aside time and actually implemented your answers then you will probably double (or more) your revenue within twelve months.
The On-Sell
Apart from when I need a funeral I’m probably going to buy the same items repeatedly.
On average I’ve bought a new car every three years and a new property every seven. I buy groceries and petrol every week and new clothes whenever beloved throws out my old ones without asking me.
The moral of the story here is that we seldom buy a thing just once.
And what on-selling is all about is having your brand top of mind when your client is ready to buy again.
Without fail and without exception every car dealership or realtor I’ve bought from has failed to keep themselves top of my mind in between my purchases. I believe that’s a very, very expensive mistake.
The most common and most costly marketing mistake is not doing any. Even poor marketing is better than none.
After that I reckon the second biggest marketing mistake is neglecting the top part of the product/service “funnel”. I’m referring to free but valued stuff that you give away so that prospects can learn to value your brand and begin to trust you.
The longer I am in business the more I’ve come to appreciate how critically important the free stuff is in regard to making successful marketing easier.
Which brings us back to on-selling and the third biggest marketing mistake which is failing to nurture the post-sales relationship with a client.
If most business owners approached a new life partner relationship with the same strategy that they approach marketing it would look something like this:
Step 1: see attractive mate (A.M.)
Step 2: woo A.M. to bed & make love
Step 3: ignore/neglect A.M. completely for years
Step 4: express great surprise when attractive mate is discovered in bed with someone else
So in order to on-sell you need to keep your client relationship fresh and make them feel like you still value the relationship.
You can do that by inviting them to events (on-line and off-line), sending them a monthly Ezine or newsletter, offering them free samples, sending cards and so on.
For many years we simply sent a logo branded email with an inspirational quote. I collect 104 quotes and we simply sent them sequentially over two years then started the cycle again.
On many occasions I’d be in a client’s office or lunch room and see a quote printed out and stuck up on a wall or hanging off a computer screen.
It was simple, completely free of monetary cost to execute, and did the job of nurturing prospects and clients.
I recommend that you ask yourself which on-selling system you’ll put into place (you can have more than one!) and then commit to doing it.
Note: that hardest part is starting.
In-Selling
This is where you create a compelling or virtually compulsory reason for clients to keep coming back to you rather than try one of your competitors.
Examples include:
The super cheap all-in-one office machine that prints, faxes, scans and copies and comes with a five year warranty.
The machine is perhaps $199 but of course the cartridges are around $45 each and you need a new one every two months. The machine is sold for cost and the money is made on the cartridges.
In a similar category are labelling machines, Polaroid cameras, and anything else that requires a proprietary brand refill.
Another example: my iPhone really made a splash the other day … when I dropped it into the toilet (I urge you not to ask for more details).
Needless to say despite repeated resuscitation attempts the phone was finally pronounced dead and gone to apple heaven.
In pre-iPhone days this would have left me thinking about what make and model of phone would best suit my needs.
But with 12,000+ songs, hundreds of German lessons and dozens of painstakingly constructed playlists I ain’t going nowhere else other than to Uncle Apple. They got me and probably for life.
In a less obtrusive way Financial Planners, Insurance Brokers and Lawyers in-sell as well. By completing a diagnosis of your situation, getting all of your papers from various places into one place and by knowing your situation well, it’s just so darned hard to switch.
Restaurant Systems Ltd (RSL) offers USA-based restaurants a customer loyalty and promotions service. The restaurant signs up and receives fancy point of sale software that tracks diner’s purchases and awards them points which can later be redeemed at the restaurant for free food or beverages.
The scheme has now expanded to retails outlets so that a diner can redeem points at a hardware store and so on.
RSL also sends out promotional offers and takes a percentage of extra sales that are generated for the retailer or restaurant owners.
It’s a good example of in-selling because how do you tell a customer who’s been madly accumulating points that you’ve decided to pull the plug on the program?
Some running shoe stores offer to video your gait and figure out if your feet roll out or roll in when running.
On the basis of the video analysis your running style was recorded in the store’s computer system and certain brands of shoes were recommended so that you ran (pardon the pun) less chance of injury.
For years after I moved to live in Australia I’d still go back to the same store in New Zealand to buy my running shoes because I could never remember whether I rolled out or rolled in. Another example of in-selling.
In early January I was preparing to attend a conference in Austin, Texas, USA.
Ten days before the event the organizer (whom in my opinion was misnamed) sent me an email stating that I was to read two specific books prior to attending.
I normally get my books from Amazon.com because the ones I want are mostly from USA based publishers and I can get them from Amazon cheaper and faster than going through a local bookstore.
But it still takes two weeks to get a book from Amazon, unless I want to pay like $100 for expedited shipping.
Faced with this problem I went to the Australian e-bay website, bought a Kindle Fire (latest e-book reader from Amazon) and had it two days later.
In the meantime I bought the two books and I read both of them on the flight (15.5 hours!) from Sydney to Los Angeles.
Prior to buying the Kindle I did the math: I went to my Amazon account and figured out that on average I was buying 2.7 books a month from that website.
Once I factored in the cheaper price of Kindle books versus their physical counterpart and the cost of postage it was clear that I’d recover the cost of the Kindle in less than five months.
Additional bonus included not having to buy a fourth bookcase, being able to access up to 600 books on a flight and being able to access literally hundreds of thousands of books from anywhere in the world that has broadband access.
The other benefit was illustrated just last week: I was talking to a friend who recommended a certain book. I told him I hadn’t heard of it and asked him to tell me a little more.
Literally 90 seconds later I made a comment about something I liked in the book. He was a little taken aback. “I thought you didn’t have that book” he asked.
“Yes but that was a minute or two ago, since then I ordered it through Amazon and I’m reading it in my library room in their cloud”.
Faster, cheaper and for a tech-head like me “way more funner”.
But wait there’s more: with my business books I can highlight important sentences and my Kindle stores them all at the front of the book.
And have you ever searched in vain back and forward in a book looking for a certain part? With searchable text that’s a thing of the past.
To further reinforce the evil genius of the Kindle creators, in the eight weeks since my machine arrived my average purchase frequency has rocketed from 2.7 items per month to an average or 3.1 per week!
So much for how much money I was going to save.
The Kindle is a Black Jellybean product (that means you love it or hate it). My wife love the feel of a real book or magazine and dislikes technology but that hasn’t stopped Amazon from selling an estimated 6 million Kindles in the last quarter of 2011.
Back to you
Don’t despair if none of the above ideas are transferable to your business. It’s still possible to in-sell even if you can’t make it virtually compulsory for clients to keep coming back (RSL, iPhone, Kindle) and you can’t collate lots of data.
In fact my preference is to avoid the compulsory form of in-selling in favour of the “magnetic” variety. A few examples …
I’m typing this in my favourite café in the small town that I live in. Being on the tourist trail we get a lot of visitors so there are a lot of cafes – around 13 places, I can grab a coffee and type.
But I find myself going back to Monica’s. It’s true that they have good coffee but that’s not what keeps me coming back. Its Lisa’s (owner) lovely smile and the warm welcome from each of the team, each of whom know me by name.
Its’ the fact that there is no teaspoon that comes with the cup because they know I don’t add sugar.
It’s the fact that after an hour or so of typing they will often ask me if I’d like another coffee and it’s the fact that they know how I like my coffee.
In other words, great customer service creates Magnetic In-selling. It’s not that you can’t go someplace else, it’s just that the personal service keep you going back.
Six Questions Every Business Owner Needs To Answer To Create A Truly Great Marketing Plan
Have you ever spent time and effort creating a Marketing Plan to then experience disappointment and frustration because it made zero difference in your business performance?
That may be because no one told you about the seven critical strategic questions that need to be answered in order to create a truly effective marketing plan. Here’s a quick overview of those questions.
Q1: What is your Ideal Client Profile and what is their Specific Unmet Need?
You need to develop a simple description of your Ideal Client and what they want.
And ideally the “what they want” part is a need that they can’t get met someplace else.
For example here’s my Ideal Client Profile:
English speaking business owners who are comfortable with the internet and who want a marketing plan that is designed specifically for small business and that’s actually proven effective to bring in new clients.
Another example from a client:
Fast food restaurant owners in the Asia Pacific region who want to increase their sales and profits through smarter sales software analysis.
Q2: What’s your Bold Promise?
Another way of asking this question is “what does my Ideal Client have to hear in order for them to want to buy my product/service?”
For example: as a business owner which of the follow value propositions would you find more motivating?
“We show you how to grow your business”
Versus
“Increase your sales and profits by 50% within six months – or you don’t pay”
The second one is the hands down winner because it’s a bold promise, it includes a specific numerical benefit and it adds a guarantee. That combination is one Kick-Butt formula so take note.
Q3: Where do my Ideal Clients hang out?
Now you need to figure out what your Ideal Clients watch, who they listen to, what they read, which meetings they go to, which clubs or associations they are members of, which other businesses have them in their network, which websites they visit and what they search for on Google when they are looking for your type of products or services.
The reason is obvious: once you know where your Ideal Clients hang out then you can direct your bold promise to them with direct offers including free trials, special prices, bonus goods and so on.
Q4: What’s your Black Jellybean?
There is no such thing as liking black jellybeans. You either love them or you hate them.
Similarly, you need to figure out that what you offer, your Ideal Client will love and create/adjust/refine a product/service accordingly. And in creating something that your Ideal Client will love, probably means that there’s a whole bunch of people who hate it.
For example: in my business I work with clients almost exclusively on-line. My clients love the fact that they don’t have to travel to meet with me, that they are one click away from being straight back to work and that they don’t have to have me in their offices or factories.
Naturally, there are others who would work with me if only I would visit them face to face, three dimensionally.
And so my on-line strategy is a Black Jellybean – people either love it or hate it.
Another example: the Quick Beauty House offers 10 minute haircuts for $20 for women! For every 8 women who hate that idea there are 2 who love it. And in a city of fifteen million people that 2 out of 10 adds up to a whole lot of women!
Q #5: What will your Funnel look like?
Imagine a Funnel, wide at the top and becoming narrower as is goes downward.
A Funnel represents a series of product/service offerings that are free at the top and then increases in price as you descend down the Funnel and its design is a critical part of any effective Marketing Plan.
As you can see the Funnel starts at the top with free stuff and as people descend down the funnel there are less of them but they are spending more with you.
As mentioned earlier, all too often business owners are trying to sell their Core Offering Product without romancing, seducing and engaging prospects with great added value free stuff first.
Ask yourself what you can offer for free, that if a person grabbed at it, they would be qualifying themselves as a likely client.
For example: I offer a free Marketing Plan training course. It runs over 30 days and contains a complete step by step training system for putting together a truly effective Marketing Plan for a business owner.
I offer the training course for free because the prospect can get great value from me without having to risk anything more than a few hours. Once they learn to trust me and my material then some will buy.
Other examples and ideas for Free Added Value option: free trial period, free sample, free demonstration, free class, free added-value newsletters or Ezines, free check-up, free in-store tasting.
