ON THE MOVE
Master the Art of the Up-sell By Jim Ackerman and Paul Furse
You are not as profitable as you could be. Truth is, you can increase sales at least 10 percent and boost your profits as much as 30 percent, perhaps even more. What would those kinds of increases do for you? How would they impact your bottom line? Your income? The growth of your enterprise? The secret is to wring all the profits you can from every transaction, by mastering the art of the up-sell. This is easy money. In fact it is, bar none, the fastest, easiest, most economical single technique for boosting sales and profits. If you’ve ever bought anything from an infomercial, you know how it goes. If you buy the “Ab Slide” for example, just 39 bucks, naturally they take your information to complete the sale. Then the phone rep starts into his up-sell scripts. Yes, SCRIPTS! There is more than one add-on offer. In fact, there are a total of eight! The rep is required to go through all of the offers, regardless of what the customer buys or doesn’t buy. One company rep admits some customers get mad, and
even wind up cancelling their original order because they’re so offended by the multiple add-ons. Yet, isn’t it fascinating that this outfit INSISTS their in-bound telemarketers make all eight offers anyway? Why? Now remember, this is a direct response marketing company and they test and track everything. Obvi- ously, they’ve discovered it is more profitable to make eight offers than it is to make either nine or seven. It’s that simple! You don’t have to carry things to this extent, but you could. What you MUST do is have consistent, programmed, and tracked up-selling and add-on selling systems in your enter- prise. That’s how you’ll learn exactly what you should do. The difference between an up-sell and an add-on…
1. The first is formally called the “up-sell” because you move the customer to a greater-valued package or prod- uct right up front.
2. The second is referred to as an “add-on sale” because it invites the customer to buy additional items, after an initial purchase decision has been made, while still at the original point of sale.
The most important thing to remember is that both mean FREE MONEY to you! How much FREE MONEY? Using these techniques you could easily make your business 30 percent more profitable … perhaps more! Here’s an add-on example from another retail industry:
Steve’s nine-year-old daughter became interested in playing the violin. So, off to the music stores Steve went to rent one. They found one store full of parents and their kids with four clerks just renting violins. Violins were flying out the door! Steve was actually getting tired of the wait and was about to go to another store when he overheard one of the clerks ask the woman at the counter if she knew about their violin offer. The
48 Mobile Electronics February | March 2011
woman’s response was emphatic. She certainly did know and that was exactly why she was there instead of the competitors’. Turns out, this store had a killer offer! Steve only had to give the store $5 down and the monthly rental fee didn’t begin for six weeks. So he got to use the violin for over a month, virtu- ally for FREE, before his first monthly payment. The only catch to the deal was he then had to keep the violin for at least four additional months at a rate of $12.50 a month. But here’s the part Steve really found fascinating. EVERY sales clerk was offering EACH parent a service/insurance pol- icy on the violin. And every single parent was taking it! It was a super deal as well. For a measly $3.50 more a month, he could get an insurance policy against breakage, replacement of parts, and repair of nicks. When asked, the clerk explained that they expected to rent all 100 of their violins with this offer. Let’s do the math. The store ends up making an additional $350 a month for their efforts to add-on sell this little service policy. Now, how much did it cost them to provide this extra service? Well, there probably was some expense. Some of the violins probably do sustain some damage and there is unques- tionably a cost of repair. But how much did it cost the store to sell this little policy … to add this additional monthly revenue? NOTHING!!! ZIP … ZERO… ZILCH … NADA!!! It was literally free money AND THEIR CUSTOMERS LOVED THEM FOR IT! So much so, they literally lined up to make the buy.
Now … what are you willing to do to … Immediately Boost
Your Profits 30 percent or More by Mastering The ART OF THE UP-SELL! It really is so easy and effective it falls in the “no brainer” category. Yet it boggles the mind how few people use it. Most of the time, it simply never comes to mind, because you and your sales team are so involved in the day-to-day op- erations of the business. Most just don’t take the time to think about marketing. Another reason is clearly the fear of offending customers by asking them to buy more. This false fear may be costing your company thousands of dollars in easy profits every month. What’s more, if you believe your products render a meaning- ful value to your customers and clients, and you fail to ask them to buy more, you are actually cheating your customers out of the benefits they deserve. This is especially true in the mo- bile electronics industry, where most clients always want more. The truth is, you may actually do your customers a disservice by not up-selling and add-on selling to them. Imagine how aggravated a woman was when her washing ma-
chine went on the fritz. Of course, it was one of those Murphy’s Law things where it broke down the day after the factory warran- ty expired. She called the dealer and was advised she should have invested in the extended warranty at the time of purchase for a minimal amount. Well, guess what ... the salesman hadn’t mentioned the warranty at the time of purchase! So the woman told the dealer she was willing to buy the warranty now, but they
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56