You’ve got your best chance to make a little extra money from customers when they are in the process of buying from you. They’ve got their money out and already trust you enough to buy.

Should you try and upsell them a higher priced product? Or cross-sell them an additional product?

Absolutely.

We recently needed to get our roof replaced. The contractor provided us with an estimate that included the basics and then threw in three line items of extras.

Upsell is More Than Price

These extra upsells had no accompanying explanations other than their name and price.

To us, that just looked like several extra hundred dollars. Why would we want to spend that?

When I called up the contractor’s office, they explained the purpose of two of the three items. We were convinced of their necessity and agreed to those upsells.

The first thing a customer will see with an upsell is the price. Help them get past that point or you’ll never make the sale.

Benefits of the Upsell

On a subsequent phone call, I spoke with the owner of the roofing company. In a matter of minutes he convinced me to buy the upgraded shingles for my roof. He highlighted the benefits of the product: higher quality, longer lifespan and contrasted that with the cheaper shingles I had originally selected.

Personal Discount

To incentivize me even further, he discounted the original upsell price in half because of several personalized reasons why I could qualify: we live close to their shop, my paperwork is in order, etc.

In the end we walked away with a new roof with all the upsells that were originally on the proposal.

Tell Me Why

The keys to the upsell were not just in the product listing but in the why behind it.

Remember these steps in your upselling efforts to your customers:

• Explain why their life will be better with the more expensive option
• Outline how the cheaper option will actually cost them more money in the long run
• Describe the consequences of the cheaper product and even the odds that they will occur
• Give the customer an “insider” feel by customizing and personalizing your discount to them (even if you give it to everyone)

Upselling a product to a customer that is already purchasing will greatly help grow your revenues and profits. Keep your selling process personal and helpful and your customers will choose the upsells and upgrades you offer.

Customer perception of your product or service is all relative. You need to identify the customer’s point of reference to be effective in your marketing and selling efforts.

Many customers will shop based on price or feature comparing your product to your competitor’s offering.

Other times your customer is only comparing what they currently have with what you are selling.

Let’s look at an example.

A while ago, I mentioned that we had an old TV that needed a converter box to receive the new digital TV signals. Ironically, that same TV started sparking and smoking about a week after we bought the converter box.

With the television dead, it was time to search for a replacement. Because our current TV was so old (over 9 years), any current television on the market looked really good.

Since my point of reference was based on a out-of-date experience, any new television would probably work as long as it fit in our cabinet.

When customers come to your store with this mindset, you need to work overtime to convince them to buy that fancy, huge, feature-rich, and pricey system you want to sell.

Not all people care about the top-of-the-line version of your product. If you want any chance of upselling the customer, take a step back and explain the basics and benefits of what you are selling and why they’d need it.

Customers will compare the products you sell side by side. If you can’t differentiate between them in words and benefits the customer cares about, they will either walk away with nothing or buy based on price.

If you sell a product that can be purchased almost anywhere from multiple vendors, you’re selling a commodity. This creates some problems in that you must convince customers to buy from you and not someone else.

Since your product itself is ubiquitous, you may be tempted to compete on price. Selling a commodity based on price is a losing proposition. Someone will always be able to undercut you.

So go ahead and sell the product at a fair price.

But wait, that can’t be it. Can it?

You’re right.

You’ll need to give the customer non-price based and compelling reasons to buy from you.

I recently purchased a new laptop from Costco. I could just have easily purchased this product from multiple other websites or retail stores.

In researching the product and reading reviews, people loved the computer but occasionally were frustrated by the return process if they had received a product dead on arrival. Instead of sending the laptop back to the vendor, they had to work with the manufacturer to ship it back and fix it.

I turned to Costco not for price, but because they alleviated the pain of buying this commoditized product. Costco offered a 90-day return policy compared to other vendor’s shorter 15- to 30-day policies. Costco also let me return the product to their store if needed so I wouldn’t have to deal with the hassle of the manufacturer’s return process.

So while the product was a commodity and could be purchased anywhere, the service and policies of Costco turned me in their favor.

In fact, I told my wife when I purchased the laptop that there was no risk because I could always return it, hassle free.

You want your customers to chose you because you are “risk free” and the easiest to purchase from.

Perception is reality.

How many times have you heard that?

Well, guess what? You can change perceptions.

How?

Set proper expectations.

The last time we had a DiGiorno pizza with the family, I noticed this line in the instructions:

Let stand 5 minutes before enjoying

Notice how they didn’t say “before eating” or “consuming” or even “before serving”. They said “before enjoying.”

They stated as obvious, accepted, and unavoidable that you’ll enjoy the product. The natural next step after preparing and cooking the pizza is not just to eat it but rather to enjoy it.

That simple instruction on the box sets expectations in the customer’s mind that they will enjoy the product. It builds excitement while they wait for the pizza to finish cooking.

How do you think you can precondition your customers to be happy with your product or service? Step outside the normal bland copywriting on your product and predict a super customer experience. Just be sure your product lives up to expectations!

Just because your customers need your product or will be forced to buy it later doesn’t mean they will buy from you or buy today. You have to convince them.

Here in the United States, we’re getting rid of our analog television broadcasts in favor of a pure digital signal. Every time we’ve watched TV over the last few months, we’ve been reminded that this change is coming. If we wanted to keep seeing our favorite shows, we’d need to get a converter box for our television.

The government even offers coupons to help offset the cost of a new converter box.

In our home, we’ve got an older television hooked up to an antenna. No satellite or cable service for us. Call me old fashioned if you will, but not before you know I won’t give up my high speed internet connection.

So why didn’t I get that converter box when I first heard about this change?

Procrastination.

I requested a coupon and it never came. Now I hear that the government has run out of funds for these coupons. Result? I wait.

I hear about an extension of the deadline for the analog to digital switch. The result? I wait.

Finally, I’m at the store and I see a display with converter boxes. I figure I’ll have to make the switch eventually, so I buy the box.

When I set up the converter box, the first thing I say to my wife is, “Honey, we’re going to wish we had done this sooner!”

Why? The picture was crystal clear. No more fuzzy channels. No more static. No more moving the antenna around to get a picture. Wow!

If I had known these were the results, I would have switched a long time ago.

Unless your customers know how your product will make their life better, they will delay buying from you or skip the purchase all together.

I suspect that if the commercials announcing this change had highlighted the benefits of switching (like those I experienced) instead of simply saying “Get your box or you won’t be able to watch TV,” they would have been more successful.

For example:

Listen, America! If you get that converter box you can have a crystal clear picture like your neighbor who bought that $2000 TV and pays $200 a month for cable.

Really, it is true! And you only have to pay $50. Don’t wait for the deadline because these boxes will sell out.

Build the desire in the customer, and they will jump at the opportunity to buy your product even if it is government mandated or they’ll have to do it eventually. Make them buy today by instilling in them a desire for a better experience and so they yearn for what you are selling.

Coupons are everywhere. Is your business using them effectively to pull in customers and build repeat business?

Include Coupons with Your Product

Papa Murphy’s pizza always includes a coupon with their product for a couple of dollars off the next order. They don’t have to pay for mailings or fliers. They piggy back their coupon on the product they know you’ll love and thus target their most easy prospects for a repeat purchase.

Are you promoting your business in the moment your customers are most satisfied with your product?

Sense of Urgency

Last year we had a team event at a bowling alley here in Austin. At the end of the day, our host gave us several gift cards for free games. Each of these gift cards expired in 30 days.

The deadline immediately makes people think not of if they will use the coupon, but when they will use it. Instead of just “the next time we go” the customer starts to think, “I’ll go next Friday.”

Leverage the Return Trip

Customers may return to your store for numerous reasons. After Christmas is a busy shopping time as people head back to stores to return merchandise they didn’t really want. Fresh with a store credit or cash in hand, they are primed to spend that money with you.

Every time I go to Border’s bookstore, my receipt has some kind of coupon attached. When I get that receipt I immediately think of which book I need or want to buy next.

Coupons can trigger your customers’ imagination of what they can buy from you.

Customers Will Spend More

Coupons encourage customers to spend money. Period. Even if the discount or gift card is for a significant portion of the product’s price, customers will likely pick up other items or spend more money with you during the same visit.

Coupons and Loyalty

Coupons aren’t just for attracting new customers. Like these examples show, coupons can encourage repeat business from your current customer base. Help instill the habit of shopping with you and that customer will become a long-term customer.

Elections are just around the corner here in the United States. This year we’ll be electing a new president and a whole bunch of other local and state officials.

I can tell election day is getting near because I see more and more “vote for me” signs stuck all over town. These signs congregate near stop lights, on corners, against fences, and in peoples’ front yards.

All these signs have something in common: they have the candidate’s name in big letters and almost always have the office they are seeking.

Unfortunately, this is about as much information as you get.

What’s missing?

How about “why should I vote for you?”

Where are the benefits, changes, ideas, or issues you want to discuss?

It would appear that most candidates are hoping for name recognition at the polls in lieu of any research voters will do.

Is your business doing the same thing?

If you are to win over customers, you can’t rely just on your name. What if customers have never heard of you before? Customers may not even know what your company does.

Take advantage of your marketing to go beyond name recognition. Customers vote with their wallets. Tell customers why they should vote for you.

Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad, answered a question about creating buzz in Inc magazine’s October 2008 issue with some profound insight:

Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable.

Robert had to bootstrap his business and didn’t have the money to advertise. His business flourished because of word of mouth referrals. Being remarkable is a surefire way to get people talking about you. Seth Godin reminded us of this in his Purple Cow book.

When you view advertising as a tax, it no longer becomes the standard operating procedure for your company. Just because everyone else does it doesn’t mean you have to throw away your cash on the same thing.

If you embraced the constraint that you couldn’t advertise, what would you do to acquire customers?

Provide outstanding customer service as your marketing?

How about encourage word of mouth referrals?

Any way you’d slice it, you’d have to get creative. In so doing, you will probably even see ways to refine and focus your advertising message should you choose that path.

Your company, product, and service should be so good that you don’t need to advertise. Is that even possible? Yes, it is.

As you read the other day, we dropped our old pest control service Terminix and needed to find a new provider. At this stage of customer acquisition, your company’s marketing would hopefully take over and persuade a customer to choose you.

Word of Mouth

We, like many people, skipped the ad-ridden landscape and asked several of our friends for recommendations. We got a few passionate reviews and some that were just so-so.

One of our friend’s recommendations was:

I would hands down recommend Pflugerville Pest Control. The prices are reasonable and the owner doesn’t advertise because he gets so much work via word of mouth referrals.

This is a great example of what you want your customers to be saying about you!

Personal Service

I called the owner and spoke with him for about fifteen minutes. He took the time to explain their services and answered my questions in detail. I learned more about the pests around my house during that brief call than during the entire four years we had Terminix servicing our house.

Break the Rules

This small business seems to defy traditional logic:

• It has no website
• It’s trucks are not artistically painted
• It doesn’t advertise

Those business practices may seem restrictive, however, this small business is succeeding because of several key factors:

1. word of mouth referrals instead of advertising
2. pricing at 75% of the big boys
3. personable service

Their service is their marketing, that in turn, spawns numerous word of mouth referrals.

What can your company learn from the small, yet successful, Pflugerville Pest Control?

In Purple Cow, author Seth Godin talks about how mass marketing is dead. Blasting out your message to the masses is no longer effective.

Does this mean all is lost? Should you give up advertising?

No! You can go local.

Even in this internet age, you can still reach potential customers through traditional, mass media channels. For example:

During the last college bowl game season, I watched a bowl game interestingly titled “San Diego County Credit Union.” This game featured the University of Utah vs. Navy and was held in San Diego, California.

While the majority of people watching the game on ESPN probably don’t have a local San Diego County Credit Union, a lot of the people at the game did.

San Diego is full of US Military personnel and families, particularly the US Navy. So while the sponsorship of this football game seemed a little out of place, it was an extremely local advertisement. Very clever.

When you choose your mass marketing channel, choose wisely. Choose local.