How NOT to upsell (and by the way, my car DIDN’T explode)
This week’s edition of Heart-Centered Technology Tips is more marketing-focused, and it contains a recommendation for a product I recently purchased. There, you’ve been warned.
You might already know that I believe technology is just a tool that we use to connect, and marketing is one of the ways we make those connections. Learning to upsell honorably is an important enough marketing topic that I thought it deserved a post of its own.
So here’s the anecdote of the week: I spent part of my Friday afternoon at an EZ Lube. I saw the banner advertising $21.95 oil changes and it occurred to me that I (well, my car) could use one. I had two $20 bills in my wallet, so I’d even have enough left over for a few groceries.
Except that I landed in Upsell Hell the minute my car was captive. Here’s a sample:
EZLG, undeterred: Also I see that it’s been awhile since you’ve flushed out the radiator, and your power steering fluid is at the end of its life. And when was the last time you had your tires rotated?
Me: Um, I’m not sure. I’d have to check my maintenance records at home. Maybe you could just print out a list of recommendations for me?
EZLG: Well, we could take care of everything on this list right now, since you’re already here. It would only be $308.95.
Me, gagging at the triple digits: Uh. I’d like to just stick with the oil change today.
EZLG: And I could give you the manager’s 15% discount plus we could apply a VIP coupon which would bring your total down to $264. And your gas mileage will improve and you’ll be helping the environment by cleaning your engine.
Me: Well, I have somewhere to be in half an hour, and I really just wanted to get the oil changed.
EZLG: OK, sure, I understand. You might be able to get away with not cleaning the intake system right now, although we really recommend that after every third oil change. So if we take that off that brings us down to $209.
…and about three or four repetitions later, I had finally convinced the guy that I really just wanted an oil change. Although I’m kind of rankled that after all that, he still got me to pay an extra $16 for “high-mileage oil.” So I paid $37.50 for what I had planned to pay $21.95 for, and I felt completely slimed. Plus I didn’t have enough left over to buy groceries.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Here are just a few things I think these guys did wrong in trying to upsell me:
- The upsell was disproportional to the original sale. I planned to spend $22 and they generously offered to let me pay them $308. Whoa! Maybe if they’d started with the “high-mileage oil” idea and stuck with that, I might have been happy to be upsold by $16.
- They used scare tactics. Like that I was “overdue” for certain services, which was dangerous by implication, and also I’d be trashing Mother Nature if I continued to drive around in a car that hadn’t had its fuel intake system cleaned.
- They didn’t take no for an answer. This is what really convinced me that they weren’t acting in my best interest (trying to help a customer) but simply following a script that attempted to get the most money out of me. That’s the opposite of building trust.
People, do not do this to your customers.
How to upsell and keep your soul intact
There are ethical ways of upselling that actually aim to help your customers, not merely squeeze more bucks out of them. An upsell, by definition, happens when you’ve already sold something. Do you really want to mess up that success by alienating someone who’s demonstrated that they’re willing to pay you?
No, of course you don’t. But how do you make an upsell offer without acting like a sleazebag?
I don’t have the answer. But Dave and Naomi do. Their latest collaboration is called Upsell 101, and it’s genius. I bought it last week, and so far I love it.
Yes, that’s an affiliate link you see there. I only recommend products I own and love, and believe would be helpful to my readers.
By “so far,” I mean that I’ve listened to the 78-minute audio, in which Naomi and Dave are their typical witty selves as they discuss 11 ways to offer upsells without being pushy. And I’ve admired the fact that the product has an easy-to-use web page as a starting point, which lets you get to all the goodies quickly instead of poking through a folder of cryptically-named stuff.
And best of all, I have filled out a bunch of worksheets, baby! You may have bought audio products before. If you’re super-organized, you may have even taken notes as you listened. But then what? What happens to the great a-ha moments you have as you’re listening?
I have plenty of audio recordings that I’ve listened to, gone “wow, I should really put this into action,” and then somehow never followed up. Fortunately Dave and Naomi have put together a series of worksheets that distill the tips they cover in the audio class, and they even give you two different formats (PDFs and Word docs), so you can edit the worksheets to fit your business.
I haven’t owned Upsell 101 long enough to have tested how well the ideas work for my business. But you can bet that my pile of worksheets will motivate me to put some ideas into action, and I’ll report back here when I have some results.
The one thing I wish had gotten a bit more airplay in the audio is the fact that when you’re selling an information product (ebook, digital audio, or anything that can be delivered via download), any scarcity you create is artificial. I’ve always personally felt uncomfortable with the idea of selling a limited quantity of an information product (as Dave correctly notes in the audio, “Dude, it’s a PDF, you can make as many copies as you want”), or even selling the exact same product to different people at different prices (because it just feels unfair somehow).
This discomfort of mine isn’t about anything that’s said in the audio — I definitely think Dave and Naomi are the opposite of sleazy internet marketers. It probably has more to do with my unique spot on the Kosher-Non-Kosher Marketing Continuum, which I totally accept is my issue, not theirs (for instance, I can see that I’m automatically equating “artificial” with “bad” which is an assumption I could look at more closely, maybe in a future post).
One final tip: You might want to join Dave’s Advance Discount List if you like his stuff and want to be able to get it in advance, for a discount. Yep, the list is exactly what he says it is.
And what about the “technology” part of this Heart-Centered Technology Tip? I’d just like to point out that the technology we use to do our upselling can be as simple as adding a line to a thank-you email, and as complex as setting up a customized autoresponder series for each product. So once again, it’s about what you do with the technology rather than the technology itself.
Until next week,
Wendy Cholbi, your friendly neighborhood technology coach
Related posts:
- How to upgrade anything, part 2 of 6 (Heart-Centered Technology Tip)
- What’s an email list and do you need one? (Heart-Centered Tech Tip)
- How to upgrade anything, part 5 of 6 (Heart-Centered Technology Tip)
- How to upgrade anything, part 3 of 6 (Heart-Centered Technology Tip)
- Biggifying through Technology Choices (Heart-Centered Tech Tip #18)
