Absolutely nothing on sale here today. Honest.

November 27, 2009 By

Black Friday, Schmack Schmiday.

I don’t go in for that nonsense. Never in my life have I spent the night in a Best Buy parking lot, waiting for 12:01 so I could get into the holiday spirit by being trampled by an insane mob while trying to get my mitts on a $99 plasma TV or whatever.

And I’m not going in for the crazy 75% off Internet-only sales either, whether it’s Black Friday or whatever the hip term for the Monday after Thanksgiving is. Mob Mentality Monday, methinks.

So if you were hoping to buy something cheap, all’s I’ve got is my regular stuff, at regular price. Sorry. Oh wait, I’m not sorry at all. Heh.

I’m totally serious. Let me repeat myself: No sales here! If you’re really desperate for an insane deal, though, you could do worse than to check these folks out:

  • Naomi over at Ittybiz is actually selling Online Business School for 75% off, and it’s going off the market in a few days. If you’ve been putting off buying it, now would be a good time.
  • Johnny B. Truant is offering his Zero to Business course for half-price, plus he’s giving a $100 discount on personal coaching. And he is one smart cookie.
  • This one isn’t technically a Black Friday sale, but the early-bird deadline for Mark Silver’s 2010 Opening the Moneyflow course is December 4. And he’s doing a free teleclass on December 2 called “You’ve got one year: Go!” His teleclasses are always gold, and totally not sales-hyp-ey. Highly recommended.

That is all. Back to your regularly scheduled retail extravaganza.

Me? I’ll be curled up with a good book, and occasionally checking Twitter so I can shake my head and tsk-tsk-tsk at reports of consumer-on-consumer savagery.

Filed Under: Announcements Tagged With: , , ,

“Is everything delightful?” or, why market to your existing customers

June 19, 2009 By

Two quick examples of why it’s great to actively sell to your existing customers:

1. “Is everything delightful?”

The other day I had lunch with a friend at one of my favorite local restaurants, Farm Artisan Foods. We were enjoying a sampling of tapas-like small plates, including a truly delicious salad that included herbed goat cheese, pickled beets, and roasted red peppers. Our server stopped by and asked “Is your salad wonderful?” and all I could do was nod (my mouth was full!).

What a funny question, I thought. Isn’t it a bit presumptious to say something like that? And I was still thinking about it  several tapas later when she did it again: She asked “Is everything delightful?” after we’d gotten everything we’d ordered. We said yes. Because it was true.

My conclusion: It was presumptious, and it was also great marketing. Here’s why:

  • Shows confidence in the product. The folks who run this restaurant seriously know their stuff. The chef makes a big deal about local, sustainable agriculture; the servers know everything about the dishes; the menu is seasonal. She knew full well that the salad was wonderful and the tapas delightful, before she asked. The leading question made it easy to agree. Presumptious, in a good way.
  • Trains customers to think your product is exceptional. Many restaurants have their servers come out at some point during the meal and ask “Is everyone doing OK?” or “How’s the food tonight?” or some similar open-ended question. Most customers respond “OK” or “fine” or occasionally ask for some more ketchup. When I, as a customer, am asked to agree that the food is wonderful and delightful, I actively think about the fact that the food is in fact wonderful and delightful. This interaction just went from a mundane check-in to a celebration of fine dining.
  • Acknowledges that the relationship doesn’t end with the sale. Once I’m in the restaurant and am eating, the sale is made. Why bother spending any more time or energy making me feel good about my food choices, or asking my opinion? There’s probably something sophisticated I could say here about customer retention, but basically it boils down to feeling appreciated as a customer. Not only will I go back to the restaurant, but I’m blogging about the experience two weeks later because my server asked me my opinion of the food in an interesting way.

2. Flowers for Father’s Day?

For Mother’s Day, I ordered flowers for my mom. Actually I ordered a real live plant because she likes them and no flowers would have to die to demonstrate my filial affection, but the ordering process was basically the same.

I wanted to support a local business, so instead of going with a national toll-free florist service, I looked up local florists in Denver, read some reviews, and settled on 5280 Flowers (it’s the Mile High City, get it?). I ordered straight from their website, despite the fact that the pictures aren’t very big and the ordering process isn’t quite as smooth as with an ecommerce giant. The flowering plant was delivered the next day, Mom was thrilled, and I was a satisfied customer.

End of story, right?

Not quite. Last week, six days before Father’s Day, I got an email from 5280 Flowers with “Father’s Day” in the subject line. It was a bit of a clunky email; not exactly perfectly formatted. Also, the first line was somewhat ominous:

“Fathers Day. Do not forget. Sunday June 21.”

But I read the email anyway because I was in the market for a Father’s Day gift. I wanted to send my dad something, but I would never have thought of flowers. I mean, we’re supposed to get our dads ties or mugs or weird electronic gadgets, right? Definitely not flowers, so why would I even consider shopping at a florist?

Well, as it turns out, this local florist also sells gift baskets, ranging from your basic Chiquita Banana fruit-cornucopia to teddy-bear baskets for new moms to … wait for it … barbeque and snack-food themed baskets for dads.

Perfect! So I called them up and ordered a custom basket, because several of their packaged baskets had different things I wanted, and the website had a clear message on every gift basket page telling me that baskets were customizable.

This business got an extra sale from me by showing me (in the right place at the right time) that they could provide more than flowers. They built on a previous interaction (my successful flower purchase) and offered me more. And I snapped it up and was happy to pay them.

Bonus tip: 5280 Flowers has two domain names: 5280Flowers.com and 5280Gourmet.com, so they can market themselves as a gourmet gift-basket shop even to people who would never buy flowers. The sites are interlinked and similar enough that I went back and forth a couple of times without realizing I was doing it. This kind of smart marketing is one reason that I recommend buying multiple domain names (they’re cheap, after all).

These two examples are straight from the leafy canopy of the Small-Business Tree. Yes, they both fall into traditional marketing, but they’re also great reminders that marketing isn’t just something you do to get customers. It’s something you do all the time, even in your interactions with existing customers.

And the florist example is also a great case study in the art of the upsell. They successfully upsold me three times: First, by getting me to shop with them for Father’s Day in the first place. Second, by offering customizable baskets so I had the option of going beyond the prepackaged deals. And third (or maybe this is just a part of the second one), the custom baskets are more expensive than the packaged ones, and I didn’t blink.

For more about respectful and successful upselling, check out the latest product I’ve purchased from Dave Navarro (@rockyourday) and Naomi Dunford (@ittybiz), Upsell 101. They’ll tell you exactly why I fell for the florist email, and how to get your own customers to fall for similar promotions…without being a Sleazy Marketer.

How am I doing with the lessons I’m learning from Upsell 101? Well, I’ll report back after I try some more of Dave and Naomi’s tips.

I’ll let you know how it goes! Happy Father’s Day, everybody!

Filed Under: Real-Life Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How to avoid Upsell Hell

June 9, 2009 By

How NOT to upsell (and by the way, my car DIDN’T explode)

This week’s post 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:

EZ Lube Guy: We’re ready to change out your oil, ma’am. Your brake fluid and transmission fluid are fine, but our computer shows that the last time you had your intake system cleaned was in ’07. So you’re overdue for that. We could take care of that for you right now if you’d like.
Me: Well, I’d rather just get the oil changed.

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

Filed Under: Heart-Centered Tech Tips, Real-Life Marketing Tagged With: , , ,