I wanted to throw something out there about up-sells, they are an important part of your business and your bottom line.  If you don’t know what an up-sell is, this is basically just a suggestion, offer or add-on to an existing sale. 

All right, so everyone has seen this in action, the in your face up-sell that adds a few more cents or dollar onto the sale, it’s always something great.  I was at the auto parts store last week snatching up some parts and when I got to the counter they had a bottle of super high power, clean anything from anywhere stuff that they asked if I wanted to take with me for only $2.50 on special.  Now it was super high concentrated and you got enough to clean the exterior and stairwell of the Empire State Building, a good deal.  I didn’t go for it but I thought about it, I bet a large number of people that day did get it.  That of course is not the up-sell I am going to talk about.  The one that I am talking about is hidden, this one does not make any more money, in fact it costs money.  Why would you want to do that?  Well, read on.

First, let me explain this up-sell, then it should be obvious why.

If you go to a fast-food drive through, Wendy’s for example, you go through the drive through because that is all you have time for and you order a sandwich and some fries with a frosty.  Maybe you are extra hungry and opt for some chicken nuggets because they are 99 cents.   You get to the window and they take the money and hand you your change or receipt and all, then follow up pretty quick with your food.  Less than 30 seconds after arriving at the window you are pulling away with your food.  You are happy, or so you think.  You pull your fries out of the bag as you drive down the road, no it is not safe or recommended but it is done, so you pull out your half empty fry container from the bag and start there.  After that you feel around in the bag for the other half of your fries that have spilled out  that are now half cold.  Not wanting to tackle the sandwich just yet you decide to have some nuggets as an appetizer.  You panic because you do not remember seeing the nuggets when you got out your half empty fry container.  So you risk your life and the lives of everyone else out driving that day to look in the bag to see if they forgot your nuggets.  It turns out that they are there, right where they should be, in the bottom of the bag upside down.  Well, the fries and the nuggets are so salty that now you need a little something to cleanse all that salt from your palate, how about that frosty?  Wait, how are you going to consume that, maybe the spoon, except there isn’t one, try the straw that is 2 times longer than the cup, but the thickness of the frosty cannot be sucked through a straw, nor can it be drank, so in modern terms you have been pwned.  Let’s examine the contents of the bag.  You have your sandwich, fries, nuggets, one napkin, a straw and one packet of ketchup.  Seriously?  If a person were to have the time to pull over at a park, get out, set up at a picnic table and enjoy their meal, they would be very disappointed.  There would be enough ketchup for one fourth of their fries, no sauce for their nuggets and no spoon for their frosty.  Insert the hidden up-sell, the ketchup, the spoon, another napkin and a well organized bag.  This cost you money and time, the time it takes to place the item in the bag so that it would not be a mess for the customer.  Most people are willing to give you the time, I will gladly wait that extra 3-5 seconds that it takes to do this and add in the extra stuff, I will gladly wait 15 seconds for this extra level of satisfaction.  You should gladly give up the fractions of a couple of cents to give them the ketchup, napkin, spoon and an offer for sauce. 

All right, fast-food, it applies to that, but where else?  Anywhere.  Let me cite a couple of more examples.  You are selling a cell phone for example.  I see this so much, the person gets the phone, gets it activated, makes sure that it works and hands the customer the box and receipt.  That customer is going to be happy that they got a new phone but not satisfied that they have to go through the learning curve of figuring out how to use it.  You just sold them the latest model of phone with 32 times more features than their old phone and left tossed them out in the cold.  The up-sell here is to take some time and show them some of the phones advanced features, set up their email on the phone for them, walk them through how to text message, how to pair it up with a blue tooth device, change the ringer and volume.  Oh, there opens up a whole bunch more of the obvious up-sells.  Blue tooth, sell them one of those, texting plan, data, navigation; the money stuff.

Selling a television?   Let’s make sure the customer understands how to scan and program channels, connect it to their surround sound, set up picture in picture and so on.  Before we get to that, make sure they know what models are available and what set would best suit their specific needs, maybe they don’t need to buy the $1900.00 model, maybe that one for $1499.00 will be a better match.  Don’t try to make the profit up front, if you take all their money today, then they won’t be able to come back tomorrow.  Seriously.  If they come in and spend more than they need to then they are not coming back.  But if you understand them, develop a relationship, save them money then when they decide that they need a blu-ray player to go with there new TV, guess where they are going to shop. 

GPS, show them how it works.  Blender, show them what makes the model they are choosing unique or better than another model.  Whatever it is, there is a hidden up-sell

Then there is the follow-up, this is really important.  Call them in a day or two and find out how they are getting along with things.  Don’t just send them a flyer once a month, talk to them.  Now, this does not apply to the fast food example, but it does in many other instances.

So it should now be obvious why you would want to spend the time and money doing this.  And yes, this is more about customer service than actual up-sells but you probably would not have read it if I came out on that note.  When it comes down to it, give the customer something to help them get the most out of their product, not just the product itself.  You do that and you will get them as repeat customers, and you will get their friends and family as well because you made the difference in their purchasing experience.  You provided them with a service not just a sale.

I know that all of what I wrote is, or should be common sense, but in my experience it is not.  My experiences have been so far off from this that it makes me not even want to go into a store and purchase anything, just buy it online at some discount place with no return policy.  It gets about the same interaction and personality. 

That’s all for now, hope you enjoyed my rambling.

Take care web.

Time for the "reveal" on what I got Angie for Valentine’s Day.  Before that I want to wish you all a happy one.

So the gift was an amazing keepsake product from http://www.whenwefirstmet.com.  I highly recommend this to anyone wanting to commemorate this occasion.  It is packed full of information that is relevant to when you met your partner.  It has news, events, sports, advertisements and more beautifully arranged in a hardback wire bound book.  For a couple of bucks extra (well worth it) you get many more pages of an astrological profile that is built around the two of you.  In the back there are several pages for you to fill out together about when you met, your first date, kiss, and so on.  Plus pages to put in photos of memories.  Angie really likes this gift, although it was wrong, we both got the date incorrect.  Oops, we are ordering a replacement. 

So that is my surprise, not bad for someone not into the Valentine thing, I think I did pretty good.  If anyone is interested in getting one for yourselves that site again is http://www.whenwefirstmet.com.  They also have other keepsakes regarding birth and marriage at http://www.whenyouwereborn.com/ and http://www.whenweweremarried.com/ I would highly recommend checking this out and Angie would agree with that.

So that is my update, go shopping!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Take care web.

So here it is, Friday the 13th.  Has anyone gone to see the new Friday the 13th movie yet?  I would like to hear from a real person on how it is. I always loved the originals…up until number 20 or so and that guy from Elm St. got in the picture and all that, it started getting pretty dumb.  So if you have seen it please leave a comment here or catch up to me on Twitter.

Speaking of Twitter, my following out there blew up over the past couple of days and I am at a loss for why.  Now there are those out there with thousands of followers, I am not in that realm; but over the past 36 hours I went from may 5-7 followers to 35 followers.  I don’t know why, guess people finally figured out what a cool guy I am.  LOL

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, are you all ready?  Did you throw out a bunch of money to show someone that you love them?  Seriously, as most of you know I am not all that big into this holiday.  It just doesn’t make sense to me, I mean I guess I kind of get it, but I don’t know why people need this day thrown in the mix of life to show someone that you love that you love them.  Honestly, do we need another day for this?  I thought that day was Tuesday, again on Wednesday, then Thursday….and so on.  Do you have to have this day set aside for it?  Maybe there are those out there who simply don’t connect, they run through their relationships without giving one another that whole feel good vibe.  Maybe they need to have this day where they can stop, hold hands, buy some flowers, eat some chocolate, wait 2 hours for a table at a nice restaurant and all that jazz.  Then they get the 15th to recover, by returning to the daily grind.  I don’t know, maybe I am the odd one.  If nothing else it helps to stimulate the economy.  I bought into it this year as well, I got in a fair deal of trouble for not buying into it last year.   So I thought if I am going to get into it then I am going to get something worth giving and set out to find that perfect gift that shows the true meaning of the holiday.  That took some searching, there is so much junk out there that is just so empty.  So I think I did pretty good in my hunt, I am not going to reveal it yet, you will have to stay tuned for that, since it is not the day yet I can’t give away the surprise, but tomorrow I will update everyone on what I found.  Don’t worry, you can buy this any time of the year and it will be special so don’t think I am going ruin things by not giving you this really great gift idea 1 day in advance, that would not be enough time for you to get it anyway.  So check back and find out what I think is the ideal gift for Valentine’s Day and several other occasions as well.

I have been super busy with a major server malfunction over the past 2 1/2 days and have gotten very little sleep so I am going to keep this very short, so unlike me.  My good friend Wes worked through this with me as well, hopefully he gets a little well deserved shut-eye as well.  Angie did some major work over today too.  She took a vacation day from work to groom the dog, Cajun.  Now, some of you may laugh; a vacation day to groom a dog?  But if you have seen this animal and were to know how he is about being groomed, many of you might stretch it out into a week long project.  He is a rough collie and takes the term rough to the extreme, the end result is amazing; she did a really wonderful job at making him look like a creature from this planet.  The amount of hair he got removed out of his coat probably came close to a full trash bag.  I’ll have to see about getting some pictures here or at her site.  He looks great.

Remember come back within the next 24 hours to get "the gift" revealed to you and find out Angie’s reaction to it.

Take care web.