Selling by Not Selling

Upselling is what happens when you take the initiative to ask someone who already has purchased something you offer to purchase more of it—or more of something else. This can happen in a variety of ways and over a variety of different time spans..

Some notes on Upselling

• Upselling happens when a TV infomercial concludes with an appeal to call a toll-free number . . . and the customer, after placing the order, responds positively to an appeal to purchase a different product, too
• Upselling happens when an order is shipped from a manufacturing plant, and the manufacturer includes, with the invoice, a flyer about an additional product or service that thanks the customer for his or her business . . . and alerts him or her to a special offering this month.
• Upselling also takes place when there is a decision to expand a business relationship with you or your company over the long term. So, for instance, in my company, where we sell sales training, upselling takes place after we have delivered the initial program, and it allows us to deliver more training in the weeks and months that follow.

Upselling is a never-ending process. This is what makes it a challenge for some people. They like to think of the sales process as something that is static, something that begins at point A and ends at point D, or E, or F. While there is certainly a lot to learn by evaluating the sales process in this linear way, it is just as true that upselling is an essential component of any successful sales career, team, or indeed of any successful organization.

Why Should You Try Upselling?

It is a well-known sales and business maxim that it costs significantly less to generate new business from an existing customer than it does to generate a new customer from scratch. In this book, you will be looking at a number of ways to create business with existing customers, and you will learn a variety of strategies for kick-starting this phenomenon of expanding the orders you receive from your customers, whether in the short or the long term.

So, if your job is to sell over the phone and you want to be able to expand the average size of your order during a single-call close—that is, a conversation that ends with the customer’s decision to buy not only your primary product, but something else, too—you will find advice on doing that here.

If your goal is to be able to reach out to existing customers and give them good reasons to buy more of what you sell, you will find that here as well.

The ideas you will encounter in this book are basic—“simple.” But for all their simplicity, they are rarely carried out by salespeople in the real world. The genesis of the ideas covered in this book is worth noting. We train other people with these principles because we tested them ourselves, and we use them ourselves! What you will read here is the result of twenty-five years of trial and error. Give it an honest try.

Take advantage of the system that follows. It works! Read it. Understand it. And then implement it. Hold yourself to the standard that a good idea, even one that sounds “simple,” is worse than useless if left untried.

Upselling Is a Conversation.

Whether we realize it or not, upselling is based on relationships. And the only real relationships we can count on are those that arise out of intelligent conversations between two people. Conversations are the foundation of upselling.

I wish I could give you some magic wand that you could wave over your prospects that would instantly allow them to see the benefits of buying more of your product, but no such magic wand exists. In the end, we will upsell, or fail to upsell, based on the quality of our conversations with our prospects and customers. If we display genuine curiosity and ask appropriate do-based questions, we will sell more of our products and services to our customers. If we don’t, we won’t.

You may well ask, What are do-based questions? Do-based questions are questions that focus, not on what we think the other person needs, or what we think his or her problem is, or what we think the potential pain is, but on what the other person is actually doing. If we focus only on what we consider the need, the pain, or the problem, then we won’t get the whole picture of what’s happening in the other person’s world. We may get part of that picture, and we may close an initial sale, but to build a relationship for the future, we have to be willing to ask questions about what the other person does. For instance:

• “Hey, we’ve talked about your current salespeople—but how are you handling your training for your new hires right now?”
• “How long have you been trying to sell your motorcycle? What have you been doing to sell it so far?”
• “How did you handle this kind of staffing problem the last time around?”

All of these are do-based questions. And all of them are substantial improvements over silly questions like, “What would you change about your current so-and-so?” or “What don’t you like about your present situation?”
Effective upselling is an extended conversation that allows you to find out what the other person is doing and plans to do, review key objectives, and make those objectives your own.
If you never learn or even bother to ask about what this person is doing or what this person’s objectives are on the job or in other realms of his life, then you will not be in much of a position to expand the relationship with your customers.

When it comes to moving toward that elusive goal—perfection in upselling—we sometimes find that less is more.

Each and every interaction with a customer we hope to sell more to—especially those interactions that are not directly sales oriented— is, in fact, a selling opportunity. How’s that for a paradox? These nonselling discussions are chances to deepen the relationship, expand our knowledge base about what is going on in an organization and in the other person’s life, and pass along relevant suggestions that parallel our own experience and ability to add value.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I am attempting to review the yearly training plan with a major account of my company. This contact is someone who has done a lot of business with our firm and someone who has in the past had no problem sitting down with me to review what his training plans are for the coming year. Let’s say we have been working together for three or four years. Now, all of a sudden, the person vanishes off the radar screen. I want to upsell to this person—that is, sell even more training to him—but my e-mails have gone unreturned, my voice mail messages have vanished into the ether, and my attempts to reach out to other people in the organization have gone nowhere. What can I do?

The best answer, in my view, is to give the person a reason to take my call that does not have to do with selling. In other words, I might send the person a book or article (that is, physically send an actual book, not e-mail an excerpt or chapter) with a personalized note. At that point, I would allow three or four days for the mail to deliver the book. I can then call and leave a message asking what the person thought of the book or article.

I am giving the person an easy way to respond and giving him a conflict-free context for future conversation. If there’s something there, I’ll probably hear back from the person—or be able to reach him more easily the next time around.

I’ll do anything to avoid the call that sounds like this: “Hi John, haven’t heard from you in a while—just wondering whether you had the chance to look at my proposal.”

Far better to call a current customer to add value to his or her day—and let the “selling” emerge of its own momentum during the conversation through “do-based” questioning!

Here’s what I say at the end of the conversation about the book or article I sent along: “Just out of curiosity, John—can we get together for lunch next Tuesday at 2:00? I have an idea I want to bounce off you.”

Some years ago, Robert Morse starred on Broadway in a one-man show entitled Tru. In that show, he offered a dead-on performance of the author Truman Capote. Capote was, as you may know, a brilliant, ultimately self-destructive literary genius. One of the more remarkable sections of the play came when Morris, as Capote, offered his advice on how to get anyone—repeat, anyone—to fall in love with you.

The advice, according to Capote, was actually very simple. Simply pay attention to the other person as though he or she were the only person on earth. Do that consistently, day in and day out, and regardless of the other obstacles in the relationship, you will find yourself united with this person.

It’s a fascinating piece of advice, advice that is relevant to the business world as well as the world of personal relationships. Ultimately, the guiding principle for good sales conversations, or upselling, and for all aspects of person-to-person selling is simply to pay a heck of a lot of attention to the other person. Not “sales” attention. Real attention.

Be absolutely certain that, when you are in a meeting with your contact, interacting with him or her on the phone, or sending an email, you are sending the message that this person really is more important than anything or anyone else on earth. Forget about selling. Just focus on what the other person is doing with incredible focus and attention.

If you can follow through on that type of commitment, genuine interest, and unapologetic attention, you will attract interest, you will build a relationship, and you will be able to sell more to your current customers.

Some thoughts…

• Why does the saying “less is more” apply particularly to upselling?
• How can we use non-sales-related discussions to move the upselling process forward?
• What’s a good way to reestablish contact with a customer who’s fallen off our “radar screen”?
• How can we use the “power” of paying attention to the customer to our advantage?