How to Masterfully Persuade
you’ll surely enjoy this story of a cool way to instantly snap a Second Glass offering into your Web initiatives. You can learn more about Lee at his web site at www.eliteinnercircle.com.
T
hroughout this guide the other Mad Scientists who have generously contributed their strategies, stories, and experi- ences with us have made one point blindingly clear:The greatest money potential exists in quenching the thirst of your target market . . . every time they’re thirsty.
That means giving your target what they want . . . con- stantly, and consistently . . . with a Second Glass, Third Glass, Fourth Glass, and so on.
What follows is one of my favorite techniques for enabling faster repeat selling. It’s tried and tested, and the good news is that almost every business has the ability to implement it seamlessly into its sales platform. It’s simple, and it could very well double your company’s revenue.
HOW TO ASK FOR MORE MONEY—FROM THE FIRST SALE—
AND GET YOUR CUSTOMER TO COUGH IT UP ENOUGH TIMES TO DOUBLE YOUR PROFITS
I call this strategy “Offering your customer a Second Glass be- fore they’ve drunk from the First,” and here’s how it works.
Method for Using This Technique (Step-by-Step)
For this, I’ll assume you already have a business selling a prod- uct or service of some kind. This is exactly what you do:
Step 1: Pull up your order forms (Web or paper), and identify what core benefits your product is offering the client.
This should be easy—the sales literature that leads the prospect to this point gives you all the clues. Ask yourself:
“Why is my client purchasing this?”
Think of two or three core benefits. Are customers pur- Mad Scientists Using The Great Formula
chasing to help themselves? To help their business? To save time? To improve their golf swing? What other benefits would relate to this principal benefit that could co-factor into one big- geroverall benefit?
If that doesn’t fully make sense right now, you’ll gain clari- fication in the coming examples.
Step 2:When you know the answer, pick another product that relates to the benefits of the first. If you sell golf clubs, you might think “educational golf video” (relating to the bene- fit of golfers wanting to increase their performance on the course). If you sell a business book, you might think “consult- ing” as a secondary avenue of supplementing the first benefit (which in this case may be aiding the reader’s business).
If you sell vacations, you might think “travel insurance”—a benefit that relates to the overall vacation experience for the customer. Make sure it’s something you already offer or can re- alistically begin to offer in the near future (and then take ac- tion to offer it).
Step 3: Take the price of that second product, and slash off the usual costs of acquiring a retail/full-price sale. Acquisi- tion costs? They can go, since you’ve already acquired the cus- tomer. Advertising costs? Knock them off as well. Affiliate costs? No need for them here, either. Remove all price barriers (and perhaps a small profit margin) that usually stop you from pricing your stock lower. Aim for a price that’s at least one- third lower than the original.
Why are you doing this?
You’re going to offer this second product at the same time as the first (literally, on the order form). You won’t need to spend money acquiring the sale, or advertising it. There’s no sales commission to pay. All of the usual fees are buried in the price of your primary sale (the First Glass). Your secondary sale (the upsell or Second Glass) is devoid of these costs.
Therefore, you can discount it.
The aim is to encourage the sale of the second product at the same time as the first. We’ll see how in the following steps.
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Step 4: Take your product, and modify your existing order form to include an offer for the new product as a small advertor- ial. Use an attention—getting headline inside that small insert that highlights the reduced price and the exclusive nature of the offer. Here are some examples I whipped up, for various prod- ucts. . . .
For golfing equipment:
“You’ve bought the club, now learn to play! Buy Secrets of the Swing on DVD, and get an instant 65 percent discount off your order! Exclusively for first time buyers.”
Business books:
“Hire the author to work with you in person—at 70 per- cent off his usual rate!”
Vacations:
“Now, save 30 percent off your dinner and theater tickets.”
Software:
“Four new, never before seen features that will appear in version 2.0 upon its release in December. Here’s how to get them, for 40 percent less than everyone else will pay.”
Seminars:
“Bring your friend, partner, or spouse—for half price!”
Information products:
“Get the ‘hidden extra chapter’ that sold stand-alone for
$997 to our closed-door group . . . for just $57 more.”
Computing equipment:
“We’ll unpack, set up, install, and configure your machine in under 60 minutes, guaranteed . . . anywhere in the country . . . for just $99 more!”
Web hosting:
“Is this site for business? If yes, process customer credit cards quickly and securely, FREE! (Just check the box.)”
These are just a few examples. They’re not particularly imag- inative, and you could do much better (although, for the five
Mad Scientists Using The Great Formula
minutes I spent conjuring these headlines, you may be surprised at the result). Tailor the headline, and the offer, to your product.
Step 5:Include a check/tick box in your ad, followed by the words “Tick the box to take advantage of this exclusive offer.” or other effective action-inspiring wording. Include offer details but summarize the benefits—remember, this is a short ad. You’re not writing a full-blown sales letter. You’re hoping they’ll check the box and put the form directly in the envelope to mail off . . . or click the submit button, if you’re doing this on your web site.
Where do you insert the ad?
Somewhere the client has to look. I typically insert it right under the “payment options” area. When new customers have tapped in their card details on my order page, I like to make it easy for them to add this. I just have them click a check box to accept the upsell. It’s super easy for them, and it has been shown—from my experience, at least—to boost profits signifi- cantly.
Step 6: That’s it, you’re done. Integrate the offer into your online ordering system (if you’re Web-based) or have your printer make some new direct mail forms, and you’re good to go. Or, as an additional test, you might even wish to try a third offer. That’s something I’ve yet to try. Who knows? Test it and see.
Why does this technique work so well?
The answer, like every aspect of marketing, is in the psy- chology.
People love to save money. In addition, when an offer is
“exclusive” or “one time only,” they are getting something that the ordinary person wouldn’t. You’re selling to their ego.
The period between a customer consciously agreeing to make a purchase and completing/submitting an order form is a very special time. You catch them in a unique, excitable, frenzied state. They’re already sold, so it takes very little to push them deeper into the sale. (Be careful, though—this can work in reverse. You can talk them out of a sale if you give them any last-minute reason to doubt. The prepurchase psy-
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chological consumer mind-set is a fragile one, to be handled with care.)
REAL RESULTS
The first time I tried the Second Glass technique of the stan- dard order form vs. order form upsell, I discovered an astonish- ing 40 percent of people were ticking that box and taking the Second Glass offer. Since then, I’ve found 40 percent to be a conservative result. Often, the upsell option is taken by up 50 percent . . . 60 percent . . . even 70 percent of my clients!
What does this mean for you?
It means that almost half of the people who hit my order form purchased more in their first buying instance. And this happened without having to sell to them. The second offer piggybacked the benefits of the first. Every effort to sell them that First Glass had already prequalified them—mentally—to accept the Second Glass.
I made it simple for them. Just tick the box. Save the money. Reap the bigger benefit. And it worked—on average, almost half of customers chose to spend more money when given the option—without any extra promotion!
In other words, new customers were drinking from that Second Glass even before receiving the first. It was an instant pay raise.
My strategy works for all products and services, big and small, expensive and otherwise—from the lower-end items right up to the high-end, big-ticket items.
Here are a couple of real-life examples, to give you some inspiration.
Promotion #1: A $697 information course was coupled with a $397 upsell.
The web site saw 2,398 visitors and 44 sales, for a total con- version rate of 1.83 percent. Of those 44 new customers, 26 (59 percent) opted to take the $397 upsell by clicking the check box.
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Gross revenue was up from $30,668 to $40,990 due to the upsell, and the average sale increased from $697 to approxi- mately $931. The visitor value rose from $12.78 per click to
$17.08.
This is as good as free money. And the best part? The upsell was old, outdated stock—still saleworthy, for sure, but in this case very difficult to position as a primary offer. What would have seen a response rate of maybe 1 to 2 percent in a “long copy” format saw a 59 percent uptake when coupled with an- other. There was a 20 to 30 times better response with an ad that was 20 to 30 times shorter and less convincing in size.
Here’s the exact ad I used (only the unit totals have changed).
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Promotion #2: A $47 subscription received a $97 “gold”
upgrade.
My friend wanted to try the same technique with his infor- mation business. The trouble was, he had only one product to sell—a subscription service he’d priced at $47 per month.
So, what did he do?
He took his basic product template and created a “gold”
version of it. This was basically the same product with a few beneficial twists—extra tips and tricks not available to the stan- dard subscriber, a little more support, and access to a gold members-only forum.
And he priced it at $97.
How did it do?
His order form routinely converts between 40 and 55 per- cent to the “gold” upgrade on a daily basis. One day last week, his site sold 86 subscriptions, and 38 took the gold. His profits for that day were up from $4,042 to $5,942—a $1,900 (47 per- cent) increase.
These are just a few examples. What could this approach do for your business? Try it and see.
This same concept can be applied to almost any type of order form—on the Web, and through direct mail. I’ve used it many times since, and every time, the same thing has hap- pened . . . bundles of profits were scooped that would other- wise remain untapped.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I’ve been marketing for many years on the Internet. For the vast majority of this time, this tactic remained unknown to me—not through lack of creativity or scope of what could be done, but simply that I never bothered to try it. Inaction can truly be the costliest of all choices. Businesses that don’t em- ploy the mentality of upselling are missing out on perhaps the most profitable avenue their business has to offer.
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How many more businesses are running on the fumes left by stale marketing ideas? At a conservative estimate, this tech- nique would quite easily be worth seven figures to many of the businesses currently producing six . . . or six to those now making five . . . and in many cases, a business could be trans- formed from successful to wildly profitable with a little time spent crafting Second Glass order form upsell offers.
All from one dumb little check box, a headline, and a tiny ad on an order page.
It makes you think, doesn’t it?
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