Guys: You’re on the dating scene, you see a girl you like… When do you go for the first kiss?
“Hi, I’m Bob! How about a big juicy kiss?”
Uh, no, I don’t think so…
Listen – it takes time to develop a relationship. And in romance – just as in business, as we’ll get to in a moment – there are stages.
Why is this?
Well, we humans typically have “thresholds” that either we’re willing to bravely step over to see or get what’s on the other side – or that stop us cold in our tracks.
A kiss within the first five minutes of meeting is just too high of a threshold. Typically.
Same with selling.
Here we are on “Episode 6”, which, if you’ve been tracking, means we’re talking about the sixth out of seven stages of the marketing lifecycle, namely…
“Upsell, Downsell and Cross-Sell”
Okay, so to set the stage, we’ve attracted our ideal customer, captured their contact information, nurtured the relationship, converted them from lead to prospect to owner of the thing we offer, fulfilled and satisfied (or better yet overdelivered and delighted) on our promise…
And now… Well, now what do we do?
Well, I don’t want to go TOO far down this trail, but if we go back to our dating analogy…
You found the right lady (Just for grins ladies, let’s take this from the guy’s perspective for now, shall we?), gained her favorable attention, and her phone number, followed up with some conversation, phone call, email, text, meeting for coffee, etc, offered dinner at a nice restaurant and dinner was great… So now what?
The whole psychology is different than in our opening scenario, right?
Same with your business. Let’s assume you’ve been hard at work, followed me up to here, successfully implementing every step along the way (You have, haven’t you?). When someone buys from you, what’s happening?
1. You breathe a long sigh of relief, roll your eyes and think, “Whew! Done! Now I can relax!”
2. Your customer on the other hand, unbeknownst to you, is thinking, “Wow, Bob’s thing that I just bought is really cool. I wonder what else he has?”
Hmm… Do you see a disconnect here?
Okay, to drive this home, the solution is really simple – maybe even easy. Examples abound:
McDonald’s: “Would you like fries with that?”
Amazon: “People who bought that also bought this, this and this.” Or “Frequently Bought Together…”or “What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?”
Ford Salesman: “All Season radials would go great on this car, just $99 with your purchase today…”
You get the idea.
And you can automate the whole process with sales and marketing software, so once you have it set up, it runs on auto-pilot for you.
Now, as Nike has said so elegantly, “Just do it.”
(Image courtesy of photostock at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
