Mike: Jeff, I was in the car business for fourteen years. And I’m not trying to say this like, “I was in the car business for 14 years and let me explain to you…”
I’m trying to tell you like what I witnessed and what I witnessed was a guy that was very, very difficult to deal with and you would be talking to him and you’d be like, “ So, if we could save you that extra $50 dollars could we put the deal together for you today?”
And he was like, “Let me explain something to you, son. I said $200. If your manager comes back at $199 I’m walking out of here and I’m not coming back. I’m going to go buy the Infinity.”
And you’d be telling your boss, “Hey, this guy is just not budging.” Then he’d be looking at his watch going, “You know what? I don’t even have time for this anymore.” It’s like the guy is tough.
And you know what happens? When you finally put the deal together it was like, “Whew!” He would sit back in his chair. He would pick up his three year old. He put her on his knee.
He’d grab her by the hand and look her in the face and say, “Daddy just bought you a car. That’s right. Yep. We’re going to put the seat in there.” And it’s like, “Hey, is there a McDonald’s around here?”
And then all of a sudden you see the guy like Austin Powers when he just got out of the cryogenics. He’s just like walking around like, “Where’s the waiting room?” and the guy was the nicest guy in the world.
Then after that he starts saying, “You see that Forerunner over there? What are those things on the bottom?” “Those are chrome side steps.” “Could you put those on for me?” He doesn’t even ask you the price.
He is now in what we would call the buying mode. And he’d be like, “You know what else I wanted to get? I wanted to get a pin stripe and the wife was like, ‘I don’t want a pin stripe.’ No. I want to get a pin stripe and let’s tint the windows as well.
“And you know what? I also want to put one of those TVs in the back.” All of a sudden the guy has separated the pain of the negotiation process and he’s now in a buying mode.
And Jeff, have you ever been there? Where you’re like in Best Buy and all of a sudden maybe you go in just to do something and all of a sudden you just get in this mode where you’re like, “Let’s go get that TV.” And, “You know what? Let’s look at a home theatre.”
The next thing you know you go to the sales person and you’re like pushing out this huge cart out to your car. Right? Because you bought the home theatre and you’re setting it up and you feel good about it. You feel good about it and I don’t think anybody says it better than Jeffrey Gitomer.
And what that means is that people love to buy. They hate to be sold. There is nothing wrong with putting offers in front of your customers. We all get a very, very good feeling out of buying.
I mean for goodness sakes, yesterday, Tom, myself, and Mike went to the Apple store. I bought this Apple Desktop with three computers. They fell in love with it. They go back.
They buy Macintoshes and we’re buying accessories for our iPhone and we literally got in this mode of, “What else can we buy? Is there anything else we can buy?” because we felt like buying.
So the point is that when you make a sale to your customer, the sales letter was the hard part. The internal conflict was the hard part. Clicking that Order button was the hard part.
All the joy begins when that sales page says, “Press continue to be redirected back to the merchant.” Because then they’re like, “Yes!” and then you provide them something else, and you’re like, “Yeah, let me just make this experience better. I want it all.
“I want the XM stereo system. I want the navigation system,” because they made that decision to buy which separated the buying process. Now I’m in the negotiating process. I’m now in a buying process. If you’re not putting offers in front of them, you’re taking away from their joy.
They want to make more purchases. I think that anybody that says, “I feel kind of funny making another sale after they just made one. They may feel that that should have been included.” No.
If that was the case then Toyota would include extended warranties in every one of their cars. They give you a three year warranty. If you want more, then there’s an option to go seven years and many people do.
Some people say, “No. I’m only leasing it for two years. I don’t need it.” Some people say, “I keep my cars for ten years. Too bad they don’t have a ten year warranty because I’d buy it. I’ll have to go for the seven.”
So never, ever should anybody listening ever feel bad about giving people additional options. The thing to remember is you’re just giving them a choice. They can say no. They can say yes. They’ll never get upset as long as they’re given a choice.
Certainly you don’t want to give them 19 upsells in a row where they can’t find their download page. But having an upsell and a downsell is a very sound strategy.