I hope everyone is as excited as me for the busiest and most festive time of the year! Hopefully you are ready to get some serious sales under your belts, which this month made me think about how we need not only to sell lots of our usual lines, but also sell lots of others too…
On my recent trip to Las Vegas I decided to live out every boys dream and go to the shooting range and let off some serious steam and some very heavy rounds. I had a look through the brochure and found an amazing selection of shooting ranges that we could visit, but the one that really stood out from the others was the one with 10% off, a free T-shirt and a Limousine ride to and from the venue, completely free of charge, wow! As Brits we are far from use to these amazing offers to get you into a venue and certainly not use to Limousine transportation to and from to go with it! On arrival we were that excited we had had just rocked up in a Limo that we hardly noticed the fact the ‘up-sell’ started as soon as we walked through the door. We were greeted with, “Good morning Sir” by the beautiful assistant
in her full destiny’s child survivor camouflage outfit and there it began. We cashed in our vouchers and then were asked to wait in the waiting room (sales emporium) and we started to spend, and spend we did! The customer service was amazing, as was the amount of products that was on offer.
Plenty of great refreshments, souvenirs, photo opportunities with any iconic movie gun you wanted from pretty much any movie you loved growing up as a kid. Of course by this stage we were like kids in a sweet shop and the “up-sell” had started, although we were having that much of a fun customer experience we didn’t even realise. When we were called to the range for our time slot it reminded us of why we were actually there and off we went to do the 4 weapons package we had pre ordered. The ‘up-sell’ started again as we walked into the shooting gallery, there was a Tommy Gun hung in pride of place along with various other weapons that were available as ‘add ons’. We were so excited and were having such a good time that we ended up doubling our package and shooting not 4 but 8 weapons. On leaving we spent even more in the gift shop, still buzzing from the day and promised to call back the next time we were in town and really did mean it! My story isn’t all about me going to a shooting range, its about how and why I spent so much more money than I had anticipated, what can we as Market Traders learn from this? Is it that I am a gun nut? NO! certainly not, but as an end user I can only say that even when I got my debit card bill on returning to the UK it didn’t hurt like it does, in fact I smiled, took a minute to reminisce on a great day and valued the money I had spent on the T-shirts
and pictures to prove it. As a customer I was attracted by a great deal, I don’t know their margins, but some could say that it was a good old ‘loss leader’ used, purely to set themselves ahead of the massive competition they had on the same road to make sure it was them I visited. They then more than made up for it with the ‘up-sell’. Nothing new here I hear you cry, but lets take a moment to ask ourselves have we ever put this into practice? I promote a ‘loss leader’ every Christmas just as I will this Christmas with my mistletoe, not only being one of the only places to sell it in the town, I also sell it for cost price purely to bring people onto the stall and when they do the ‘up-sell’ starts. Christmas Trees, Garland, Wreaths and of course plenty of fruit and veg, but don’t just take my word for it, lets take a look at someone who for me based their whole business model on two basic sales techniques, the ‘loss leader’ and the ‘up-sell’. The king of these techniques in Europe has to be Vista Print. These guys target SMES with the ‘loss leader’ of free business cards and then as soon as you go on their website bang, you are like a kid in a sweet shop and the ‘up-sell’ starts. Some people would call this old school, but sales is all about looking at new techniques as well as the old and using the ones that work best, for you! My advice this Christmas, look after your regulars, but make sure you get a great new line in to entice new customers. Make it your USP and make sure people know you have it via the usual channels and of course the ever popular social media and then when you have that captive audience, start the ‘up-sell’. Why not even replace the Limousine with a coach and try to run a promotional coach to your market for a real Christmas shopping experience? I would like to sincerely wish all readers a very Merry Christmas and a
prosperous New Year! Twitter @Theadamcorbally
www.markettradenews.com
www.facebook.com/markettradenews
www.twitter.com/markettradenews
Market Trade News 