Satisfying the Customer / Sale Offers and Options

In order to have a successful business and satisfy your customers, clients or patients, you must have a variety of products, services and/or events at a variety of price points.

This will allow you to meet your prospects’ needs and desires at whatever price point they are comfortable making their intial purchase from you.

Having “upsells,” “downsells,” “cross-sells” and “back-end” offerings will ensure that you will be able to continue to serve and profit from your customer relationships long after the first sale.

Always Have More Than One Offering

For entrepreneurs and small businesses, it’s generally not enough to have just one offering, whether product, service or event. Your “inventory” needs to include offerings at a variety of price points, so that your customers, clients or patients can choose their “point of entry,” and so that you can continue to serve them after they make their first purchase.

Your offerings may all be representative of whatever is your main area of product or service. For example, if you offer training about a specific topic, your offerings might be comprised of a 60-minute audio program for $10, a live interview teleseminar for $20, an audio/pdf basic self-guided training for $97, a month-long teleconference group coaching program for $297, and a 6-hour live workshop for $497 – all on the same topic.

Or your offerings may be related to your main product offering, but diverse in their scope. If you serve cat owners, for example, your offerings might include a $10 pdf e-book containing “natural” cat recipes, a $20 assortment of cat “treats,” a $50 “soft cat bed, a $50 hand-made personalized cat ID collar, and a $100 fancy cat bed.

Your offerings don’t all have to be proprietary, and you don’t even have to be the supplier. In the example of the training company, your $497 offer might be a training on your topic not that you provide personally but that you recommend to your clients, for which you receive a referral commission when someone you refer purchases the training from your colleague. In the example of the cat-related business, you can make all of those items yourself, have some or all of them manufactured for you, and/or source other companies which may even process and drop-ship your customers orders, saving you the hassle of inventory and shipping and sending you the profits from your customers’ transactions.

Be Prepared With A Variety of Offers

You have a “primary offer” – the one you lead with to everybody, or in some businesses, the offer you make to any particular prospect or customer based on his/her/their specific circumstance.

Every time you prepare to make your primary offer (whatever you want him/her/them to buy NOW) to a prospect or an existing customer, be prepared with the following.

If they DON’T say “yes” to the purchase immediately:

A. “Down-sell”

If you offer a $97 training program and someone says “no” or “not now,” what else do you  have to offer them RIGHT NOW that will be of service to them, yet cost them less?

This COULD include discounting the initial offer, and/or having a less-expensive product or service that you suggest that they consider purchasing instead.

If they DO say “yes” to the purchase immediately:

B. “Cross-sell”

Think amazon.com “Customers who bought “this” [book] are also interested in this [book].

“Cross-sell” items COMPLEMENT the primary offer.

C. “Up-sell”

Customers who buy a hamburger at a fast-food restaurant are asked before paying: “Would you like fries with that?”

“Up-sell” items don’t just complement the initial offer, they are “add-ons” to it, that increase the value of the purchase to the buyer.

After the purchase has occurred:

D. “Back-End”

What’s the NEXT logical purchase that a customer who purchases any product or service should make?

If they bought your $97 training, perhaps it’s your $297 four-hour live workshop. If it’s a rug, perhaps it’s quarterly rug-cleaning services.

“Back-end” sales can be “down-sells,” “cross-sells” and “up-sells.”

Know What You’re Going to Offer Your Customer Next

Whether your customer is reticent to make his/her/their initial purchase, whether they’re just about to make a purchase from you, or whether they’ve already purchased from you, you need to have a  strategy for what you’ll offer them that will add value to them as part of their purchase, or after.

Know what you’re going to offer/suggest to a satisfied customer next, that makes sense in light of what he/she/they are ready to purchase, or have already purchased.

Your Assignment

Create (or review) your offers and options.

Develop a document for your own use and/or for your prospects and customers that includes your primary offer(s), down-sell(s), up-sell(s), cross-sell(s) and “back-end” products, services and/or events. Include a brief description of each, along with the price point.

Learn your offers and options inside and out. Memorize them. Be comfortable with knowing when to make them, and in what way (in person, on the phone, via fax or e-mail, on your Web site, etc.). Carefully craft the written and spoken language that explains the specific benefits your customer will experience with the purchase of each of your offerings.

When you’re confident that you’ve got this organized for yourself, begin sharing it immediately with prospects and existing customers.

Start yourself down the path of offering greater service and receiving greater profits from having your sales offers and options strategy firmly in place.

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