Are you using upsell questions? Because you should be.

They have the power to add quite a lot of money to your sales, or your revenue, or your turnover, or your invoicing, whichever you like to call it.

A couple of weeks ago I spoke about the power of small changes and how they accumulate.

And I talked about if you could increase your sales revenue by 5%, and a number of other things, your margins and your number of jobs then you can make a significant change to your profit.

I want to talk about another way to make a change, and that is an upsell question.

I’m Jon. I’m a business coach for tradies as you know. I run the Tradies Toolbox Coaching Program. And it’s about helping you grow and scale your business. Part of growing and scaling is more revenue and sales and an upsell question is an enormous part of that.

Now, I’ll tell a little story before I get stuck in. I went to the airport at the Gold Coast the other day, and I bought myself a Hungry Jack’s in the morning because I was hungry. (I know I shouldn’t.)

But I went to the counter said ‘Hello’ to the woman. She said ‘Hi’.

I said, “I’ll have an angry burger please.”

And she said, “Would you want it as a meal?” And I went, “Yeah.”

She said, “Do you want it large?” And I went. “Yeah.”

She said, “Do you want Coke for your drink?” And I said, “No, I’ll have sparkling water.”

Happy days. Job done. I increased my sale from $6 to $9 without even noticing. I had too many chips, couldn’t eat them all.

This is the classic upsell question. She asked me three and she didn’t care whether I said yes or no. Her job was to ask the question and this is my point, right?

The power is in asking the question, not in feeling pressure to get a ‘Yes’ as your answer. People can make their own minds up. I think the joy of this is you ask the upsell question, your customer makes their own mind up about whether they want to buy more stuff or not.

So that’s one important point, right? It doesn’t matter whether they say yes or no. If you ask everybody some of them will say yes. So the real power comes in always asking the question.

Always saying:

• “Would you like fries with that?”
• “Would you like it as a meal?”
• “Would you like to upsize?”

So let’s now talk about what that means in your context for trade business, okay?

Now as you know, I like to think of trades businesses as 2 types:

1. There are project trades;
2. And there are jobbing trades.

Jobbing Trade = Small, when you go into someone’s house and doing a small job.

Project Trade = Things like houses, and the like.

With a project trade, a house of pool, a fence, an extension or roof that kind of thing there are 2 places to answer your upsell questions.

1. During quoting.
   
   I know this is tricky because if you upsell too much, the price becomes too much. So there’s a a balanced and a nuanced set of questions there.

For example, if they said, “Oh I just want a roof”, you can ask:

• “Do you want color bond?”
• “Do you want beautiful Welsh slate?”

That’s an upsell, isn’t it?

Recommended Reading: One Simple Thing That Will Improve Your Sales Conversions (Win More Quotes)

And we can turn that into a checklist of questions that you can ask. (Bearing in mind that we don’t want to find ourselves doubling the customers budget, right?)

2. The Variations.

You know when things happen that weren’t considered in the quote or in the proposal, you could ask a question. And raise the variation and charge the extra money. (I don’t mean to use variations unfairly or to cheat).

I mean you know: “This is a quite legitimate, ‘this wasn’t part of the original proposal, what you want to do? It will cost you this much. If you do that thing, do you want to or not?”

Right, happy days.

With jobbing trades, I have a question for you.

“Is there anything else you want me to have a look at while I’m here?”

And that works whether you’re in someone’s house whether you’re in someone’s shop, or business, or factory, or restaurant, or cafe. You can ask that question.

And even better, you can take a checklist with you, can’t you?

• “Would you like me to run through the household electrical safety checklist, while I’m here?
• “And I’ll go and check the switchboard for safety switches.”
• “And I’ll have a quick look around all the powerpoints for loose wires.”
• “I’ll look at the light fittings.”

Obviously, I have an electrician in mind here. But this works equally well for plumbers and dripping taps, and for all the other trades, and looking at broken shelves, and the like.

So you can apply it to your business and obviously, if you want help to do that, get in touch and I’ll help you think it through.

1. The power lies in always asking.
2. The power for your staff and for making this a system, lies in having a checklist so that they don’t forget to ask the question.

They have to, as they finish the job on-site, get to the end of their special on-site job checklist and go, “That’s right. Have to ask the customer if there’s anything else they want me to look up while I’m here.”

Or produce the checklist and say,  “You want me to go through this with you quickly before I go?” Before they write the invoice and collect the money and all the rest of it, okay?

So, how much extra revenue do you think this could be worth for you in your business?

This is one thing that if you implement it properly, and you always ask it, I think will bring you a significant lift in revenue.

Go on and type the answers into the chat box below and let me know how much you think this could be worth to you?

See you.