Ah, upselling. If you have ever shopped at any type of store, odds are good that you have been exposed to upselling. What is an upsell? Well, an upsell is a marketing technique used to get you, the consumer, to part with more of your hard-earned cash. According to dictionary.com, the verb upsell means “to try to persuade a customer to buy a more expensive item or to buy a related additional product at a discount.”
Retailers the world over use this technique. Businesses that you might not even think of use upselling to attempt to bring in more revenue. For example, in high school and college I worked at a movie theater. In addition to selling tickets, popping popcorn, and sweeping floors, my duties included upselling. For example, when a customer ordered a small popcorn and a medium drink, we were trained to ask, “Would you like to get a medium popcorn instead for just $0.25 more?” and so on and so forth.
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Photo credit: Mark Hillary
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The more someone tries to sell me something, the more they convince me that the sale is better for them than for me. Although every now and again, the ladies at the cosmetic counter can talk me into stuff.
I hear you- we have actually taken great pains to try to get off the mailing lists for pretty much every catalog on the planet, since it’s too easy to find something we like or think we need. I haven’t missed paging through catalogs yet!
Just read your post after our interaction on Twitter and I must say, very useful advice! I actually avoided an up sell a couple weeks ago from a blog network (reviewing shortly) and I’m glad I did. Too many get suckered into services that aren’t necessary and essentially just cost more money.
Nice post, thanks for the read.
Upsells truly are everywhere! Sometimes I think the added services can be useful, but more often than not I think it’s a pitch for a service that’s not really needed, or that could be obtained for free or cheaper somewhere else.