Marketing Expert/Sales Manager Vs The Pizza Boy

This weekend, I ordered pizza from a place in town that I hadn't ordered from before. Their catch was a large pizza for $5.99. Not bad; my family of four could eat for under six bucks. Now, I knew a sales pitch was coming. Any place that offers a low price on something always trains their staff to try to up sale you on bigger or additional items. I am pretty good at fending off any attempts.

Until Friday.

Mind you, I am a seasoned marketing expert. I have managed over 40 investment sales reps. I am certified sales trainer. I know successful sales and marketing techniques and I know how to teach them to others. I tell you this not to toot my own horn, but to let you know that this pizza boy who answered the phone to take my order was talking to someone who knew what he was doing; someone who even trained others to do the same.

So, I ordered the pizza and the first volley was hurled at me. "Would you like to make that an extra large for just a dollar more?"

Proud of my keen insight and ability to see what was happening, I said, "No, the large will be fine."

He politely said OK and read my order back. Then he asked if I needed something to drink. "Two liters are $2." I thought to myself, "That's highway robbery! I could get a 2 liter at Wal-Mart for a buck." I answered, "No thank you."

Without giving a play-by-play, he told be I would get a 20 oz for $1. That started making me think that the 2 liter was not such a bad deal compared to the 20 oz.

Argh!! It was happening. By the time I was done with the order, My $6 pizza turned into a $6 buck pizza, a medium garlic-cheesy bread, a medium cinnamon dessert pizza, and oh, yeah, a 2 liter of Dr. Pepper. Total bill: $15.

The thing was, I knew what was happening as it was happening. Here I am with more money than you could imagine invested in me by corporate America to learn sales and marketing principles--skills that have helped me uncover hundreds of millions of dollars for companies I have worked for in my career--and I was up sold by a pizza boy who executed his training flawlessly.

I knew this would be my blog topic today. I have simmered down my experience on Friday to these points that we all need to remember as we plan our marketing activities.

1. We need to be consistent in executing our marketing plan. There will always be someone who will be ready to buy from us. We need to make sure we are selling to them at that time. I was ready to up size on Friday, but I would not have if the offer was not there. The same is true of your prospects.

2. We need to find up sells and add-ons. Once someone is in the buying mode, we have an opportunity to increase the size of the purchase ticket. Often, the only chance we will have at selling another product or service will be on the initial sales call. Though I had successfully battled through other attempts at up sells at a pizza place before, Friday I was susceptible to it. The result: they walked away with over 200% more that I originally planned on spending with them.

3. We need to remember that people are not always at the same step in the purchase cycle every time we see them. If a pizza place only tried once to up sell me, then they would be missing out on a lot of future sales. Just because I said "no" before doesn't mean I will say "no" next time. The same is true for your prospects.

4. We need to remember that we don't always need to hard sale to find buyers. The pizza boy was delivering a script to me, but he was polite and in no way pushy. This left me open mentally and emotionally to his up sell suggestions. At no time did I feel like he was out to sell me something, even though that's exactly what he was out to do. If you can master this, you will be building relationships rather than causing people to run the other way when they come across your sales message.

5. If we don't catch them today, there's always tomorrow. I told you that I had successfully said "no" to pizza up sells in the past, but during this point in time, I was ready to say yes. Because the pizza boy asked me on Friday for up sells, he got them. The same is true with your prospects. For what ever the reason, sometimes they will say "no" today and "yes" tomorrow. It may be that their needs have changed between the two offers, or that they had time for your original offer to peculate. Just be ready when that susceptibility comes by always making sure your offers are on the table.

There are other lessons that we could pull out of my encounter with the pizza boy on Friday, but these are some of the big things, in my opinion, that he did well. And remember, it's not always about your skill as a marketer that hooks people. It's just as much about timing and where they are in the purchase cycle. When you do your part consistently, then you have the best chance of converting a sale.