22 – Learn the Details: Upselling and Advertorials

Episode 22 Upselling and Advertorials this will be one of the most powerful lesson you could ever have and if you implement what you learn it will most likely mean millions of dollars of extra income over the course of your business.
Episode 21 Geoff Ronning the stealth webinar guy tells about the time he got projectile throw up in the back of his head.

Our Sponsor is http://www.KickStartCart.com the shopping cart system I’ve been using and promoting for 16 years because mere mortals can operate it. To be able to do some of the things I talk about today, you need a good shopping cart system. We give unlimited free one-on-one tutoring on the cart to get you up and running and help you figure things out fast. So, get your 30-day free trial at http://www.KickStartCart.com and we’ll have that in the show notes.

OK. Let’s get into our main topics today. And That’s Upselling and Advertorials. These are two different topics but both will help you sell more. We typically call upselling, “Do you want fries with that?” Someone has already made a purchase decision and we are offering them something additional to go with what they just decided to buy or what they have already purchased. In the show notes for this episode at screwthecommute.com we’ll have some screen captures so you see how upselling and advertorials might look in action.
But let me give you my first theory. And even though everything I teach is practical, I think it’s important to know why things work. Upselling works so well . . . especially the first two types I show you below because of what I call the “Open Wallet” theory. That is: “The easiest person to sell is the one who already has their wallet open.” You can’t go to hardly any stores that don’t have a bunch of stuff to buy at the checkout counter. Why? Because you’re stuck there waiting in line to purchase what you wanted to purchase and you’re a captive audience to all the other stuff. This is a big profit center for most physical businesses. I use the same technique online even though the person isn’t technically waiting behind others to purchase.
OK. Let’s get into upselling first and I’ll get to advertorials later.
OVERALL THEORY
First an overall theory that I operate by and I might add other people are successful with other methods, but this is the theory I try to stick to when selling a particular product or group of products using upselling. My view is that I only put one decision in front of a person at a time. I believe, as many other experts in selling feel, that a “confused mind votes no.” That means if someone doesn’t know what to pick out of your offerings, they frequently don’t pick anything and leave without buying.
I’ve got several examples of this. I sell almost nothing from my catalog of products. I sell tons when I concentrate on one item. That same item might be in my catalog, but it gets lost in the shuffle and there’s just too much to pick from so people don’t pick anything.
Another example is from my speaking career. For over half my career I’ve been one of the top back of the room sellers at public events. At these events, I watch all the other speakers and many of them have the old, Gold, Silver and Platinum packages. I’m an audience watcher. I see people looking confused. I see them whispering to the person sitting next to them, “What did he say comes with that?” The audience members look totally discombobulated. I’m sitting back there and, in my mind, I’m smiling from ear-to-ear because I know I’m going to take home most of the money.
I even made this mistake of offering too many things for years. I have a year-long mentorship program and immersion weekend at my retreat center that at events sold for $4995.00 and early on for the people “I thought” couldn’t afford the bigger package, I had a $599.00 home study kit. Here’s why you never should get too big for your britches and think you know it all. One time I totally zoned out on stage and forgot to mention the $599.00 package. Guess what happened. Everyone bought the mentorship. It was clear the enormous amount of value they would get. It was nothing like anyone else was selling and there was no confusion. They either bought it or they didn’t.
So, that was my 2 x 4 to the head to sell one thing at a time.
You can check out the mentor program at https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com over there you can watch a video by clicking on the little monitor and you can download a learning brochure. I’ll have it in the show notes.
So how does this apply to upselling. I wait until someone has either purchased something or made a decision to purchase something before I offer them something else to purchase which is the upsell. That way they are only making one decision at a time and I’m not confusing them.
There are three types of Upselling
1. At point of purchase
2. Immediately post sale
3. After the sale
I’ll go over each one, but before I do I want to give you another theory to work with that pretty much guarantees that 30-50% of the people that see your offer, actually buy it. That’s been my track record for years. If I structure the upsell properly, 30-50% of the people seeing the offer actually buy it.
Here’s the overall upselling theory and then I’ll give you some examples at the point of purchase:
A person makes a decision to buy product “A”. You offer them product “B” that has the following characteristics:
Product “B” is related to product “A”
Product “B” is considerably cheaper than product “A”
Product “B” is some kind of deal
Let’s say you or a guy you know decided they needed a new suit and they had a budget of $600.00 for the new suit. They go to the store pick out a suit get fitted for it and the salesperson says. Everyone buying a suit gets two for one on shirts and ties.
Let’s break this down. The original amount of purchase decision was $600.00. Shirts and ties are certainly related to suits and even at full price they are a cheaper product. Making them two for one makes them super cheap deal. In my experience 30-50% of the people will go for this deal.
That was an example of an upsell at the point of purchase for a brick and mortar store.
Online you can do the same thing. We use http://www.KickStartCart.com that handles this for us. When someone clicks to buy an item. We have told the cart when someone puts product “A” in the cart, offer them product “B”. There are two ways to do this and I prefer the first way where the product and a description of the product are on top of the cart page so the person has to scroll past it before they get to what they already decided to purchase. In the show notes we’ll put a graphic example of this so you can see what it actually looks like for a real product.
RELATED PRODUCTS
The second way you can offer another product which I’ve not seen sell as much as the first way is to put in “Related” products below what they have already put in the cart. I’ll also have a graphic of this in the show notes at screwthecommute.com/22
You can put one or more in this area below the cart and many companies do. Amazon is one and you sure can’t doubt their success. For us little guys I try not to violate my “one decision” at a time rule so I don’t do the multiple related products under the cart too much.
Side bar.
A “Related” product is something you’ve told the cart to offer depending on what the person already chose to buy. A “Featured” product is one that is shown no matter what the person chose to buy. This would be something you were really pushing for everyone to see.
Another side bar is that you could put multiple products in the above the cart method if you wanted to, but again I don’t do it hardly at all because it violates my one decision at a time rule.
IMMEDIATELY POST SALE UPSELLING
Now let’s move to upselling immediately post sale.
Let’s say someone purchased something from you online. They checked out and completed the sale. So, the sale is completely done in their mind…..but not ours. In this case they are expecting to see a “Thank You” page (which we’ll get to thank you page selling later), but instead they see a page that says something like, “Add Product “D” to your order. Then there’s sales copy saying how great product “D” is and a “Yes” and “No” button at the bottom.
If they click on the “Yes” button, product “D” is added to their order and they don’t have to fill out anything else. I.e. you are making it very easy for them to buy. Then guess what might happen. Another product page appears that says something like, “You made a great decision adding product “D” to your order. Did you know we also have a great product “E”? Then you describe product “E” and give them another yes/no button. If they click “Yes”, you could repeat the process again and again. Hey as long as they keep clicking “Yes”, they must really like what you have to offer.
I actually don’t go more than a couple times with this, but it has added an enormous amount of money to my bottom line over the years.
But you say, “Tom. What if they click “No”?” Well, if you’re timid, you might immediately take them to a “Thank You” page and be done with it. If you’re a little more aggressive, you would take them to another similar page offering another product and giving them yes/no buttons. You have to be careful here, because if people click “No” and you continue to shove products in their face, they might get upset with you. The saving grace is their original order is already completed and most people won’t go back and cancel it just because you gave them too many offers.
I’m not saying I want you to be so pushy, that you upset every customer. I’m just saying that if you are too timid to at least try some of these techniques, you are undoubtedly leaving a lot of money on the table and making it harder for your business to be profitable. In some markets you can give them five or six offers and no one gets upset. In others one or two is the max. You have to try things out in your market to see where the threshold is that makes you the most money with the least upset customers.
I’ll also have a screen capture sample of a yes/no page in the show notes.
AFTER THE SALE UPSELLING
Now let’s move on to After-the-Sale Upselling
Yes, I know the last example was technically after the sale. It, however, happened immediately while the person was still right there waiting for a thank you page. This “After-the-Sale” upselling method for me happen with the use of autoresponders.
AUTORESPONDERS
For those of you that don’t know what an autoresponder is, it is a mechanism that sends an email or a series of emails to a person after they have “triggered” the autoresponder. They could trigger the autoresponder by buying something, or opting in for some kind of free newsletter, or freebie AKA “Ethical Bribe” you are providing. It doesn’t happen very much now, but many autoresponders could be triggered by the person sending an email to a certain email address that triggers the autoresponder.
BTW. Most top marketers would tell you the autoresponder is the most powerful and profitable tool ever invent for people selling online. Our shopping cart system http://www.KickStartCart.com has unlimited numbers of autoresponders. I think over the years I have accumulated over 400 sequences that are both taking care of customers and upselling them as I’m recording this for you.
For our purposes the autoresponder in this case would be triggered by the customer making a purchase. You have written autoresponder message that go out in a sequence. The first one might be a thank you email and some tips on how long shipping will take or where to download their product if they missed the download link.
The second email might be customer service info if they have any questions or trouble.
The third email might be a repeat of customer service info and some extra tips or updates on using what they purchased.
Note: These aren’t all on the same day hahaha. They are spread out over several days.
Sidebar: I want people to get used to getting emails from me that help them. That when they are less likely to unsubscribe when they get a purely sales-oriented email.
The fourth email might be an additional tip to use the product . . . and here’s where the after the sale upsell comes in. I’ll give you an example from my Wake ‘em Up Pro Speaking System. If you want to learn about it, it will be in the show notes.
“The best way for professional speakers to get their fees up is to become better known. I’ve been on radio and TV all over the world and I collaborated with Joan Stewart, ‘The Publicity Hound’ to write and e-book giving you all the secrets of how I did it. Here’s a link to the Table of Contents and free excerpt along with a coupon code for a 50% discount since you bought the speaker system. Check it out.”
I will have that link for the Table of Contents in the show notes.
Sidebar: People love coupons and you can make custom ones for any group you want in http://www.KickStartCart.com It could be percentage off, a dollar amount off, free shipping etc. People love that and it increases sales.
So, that’s an example of upselling after the sale using an autoresponder.
PHONE CALLS
I don’t do this much personally anymore simply because of the sheer volume of business we do, but another way to upsell after the sale is to actually call people and thank them for the order and tell them about other stuff you have. I don’t pretend to be a phone expert, but just the fact you called goes a long way with some people. I will tell you, when I first started selling online, I called everyone that ordered and it really accelerated my success online. So, don’t be afraid to pick up that phone. It’s not cold calling which I hate.
Sponsor
Let me tell you about this lady I got a call from. She was paying $4000.00 a month for a part time person to operate her shopping cart system and she wasn’t even using half of what it could do. And that’s in addition to the $300-$400 per month she’s paying for the system. That’s highway robbery. She got sucked into a big company aggressively marketing to people that didn’t know any better and she got taken for a ride. The system I promote http://www.KickStartCart.com cost 1/3 the price and with our unlimited one-on-one tutoring you’ll be able to easily operate it yourself. Get your 30-day free trial at http://www.KickStartCart.com

THANK YOU PAGE SELLING
Now here’s a kind of a form of upselling that most people totally miss when they sell online and it’s really right in front of your face to do it and the customer’s face too. In fact, the customer is expecting and waiting for the Thank You page to display after they purchase online to make sure the sale actually went through.
Instead of simply saying thanks for the purchase and here’s your order number, this page is a perfect place to sell more of your stuff or other people’s stuff.
“What do you mean, Tom, ‘Other people’s stuff’” I mean this is a great place to put affiliate links to other related products and services that you don’t sell. You send your customer who just bought and has their wallet out to another online seller who sells them something else and gives you a commission on the sale.
For instance, let’s say you have an online store specializing in sports balls…..any kind of balls, baseballs, softballs, golf balls, soccer balls or whatever kinds of sports balls there is. Now let’s say someone bought a soccer ball from you. On your thank you page you put an affiliate link to another online store that sells soccer shoes or soccer clothes or soccer field equipment or whatever.
A good shopping cart system like the one I use and promote http://www.KickStartCart.com can display a custom thank you page depending on what the customer bought. If they bought a soccer ball, it would be kind of ridiculous to send them to a place selling golf clubs, wouldn’t it? You’d want to send them to as soccer related site. If they bought a baseball, you would send them to where they could buy bats, catcher’s gear, helmets, bases and such.
So, if you want to make more from the same number of visitors to your site, use upselling and thank you page selling to sell more of your stuff and get affiliate commission from lots of other companies. I’ll be doing an episode all about affiliate selling sometime in the future, so watch for it.

ADVERTORIAL
This is an extremely powerful form of selling I learned in 1996 from Corey Rudl the thirty something “Grandfather of Internet Marketing”.
Advertorial stands for Advertisement / Editorial. Basically, it’s and advertisement that doesn’t look like an advertisement. It just looks like an article or it could be a video or audio that just starts out as a story.
When I took consultation with Corey he looked at the sales page for my Wake ‘em Up Video Professional Speaking system and he said, “Get the picture of the product the heck off the page.” I’m like, “What? People have to see what they’re buying don’t they?”
He said, “Tom. What is the first thing people do on a web page if they see what appears to be an expensive product?” So as not to waste my $2400/hour consultation he answered it for me. “They scroll to the bottom of the page to look for the price. And then they leave.”
He then asked me another question. “Tom, which makes more sense, that the prospect sees the benefits of the product before the price, or the price before the benefits?”
Well the answer to that couldn’t have been more crystal clear and another reason why you shouldn’t approach life like a know-it-all. He actually said, “Hide your products. Lead people to them with compelling stories and benefits to them and they will be begging to have a product that will give them those benefits.”
So, he had me redo the sales letter with no picture of the product …. none….and pretty much a compelling story letter of all the things I had to learn to become a pro speaker and how people started bugging me so bad to help them become better speakers I couldn’t get my own work done. That’s when I put together the Wake ‘em Up Video Professional Speaking System. This whole story was in the sales letter.
THE ¾ RULE
Corey gave me a rule to work with he called “The ¾ Rule”. He said not to reveal the fact a product was involved until at least ¾ of the way through the advertorial. If people read that far, they will be saturated with benefits of the product and way more likely to purchase. …..Mostly because the first ¾ of the letter concentrated on showing them all the things could have if they learned all the things I had to learn to be a top pro speaker.
The initial testing on these two very different sales letters will make your jaw drop. It did mine and it meant probably a million dollars in extra sales.
The advertorial with no pictures of the product and what just looked like a big article on professional speaker sold four times as many speaker systems as the one with the picture. The people that bought from the advertorial had no idea what they bought looked like until it showed up on their doorstep. They did, however, know the enormous picture of what could be for them, I painted in their minds using the advertorial.
I’ve got a little graphic of just the top of the Advertorial and regular sales page side-by-side so you can get an idea of what they both look like.
So, in the famous words of Corey Rudl . . . “Hide your products”
OK that’s what I have for you today. If you use the things in this week’s training session diligently, it could mean millions of extra dollars in your pocket over the course of your career.
This has been episode 022. To see the show notes just go to https://www.ScrewTheCommute.com/22
In the next episode I’m doing an interview with business Strategist Vickie Sullivan and she’s going to tell you about the hitman that offered her a free stabbing as a gift for her great customer service ahahahaha. Don’t miss it!
Get your free trial to http://www.KickStartCart.com, please subscribe and leave us a review.

Join my distance learning school: https://www.IMTCVA.org
OR
Join the mentor program PLUS get a FREE Scholarship to the School: https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com