The Master of the Upsell

This last weekend my son and I made our annual pilgrimage to South Bend Indiana to see the Notre Dame Fighting Irish take on the Michigan State Spartans. Now no Irish jokes please because this isn’t a column about how my alma mater barely held on to win one at home, or their any of their recent struggles that have turned a few hairs grey. This is actually about the Budget Rental Car we picked up at Midway Airport in Chicago.I show up at the counter with my confirmation number for an intermediate car with a weekend rate of $28. I jokingly asked my agent Maria (name changed to protect the innocent) if she had a Lexus or a Jaguar for me. Maria then proceeds to tell me that she just so happens to have a Camaro for me.

Now I’m not a car guy so I said great. Then I get the contract and I see that the price for the weekend is over $100 more than what I thought I was paying. So the first lesson on selling was good old Maria assumed the sale of the higher priced product without sharing with me it would be more money.

So I politely declined the upsell from Maria. Now this is where the salesmanship really kicked in. Maria told me how much my son would really enjoy the car. I said Maria I don’t even know what it looks like and I declined the offer. She then takes out her Iphone and shows me a picture because she had just seen the beautiful car yesterday and liked it so much she took a picture. I politely declined again. She then tells me that she had recently driven it and really was forced to give it up. Again I declined the offer. She tells me it is in the movies the Transformers which I politely tell her I had not seen, but my son confirmed that it was in the movie and that it looked like a sporty car.

She says it rides so smoothly and we will have such a wonderful trip going to South Bend that we may even want to buy one when we get home. In the mean time, there is a line forming behind me and they are all shuffling their feet wanting me to get going. So of course I finally consent to the upgrade to a car I really didn’t know I wanted at a price I really didn’t expect to pay. But as a salesman, I truly appreciated the effort she put out to overcome every objection I had.

But here’s the best part. It accelerates quickly and was a very smooth ride. It got a lot of looks from passer bys. In Chicago, many people complimented and said they “Liked my ride.” My son and I joked the whole trip about where we could go to ride around in this cool car. We ended up with a story about the car and we had a bunch of fun because of it.

So when you are coming up with people telling you “no” to your sales pitch, just keep repackaging it like Maria did. Show them a picture, tell a story, and be persistent. You just might get the sale when mere mortal sales people will stop at the first “no.”

To see a video of this car go to my blog at www.MikeRoot.com.