If you want to grow your sales and profits without having to attract any more people to your business then this will be the most important article you’ve read all year.
Recently my daughter and I were in Miami working at a trade show. We got to town a day early to set up and get ready for the event.
Before we left, my wife asked us to bring her back a guitar pin from the Hard Rock Café in Miami.
Over the years we’ve visited Hard Rock Cafés all over the world getting guitar pins for her, eating the food, and enjoying the atmosphere.
Over the past 5 years, though, we’ve fallen out of the habit of doing that. Maybe when you’ve seen one Hardrock Café (or 25 or so) you’ve seen them all.
In any case, we were in Miami back at a Hard Rock Cafe. It had been several years since I’ve been to one, and it looked the same from the outside.
However, as we were going in I noticed something had changed. They had a drum set inside the door of the restaurant and they wanted my daughter and me to get our picture taken behind the drums holding guitars.
I knew what was coming as they took the pictures, but I played along.
After we ordered our food the lady came around with our pictures (see below) offering them to us for sale. You know the result of this as I obviously have the picture here…
While she was chatting I asked her how many people actually buy the pictures.
Her answer shocked me.
She told me 3 out of 4 people purchase them.
Wow, I thought, what did that do for their sales for every day?
A little math…
The picture was $16.
The total bill for our food was $51.
This means that upsell added 30% to the total bill.
So in the end, even our server got more because of it.
I was happy to buy the picture as I don’t travel with my daughter that often and it helped their sales.
But if 3 out of 4 people buy the picture that means that the Hard Rock is increasing their sales by over 10% without ever increasing the amount of people coming in their doors. Plus they still offer all the traditional restaurant upsells.
The fascinating point is that in no way is the picture related to the food.
It only took a little creativity from them to give their customers a different experience and add to their bottom line too.
My dad always taught me to look at what other businesses are doing right – and wow was this right.
I’m looking at how I can use this idea of an unrelated upsell that fits in my business.
How about you? What can you offer in your business that even ½ of the people will take that will add 10% to your sales?
A little creativity and you’ll have a surplus of cash flowing into your business.
Isn’t that a fun thought?
Have a great (and creative) week!