By MARK RIFFEY for the Flathead Beacon Newspaper
Thanks to cloud services, my hardware needs have shrunk substantially in recent years. This makes it easy to pace and plan hardware upgrades for what little hardware I have left.
However, reality sometimes gets in the way. Yesterday, my wife’s laptop died so I had to take immediate action.
It was a lesson in fulfillment, point of sale retail and how to make a good upsell, or not.
Bad upsells undermine trust
Every time I update Java, the Oracle-owned technology’s installer offers to install the “Ask Toolbar” as an option.
The default is “Yes, install the Ask Toolbar” and may also ask to change your home page to the Ask search engine page. My guess is that Doug Leeds (CEO of Ask) doesn’t even use Ask as his home page.
According to three different independent references in Wikipedia, the Ask Toolbar is considered malware: “Ask.com is noted for a malware toolbar that can be surreptitiously bundled in with legitimate program installations, and which generally cannot be easily removed from most common browsers once installed.”
When someone asks me how to make a good upsell, I suggest that they focus on being helpful.
Every time I update Adobe Flash Player, the Adobe-installer offers to install McAfee anti-virus. Naturally, the default is “Yes, install MacAfee.”
Since Microsoft bought Skype, the Skype installer now asks to switch your default browser, switch your default search engine and install a browser plugin that changes what happens when you click on a phone number. Of course, “Yes, please make all those changes.” is the default.
In all three cases, these defaults are the last thing you want to do.
The point is that these actions give the impression that these companies are willing to damage their reputations (and our computers) and undermine any trust we might have in them by injecting these out-of-context (or damaging) upsells into the process of using their products.
Why bad upsells annoy us
As long as we’re paying attention, these things are easy to bypass and only take a moment to do so. Anytime we’re installing software on a computer, the prudent user should be paying attention. We should not be clicking through the install to “just get it over with”, yet many do exactly that and find themselves victims of these unscrupulous install processes.
They amount to bad upsells.
These situations annoy us because they change our experience with the vendor’s product and make us be on our guard at a time when the vendor’s trust should be assumed – when we allow them to take brief control of our machines so their software can be updated.
It’s the worst possible time to do something to undermine trust, yet that’s exactly what these and other vendors do. It’s the worst kind of upsell, even though we aren’t being asked to open our wallets.
So how does that relate to a new laptop?
Good upsells are helpful
Deciding what to upsell is as important as the act of asking about it. When someone asks me how to make a good upsell, I suggest that they focus on being helpful.
If someone brings a couple of cases of canned drinks to the checkout stand, a helpful suggestion is “Do you need any ice?”
If they bring five quarts of motor oil to the checkout, it makes sense to ask about the kind of vehicle they have so you can help them select an oil filter.
Even though we buy gifts for people all year, only jewelry stores tend to ask if if we’d like complimentary gift wrap for a purchase made January through October. Gift wrap is an upsell, even if free.
We get distracted or forgetful in these situations by thinking beyond the moment, so the right upsell can save us time, fuel, frustration and embarrassment by reminding us about important items.
As with any marketing, you should test your upsell to see what works so you can stop doing what doesn’t. A better ice question might be “Do you have enough ice to keep these cold all day?“, but you won’t know this unless you test questions and measure results.
Does the upsell help the customer remember something that compliments their purchase? Does it help them make the purchase more effective, more productive, more valuable to them? Does the upsell build trust or undermine it?
Bottom line: Does it help them?
Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a strategic, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on Twitter, or email him atmriffey@flatheadbeacon.com. Check out the Flathead Beacon archive of all of Mark’s blogs.