The Great Up Sell: How This Technique is Infiltrating Our Lives

Big box retailers do it. Car dealers do it. Hell, even fast food joints do it. But the supermarket? Come on…that's taking up selling a little too far. The up sell was once limited. There was the pimple-faced kid at your local electronics retailer trying to sell the customer some ridiculously overpriced warrantee that you didn't need and the shifty eyes car salesman who tried to convince the customer that you needed the full leather package on your new minivan. And of course, who can forget the quintessential "Would you like fries with that?" Not anymore. It seems like where ever you go employees are trying to up sell the customer.

Take restaurants for example. You go there. You want a bowl of pasta and a salad. Simple, right? Wrong. The server assaults you with a bottle of wine almost as soon as you sit asking your party "you don't even want to sample it?" You, as the customer, don't want that wine and you don't want to be harangued about it either, but the servers are trained to do this. Later on, during ordering, the server tries to convince you, the customer, to get the appetizer of the week. Again, you aren't interested in the proposed appetizer, but the server had to try because their boss makes them do it to every customer. For a lot of customers, the up sell is a turn off.

There are only so many times a person - a customer - will take that up sell - being badgered about warrantees, accessories or accompaniments before it just gets old. Fortunately, not all establishments buy into this up sell requirement that servers try to get more from their customers. In fact, some actually know they have a good enough product (or food) that they don't need to do that. The "Would you like fries with that?" model that worked for McDonalds isn't a one-size-fits-all up selling technique, by any means. It worked for them (and later that became would you like to make that a meal or supersize that or whatever) because they are a fast food joint where customers were looking for a no frills approach by the servers. But if you are dining at a sit down restaurant, and paying for service, a customer isn't looking for no frills approach to up selling. They aren't looking for a one-size-fits-all approach with the same bottle of wine making the rounds no matter what anyone is ordering. That up sell just isn't going to work.

Now the up sell has even infiltrated the supermarket where cashiers morosely ask if the customer wants batteries with your milk, as if the two have a direct correlation. Inevitably the cashier is turned down by the customer, thereby thwarting the up sell. What establishments need to do is forget the notion of a no-frills up sell approach and tailor their up sell to what they are selling. For instance, a server could offer to make pairing suggestions that actually work with the meal that customers are ordering or suggest an appropriate appetizer. Likely, the server will still be turned down a lot, but at least it won't be a case of "Why are you offering me sub-par red wine with my tilapia?" In the case of the supermarket, the up sell just needs to be abandoned. It's completely unnecessary. Customers spend thousands of dollars there a year, and the supermarkets are not short on income. They need to just lay off, and let the customer shop and pay in peace.