An Easy $200 Sale All Because of One Magical Question

[Ron Douglas]

Words are so powerful. I've never considered myself a sales person, but doing Internet Marketing and being exposed to great salesmanship will make you instinctively very influential.

Here's a sales lesson which I put into action and made a quick $200 with yesterday from asking one question.

The first part is something I picked up from Jay Abraham. He says to always offer your customers the opportunity to purchase multiple products from you. Don't place a limit on the quantity they can buy and you can't help but increase the amount of your average sale.

So from that lesson, I added this to the bottom of one of my sites:

"Contact Us for Special Bulk Order Discounts"

The second lesson I applied in this instance was to always phrase questions to trigger your desired response.

For example, if someone buys a hamburger from you and you want to sell them a drink, instead of asking "do you want a drink with that?" - the proper question is "Do you want a soda or juice with that?"

Do you see the difference?

The first question gives the customer an easy Yes or No reply.

The second question is much more likely to result in an add on sale. People will respond to the options you give them.

So how did I apply these two lessons to make money?

Yesterday I got an email from a customer who was interested in one of my products. She asked about the Bulk Order Discount. If I didn't provide that option, I would have never had the opportunity to make a big sale.

She went on to ask how much it would cost to buy a quantity of 6.

I responded by telling her that 6 was not really "bulk" but if she bought 10 I could give her a special price of $19.99 each, but only until Friday. Honestly, I just made that up on the fly but it sounded good :-).

I then concluded with one question:

"Where should I email your invoice?"

And like magic, her next email said: "thank you so much, please send it to email@customer.com"

Cha-ching a quick $200 just by offering a multiple quantity opportunity and eliminating an easy Yes or No reply.

How can you apply these simple lessons to your own business?

[RandyW32]

This is a great read! Thank you so much for this valuable information.

[Star69]

Excellent post, Ron! I've known about this for at least the past twenty years but I forgot that maybe not everyone knows about this.

Isn't it funny how many major corporations never learned how to do it the correct way?

For instance, "You want fries with that?"

Uh, no...

But if they began saying, "French fries, would you like small, medium or large?"

The difference to the bottom line would be astounding.

This works, people, and I'd seriously consider trying to add it to your business model.

Thinking along those same lines, consider creating products that compliment each other. I'm sure you may have come across sites that included a little suggestion like "People who purchased this item also purchased (item name)..."

Suggestive selling works.

[Ron Douglas]

Yes, indeed. There are so many ways you can apply suggestive selling to your business.

It's also very effective to not only suggest to customers your desired outcome, but to also make that outcome more attractive.

For example: "Get the Platinum Full Year Membership and Save 35%, Plus The Following Bonuses..."

[Kathy Stover]

Thanks for the share Ron.

[Michael Oksa]

Hi Ron,

Excellent sales technique!

I'm not sure what the technical name for it is, but I call it the "positive option method", because whichever choice they opt for, it's a positive result for you.

"Where should I send the invoice?" is another example of it. The only difference is that you don't present the positive options. Still, the buyer creates the positive options in their mind, which is a form of letting them sell themselves your product - another great technique.

Don't even get me started on the power of closed and open questions.



Thanks again, and...

All the best,
Michael

[Michael Oksa]

Originally Posted by TMG Enterprises

Why not? That would be fantastic information for most people. Answers to open ended questions are probably the best source of information on your market that you'll ever get.

Tina G

Yep.

I just didn't want to highjack the thread.

Perhaps it would make a good new post though.

You are right about open ended questions. The other thing I like about them is that it gets potential buyers to convince themselves to buy. They never feel like they're being sold to, but rather being led to what seems to be a rational outcome (notice I didn't say rational decision).

All the best,
Michael

[Ron Douglas]

Originally Posted by Michael Oksa

Yep.

I just didn't want to highjack the thread.

Perhaps it would make a good new post though.

You are right about open ended questions. The other thing I like about them is that it gets potential buyers to convince themselves to buy. They never feel like they're being sold to, but rather being led to what seems to be a rational outcome (notice I didn't say rational decision).

All the best,
Michael

Permission granted to hijack the thread :-)

[Traffic101]

Interesting post. Never thought of giving them options. Thank you for sharing, I will have to try that and congrats on your quick thinking.

[Michael Oksa]

This is not a complete explantaion, but more of a brief overview; hopefully others can add to it.

Closed questions are those that can be answered simply, such as 'yes' or 'no'.

Open questions have no simple answer and often require an explanation.

Use both types correctly and they can work wonders.

Closed questions are great for filtering out who reads your full message. They are a way of qualifying prospects. Use them at any point where you need a direct decision to be made.

Here's a headline as an example...

Are you ready to make money online?

If they answer 'no', they will move to another page, but that's okay - they aren't your target anyway.

If they answer 'yes', they will likely keep reading.

Another good place to use closed questions is at the point of purchasing. Can be used with the "positive option method".

"Are you ready to take the next step, or do you need more information?"

Open ended questions help prospects paint pictures in their own mind. "How do you feel after being on your feet all day?" is more effective than "Do your feet hurt after being on them all day?", because it lets the prospect feel their own discomfort. Maybe they wouldn't even use the word 'hurt' (as would have been suggested in the second question)., instead they may think of words like, painful, brutal, aching, living H*ll, searing, blistering, etc.

There's simply no way you can guess what they will think, and it's their thoughts that ultimately make the sale.

Again, this is a simple overview, but the techniques are effective when done right.

What do you think?

All the best,
Michael

[artwebster]

Many people get so anal about 'closing' questions and the way to proceed with their rote learnt presentation that they often miss the close presented by the prospect - they will often talk the sale out.

It is much more important, from a closing point of view, to be trial closing all the time. This can be as simple as explaining an aspect of the product and saying "but I suppose you don't want that?"
THe prospect answers 'No, I don't" and your trial close would be simply 'So if it didn't have that, you would be happy?"
The prospect answers "Yes, I do" and you simply say "I'll make sure you get that. Did I also show you this?" and move on to another aspect of the product.
This is easier, as well, if you put the prospect 'in posession' of the item being sold - " So your PBQ17 will have . . . "

[Scott Holmes]

Very helpful to those of us that don't have a lot of sales experience.
Thanks to all
Scott

[SurviveUnemployment]

Assuming the sale is the most important aspect of closing it.

"So you'd be willing to give it a try."
"Do you want that in red or blue?"

[pavondunbar]

Great post, Ron!

I am happy you made that extra sale...

Can anyone tell me how "bulk order discounts" would apply to digital products being sold?

I would love to hear answers re: this question...

Thanks...

Pavon

[darryl-thomas]

classic sales 101...thx for sharing

[Harvey.Segal]

Originally Posted by Star69

For instance, "You want fries with that?"

Uh, no...

But if they began saying, "French fries, would you like small, medium or large?"

The difference to the bottom line would be astounding.

This works, people, and I'd seriously consider trying to add it to your business model.

It doesn't work for me.

I've been offering French fries with my ebooks but I don't see any increase in sales

Harvey

[Ron Douglas]

Originally Posted by Harvey.Segal

It doesn't work for me.

I've been offering French fries with my ebooks but I don't see any increase in sales

Harvey

That only works in the weightloss market Harvey. LOL

[artwebster]

Hi, Pavondunbar,

Bulk discounts can work with anything. You can either make a refund to satisfy the discount or, better still, you can have different payment pages for different quantities that you are prepared to offer a discount on.

For example, you could have $19.99 each, $17.99 for 5 or more, $15.99 for 10 or more leading to three separate payment pages. The customer might not be dishonest enough to buy one copy and then create as many copies as he needs.

[Traffic-Bug]

I would like John Taylor's opinion in this thread. Wattaboy

[Ray Erdmann]

@Ron: Thanks for the post and congrats on the improv of what constitutes a 'bulk purchase'...and it leading to an extra $200 you would not of had before! ;-)

And thanks for Michael for his insight on the proper techniques using open ended questions...I learned something from your insight and hopefully I'll be able to remember it the next time I build a landing page or sales page!

God! I love this forum!

[aekaplan]

This is a very useful post. I am starting an e-commerce website and will be adding this phrase "Contact Us for Special Bulk Order Discounts" to my page thanks to you! Much appreciated.

[Steve Sanchez]

Great information, I can't wait for your "coming soon" posts!

[Ivancho]

Originally Posted by ArthurRose

Yes, offering many products works better because the visitor is psychologically predetermined to choose one of the products not choose whether to buy or not.

This is absollutlly right. I have a expirience with such a thing and can say it is pretty good to have many products than one...

[Jim Hallmark]

Originally Posted by artwebster

Many people get so anal about 'closing' questions and the way to proceed with their rote learnt presentation that they often miss the close presented by the prospect - they will often talk the sale out.

Had to laugh at your post Art. Many years ago I sold health insurance and in one of our monthly newsletters was the following quip:

"Samson slew 10,000 Philistines using the jawbone of an ass. Every day 1000 sales are lost using the same instrument."

Surely IM'ers wouldn't be guilty of the same thing would they? Naaaah!

Cheers,
Jim

[jms.mrtn]

Right on the money, great post thanks for posting this

[Charan Saini]

Its so true Ron, you have to ask open ended questions rather then closed questions.
Custmers respond to options better !

[Ben Clemons]

great info for sure! I have done similar, but will definitely test even more now!