Don’t Oversell the Upsell, Tony.

There’s a particular restaurant I frequented for business meetings. Good food, good space, great mid-way point for me to meet people -until I met Tony.

I met a vendor for lunch to discuss our relationship and Tony proudly and enthusiastically introduced himself as our “amazing” waiter (his words).  Lovely. He became the most memorable waiter of my life – but not in a way that he might appreciate.

The first thing he did was make a remark on my request for water, “Get what you want, this guy is going to buy it for you!”. I like water with my meals, it has nothing to do with price but he wanted to upsell me to a paid beverage. When he returned with my water, he abruptly interrupted our conversation and quizzed us about whether we remembered his name for minutes. He chided, “It’s the most common Italian name! C’mon!”. He waited until we correctly answered, “Tony”. The fun didn’t stop there.  He became the subject of our meeting as he made comments about each of our meal selections, about declining the appetizers he suggested, and when we thought we were done with the Tony-ordeal after we held strong against his persistence about one of us having room for dessert (particularly a carrot cake on special) – he came back with our check and poked and kept going. He told us about the event the chain was hosting at another location that weekend and encouraged us to go. I smiled and thanked him for letting us know and he lingered. “Well, are you going to go?” and when I shook my head, “Why not????”. We will never forget you, Tony.

In fact, I always think of Tony when I teach or coach sales. I want to be careful to impart the “stopping points” to our staff.  I teach “upselling” as a presentation of benefit to the customer, because it is!  In most cases, presenting the options available is part of a positive, consultative and educational experience. Those products present a solution to problems that our customers have. We are in service when we ask the appropriate questions to uncover the need for them. However, when they are declined or found to be unnecessary, it’s time to move on. There is no reason to keep suggesting the amazingly fresh carrot cake (which, by the way, I’m allergic to and will never order, but keep trying to sell it to me and see what happens).

When we oversell the upsell, we demonstrate that we didn’t care about the customer’s needs and fail to present our value and build the relationship. It creates bad memories that cause customers to utilize avoidance behaviors or make a specific request for a different “server”.