Are you leaving money on the table?

On a bitterly cold Saturday night, a group of 10 of us went out to dinner. When we got there at 7pm it was disappointing to see the table we had booked, for 7pm, was well and truly occupied.

There was no other table we could sit at and no space inside, so we had to wait outside in what felt like arctic temperatures.

It was at least 20 minutes before we were invited in to sit at our table.

(Nobody asked us if we wanted a drink while we were waiting.)

We got settled and were handed two menus each, one of which felt like it was 130 pages long.

(Nobody asked us if we wanted a drink while we were reading the menus.)

It took a good long time to wade through both menus, debate whether we were going to share or not, make a decision about what to order that didn't double up with anyone else's order and decide on exactly how many naan breads to order between us.

(Nobody asked us if we wanted a drink, until we were more than half way through this process.)

The meal took a very long time to come. While we waited, the people sitting closest to me summonsed the waitress twice to ask to order more drinks.

They would readily have ordered more if they'd only been asked.

You’re astute. I bet you've picked up a couple of things by this point.

Yes, it does seem that my friends seem to need plenty of social lubrication for a night out with me. I've noticed that too.

But more importantly,?the restaurant was missing an?opportunity to make easy money because they simply did not ask us to spend more.

If you tally up even one extra drink for everyone at our table of ten, then add that sum to all the other unpurchased drinks that other diners that night might have enjoyed, that totals a pretty decent amount of extra revenue that passed the restaurant by.

Because they didn’t ask.

And there's a lesson there.

How much money are you leaving in your clients' pockets, money that they would be only too happy to part with, because you simply didn’t ask?

You can think of it as upselling, or if you’re like me and the thought of 'selling' makes you come over all clammy, you can think of it as adding extra value to your customers.?

Either way, I'm betting that if you think hard enough, you could identify at least one way (and quite possibly more) to easily enrich your client's experience at the same time as your own bank account.

So what'll it be?

What will you do today to enrich your client's experience? And your bank account?

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