Section 4. Downsell offers. What's an offer when they say no? In the last section,

we used upsell offers to get people to buy more stuff. If we did a good job, we've turned

to profit too. Another step forward or beyond. Awesome. But what if they say no? We downsell them.

Downselling tweaks the original offer to find the highest value solution for the customer's budget.

So any offer you make

after someone says no is a downsell. I downsell in two ways. I change how much they pay or what they

get. For how they pay, I balance how much they pay now with how much they pay over time. For what they

get, I change quantity, quality, or offer something different. First, we cover my rules of downselling. They apply to all my downsell processes. Then, when we dive into individual offers, you can hit the ground running and downsell like a prop. How not to downsell? A real story from a friend. I was buying a car and the salesman tried to upsell car insurance. The cost of the insurance when he first started was $5,000. I said no, but then he lowered the price. And I said no again. He kept lowering the price until the same insurance he first offered for $5,000 was now only $400. I still said no. At first I said no because it was too much money. By the end I said no because I didn't trust the guy. The entire experience felt dirty. Then I wondered, was he ripping me off in the car too? Now I didn't want to buy the car from him either. People lower the price to close a sale. But even if you close this one sale, the customer will question every price you offer from that point going forward, and whoever they tell. You trade trust for a buck, not worth it. Note, you can offer something different for less. You just can't offer the same thing

for less. If he'd offer different insurance for less, rather than the same insurance for less,

he probably would have kept her trust and closed the sale. The rules of downselling. Remember,

they said no to this offer, not all offers. Sometimes, a lot of times, people say no, and that's okay.

Just because they rejected this offer

doesn't mean they rejected you. It hurts when someone rejects you. I get it. But see it for what

it is, an opportunity to find out what they really want and profit from it. Instead of hiding your

head in the sand, stand stand your ground, and make another offer. No means no for this thing,

not know for everything. Downsells are trades.

When downselling, you work with the customer to find combinations of giving and getting until you

get a match. If you're going to give something, get something. Personalize, don't pressure.

Figure out what they like and don't like, then offer more of what they like, unless what they don't,

with a price to match. You're personalizing here. If someone refuses my large soda upsell, I can offer alternatives. I could ask if they want a small, a juice, or a coffee. Am I being offensive by asking? Absolutely not. In fact, if I can better serve them, it would be offensive not to. Offer the same thing in new ways. In a perfect world, you've got tons of different things to sell, so everybody buys something. In the real world, you limit downsells to what you've got. Otherwise, you create 100 businesses worth of products and problems, a silly choice. So just think of downselling more like 100 ways to offer the stuff you already have. Don't drop your price just to get somebody to buy. First off, dropping your price is not really downselling. It's discounting. If someone wants what you have and just doesn't want to pay the price, tough cookies. On the other hand, you can offer them

to pay less now and pay more money over time, a payment plan. But whatever you do, don't just change

the price to get someone to buy because customers talk about price.

...