Who Knew that the Bible is One of the Best Books on Sales Ever Written?

Thursday, September 29th, 2011 at 9:49 pm

I am definitely not the most religious person on Earth. As a matter of fact I am not a religious person at all. I don’t go to church and I have never read the Bible.

However, if my memory serves me well there is a quote from the Holy Book, something like “Ask and you will be given”.

That’s what crossed my mine earlier on today when I was buying a coffee and a donut at Dunkin Donuts.

The sales associate asked me something along the lines of “Good morning. What can I get you today”? Not too shabby, right. It is much better than saying nothing.

A few days before that I was buying my black coffee at Starbucks at the drive thru and the sales associate said something like: “Good morning. Can I get you started with The-Name-of-a-New-Item”? That’s a great way in my opinion to push a new item, don’t you think.

I didn’t buy it, because I prefer black coffee, but I am confident that a certain percentage of people have bough it to taste it and some of these people will keep buying it. Of course the new drink was on the expensive side.
How can I be so sure that by just asking Starbuck in particular would sell more of these drinks? It’s very simple and it comes from my own experience.

A few years ago I used to work for Swiss Airlines in Chicago. Usually around Christmas business class travelers just stop travelling. I don’t know why but that’s a fact. As a result Swiss’ business class was almost empty.

To fill it up we wanted to upsell the passengers travelling economy. Under normal circumstances the upgrade from economy to business was $800 but for a limited time it was reduced to $400.

Even though the price was so low there were hardly any takers. At the same time economy was overbooked daily (in case you don’t know airlines overbook their flight because there is a certain percentage of people who don’t shop up for their flight).

One thing I forgot to mention is that there was a competition among all 8 Swiss stations in the US. The one that was about to sell most upgrades was supposed to get a prize.

Just because I wanted to win so bed I decided to do something about that. I made small signs saying something among the lines of “Ask Us for Our Upgrade Specials”.

From the moment we put the signs on the counters we had people on a waiting list willing to fly business. Needles to say we ended up first among all stations and won the competition.

That’s not important, though. What’s important is the rule that when you ask the right people and present them the right offer enough of them will take you up on it.

So what you might be wondering. Not so fast, cowboy. This principle can be applied to different situations and businesses. For example you can answer the phone the way the Starbucks barista greeted me. You might not ask for a sale but can notify the callers about a special offer that you have or something.

If you already have something like that in place in your business why don’t you share it in the comments section below? This way each one of us will walk out with 2 ideas.