I’ve always found the standard internet marketing advice about maximizing every transaction repugnant. Apparently, if your offers don’t include 40 upsells, downsells, one-time offers, and cross-sells, you’re an idiot leaving money on the table.
There’s nothing wrong with sales tactics. I’ve used plenty of them myself. But somewhere along the line, maximizing revenue can turn into squeezing every last nickel out of another person.
The other day, my tires needed air.
Watch almost any movie from the 1950s with a gas station, and you’ll notice a big sign advertising ๐๐ฅ๐๐ ๐๐๐ฅ.
At some point, somebody must have looked at that sign and thought, “Free air? Why are we giving that away? We could charge a nickel!”
Today, I’ve seen air pumps charging $๐ฎ.๐ฑ๐ฌ.
Now, I’m a huge admirer of Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham’s philosophy of getting everything you can out of everything you’ve got. But there’s a difference between maximizing the value of a customer relationship and extracting every possible dollar from every transaction.
Charging for every little thing gradually eats away at the goodwill you’ve built. Goodwill is difficult to measure. It doesn’t fit neatly on a spreadsheet. But it’s one of those nonlinear human things that can work for you or against you when you least expect it.
And by the time you discover what it’s worth, you may have already squandered it.
Sometimes the smartest business decision is to leave money on the table. Just because you CAN turn a nickel on every little thing doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
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