Build an ascension path with five points to ask

1. Make the path clear

The ascension path is the last piece of customer service at ten to nineteen people. With a new product, you must make a clear ascension path: know when you are going to offer the customer the next thing to buy.

The question that always comes up is when to make that offer. The answer offered is that everybody is ready at a different point in time.

2. The five points

The points, in the order they come:

#	Point	What it looks like	Leading indicator given
1	Immediately	Some customers are in a buying frenzy: having bought the first thing, they immediately want the next	They might say on a sales call that they would really love the next product
2	24 to 48 hours later	They have done an onboarding call with your team, or had the first delivery of value. They are impressed and excited before they have results, and want the next thing. You could also offer the ascension with a discount, such as an early-bird special, named as you like	One practice: ask whether they want to grow faster, and score them at onboarding (section 2.1)
3	The first big win	They tell you how much they appreciate the product or service, leave a testimonial, or recoup their investment	They might say they cannot imagine never having worked with you; it might just be a really amazing testimonial; or you know they have recouped their investment
4	The halfway point	Halfway through the product or service: called a pretty standard point to offer an ascension or an upsell	In one business, buyers had to be netting a certain amount a month from their business to qualify for the halfway sale, because then it was known they could afford the investment
5	The last shot	You tried every other time and they did not take it, so you make a last Hail Mary effort	Not established on this page

2.1 Working the points in a membership with no set end

One practice here, for an open-ended monthly membership, adds these:

• From the first point to the second, use three conversations. Right after someone joins, ask whether they want to grow faster and would invest more. If so, onboard them like any customer, then hold a setting call, then a closing call. Do not try to close at onboarding or on the call after it: it takes three.
• With no halfway point, make milestones. Give members milestones to hit, so that wins happen and the people who reach them raise their hands.
• On live group calls, have a salesperson present, to take anyone who shows interest into a one-to-one conversation straight away.
• Signals. People who take the annual plan are, in this view, the best-qualified prospects for the higher-priced offer. Score people during onboarding, and approach only the likely ones. The low-priced door can stay open to anyone as long as letting more people in does not break what the offer promises.
• Keep the low-priced offer as the way in. Before replacing a low-priced offer that works with a high-priced one, keep both: send traffic to the low-priced one and move the top of it up. The later high-priced purchases then count in a customer's lifetime value when you decide what you can spend to win them.

3. Why asks fail

Most business owners do not ascend people, not because those people do not want to ascend, but because they are asked at the time they are not ready. You have up to five times at which you could ask a customer to ascend, and most people ask at only one point in time.

So build out the ascension path, and your team knows every point and time at which you ask.

One thing is added: you want leading indicators of when to ask a customer. You can tie a leading indicator to every point on the path; the ones given are in the table in section 2.

4. Right product, right time, right way

The view given boils ascensions, and any kind of upsell, down to three things: the right product, at the right time, in the right way. If someone does not buy, you offered it at the wrong time, or you offered the wrong thing, or you offered it in a way they did not like.

The same three failures are set out in section 3 of SOP 66 — Run the classic upsell and choose the moment. There the wrong way is that the customer does not believe you specifically; here it is a way they did not like. After a refused ask, the first reading points to whether they believe you, the second to how you asked, which section 5 varies. This page does not settle which reading is right.

5. Put effort into each ask

Most times, in the view offered as one opinion from having put a lot of sales processes together, a sale fails because you did not actually try. What that means: make it cool. So many business owners, in the same view, are just lazy with it, and then they get lazy results, which is no surprise.

In the approach described, if you have five opportunities, you do not only ask at those five times. You ask in a different way each of the five times, and have maybe a different incentive attached, one more relevant to that time period or to the problems the customer is dealing with. You might lead with a different hook. They might not have taken the first hook you offered them, so maybe the second time you offer even the same product, you offer it in a different way. They find out it does something they did not know about, and you tell them you think it would help.

The image used is a Rubik's cube: be willing to change your sides depending on where the customer is in their journey with the business.

This cannot be overstated: make it cool.

6. Beside the five moments on SOP 57

SOP 57 — Compute the payback period and shorten it sets out five upsell moments in its section 6, in the same order as the points here. They differ at the second: SOP 57 puts it at usually 24, 48 or 72 hours, and this page at 24 to 48 hours. Held to 48 hours, an ask made on the third day comes after the second point; under SOP 57 it is still in time. This page does not settle which reading is right.

7. What this page does not decide for you

• What the next product is. Not established on this page.
• Leading indicators for the last shot. Not established on this page.
• What goes into the onboarding score in section 2.1. Not established on this page.
• Where the halfway threshold sits. This page gives no figure for the halfway threshold.
• How big an early-bird discount is. This page gives no figure for the early-bird discount.
• Which incentive or hook to use at each point. Not established on this page.

8. The checklist

Step	What you do
Map the path	Build out every point, so the team knows when to ask
Tie indicators	Tie a leading indicator of when to ask to each point
Qualify at halfway	In one business, a monthly netting threshold showed buyers could afford it
Point two, in three calls	Onboard, then set, then close; never close at onboarding
No halfway point	Make milestones, so wins happen and people raise their hands
Group calls held live	A salesperson on each, to take interest into one-to-one
Keep the way in	Keep the low-priced offer; count later high-priced buys in what you can spend to win a customer
Vary each ask	A different way, and maybe a different incentive or hook, at each point
Effort	Make each ask cool; in the view here, lazy asks get lazy results

9. What this page does not cover

The back-end upsell priced against the core offer is section 3 of SOP 152 — Sell a second product at ten to nineteen people. Ascension as the last of four customer milestones is SOP 143 — Build the four-milestone customer journey. What a customer service rep may do for an upset customer without a manager is SOP 161 — Give customer service reps an empowerment wheel. Billing once a year, and how deep to discount it, is SOP 77, section 5.