Build the next sale into the offer and anchor high

1. Put sales conversations inside the offer

If you sell services, make sales consultations a part of the offer itself, so that the timeline you sell already holds the points at which a customer can move up. The whole aim is a higher lifetime value, so it helps to have moments the customer has opted into at which you can sell them more.

Those moments can be unscalable. Where they are chances to upsell, they can be parts that do not scale. The parts of your offer that do not scale can lift lifetime value in two ways at once: the front-end purchase seems worth more, and the customer becomes likelier to go on and buy the back-end one.

What selling the consultations does. Once they are sold as part of the package, customers reportedly become likelier to turn up to them; the consultations also add to the value of the front end and lower the risk that the customer will not get the result they came for.

2. The weight-loss and home-services cases

A case helps, because people sometimes struggle to make the idea concrete.

Weight loss. One weight-loss offer promised check-ins all the way through: a nutrition consultation, which served as the onboarding, and a one-on-one check-in at the halfway point, sold as the moment to check whether the plan needs any adjustment for the best outcome. Both were moments to sell. At the nutrition consultation the business would sell supplements; at the halfway point, the membership.

Home services. If you want customers to buy from you year after year, ask what else you could sell them that adds value. One answer is maybe an annual checkup. You might even waive the price of the checkup, a checkup that comes with a certain amount of fixes included, for customers who prepay today. Getting people to prepay today guarantees that you come back next year, find what needs fixing and sell them something more.

Two worked plans for a one-time job. In one example, a seasonal lighting job done once a year at $1,200 gets a plan on the back at $15 a month, covering upkeep and credited toward next year's $1,200, so it costs the customer really nothing out of pocket and puts them on the round of homes you serve every year. The plan is given as $200 a year; a year at $15 a month is $180. In a second, a one-time treatment at $15,000 is presented on the same ticket as $5,000 a year to keep the result, billed as $2,500 every six months: one price up front and one recurring, so the customer opts out rather than in. If the recurring price is too high to sell, ask whether a more compressed version of the delivery would still work for 80 to 90 percent of people. More places to look: SOP 283, section 2.

Frame it another way. You can always build in a sales consultation; you only have to frame it differently. You still have to do the rest of the work. But most times, when you meet a customer you have not seen in a while, you ask how life is going and what problems they have, and they ask whether, since you did well at the first job, you can help with the next one. The view here is that this is an ethical way to help customers: the offer is simply built to help the business rather than hurt it.

3. Events, and where the core offer ends

Events. In the same spirit, events can be sold too, ones that can be presented as part of an offer; including them is simply a preference here. If you can work events into what you do, they are a great opening; not always, but where you can, they work very well.

The core offer against the upsell. People usually ask how to tell what belongs in the core offer from what should be sold as an upsell. The answer: the core offer is what you promised. A great upsell answers a hope the customer had that the core offer left unmet.

4. The money models, seen from lifetime value

These are touched on briefly, from the side of lifetime value. How each structure is built is on its own page.

Win your money back. The view here: a wonderful way, and one seen to lift the average ticket. Customers price in a certain amount of discount, one they expect to win back, so it works almost like a rebate. A buyer who would pay $300 straight might stake $500 on their own follow-through, betting that they will do what you tell them. The forms of the bet, the criteria and the deposit are on SOP 60 — Design a win-your-money-back offer.

Buy X, get Y free. This too is called a wonderful way to raise lifetime value, and a favorite here: you pull cash forward, you raise cart size, you cut churn, and it does a whole bunch of other things besides. Turning a discount into a free offer, step by step, is SOP 63 — Design a buy-X-get-Y-free offer.

Annuals. The annual offer is split out here, though an annual plan is the same structure as buy X, get Y free: one runs on time and the other on units, but the mechanism is the same. It is separated because some people miss that link. If you have the opportunity, offer a yearly option; at least create one. At $5,000 a month, at least offer a choice of paying 50, which saves them some money. Offering people on a monthly plan the chance to prepay months or a year ahead, as a buy-X-get-Y-free upsell, is section 10 of SOP 74 — Price continuity against upfront cash.

5. Sell risk, speed and ease on their own

Risk, speed and ease can always be sold on their own or offered as upsells in their own right. If you are stuck for an upsell, sell priority: the same thing, done faster, is a great upsell. Who pays the most for speed? Rich people. If you would rather not change what you offer, that is fine: deliver it sooner and move these buyers to the head of the queue.

Ease. Ask whether you can make it easier for them still, and whether it can have a concierge element. Then pencil out what that would really cost: what it would cost to go to their home and clear out their kitchen, or to hire someone else for it. Not that much. Yet a person flying in to handle, at the customer's home, a job that might take a day is perceived as worth an extra $10,000, probably, and it would not cost you that.

Imagine first, then cost it. That is why an offer is built in this order: be wild first, then work out what it would actually cost, then rework the offer.

6. Anchors only work if you sell them

The view here strongly favors anchors; this part is short. Annual plans and bulk purchases can do the anchoring too. What matters most is that you actually sell the anchor. The view here is that this is where people go wrong: they try to hurry past the anchor and only mention it instead of committing to it fully. Unless the customer really runs the purchase through in their head, the anchor does not shape how they decide. In this view, it is the number one thing people get wrong when their anchors fail.

The anchor upsell step by step is section 4 of SOP 68 — Run the anchor upsell, and why it has to be presented in earnest is its section 7.

7. Add a zero

The exercise. The view here is that many owners, especially service sellers, should ask what they would have to do if they added a zero. Take your core offer, whatever it is, add a zero to its price, and write down what you would do for a buyer prepared to pay the extra zero.

One answer, worked. For a pool builder at $150,000, one answer is that the price would become $1.5 million. The suggestion there, in fact, is to multiply the gross profit by ten and then look at the price that results. Put it with a let's say: at 30 percent gross margins on a build, you make, as the figure is given, 50 on $150,000; picture making 500,000 on it rather than 50, then study the price that goes with it.

Step two: what the extra costs you. Estimate what it would cost you to do the extra thing, and put it as a percentage of the increase. The figures given here: a cost 20 percent higher against ten times the money; a cost 10 percent higher, which is said to have you running 90 percent; and a 30 percent gross margin. The conclusion: the business has to be willing to offer it.

Not everyone has to buy it. Not everybody has to buy it; at least give people the opportunity.

Pricing a limited offer by adding a zero to your average order value, run as a short campaign to your customers and engaged leads, is on SOP 81 — Run a fast-cash campaign, section 5.

8. Why a few buyers are enough

The shares. Recall how fractals work. 20 percent, one in five, will pay 5 to 10 times as much. One in five of those again, so one in 25 or so, about 4 percent, are willing to pay 25 times more, or even as much as 100 times more. The spending pattern and the tier prices that follow from it are set out in sections 1 to 3 of SOP 224 — Set fractal price tiers and read price off the close rate.

One sale a month. Even if you sell only one of this monster anchor a month, that single sale might match half of what the whole business brings in. You may think that is risky; the view here is that it is not, because it is an upsell.

One owner's case. When one owner started a gym, which ran group training and no personal training, one customer was paying him around $4,000 in cash every month for 90-minute personal training sessions five days a week, with him and his nutrition: a lot of training. People told him not to get distracted, to stay focused on the business, and so on. But at $4,000 a month he did not need to live off the gym: he could live on that one customer, and he could keep putting all of the gym's money back into the business.

9. An elite tier lifts the whole brand

A top tier also gives you some really nice anchoring for the brand. Picture five or ten private clients who get an elite tier of service from you, an elite membership or an elite anything, and who are the only ones with access to the owner, or whatever it is. Ask what that does to how the rest of what you sell is perceived: it pulls it up.

Take a carmaker that started with a sports car and brought out its other models later. Part of the reason was reportedly manufacturing, but from a branding point of view it was excellent, because it anchors high. Then you add tiers underneath, working downward.

10. Start small, and take it to your list

The first time. If this is your first try, set a cap of five. Keep it simple; there is no need to overthink it. What you must do is sell it in earnest.

Your list. If you really want a return from this today, put the offer in front of your list. The recommendation here is to do it; the claim is that you will not make less money.

11. What this page does not decide for you

• What the 50 is. At $5,000 a month the advice is at least to let people pay 50 and save some money. Not established on this page.
• The pool figures. They are carried as stated here: 50 on $150,000, and 500,000 instead of 50. What the bare 50 counts: Not established on this page.
• The margin lines in step two. Which figure is a cost and which a margin: Not established on this page.
• A zero on the price, or ten times the profit. The exercise asks for a zero on the price of your core offer; the worked pool example suggests ten times the gross profit instead. This page does not settle which reading is right.
• What the home-services customer prepays for. Not established on this page.
• Five of what. The cap of five comes just after five or ten private clients are mentioned. Not established on this page.
• Risk. Risk is named beside speed and ease as something to sell separately; the examples that follow are for speed and ease.

12. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	If you sell services, build sales consultations into the offer, such as an onboarding consultation, a halfway check-in or an annual checkup, each a point at which to sell the next thing
1a	For a one-time job, put a small recurring plan on the same ticket, credited toward the next job or kept as upkeep
2	Let those points be unscalable where they are upsell chances; they can raise the front end's perceived value and the chance of a back-end sale
3	Build events in if you can; not always, but where they fit
4	Treat the core offer as what you promised; look for upsells in what customers hoped for and did not get
5	Use win your money back, buy X get Y free and, if you have the opportunity, an annual option to raise what each customer is worth
6	If you cannot think of an upsell, sell speed (priority, the front of the line) or ease (a concierge element); imagine it first, then cost it and rework the offer
7	Sell every anchor for real, annual and bulk options included
8	Add a zero: write what you would do at that price, then put the cost of the extra as a percentage of the increase
9	Make the top offer available and give people the chance to buy it; if it is your first try, cap it at five
10	Put the offer in front of your list

13. What this page does not cover

A drill on the ways to make customers worth more is SOP 232. Becoming the most expensive in your market is SOP 233 — Become the most expensive and stop selling a commodity. Upselling more of the same or a better version is SOP 236 — Upsell more of it, more help with it, or better. The front-end offer itself is SOP 230 — Shape the front-end offer for lifetime value. When in the customer's journey to make each upsell is on SOP 222 — Script the upsell at each point of greatest deprivation, and the points at which to ask a customer to move up are on SOP 162 — Build an ascension path with five points to ask.