Super size your bottom line

We recently went through the drive-through at Mickey D’s to load up on grub so the whole family could chow down while watching the documentary Super Size Me. There was a segment that discussed the rules that Morgan Spurlock had to abide during his 30-day ordeal, the first being that every meal he ate had to be from McDonalds. Another rule was that if a cashier asked him to super size his meal, he would have to say “yes.”

Out of 90 meals he ate at the mega fast food chain, he was only asked nine times to super size it. Five of those times were in the great state of Texas, which also happens to lay claim to having five of the top ten fattest cities in the United States. In other words, he was only asked 10 percent of the time to increase the size of his order. It was also interesting that Spurlock asked one of the cashiers in Texas how many people will super size their order out of every five people she asks, and her response was “five people”, or about 100 percent of the time!

This is one of the simplest and fastest ways to swell your sales, yet how many business owners take advantage of the impact that up-selling will create for their business? On average, if you ask three people to upgrade, or add on to their purchase, one of them will say yes. Asking this type of question is magical because it can make additional dollars appear during a sale without any downside. The worst thing that can happen is someone will just say “no.”

The auto sales industry has perfected the art of add-on accessories that can easily increase the cost of a new vehicle from several hundred to several thousand dollars. Often, the extra something you are asked to pay for adds to the overall value of the purchase. Just try to buy a no-frills vehicle and you will be sorry for not having access to those accessories that makes your car a dream to drive.

Once you determine what you can ask the customer to add to their purchase, you will need to train your staff to ask the magic question. Even though McDonald’s provides extensive training, and they would like their employees to ask customers to add a drink or fries to the entrée, it won’t happen if the employee does not ask the magic question. If a major fast food chain, that has highly-developed systems in place, cannot get their employees to ask customers to super size their order more than 10 percent of the time, you probably will also have trouble getting your employees to do any better.

One technique is to reward your customers if an employee does not ask the magic question. We went to a Sonic Burger drive-in when we lived in Abilene, Texas and on the speaker, used to make an order, was a taped message that said something like: If your are not asked to get the large drink, you will receive a free order of onion rings.

We gave our order and intently listened to see if we would get our free onion rings, but the magic question was asked. We’re sure that there was some penalty for giving too many onion rings away, and that the person taking the order would only need to get caught a couple of times before making it a regular part of her order dialogue.

Another way to increase sales is to determine an offer that can be made to invite existing customers to your business. We received a letter from a bank congratulating us because we were approved for a “pre-holiday loan special” for a significant amount of money. This was a great way for the bank to add some additional money to their bottom line during the Christmas season by making a loan to an existing customer.

We decided to check it out and drove to the bank, but when we got within six feet of the main entrance at 2:55pm, someone locked the door on us. For a bank that takes a ridiculous amount of time to handle simple transactions, they were more than punctual when it came to locking the doors in a customer’s face several minutes prior to closing. We would like to thank the bank employee for their promptness because it gave us more time to think about the loan and decide that we did not really need it, or the $2,500 finance charge.

Adding additional add-ons does add to your bottom line. By the way, the documentary has super sized Morgan Spurlock’s bottom line. It cost $65,000 to produce, and the film has already made a tidy $50 million. Interestingly, McDonald’s removed their super size option from their menu a few months after the movie premiered. Even though super size is no longer an option, the magic question can still help super size your sales and bottom line. It is so easy and so simple to ask, yet so often ignored. So…would you like fries with your order?

(Rik is a business instructor at NMC and Janel is the owner of Positively Outrageous Results. They have consulted with over 400 businesses in 40 different industries, and can be contacted at: biz_results@yahoo.com)