The Three Ways to Grow Your Business—And Which To Choose First

Back in the ’70s, the savvy marketing minds at fast food chain McDonalds crunched their sales numbers and made a discovery:

A sizable bite of each restaurant’s customers bought a burger and nothing else.

They decided to try a test.

The sales clerk would wait until the customer had placed the order—then hit them with the now-famous “Do you want fries with that?”

Smart, right?

What’s startling though is how well it worked: HALF of the customers said yes.

That test has likely earned McDonalds billions of dollars in the decades since.

And it illustrates one of the three (and only three) ways you can grow your business:

1. Increase the number of customers.

2. Increase the average size of each purchase.

3. Increase the number of times your customers buy from you.

(Credit goes to marketing genius Jay Abraham for those rules.)

The marketing efforts of most businesses and entrepreneurs focus on #1—which is the HARDEST and MOST EXPENSIVE way to grow.

Ironic, no?

This week at Simple Programmer I’m focusing on the “McDonalds option” of increasing the average order size.

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours on what we dubbed “Operation Upsell All The Things.”

We have several different products that we’re selling, so I added upsell offers to each.

Now when you buy our $99 product, I offer you a chance to buy our $299 product at a special discount.

And when you buy our $299 product, you get an offer to grab the $99 product at a $20 savings.

The funny thing is, these products aren’t really all that related to each other.

I just figured, the customer’s in a buying mood, so why not?

It took me less than 2 hours to set everything up.

And less than 12 hours later, BOOM!

The first sale rolled in.

Just like that, a $99 sale turned into $229.

Now I don’t expect that 50% of our customers will take the upgrade.

It’ll probably be more like 5%, especially since the “upgrade” option isn’t directly related to the product they’re purchasing.

At $100+ a pop, though, those extra sales will add up fast, and we might bump our revenue by 10% or more with no extra effort.

I’ll keep tabs on this and report back on what happens.

Now it’s your turn:

What extra value can you offer YOUR customers to entice them to send a little more money your way?

Make the offer.

Start today.

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