Underselling or underserving

Many of us are nervous of appearing too “salesy” but do we end up underserving our clients/customers as a result?

Thinking back to a long lunch with a friend a while ago now. We ordered our food and drinks and enjoyed a good chat. But the food took a long time to come, a minor irritation as we hadn’t been prewarned but we weren’t in a rush. We had, however, finished our drinks and wanted to order more.

There was no server in sight so we became very conscious of the food delay as well as our lack of drinks.

If only somebody had stopped by to ask if we needed anything else we would have continued our conversation over fresh drinks and stopped looking at our watches.

In failing to sell to us they actually ended up underserving us. They could have sold 22% extra (I’m an accountant, of course I worked it out!) AND had very satisfied customers.

So don’t be embarrassed about upselling or cross selling if you think your client/customer needs it (and, if they don’t need it you shouldn’t be trying to sell it to them anyway!).