Yesterday, Ed Dale posted an article to his blog that kind of struck me. In it, Ed submits that hard-sell marketing is better than soft-sell, even when people are jaded and annoyed with such aggressive approaches.

If you think I’m saying this because I prefer soft-sell approaches, think again.

The reason it struck me is that, and with all due respect to Ed, his post may be a tad misleading.

I agree with the fact that people today are annoyed, jaded, and even frustrated when buying products online — specifically, products in the Internet marketing industry. But I don’t think people are annoyed with hard-sell marketing at all.

They’re annoyed with something else entirely.

Before I dive in, please understand that Ed Dale and I are friends.

In fact, when Ed posted about his recent decision to dump all his friends on Facebook and promote a “fan page” instead, not only was I one of the first ones to agree with him and applaud him, but also I followed in his footsteps.

My comments here have nothing to do with Ed Dale as a person or even as a marketer. They are strictly my opinions on the strategy he pointed out and apparently endorsed.

First, to put this in proper context, let me quote a few passages from Ed’s article…

It’s a bit simplistic to describe like this but it’s the online equivalent of “Do you want Fries with that”

Now here’s the thing. Some people get SUPER annoyed when (increasingly a baby boomer) McDonalds server asks this question.

Your like, “Dude, if I wanted the Fries with that, I would have ordered them!!!!”

If this is sooo annoying – why do they keep doing it?

IT WORKS.

It works really, really well.

Really, Really, Really, Really with sugar on top well.

“Upselling” and “Downselling” (as we say in the biz ) works (…).

First off, I totally agree with this statement.

If you’ve been around this blog for some time, you’ve probably seen my wife’s video on Upsells, Downsells, And One-Time Offers in which she describes the process.

Upselling is not only an important aspect of marketing and particularly Internet marketing, but it’s also one that so many marketers fail to capitalize on. Marketers are leaving an insane load of cash on the table by not asking their customers to buy more.

Some of our students have literally doubled and even tripled their income by simply adding an upsell offer to their sales funnel, which took only minutes to implement.

Jay Abraham, one of the world’s most prolific marketing experts, is often quoted as saying there are only three ways to increase your business.

1. Increasing the number,
2. Increasing the frequency,
3. Or increasing the size of purchases.

The first one involves getting new clients. That’s just good old marketing. You want to find new, hungry prospects who will buy your products for the first time.

The second is new purchases from the same client base. It’s making follow-up and additional offers to your current customers, and getting them to keep buying from you.

The last part is the one people often miss the boat on. It’s upselling, where you get people to buy more or increase the size of their orders as they are buying from you.

Simple enough, right?

The specific issue I have with Ed’s article is not the premise but the analogy he used. Upselling is indeed akin to a McDonald’s server asking, “Do you want fries with that?” And it’s certainly something we should incorporate in our offers.

I also agree with Ed that the market is definitely annoyed and jaded.

But the issue I have is that the market is not annoyed with upsells as Ed Dale seems to imply. It’s annoyed with the type of upsell offers, which has more to do with withholding your customer’s order than it is with just asking them to buy more.

Huge difference, here.

For example, my wife wrote Internet Marketing Sins a few months ago, in which she covers 15 of the most egregious sins perpetrated by online marketers. In it, she covers this particular sin in great detail in a chapter entitled “Upsell Hell.”

(I prefer to call it “Upsell Jail,” because that is precisely what it feels like when one stumbles onto an offer of this kind. You feel helplessly locked in, unable to break out.)

As my wife noted so well, the issue is about holding the customer — i.e., their credit card information, their money, and yes, even their order — hostage.

The process works this way.

A customer comes to a website, reads the copy, and decides to buy the product. She clicks on the order button, fills in the credit card details, and submits the order form.

But before accessing the product she just ordered, she’s presented with an upsell offer.

She’s a bit annoyed, but it’s shadowed by the fact that she’s quite excited about her original order. So she takes the time to read the additional offer, decides she’s not interested, and clicks on “no thanks” (hopefully, when such an option exists).

The process so far is not that bad. But here’s the rub…

If she stumbles onto an offer by some very aggressive marketer, things unfortunately don’t stop there. Before she can access or download her product, even before she receives a confirmation that her payment went through successfully, she’s hit with another upsell offer. And then another, and another, and another.

In some cases, we’re talking three, five, eight, even 10 upsell offers or more!

Annoying? You bet!

Again, the issue has nothing to do with making an upsell offer. If it were me, I would have made the offer before the customer entered their credit card details (it’s no different than adding a product to a shopping cart), or after they’ve reached the confirmation page.

But to force a customer to wade through a barrage of upsell offers while holding their order — and their money — hostage is, in my opinion, the real problem, here.

Think about it.

The customer purchased your product after they have built up enough trust and confidence in you to buy what you originally offered. They probably took a long time to read your copy, perhaps even watched your video, looked you up on the web, and, with excitement mixed with a bit of trepidation, decided to go ahead.

However, when you hit them over the head again and again with a flurry of upsell offers, there’s no question the consumer will doubt you, get annoyed, never buy from you again, even hate you, or worse yet, tell others about you.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I’m a fan of aggressive marketing. I believe that you must ask for the order, and ask for it as many times as possible. In fact, I don’t mind marketers who are even more aggressive than I am.

But the sentiment some of these marketers share is what scares me somewhat.

Most of these aggressive marketers don’t care. Why? Because during these huge, mega-launches, these “drive-by” marketers only intend to sell one-hit products (i.e., not evergreen, long-term products with sustainable growth).

Their sole aim is to milk as many prospects as possible for all they can during a finite period of time. Sadly, some of them don’t even care if their customers ever buy again.

As one marketer called it, it’s a “churn and burn” mentality.

Admittedly, one reason may be because many of these marketers offer continuity programs, which on the surface may appear as a long-term strategy. (However, some continuity offers are forced in the backend of the same, huge launches.)

Plus, many of their products are indeed of high quality and very good.

But another analogy that comes to mind is that of snake oil salesmen. The parallel is ostensibly there. Snake oil salesmen drive into town, sell their entire lot as fast as they can, and skip town as soon as they’re done.

In fact, this brings me to another issue Ed brought up in his post. Ed said this…

Yet in this so called “depressed” (more on this in a minute) economy – Internet Marketing stuff is being sold at RECORD numbers.

Record numbers?

Yes, if you want to count unit sales. And during mega-launches where everyone and their neighbor’s pet parrot is emailing you with the same offer, it’s no wonder that such sales incur huge, record-breaking numbers.

But in this case, as it is in many cases of late, the offer is cheap or even free — the purpose being to force people onto a continuity program. Let’s not forget affiliate commissions for the launch and on the recurring income afterwards.

So record-breaking sales doesn’t necessarily translate into record-breaking profits.

(That’s a whole different issue for another day, although I must add that some marketers are overt and clear about their backend continuity offers. They may be forced continuity, which is perfectly fine, but they’re not hidden or slipped under the radar.)

So the numbers are there, I agree.

However, what about long-term, residual income? What about Jay Abraham’s point #2, “frequency of purchases?” Well, that’s a non-issue for many marketers because their clients are forced onto a continuity program, anyway.

But will they buy more from the same marketer? Of their own volition?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But I daresay, retention of their initial order, if these marketers don’t go out of their way to coddle those customers sufficiently, or at least offer excellent — not average or above average, but truly excellent — content, will likely suffer.

So when some marketers purport to make millions with their sales on launch day, are they actually talking about gross revenue? Or are they talking about unit sales or their predicted revenue over the long term based on 100% retention of their new customers?

Something to think about.

As Frank Kern’s grandfather once said to him (from a presentation Frank gave at a seminar) when he used to work in his grandfather’s used-car business, after Frank was all excited about a sale he made that wasn’t quite finalized…

“It ain’t sold ’til you got the money!”

Finally, let me come back to the analogy Ed Dale made. To me, asking “Want fries with that?” is a wrong analogy. A better one is, after you asked for a burger the server says:

“A burger? Sure, that’s $3.00.” (You hand over a $20 bill.) The server, holding your burger in one hand and your $20 in the other, continues:

“Now that you’ve given me $20, how about fries with that? No? How about an apple pie? No? Then how about an extra burger for only half off, and you better decide now because this is the only time I’m making you this special offer!”

Remember, you’re hungry. You paid for the burger. You see the server holding both your change and your burger, almost taunting you. Naturally, you’re getting annoyed by now. Just when you think you’re finally getting your food, the server quips:

“OK then, I know you’re hungry, but before I give you your burger and your change back, may I interest you in our burger-of-the-month club?”

Can you see the frustration?

So when a marketer says, “It works!” I cringe. Why? Because they’re using results — specifically, they’re using superficial, short term, prediction-based, best-case-scenario results — to justify their marketing efforts.

Well, of course it works! It’s no different than saying “Want money? Go rob a bank! Why? Because it works!” Needless to say, when you hold someone hostage at gun point asking for their money, you bet that it works.

Now, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say:

“But Michel, isn’t your analogy extreme and just as far off as the fast-food one?”

Sure, my analogy may be a little extreme. What some of these marketers do may be entirely legal and, unlike a bank robbery, no one can get physically hurt.

But when it comes to the ethics of the thing, it’s not that much different. Because, while it may be legal, saying that “it works” when it has no choice but to work because you’re forcing it to, then it’s not so far off the mark.

In short, it may be legal but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right.

Plus, the bank analogy is dead-on in other ways, too. For example, unless that bank’s security has been reinforced, consumer confidence restored, and the bank robber apprehended, chances are those consumers will never go back to that bank.

They’ll likely close their accounts and take their money elsewhere.

One of our Twitter friends asked this question:

Q: “What’s the difference between a one-time offer (OTO) and an upsell? I was taught they were the same thing, and if you can re-educate us on the subject, I’m all for that!”

A: We thought that was a great question because the differences are sometimes very subtle and easy to confuse. So we decided to record a brief video and do a direct comparison between them, as well as shed some light on how downsells work.

Please understand this is our perspective, and it’s entirely possible that your perspective will vary. We welcome your comments and value your opinions, so please share them in the comments below.

Don’t forget to download your free copy of Internet Marketing Sins if you haven’t already done so.

If you’ve ever been stuck in “upsell hell,” then you need to read it. It also helps shed light on how to make upsells and one-time offers work much better for both you and your customers!