EP220 The 501 UpSell | Ken Courtright’s Today’s Growth | Growing Business Today

The dynamics have truly changed for non-profit organizations to gain funds these days. There is the 501 UpSell wherein you can see them at your local grocery stores for donation, and almost all the time people give. Ken breaks down what’s going on with the nonprofit or the 501(c)(3) and relates it to the profit business. Learn some tips on what you can do to attract more clients and customers while gaining a warm contact that you can add on your mailing list.

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The 501 UpSell

This is the show where I live life. As I see or hear some type of business growth technique spoken or whether I read it, saw it on a video, or heard it from stage, whether I’m saying it or somebody else’s, if I think it’s relevant and timely, I write it down and make sure I talk about it. Here’s one that came out. Somebody was asking me a different type of question and I launched on this one. I was bridging how a 501(c)(3) is a for-profit business and I was making the case that if you think of it as a nonprofit, you’re for sure going to go out of business in that type of operation. I’m going to the call this The 501 Technique, referencing a 501(c)(3).

Have you ever noticed that when you’re in a major retailer or a major website like GoDaddy, right at the checkout, they ask you, “Would you like to donate $1 to this particular charities? Would you like to pick from six different charities? Would you like to round up your change to make it an even amount and send that $0.38 to this organization?” These 501(c)(3)s are understanding that if they can get their concept or product in the flow of someone’s shopping cart in the form of what’s called an upsell, they’ve got a chance to recover a lot of donations that are no longer coming in. A lot of 501s back in the day lived on huge grants and huge one-time donations.

As the world’s got busier with Skype, text, voicemail, this and that, a lot of these donations are hard to reach these philanthropic people. 501s had to go in a completely different direction. In my local town, you see this in Dollar General, major grocery stores, and major retailers everywhere. At the checkout counter, they’re saying, “Would you like to donate $1 to X?” Most people donate something. These large organizations partnered up with large companies and national companies to get in the flow of the cash register and the shopping cart. Here’s my question, “If this works for a nonprofit, can this work for a for-profit? Why can’t we do this in all of our business? Why can’t you, in any business you have, partner up with a company of your size, get in the flow of their revenue channel, and have them upsell for you?

The question is, “Why would they do that? What would you do?” Here are some examples. Let’s say you’re a coach or consultant. You’re a life coach or athletic coach, what if you partnered with another company and right at the checkout when they’re taking the order form and they’re doing the deal, it says, “I’m curious, would you like a copy of our partner’s book for $1?” They’re going to explain what the book is and it’s worth $25 or if not thousands of dollars. The bottom line is a percentage of people are going to buy anything for $1. Here’s the key, you give the partner the $1, so they upsold and got $1, but you got an endorsement from the other partner. More importantly, you gained a warm email in your contact list.

What if you’re a bricklayer or a home builder? How in the world are you going to get your $50,000 accounts to $2 million homes that you build? How are you going to possibly upsell that in any fashion? What if you worked with the local hardware store and at the checkout counter built into their system, it said, “Would you like this homebuilder’s guide to do it yourself for repairs or anything for $1?” I guarantee you that local hardware store is going to get a lot of people to upsell for $1 and give them your physical guide to repairing things for $1 using your e-Book or whatever. You get a warm contact that you get to add to your email list. If you’ve heard some of my other episodes, if you have growing email lists, you own an ATM machine.

Here’s the key. What small item can your company giveaway for $1 where you’re going to turn over the $1 to whatever partner channel is allowing you to be upsold in their revenue channel? What can you give away for $1 in exchange to add an email to your contact list? Could you imagine if you gave away $5,000 but you added 5,000 warm contexts to your email list that were legitimately your target audience? That would be priceless. You can communicate email and sell to that 5,000 people time and time again. It is worth so much money. I hope this helps.

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