Short excerpt from a 2023 talk where Russell Brunson explains upselling: he compares McDonald’s selling a low-priced loss-leading hamburger to attract customers, then profiting from add-ons (fries and a Coke). He describes applying the same upsell approach to his own products by offering follow-on purchases after the initial sale.
Chapters
You've been to McDonald's, you know when they offer you a hamburger, do you know that for them to sell that hamburger, they actually lose money? The money for the ads and the promotion, the marketing, they actually lose money. So they sell you a hamburger for like two or three bucks, and it costs them four or five dollars to get you there. In the drive in, they said. Then they added this little sentence on there and said, hey, would you like fries and a Coke with that? And the majority of people say, oh, yeah, sure, throw that in there. And they did that. The fries and the Coke is where they make their money. So they spend three or four dollars to get someone there. They, they sell a hamburger for $2, they lose the dollar, they add fries and a Coke, and all of a sudden, boom, they're profitable. What I did is I started having upsells trying to sell the next thing that someone would need if they bought my first product.