I’m going to talk to you about pickled onions, and four simple letters.

Here’s some practical help to get more money from your existing customers.

I heard a story a few years ago about a fish and chip shop from Barnsley.

It was revolutionised, when the owner implemented a simple phrase with every customer that came into his shop ‘would you like a pickled onion?’

The compounded impact of that, was over £30,000 of additional revenue every year which is game-changing for a chip shop.

We all know about how McDonald’s staff are trained to ask if you ‘want fries with that’, but we somehow forget, or seem to think these things are not relevant to our businesses, but they are.

There’ll be things that you could offer systematically, that’s the key to every customer, that collectively will significantly grow your revenue in the weeks and months ahead.

And if you’re thinking ‘aww but this doesn’t apply me as I don’t have a shop. I’m B2B’…

…well, my friends, this one is for you and comes courtesy of my friend, the forklift truck salesman.

His name is Paul, and Paul is a genius when it comes to maximising the order values from his customers.

And he attributes that predominantly to four simple letters, because if you’re selling to customers, who are going to place an order or get a quote, at some point in the sales process you’ll say to them, “what’s your budget?”.

And when they give you an answer, you simply reply with this simple phrase, ‘up to?’.

And in almost every case, they’ll give you a higher number – bingo!

You’ve just stretched the budget, increased the spend, grown the turnover, and if you know your numbers properly, that will lead to significant uplifts in your bottom line.