Whenever I do a consultation with a small business owner who is thinking small – and most of us fall prey to this tendency from time to time – I offer them …
The King of Bahrain Exercise
Here’s how it goes. Suppose you are a massage therapist or a human rights consultant. Imagine you have a good friend and client named Sandy who is going out with a guy from the Middle East.
One day you get a call from a man who is an emissary from the King of Bahrain. It turns out your friend Sandy raved about you to her boyfriend, and he went back to Bahrain and spoke to the King.
For some crazy reason the King wants to experience the benefits you offer, but with a twist. His emissary speaks as follows:
“We understand you have a busy practice, but the King is experiencing an urgent need of the services you offer. He not only wants to transform his own life, but also that of his family. And, he wants to transform the palace culture in Bahrain, and, indeed the culture of all of Bahrain.
The King, after commissioning an investigation into your work, has complete confidence in your integrity and skill and he has instructed me to empower you to create whatever program is necessary to allow as complete a transformation of the King’s life and all of Bahrain as you are capable of delivering. Money is no object. Time is no object.
We believe this is a unique opportunity for you to apply your skills at the highest level and to therefore have the highest impact possible on a whole population.”
Given those circumstances, what would you propose?
Another way of framing this is simply to ask, What is your premium product?
What if someone wants to buy the Whole Enchilada?
What do you offer?
What would you sell to the King of Bahrain if he gave you Carte Blanche?
Next Steps
Develop a super premium version of your product or service, you WILL get a chance to sell it.
If you have three levels, you will sell the middle level most of the time.
So, what’s the logic here? If you only have one level of service, nobody can buy the up sell.
If you have three levels, you’ll sell the middle level much or most of the time, and you’ll sell the Super Premium version SOME of the time.
Don’t quote me here, but I believe the breakdown is something like this: You’ll sell the middle offer about 60% of the time, the lower/cheaper offer 30% of the time, and the higher/premium offer about 10% of the time.
These numbers might be a tad off, but you see that YOU WILL SELL THE PREMIUM OFFER … probably 1 in 10 or so times!!!
Now go figure out your King of Bahrain offer 😉
~ James
PS. I’d like to acknowledge Tom St.Louis who, many years ago over dinner, fine red wine and excellent cigars, told me this story and graciously said I could share it with you. Actually his words were more like “Have at it!” 🙂