Upselling is a really dumb strategy. Instead of pressuring people into buying something they don’t want (and often don’t need), why not just wow them?

If you do customer service right, your customers will buy more. Maybe not this visit, but they’ll come back. And they’ll tell their friends too (word of mouth marketing anyone?).

I was in my local Best Buy the other day for help with a quirky computer problem. Alec, the Geek Squad guy, fiddled with the settings for a little while and succeeded in stopping my system from asking for an imaginary security code every time I tried to log into a public wifi network.

While talking with Alec, I noticed a flyer for one of Geek Squad’s services: home wifi set-up. Not only does it includes the hardware, but they also throw in several months of tech support. My parents are looking at (finally) getting wifi; until I saw this, I thought I was going to set it up for them. Now I have a better Plan A.

Just by wowing me with kindness, they’ve sold me on something bigger without “upselling.” Plus I’m sharing my story.

Photo by hortulus (Flickr).