Can You Better Starbucks' Upsell Rate?

I’m ashamed, yes. I had to venture into a Starbucks coffee shop the other day.

After I ordered one of their standard, middle-sized drinks, the cheery server asked me;

“Would you like to try our new single origin Kenyan espresso instead?”

Immediately sensing selling insight, I wondered why she thought I might like her kind offer. . . yet I got more joy from asking if it cost the same.

She replied that it was “20p extra”.

I delved deeper. How many people go for it? “Quite a few”.

Out of ten cups, how many are the Kenyan? The combined knowledge of the trio behind the counter suggested, “three, maybe four”.

So roughly a third of people upgrade. And just because you ask them to.

Admittedly, this is a pure retail example. Yet it surely transmits to our solution b2b world.

The maths are interesting too. The twenty pence more was on top of a £2.60 item. That’s exactly one-thirteenth on top. Just shy of an 8% increase.

There’s a couple of unknowns here. Apparently some loyalty card holders had the upgrade as a freebie which may skew findings a little, and what about the margin levels between the two beans.

Nevertheless, imagine if you could increase revenue (or better yet, margin) by 8% across maybe as many as 4 from 10 of your transactions. An overall uplift perhaps approaching 4%. That’s a decent impact on anybody’s quota.

And just by asking everyone a simple question.