Upselling may be as old as the art of bartering, but has the practice changed in 2021? Our experts, Lisa Hinds and Ray Santiago, will share their insights at EXPO!

As an owner/operator reading this, the concept of upselling should be as familiar to you as your most faithfully loyal regular and their drink of choice, or who your top-earning entertainer is. If allotted the resources, you may have even experimented or gone deep-data diving to see what upsell works best for you.

Is it the Dom Pérignon bottle service? Maybe it’s coaxing that regular into a VIP room? Perhaps you offer food in your establishment and it’s getting a patron to splurge on some dining before a dance? Whatever it is that you and your staff upsell, it is a fiber of salesmanship DNA and, as such, a blueprint of financial success.

In a time when some clubs are finally waking after a months-long pandemic-spurred hibernation, becoming profitable as quickly as possible is a priority. The “Rebound” seminar at EXPO is specifically designed to help you maximize per-guest revenue, a key indicator of a club’s profitability.

Ray Santiago

Ray Santiago, GM of the Rick’s Cabaret club in San Antonio, and Lisa Hinds, an industry veteran and senior manager at Scores Chicago O’Hare, will be doling out advice about the art of the upsell — including the “how” and the “what” — to make sure you’re operating in the green as quickly as possible. Put simply, upselling involves encouraging the purchase of an item or service at a higher price for any number of reasons.

Hinds, who has been in the industry 27 years — in management since 1999 — first tasted her love of upselling courtesy of champagne. She loved how the bubbly translated to dollars.

“I feed off of the upsell,” she says. “It’s something I love to do. I don’t want to call it a game, because it’s not a game; it’s more of a tactic that if you live it, it can be the environment that you want to create.”

Even as she has risen the ranks, she says her passion for sales has never waned and she works with the staff on that principle.

We have to remember that the bottom line is our concern, not typically the staff or entertainers’. They’re there to make their own money. Our job is to figure out how to motivate them and to help us make ours,” she says. “But money is not the only motivator. You can create excitement with literally anything, any product that you have. It’s about your strategy to do it.”

Have options that can accommodate all price ranges. When the guest is comfortable and having a good time, they are more open to suggestion, meaning add-on sales. — EXPO 2021 seminar speaker Lisa Hinds

She does, however, acknowledge the shift in customers for a lot of clubs. “We have to turn to this younger generation and listen to them, watch them, and learn from them, so that we even know what to push.”

She has pointed to the influx of younger guests in the face of cautious re-openings. She says Scores Chicago O’Hare had a usual marketing strategy of 80/20, with 20% being focused on the nightclub crowd, but the club has flipped those numbers. They brought in new nightclub-oriented staff to complement the cabaret staff and also tweaked their music format and pushed more bottle service, namely tequila.

Lisa Hinds

“I believe the key to maximizing your per-guest profit lies in your ability to create a party in every size,” Hinds says. “Have options that can accommodate all price ranges. When the guest is comfortable and having a good time, they are more open to suggestion, meaning add-on sales.”

For Santiago, who has spent 21 years in the industry, the key to upselling lies beyond tangible items.

“Why are guests going to spend $250 or $300 or $1,000 on a bottle when they can just go home and do that on their own? People think it’s the girls, music, atmosphere,” says Santiago. “What I’ve learned over the years is, the reason people upsell and it works is because guests can’t take the bottle or whatever package you sell with them. What are you selling them? It’s the experience — that’s something you can take with you.”

Naturally, the patron experience is something that has changed at clubs because of COVID, something that is hopefully approaching “normal” as the year progresses.  Santiago says he and his team have online package sales to appease people that would rather minimize physical interaction, but when people come in he says it’s all about making them feel comfortable.

“Literally when people walk through the door, the hospitality and the angle of upselling is part of the package, it’s part of making the guests feel like they’re family,” he says.

“Why are guests going to spend $250 or $300 or $1,000 on a bottle when they can just go home and do that on their own? People think it’s the girls, music, atmosphere. But what are you selling them? It’s the experience — that’s something you can take with you.” — EXPO 2021 seminar speaker Ray Santiago

A customer may not buy a bottle or package that night, he says, but the atmosphere fostered at the club breeds a familiar customer. In a time when social distancing is still a thing, Santiago hints at other tactics that can enhance customer feedback: remembering names, looking for first-time guests, picking up on cues that convey genuine care for the customer.

“Whether they spend $10 or they’ve spent $1,000, we still treat them like they’re gold,” he says. “Like they’re a movie star. Building that customer relationship is number one.”

And while the pandemic has rendered a lot of individuals’ economic standing in a state of flux, if a guest is in your club, that’s a huge literal first step in the door.

“They want to have a great time,” says Santiago. “You want them to have such a great time that they want to bring their friends to experience what they’ve told them,” says Santiago. “The ultimate upsell is having them come back.”

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