Ongoing Selling Archives - understand-culture

The Vocabulary of the Next Sale

Would you like fries with that? — The counter question that adds to an order. It is also a joke about low-paid jobs.

Rainmaker. — “A person (such as a partner in a law firm) who brings in new business,” in Merriam-Webster’s definition.

Hunters and farmers. — Sales teams divide the work. Hunters win new clients. Farmers grow existing accounts, often by upselling and cross-selling.

Farming a neighborhood. — A real estate agent markets to the same homeowners for years, so that they think of the agent first when they are ready to sell.

The Credit Card Pitch in the Aisle

On American flights, a flight attendant often interrupts the service to promote the airline’s credit card.

In July 2018 Skift reported, based on leaked internal documents, that United planned to make these pitches mandatory from September 1. Flight attendants would earn a $50 commission per sale, rising to $100 per sale once the pitches were mandatory.

Twice a Year

Americans are told to see the dentist twice a year, and the next cleaning is usually booked before the patient leaves. Insurance plans commonly pay for two cleanings a year.

Where the rule came from is uncertain. One account traces it to an old Pepsodent toothpaste slogan: “Use Pepsodent every day – see your dentist twice a year.” A Cochrane review in 2013 found “no evidence to support or refute” the practice.

The Windshield Sticker

After an oil change, the mechanic puts a small sticker on the windshield. For years it showed the date and mileage of the next visit, three months or 3,000 miles later.

Some car makers now recommend oil changes every 10,000 or even 15,000 miles. In 2016 California state officials said that drivers were wasting millions of dollars on unnecessary oil changes.

Your Customers May Still Be Called

Since June 27, 2003, Americans can put their phone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry. As of September 30, 2023, it had 249,498,621 active registrations.

The registry has an exception for existing relationships. A seller may still call a person who bought from it “within the 18 months immediately preceding the date of a telemarketing call,” or who made an inquiry within the previous three months.

Auditors May Not Sell Consulting

Section 201 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 forbids an audit firm to sell its audit clients a list of other services. Among them are “financial information systems design and implementation,” “actuarial services,” “internal audit outsourcing services,” and “legal services and expert services unrelated to the audit.”

Under Section 202, other services, including tax work, “must be preapproved by the issuer’s audit committee.” The law followed the collapse of Enron, whose auditor, Arthur Andersen, had done both audit and non-audit work for the company.

Automatic Renewal

California regulates subscriptions that renew automatically under a law first enacted in 2010. An amendment that took effect on July 1, 2025, adds annual reminders for some subscriptions. It also allows the business, when a customer cancels, to present a “discounted offer, retention benefit, or information regarding the effects of cancellation,” as long as a clear way to cancel is shown.

A federal rule went further. In October 2024 the Federal Trade Commission adopted a “click-to-cancel” rule. Its chair, Lina Khan, said: “Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription.” On July 8, 2025, a federal appeals court struck the rule down on procedural grounds, days before most of it was due to take effect.

Eight Rhymed with Great

Wells Fargo built its strategy on selling more products to its existing customers. Its chief executive, John Stumpf, wrote in a 2010 letter to shareholders that the goal was eight products per customer, because “eight ‘rhymed with great.'”

At a Senate hearing on September 20, 2016, Senator Richard Shelby read the line back to him. Employees had opened about 1.5 million deposit accounts and 565,000 credit card accounts that customers may not have authorized. The bank paid $185 million in fines, and about 5,300 employees were fired.

Land and Expand

American software companies describe a sales strategy called land and expand. The vendor first secures a small presence in a client’s organization. Then it grows the account.

The result is reported to investors as net revenue retention. A rate above 100 percent means that revenue from existing customers grew by more than the company lost from customers who left or cut back. Snowflake reported a net revenue retention rate of 131 percent as of January 31, 2024.

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Amazon product pages show what other customers bought with the item. In January 2003, three Amazon engineers, Greg Linden, Brent Smith and Jeremy York, described the method in IEEE Internet Computing: “finding items that customers tend to purchase together.”

They were open about the purpose: “Recommendation algorithms provide an effective form of targeted marketing.” Their click-through and conversion rates “vastly exceed those of untargeted content such as banner advertisements.”