“Big Rocks – Little Rocks, And The Marketing Lesson They Teach”

I heard this at the bootcamp I just came back from. I honestly can’t remember who said it, but it sure made a strong point that applies directly to retail.

A retailer was complaining to his mentor that his business was failing, and that he couldn’t upsell his customers from the cheap “no profit” items. The Mentor thought about it a bit & devised a lesson for the retailer

(I’m liberally paraphrasing here)

The retailer was given a bucket and told to fill it with pre-selected rocks (the size of a baseball) pebbles and sand.

He poured the sand into the bucket, filling it about 2/3 of the way to the top. He then tried to add the baseball sized rocks. He was given 6 and could only fit 2 into the bucket.

“The bucket is completely full”” said the man.

The Mentor dumped out the sand & rocks.

First he put all the large rocks into the bucket. The rocks reached the top of the bucket.

The man taking the test said “The bucket is full”

“Not so” said the Mentor. “See all the empty spaces between the rocks? Pour in the pebbles””

The retailer poured in the pebbles. The pebbles filled in the spaces between the rocks. They barely reached the top of the bucket, and he was out of pebbles.

“The bucket is now full” said the retailer.

“Not so” said the Mentor. “Pour in the sand”

The sand filled in all the spaces between the pebbles.

“Finally, the bucket is completely full” said the retailer.

Then the Mentor poured a pitcher of water in the bucket & the water filled in the spaces between the grains of sand.

And they lived happily ever after. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself)

Think about that story a minute. The speaker used it to show that there is value left in leads that didn’t buy.

I translated it into “retailese””, and had seven lessons I could glean from it.

I thought about which is better..up selling or down selling. Up selling is going from small pebbles to big rocks. Down selling is going from big rocks to sand.

There are benefits to down selling.

If you show the inexpensive model, and they don’t buy...where do you go from there?

But if you show your high end product (assuming you have a selection), and they don’t buy...where can you take them?

To every other product in that category.

Another benefit of starting at the high end, is that they may just say “Yes”. Now the customer has the best solution for them, and you have the most profit. That can’t be all bad.

Another benefit is that, if you start at the high end, you have established a “price point” that you can work from.

For example, we show someone a $900 vacuum cleaner, and they say “We didn’t want to go that high”...it’s now going to be difficult for the customer to tell you that they don’t want to go more that $50. They may say “We would like to stay under $400” when they actually came in with $100 as the figure they had in mind.

The high end buyers are the “big rocks” and the scaled down buyers are the pebbles and sand.

But you start with the big rocks.

Another lesson I got from this “big rock - small rock” story is that ...if they say “yes” to the cheaper item, it’s a done deal in the customer’s mind. Now you have to change gears to re-open the door to show another product at a higher price.

And if you are advertising, it even becomes more important that you are showing the high end product. ..because you need to pay for the ad.

Some stores sell rocks, some pebbles, and some sand. Which are you?

Wal-Mart can have the sand, I’ll take the rocks.