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Are you also offered Lemons every time you ask for Oranges?

Can we somehow find and kill the alleged marketing genius who invented the term – Cross Sell

I tried searching for him on the Internet, but couldn’t place one particular inventor of the term, albeit, must admit that I was rather unpleasantly surprised by nine million experts on the term Cross-Selling.

Wonder what their USP is – How to not sell a customer what they need, but as per your greed

Cross selling, which in simple terms, can be defined as:

‘If you come to buy a pen, we will shift our focus from finding a nice pen for you, instead, would like to sell you a Rubber, a Pencil, a Copy, a Ruler and you know what, for all we care – A Credit card!’

My visits to the bank are made with only one objective now – Deposit more money than I Lose!

Day is not far when bank will automatically deduct money from your account, and rationale will go something like –

‘We noticed from our newly bought big data machine (for which we apparently spent Rs 2 crores), that in the last 2 weeks you have done some Grocery shopping with your wife at Big Bazaar, which could have earned you a million trivial unrewarding reward points if you had swiped our bank’s credit card. Thus, for your family benefit an in line with your requirements, we have issued you our hugely popular, highly disposable Grocery-Rewards-Credit card. It will be duly delivered at your registered address within 7 working days’

In case you want to file a complaint about this transaction, please note that you had agreed to our “Terms & Conditions” while opening the account, in which it was clearly mentioned in the 105th line in a font size of about “-10” for which we had also advised you to use a telescope to read, but for some odd reason, you didn’t bother enough!

Cross selling is rampant, present everywhere we go, only a matter of time before we have cross-selling up in the Air:

Passenger Can I get some water?

Hostess Sir, we only have Qua

Passenger Wtf is that?

Hostess Basically money, but my marketing pitch is that its purity comes straight from the mountains( likely, Himalayas) to ground level to now, back in the air sir. Mountain part, for some shitty reason, adds 300 percent to its price + Air delivery charge of Rs 150 + Service charge : 50.

Total – Rs 500/- Sir for about 5 sips of water. But I must mention again, this stuff is really pure.

Passenger Only pure stuff I take is usually blue in color. So, thank you. I will rather die of thirst.

There should be a law in our constitution named Right to Offend if somebody goes too far in cross selling. I should legally be able to say : Bhai, Tu ye sab apne andar le le, aur mujhe mera Pen de de. And walk back home with pride & hopefully, a pen.

True Story, This is how my barber tries to cross sell :

Barber: Sir, I see some dandruff in your hair. Expecting me to reply: Oh, Really, so nice of you to point out, What should I do?, insinuating his Prey-zone.

Me: Oh, is it, don’t worry, I am doing something about it. *making the situation little different than how he imagined in his training*

Barber: Okkk, Is it working well, sir? *I liked his open ended approach*

Me: Yup!, in a stern objective reply.

Barber: Ok sir. Otherwise, you can also try *This thing for which I will get a cut from your money*’

Me: *Peace* highly disappointed at his ill-timing of introducing the product, and not gauging the obvious resistance in my last response.

Point remains, I can’t even get a mindless hair cut without being careful.

I can’t go and order a Subway without having to say ‘No’ to the unnecessary question, – “Sir, Would you like a drink with your Sandwich?”.

I will ask for a drink if I want a drink, you moronic trained piece of robot. I have a voice, in case you missed, I just ordered your whole damn customized sandwich with it!

Look, I don’t know about you, but I am a lazy man, I intend to use all my residual limited energy in things which matter : Writing, Reading, Stand up, Guitar, Office, not to forget – weekly fights with wife!

Going to a restaurant, getting the same hair cut for 2014th time, transacting at a bank etc should be rest time for my brain.

Asking my brain to operate during these times is like asking Navjot Sidhu to stay quiet during a comedy show, in fact for that matter : any show.

He may not cross sell you anything, but for this daunting task, he may put a cross on your picture leading to unwanted results.

Happy Shopping.

Originally Published here, One post every week :

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