When "leaving money on the table" is the right thing to do

👉 a bit of a rant. sorry.

A phrase you hear *a lot* in the marketing world is "don't leave money on the table".

I'm sure you've heard it before.

"If you don't have a bunch of upsells you're leaving money on the table".

"If you don't sell in every email you're leaving money on the table".

"If you don't send out at least 3 sales emails on the last day of a launch you're leaving money on the table".

Bah.

When I did my first ever consultant sales training with Gemini Consulting back in the 90s one of the first things we were taught was "don't be the greedy guest at the buffet who stuffs themselves with every bit of food available". 

Leaving money on the table is fine.

If clients get the feeling you're trying to grab as much money from them as possible as fast as possible they'll realise you're acting in your interests not theirs and they won't trust you anywhere near as much.

And if they don't trust you anywhere near as much, you won't earn anywhere near as much from them in the long term.

Greedy guests tend not to get invited back.

Whenever I promote one of my online courses on email marketing I always have this dilemma of how hard to push for sales. More emails and a stronger sales message deliberately pushing emotional hot buttons and highlighting the scarcity will always get more sales.

But I firmly believe that if the time isn't right for my potential customer, or if they’re working their way through another program or email marketing just isn't a priority for them right now then it's a mistake for them sign up. They won't give it the focus needed to get brilliant results.

And I believe it's a mistake for me to sell, sell, sell it.

I’m happy to sell at the level where people who are ready and for whom it’s a priority will sign up.

Sure, I could push to get more, but it wouldn’t be right for them.

And my advice is to ignore the experts who warn you about leaving money on the table. 

Leaving money on the table is fine. Welcome guests get invited back time and time again, and the table gets restocked.

If you're in it for the long term you're better off being a welcome guest than a smash-and-grab raider.