How upselling can change the way you do business.

Anyone can sell a dance. Anyone can sell a champagne room. Anyone can make money on stage.

Spend long enough at a club and you’ll see it happen. Every day, there’s an entertainer who doesn’t usually get in a VIP room that catches her “lucky break.” There’s always a customer willing to buy at least one dance from the dancer that brings her C- game to the table. And there’s always a chance that with the right crowd, the right music, and the right mood a newbie or amateur will rake it in on the tip rail. These small windows of opportunity or lucky streaks may be the excuse dancers use for not working on their craft more.  After all, if you’re bringing in money occasionally, or on lucky nights, it’s still money.  

But while these little moments of luck can feel great, they’re just tiny blips on the map of your career.

No single shift of income is enough to retire on.

No single sale can create financial freedom.

No single customer is the road out.

And the emotional reactions we have to wins are often more harmful in the long run than missing out would have been. Entertainers may slow down, ease up, or just go home early once they hit whatever target they’d set for the night- even if the club is bustling and full of customers.

Dancers that score a big “mega” night may take off work for a few months- but will be back in the club next season, back at square one. Nothing was invested, nothing came from the big “win” and the dancer now struggles even harder because other customers aren’t as willing or as easy to part with their money.

This industry can feel like a rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows, and the dancer who lives and dies by her last big win or big loss is just riding the ride. They may get cocky and overambitious when they hit it big, and go make impulsive purchases they’ll pay off for years. They may have a few bad shifts and suddenly have to live under a blanket fort for two weeks while the skies align to send money their way again- leaving hundreds of potential hours of income for someone else to earn. 

Here are some other signs of a gambling approach to the club:

-      The feeling that you’re not sure what’s happening tonight- no idea if you’ll go home with a big bag or with just enough to cover your house. 

-      The euphoria of closing one big win that makes it hard to show up later that week, makes you irritable with other customers, or that you justify a new big purchase with.

-      The anxiety of approaching every new customer and having to start from scratch that may keep low-spending or toxic regulars around.  

-      The burnout that comes from staying in the same place mentally and financially for years while you see others grow themselves and create more options for their future.

-      The fear that you are getting “too old” for the industry or too annoyed or frustrated with men to keep going- but that you don’t have another way to bring in income. 

These all look different but are tied in by the feeling that you are out of control of what’s happening to you. That you are just an observer or a bystander at the club and money comes and goes according to a set of rules you don’t understand and can’t change. That these are just “the cards I was dealt.”

So, when we cover upsells, stacking dances, and following up on customers, its essential to put yourself in the driver’s seat first. As the entertainer, you are in control of your money. No one else can decide your financial future.

For the person reading and going, “what does this have to do with my upsells?,” how many times have you…

-      Walked away without asking for a tip.

-      Walked away without getting something from a customer (money, information, a valid reason they’re not buying, quality business advice, a pleasant interaction, respect, acknowledgement).

-      Walked away from a shift before the lights came on.

-      Walked away from a customer because you ran out of patience, ran out of attention, or ran out of responses for an objection you hear every day.

-      Walked away from a sale because you got embarrassed, awkward, or scared to talk money.

-      Walked away from your phone because you didn’t want to reply to a customer- even though he might have come in to see you again if you’d given him the time of day.

-      Walked away from a potential paying customer for a drink, your delivery order in the back, your friend, your phone, your “regular” that spends almost nothing, etc.

-       Walked away from a customer on stage because he didn’t pull out bands right away or wasn’t impressed at your first pole trick.

It happens all the time. It happens to all entertainers some times. Again, this isn’t about perfection, it’s about progress.  And making progress in upsells means you have to teach yourself to leave it all on the floor. 

You have to visualize the very short time you have left in this industry (whether it’s a few months or a few decades) and put all of your intention on getting the most out of every second. You have to give it your all.

The good news is that you are not at the club for hundreds of hours a week.  Most entertainers keep a relatively low number of work hours- either by design or by the hours the club stays open.  It means you have to make your time count even more though!

And for anyone reading who works long hours, that’s not a reason to do less.  It means you have a unique opportunity to make the most of even more customers walking into the club.   It means you have a chance to be in the top percentage of earners in your industry—and it’s not an opportunity that lasts forever. Life gets in the way, things happen.

You may have 5 hours a week to spend at the club or you may easily spend 50 hours at the club. Either way, you are working with limited time. And if you care about where your time goes, you should always be challenging yourself to get more out of every minute at the club.  That’s what upselling is for. It’s about taking the hard work you’re already doing and getting far bigger returns out of each interaction. 

Because you cannot make more time—but you can always make more money.

We’ll try to cover as many areas of the upsell as we can here, but please realize that there is much, much more than this! We’ll be offering more courses (and probably an entire book) dedicated just to the upsell. This is a fantastic area to branch out in with side businesses, fresh strategies, and custom pitches that only you can do- so don’t only do what’s covered here!

Because there’s so much ground to get through, this chapter of your book will have 10 unique strategies you can use to bring in more at the club. We’ll split this content into:

Section I: Stacking Up

Stacking is just how it sounds. The same way you stack on pancakes onto your plate when they’re just the right ratio of chocolate chip to sugary fluff, customers can be persuaded easily to buy more and more from you- even if they said they only wanted one up front. We’ll explore ways to get him to keep buying without making him feel like he’s being “scammed,” and how you can get him to keep buying without “killing the mood.”

Section II: Getting Tipsy

The tip is one of the most undermanaged sections of the sale. Many dancers feel uncomfortable or scared asking for more, and customers will capitalize on this doubt to hand entertainers a crumpled small bill from their wallet and call it even. We’ll cover five unique tools you can bring to the table to ask for tips like the professional you are.

Section III: Following Up

If your customer has already bought once, there’s a huge chance that he wants to buy again, and buy from you! Thinking just a little outside the box can bring in repeat business, create additional income streams, and keep your customers tipping and buying from you long after they’ve left your club.

Some of the tips and ideas we’ll cover will not be useful to everyone reading. Depending on your clubs’ rules, limitations, and your own work strategy not everything in here may be a perfect fit. Even if some of these ideas don’t match up with your business model, make sure you still read through the sections. You may still find something of value you can take home with you.