Let's start with a perfect example of The Bump. Next time you go to a McDonald's, order a sandwich and drink (but no fries) and see what happens. You will personally experience a simple, ridiculously easy, million-dollar bump.

If you place an order that doesn't include french fries (chips), the counter person will immediately and cheerfully suggest some hot, delicious fries. Just the mere suggestion causes a certain percentage of people to go ahead and order the fries and of course McDonalds have made the extra price quite small.

We are not talking about a few isolated cases, either think of about 1/3 of people will bump up their order. There are thousands of McDonald's all over the world so this one little bump adds up to $millions. All they do is make a simple little suggestion about something that goes naturally with their order, is appealing and costs a little extra.

Let's start thinking about how you can use this hot technique to bump up your own profits. Computers are tools of the trade now BUT they are still gadgets and big boys (and girls) like to buy gadgets. Make a list of your boring low margin items and think of a few things that you can naturally add to these items to make them more appealing.

For example if they are buying a new hard drive do they need a new graphics board to cope with all those new games (sorry hard work) they will be using the computer for? Say they want a wi-fi card then sell them a wireless connector. If they are buying a computer game then sell them a complimentary game at a discount. Well you get the point.

Think of groupings of items that fulfill the following factors:
* They naturally go together.
* They increase the desirability or wantability of the items.
* The perceived value goes up people think that they are getting a bargain as the total cost is lower than if they are purchased separately.
* At least one of the items is a high profit item.

Now you can do two things with these bumps. Either make the bumps part of your everyday sales just as McDonalds does, or make it a special offer and heavily promote it during a defined time.

Here's an important concept that you should always remember, everybody loves a special deal. Therefore, you can often use something that's only loosely related to the customer's purchase for a bump. Offer a special discount on something the customer may want in the future.

Lee Lister

Lee Lister is Management Consultant and Program Manager with more than 25 year's management and consultancy experience and more than 20 year's program and project management experience in projects for Banking, Finance, Insurance, Leisure and Government bodies. She also have more than 10 years bid management experience ranging from bids for medium companies to large international and infrastructure bids.

British born, Lee received her BA(Hons) Financial Economics from the University of Essex. She went on to work in or for a considerable number of countries within Asia and Europe as well as Australia and the United States. While building a name for herself through helping company restructure, change management and project management consultancy, Lee became a well-known figure for her skills in analyzing, problem solving and trouble-shooting. She has consulted for many major industries, including banking, telecommunications, insurance, transportation, leisure and governments from many different countries. Some of the companies who have benefited from Lee?s expertise are Hewlett Packard, Siemans Nixdorf, Electrolux and the Philippines government.

Whilst working in the Far East she became a recognized expert on preparing and evaluating large World Bank Proposals (infrastructure projects within developing countries). These accomplishments called upon the skills of bid and project management, risk assessment, contract negotiation and supplier management and required dedicated work to very tight time scales. This expertise was acknowledged by an invitation to be the principle speaker at an International Business Development Conference in Washington, USA. She has also consulted at very senior level in several countries.

She owns and manages two companies, Biz Guru LLC in the USA and Biz Guru Services Ltd in the UK as well a considerable number of profitable web sites. She works almost entirely via the internet, visiting clients on site during major consultancies and training. Her Internet skills span from when major companies first started to consider obtaining their own web sites. During these years, she has kept up to date with the rapid changes on the internet, including the dot com boom and the resulting bust ? which her own web based companies survived.

She regularly consults, writes and lectures on business, bid management and marketing and has published numerous courses and books.