you want fries with that?

It's the punchline to a million jokes, it's a pop culture reference, and it's even a Canadian TV show.

It's also an extremely successful sales technique called upselling.

Upselling comes in different forms. It can be a solicitious salesperson showing you upgrades or add-ons to the gadget you're about to buy, a suggestion about alternative (and often more expensive) products that you may not have considered, or an offer to protect your purchase with a service plan or extendend warranty. (Extended warranty! How can I lose?) Although there's usually a huge element of nice-nice that goes along with upselling, the objective is simple: the salesperson is trying to get you to buy more, thereby increasing the retailer's profit margin and in some cases, the salesperson's commission.

Here are some situations in which I've encountered upselling:

1. Buying a sofa. The salesperson tried to get me to pay an extra $80 for free lifetime cleaning. If my sofa needs much more in the way of cleaning than an occasional shot of fabric cleaner and a sponge, then I've got more problems than lifetime sofa cleaning will solve. Besides, I bought a black sofa on purpose: I wanted a sofa in which I could pour an entire bottle of red wine if I wanted to, and after a few days no one would know the difference.

2. Trader Joe's. Just the other day, the nice cashier at Trader Joe's tried to sell me a tote bag as I was filling my backpack with frozen chicken.

"Do you want to buy a tote bag for 99 cents?"
"No."
"Are you sure? It's only 99 cents.
"No."

(Why did she think I brought the flipping backpack in the first place?)

3. Car insurance. My home insurance company sends me junk mail every week offering to sell me car insurance since I'm a highly valued customer. I don't have a car, but whatever. I figure that if they really valued me, they'd already know that.

Upselling can be beneficial to the consumer if the discount represents a savings over something the consumer would have bought anyway. Unfortunately, more often it represents subtle or not-so-subtle pressure towards an impulse purchase that goes beyond what the consumer intended to buy, resulting in a total cost of more than the consumer intended to spend.

For the retailer, upselling is always beneficial. That's worth remembering next time you get asked if you want fries with that.

The key to not getting sucked into spending more money than you intend is to recognize upselling for what it is and plan accordingly. If you're going to buy a new whatever, do the research in advance and have a clear idea of what you want before you enter the store. If you get a hard upsell pitch from an employee, all you have to do is respond with one of the most powerful phrases in the English language:

No thanks.

If the salesperson tries to come back with questions like But I don't understand. Why wouldn't you want to take advantage of a bargain like this? or hardball statements like This deal won't be available again if you don't take advantage of it today, you're not obligated to make excuses. No thanks is all the answer you have to give.

If the sales pressure gets to be too much, you can simply get up and walk out. You may not get what you had planned to buy, but it's pretty empowering to know that you successfully resisted an eminently effective psychological selling technique.

If you ask me, that's worth more than money can buy.