9 Upselling and Cross-selling strategies for every business

Every firm aims to improve the sales of their products/services by applying cross-selling and upselling techniques.

Let’s first understand what exactly is meant by upselling and cross-selling.

Cross-selling is generally defined as selling an extra item to the customer along with the main product that customer is already buying. On the other hand, upselling refers to influencing the customers to purchase an item which is of higher value than the original product that customer was planning to purchase. Often, these terms are used interchangeably but they have distinct meaning.

If done strategically, these can improve the sales of the business and can help in achieving the targets more quickly.

Let’s go through some essential techniques associated with this form of marketing.

1.      Cross-sell only 1/4th of the original

That’s right! Make a rule of thumb that price of add-on service/service should be around 1/4th of the product that the customer intends to purchase.

For example, if the main product is worth $ 1000, then make sure to that the order of the add-on product should be around $250.

2.      Avoid close-ended questions

The sales agents often commit this mistake of putting close-ended questions in front of customers. For example, “Would you like to order anything else?” The answers to these questions come only in the form of yes or no which limits the scope of convincing the customers.

You can use much better line to continue the conversation like “Let me tell you about one more product that will perfectly complement this product.”

3.      Limit the recommendations of upselling

If you present too many choices while upselling, it will not necessarily enhance the sale. On the contrary, it may confuse the customers. And the customers prefer to avoid shopping in the state of confusion. Therefore, make sure to keep the recommendation in the range of 2-3 which will increase the possibility of better sale.

4.      Learn about your products with in-depth details

You can only influence your customers to buy more if you know enough about the product. By knowing more about the products, you can tell what makes these products more useful. Even customers will prefer purchasing the product from someone who knows more about the product. Trying a product yourself also helps to learn more about it.

5.      Pushing is a big no-no

Several times, customers are not in a very good mood and do not prefer to listen anything other than the details of the products ordered by them. Therefore, do not push the customers to purchase a product when he/she says no to your recommendation on the very first time.

6.      Do it with honesty

Make sure that while describing features of an alternate product or something of higher value, do not misguide the customers by giving some wrong details of the product.  The customer may purchase the product at that instant but your company will develop a negative image in the market. This will ultimately lead to disintegration of the business in the future. Therefore, provide only the information which you are sure about while cross selling or upselling to the customer.

7.      Do cross-selling/upselling on the basis of customer’s preferences

Understanding the preferences of the customers will definitely help you in suggesting the products which matches their choices and needs. You can take support of customer’s shopping history to analyze what kind of products will be appreciated most by the customer.

8.      Take support of data analytics

Data analytics are usually implemented by customer support service providers  for predicting the behavior of customers related to resolution of queries. But this modern method of using insights from customer data can also be beneficial for upselling/cross-selling. Through this strategy, you can predict how the customers will react if agents try to sell some additional product to them.

9.      Choose the right timing

Timing is also one of the biggest factors that influence the customer to purchase something that they were not ready to buy earlier. Best time is when customer has finalized the product but is about to check out. It is during this time that he is ready to purchase anything extra which gives you an opportunity to offer them something more.

Conclusion

A combination of above discussed strategies will not only enhance the sales of the company but will also help in developing a better name for the company. You can also take support of call center outsourcing firms which offer upselling/cross-selling in integration with processes like customer support, telemarketing and order taking.