Cross Selling to Increase Sales

• Train your staff to become cross-selling experts.  And reward them for doing this when it's relevant to the customer. 

Know this:  people need to use good judgment.  An example from mystery shopping at McDonald's when the employees were all to be asking, "Do you want fries with that?"  An employee asked this to someone who had just ordered an ice cream cone.  Fries with an ice cream cone?  That wasn't a relevant recommendation.  For cross selling to work well and not come off as a high pressure sales technique, the sales person has to think about what the customer is interested in and make relevant recommendations.  

• Use information from your customer database to tailor messages to cross sell relevant products and services based on what the person (or company) has purchased in the past.
  • If you know who has bought what, it helps you identify what products or services an individual or company are not buying.  With that information you can determine what would be relevant and appropriate to recommend to them.  This is called “increasing share of customer” or “increasing the market basket.”  Or cross-selling.

• Make sure your website is set up to cross sell relevant products or services.  

• Other sales techniques that are cross selling
  • Upselling with Good Better Best Options
    
  • Solution Selling
    
  • Bundling
    
  • See all articles on How to Increase Sales

• An example of cross-selling to consumers.  A hair salon can increase revenues by identifying customers who buy a single service (ex: haircut only customer) and sending only those single service people an email with a coupon to try hair coloring or make-up application.

  • What is key:  Only offer this coupon to people who don’t buy this service now.  You don’t want to offer all your paying customers a deal on something they’d pay full price for.

  • You could also offer a free 15 minute consultation about hair highlighting, coloring, perms (whatever is relevant) at their next visit.

• A business example of cross-selling.  Let's say you sell tax services to small businesses.  You’re very busy (too busy) during tax season and then not busy enough during other parts of the year.  What else could you offer your customers that they’d value and you’d make money doing?

  • What about personal financial assessment or coaching for the business owner during your “off months?”

  • Look at your client list and determine who your offer would be relevant to and send them a letter with a timeframe (deadline.)  Follow-up with a phone call to see if and when they want to schedule a meeting. 

  • Even if they decline, you are reminding them about you and your tax services.  If you do this well, you will increase their confidence in you. 

• An example of cross-selling in retail.  When someone is buying a car seat for a baby, that new parent needs a lot of other things!  When someone is buying a computer, a savvy sales person recommends software, a monitor, a carrying case, cables, a mouse and a warranty. 

• An example of cross-selling for services.  The phone companies are masters at this.  When you set up a new phone line, they tell you about all their other services for voice mail, cell phones and high speed Internet access.  

Next page:  How your staff, website and mailings can help you cross-sell