Benefits Of Cross Selling

Have you ever realized that when you go to your neighborhood supermarket, you often end up purchasing a lot more stuff than you originally intended to? You only wanted to purchase meat, but in the end, you also bought eggs, condiments, salad dressing, and desserts to go with that sumptuous meal you have been planning.

Or, look into your wallet and you will find you have a credit card from the same bank with which you have a savings account and the current account. More often than not, you would have taken a mortgage from the same bank.

Welcome to the concept of cross selling. In the situation described above, the store sold you one or more items that were related to the one thing you wanted to purchase. In the end, you walked away with a feeling that you saved time, got some bonus points on the loyalty card and even some discount. The store also was able to sell you more stuff with much less effort that it would have had to with another customer; it also solidified an impression that you could get everything from one place. Similarly, the bank has one customer to whom it is selling practically everything it has got. And you do not have a reason to shop around for financial products.

Are You Cross Selling?

Now, consider your own business. Chances are you also have multiple products to sell, and your customers even know about that. However, have you ever thought about how many of those does a single customer think of purchasing from you? Most customers are happy shopping for just what they wanted, so as the business owner, it becomes an opportunity for you to increase your sales by additional purchases from one customer.

Another way to understand this idea is that cross selling is a way of selling complimentary or supplementary products to the customers. Think of selling a car charger when the customer is purchasing a mobile phone!

In many cases, you will have slow moving products on your shelf. Cross selling is your best chance to sell them to the customer and increase your customer base, gain their loyalty and having them want to come to you more often. An example is after sales service, annual maintenance contracts, and extended warranties. It is always difficult to sell these kinds of offerings to a new customer or, get him to shift to you if he already has such a product with him.

Economically also, the concept makes a lot of sense. You already have a customer at your doorstep, so you did not have to spend anything to catch his attention. He just bought something from you, so the marketing and selling costs are covered already. You have something more to sell him, and this product will enhance the value, the usability, the reliability of what was just sold.

Cross Selling Tips

Quite likely, you also have a website. When the customer is about to make the payment for the product, you can put a catchy banner right near the “check out”, that says “customers who bought this also bought XXX”, or “consider buying XXX to get hassle free service or warranty for just $20”, or even “gift pack this for just $5”. Yet another way to make the customer buy is to make him stay on the products webpage after he has selected something to be added to his kart.

You can track the success of your cross selling efforts by simply dividing the number of products sold by the number of customers. If the result is 2.4, you are doing OK. Anything above 2.8 is considered excellent conversion.

Always do your homework before cross selling. There are only a certain set of items that can be sold to the same customer in a given situation and he should realize their value with the core product he wants to buy. If you try and sell something that is not related to what he needs, he is likely to not even buy what he wanted to in the first instance.

The important thing to realize is that it is easy to fall into a trap and try and sell too hard to your customers. You must understand that customers are always more oriented towards experience and services. They should not get the feeling that you are more focused on selling things to them. They should feel that you value your relationship with them more than anything else. That should always be a part of your conversation. Then, you will be able to distinguish between the situations where you are trying too hard or where you should restrain yourself.

Are you using cross selling in your business?