Upsells And Cross-Sells: Techniques To Improve Your Conversion Rate

10 Sep, 2013

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Selling is when a customer buys your product or service. Technically, an upsell happens when the prospective customer is led to another higher-priced product, right after they hit the Click To Order button and before they get to the order processing page. It is meant to replace the original product the customer wanted to buy.

If your offer appears on the CHECKOUT page before the order is processed; that’s a cross-sell. The cross-selling products are sold in addition to the main product, as complementary products.

Both the strategies have the same goal – increasing the amount spent by the customer. This was prevalent even in the 1960’s, but back then any salesman trying to pitch a package of bulk items is looked at with suspicion that they’re trying to get rid of old stock or defective pieces.

But the company that had success with this concept even back then, is the Campbell Soup Company. It managed to succeed because it had a good name and had established a trust factor with people. The company sold a can of soup for 32 cents. The upsell technique was introduced with an offer of 5 cans of soup for $1. This was so successful that it soon spread to other food brands and industries as well.

Today upselling and cross-selling are encouraged and they’re used extensively in almost all the industries from fast food to technology.

McDonald’s started training its staff in franchises to ask the question, “Would you like fries with that?” That simple question made them millions.

Encourage Your Customers To Buy Through Upselling & Cross-Selling

A successful cross-selling and up-selling salesperson will be able to paint a picture of the value that the customer will receive so that the customer will be able to visualize the benefits of making the purchase. Up-selling benefits the customer by providing higher quality, while cross-selling adds benefit by providing additional quality. ~ Jared Lewis via smallbusiness.chron.com

Words like upselling and cross-selling can scare away newbie marketers, as all they want is a straight forward sale. A customer visits the web page and clicks on the “buy” button, and a sale happens. Simple and easy!

While simplicity is the best way to go when starting out, upselling and cross-selling have immense power in taking your business several notches higher. The top players understand the importance and always look to improve their conversion rate in these areas. The rule in business is to never let any customer leave without being recommended other products.

This is how a successful business thinks. Every single visitor is important and every single customer is looked at as an asset for potential future opportunities. Once they have a customer in hand, they’ll do anything to keep the customer for a lifetime and get the maximum value possible from the customer, but of course, without antagonizing the customer.

Improve Your Conversion Rate: Upselling and Cross-Selling

Small business upselling is really broken into two parts. This first component is focused around growing the amount your customers spend with you per purchase now – also known as increasing transaction size or what I like to call the “Would you like fries with that shake?” model. ~ Madison Jacobs via bigideasblog.infusionsoft.com

Upselling means you try to sell an upgraded product “similar” to the original product they intended to buy. Cross-selling means you sell them products “related” to the original product they’re buying.

Common upsell offers include:

Same product in bulk
Same product with more features
Same product but better in quality or from a better brand
Same product but in a package with some other

Cross-selling includes:

Different product but complimentary to the main product, such as batteries with a camera, chips with a coke etc.

Let’s understand this with an example:

You’re at the cash counter of a store paying for a book. The cashier asks you if you’d like to buy the rest of the books in the same series as a package. She tells you that it works out cheaper than buying each one individually. Another example is that of a salesman asking the customer if he’d like to buy a computer with more hard-disk space. That does sound familiar, doesn’t it? This is upselling.

How about the cashier asking you if you’d like to buy another set of books from the same author? That cross-selling for you!

The idea behind upselling and cross-selling is the confidence that even if the customer doesn’t want to spend extra money on anything else, the original sale would be completed. So you’re not losing anything by trying. You’re gaining the opportunity to increase the chances of making more sales and more money by putting the extra products in front of the customers. Even if every customer doesn’t buy, there are bound to be extra sales and extra income.

Your Upsell or Cross-Sell Must Not Compete With Your Original Product

When your customer service reps are asked to cross-sell, make sure they resolve a customer’s primary issue of concern before delving into cross-selling options. Customers are much more willing to listen to a service representative after their initial concern or issue has been resolved. ~ marketingscoop.com

From experience, I can tell you that it’s important to make sure your original product is of very high quality. For example, if you’re selling an eBook on weight loss as your main product, you can have the eBook along with videos on weight loss as the upsell.

As far as cross-selling is concerned, generally, lower-priced items have success. Amazon.com recommends other books on a similar topic to the book the customer is intending to buy. Higher-priced items don’t do well with cross-selling. A customer who has decided to spend $400 on a jacket may not be willing to spend another $300 worth of shoes to go with it, even if the shoes complement the jacket. But ask them to buy chips with the coke or a pair of curlers with the hair iron, they will.

Learn How To Upsell and Cross-Sell

As you can see in the image above, there can be more than one upsell.

Initially, when starting out, I suggest you go with your main product and if you’re willing to give it a try, cross-sell something related to the main product. Once you get into it, you’ll understand how it’s done and how your customers are taking it. Make sure what you offer makes sense as a cross-sell.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that upsells and cross-sells are an integral part of marketing today. To be successful in business, irrespective of the size of your business, give utmost importance to retaining and creating a system of upsells and cross sells for your products.