One of
quickest ways to increase your sales is through upselling, or selling additional products to customers at
time they are placing an order. An excellent example of that is found at fast food restaurants: when you order a burger, you will often be asked "Do you want fries with that?" It's a great way to increase your revenues, since customers are basically in a "buying from you" frame of mind at that time. This can work for products or services, although services should be "productized", meaning you offer a specific scope of services for a set price.Here are
basic steps to a good upselling program: 1.Know
value of your products 2.Figure out what others have bought 3.Develop new options (products, installation, maintenance plan) 4.Script your plan
Ready to get started? Get out your pencil and let's go!
1. Know
value of your products -----------------------------------------
In this case, value means two things:
value or profitability of
product to you,
business owner; and
value or usefulness of
product to your customer.
Start with yourself. Look at each of your products, and calculate
cash in your pocket for selling each of them. This is just
amount you sell
product or service for, less your costs for buying or providing it. Be sure to include all costs - for example, if you buy
product from another company you will need to include
shipping costs to get
product to your location.
Create a table so you can clearly see
profitability of each product: on a piece of paper put
following items as column headings, and then fill your table out: Product Name Selling Price Cost to Buy/Provide Cash in (Selling price minus your cost to buy or provide) % Cash in (Cash in divided by Cost to buy or provide)
Next, look at
value of each product to your customer. There are items which are useful by themselves, and items which are useful when purchased with another product. You will have
greatest success if you offer products which are less expensive than
original purchase but are in some way related to it. For example, if you sell a printer, an excellent upsell would be to offer a set of extra printer cartridges to be shipped to them along with
printer.
Add a column to your table: Related to
In this column, put a "P" for primary products and an "A" for add-on products. Next to each "A" put
name of
primary products it can be sold with.