You can dramatically increase sales by offering helpful and relevant product recommendations in the form of upsells or cross-sells.
What’s the difference between an upsell and a cross-sell?
In brief, an up-sell is when you offer the same type of product with an increased price. For example, the same product with an additional feature, or a customised version of the product. Think of it like when a fast food restaurant asks if you’d like to upgrade to a larger size.
A cross-sell is when you offer an additional product recommendation that can complement the original. For example, if you’re looking at a wax burner, wax melts would be a fantastic cross-sale opportunity.
Consistantly offering up-selling and cross-selling to new and existing customers can greatly increase revenue and help show off your inventory to potential customers.
3 Upselling and Cross-selling Tips and Tricks
Here are three ways to maximize revenue from upselling and cross-selling.
Make It Relevant
First and most importantly, any products you recommend to your audience should be relevant. If someone is looking at your wax burner, don’t offer them your bath bombs. The buyer should be able to very quickly see the relationship between the products.
Make It Desirable
Make sure that the products you’re recommending are desired. If you have a choice between offering a wax burner that gets ordered often or viewed the most over a Christmas tree decoration (In February), you’re probably better off offering the wax burner.
Make It Urgent
When applicable, you should take opportunities to create urgency by limiting quantity or the purchasing window. This is where scheduled sales days/market days come in handy. Be sure to highlight these limits to customers to create a “Use it or lose it” concept.
A good example could be scheduling a 1 week sale of a product with limited stock. Not only are you creating a time constraint but also a quantity limit.