Cross-selling is convincing customers to purchase a complementary item on top of their initial purchase to make it more valuable.
Ways to sell complementary items
By learning how to cross-sell, you can increase your business sales. For example, if you’re selling women’s clothing and someone buys a dress from your store, you can encourage them to purchase a scarf as well.
There are genuine benefits for your customers. Firstly, they’ll appreciate the time and thought you put into analyzing a product and finding a way to make the purchase more worthwhile.
So when you’re cross-selling, keep your customers’ needs uppermost in mind and try to:
- Create a sense of urgency around buying the complementary item. For instance, “50% off – today only!” is a sign that many consumers may find difficult to ignore.
- Ensure the complementary product or service is relevant to your customers main purchase. For example, offering fries and a soft drink with a burger purchase works, whereas offering some discounted sunglasses with that same burger may not.
- Clearly communicate the value of the second product or service. For instance, you should train your sales staff to know the complementary items inside-out, so they’re confident when discussing the added value.
Convince customers that the complementary product is essential. For example, if you’re selling laptops, also aim to sell a mouse, mouse pad and headphones.
Examine your customer data
Take a look at your sales data and try to identify trends to see what could be sold. For example, if you operate a men’s store and sales for jeans are strong but belt and sock sales are weak, consider offering belts and socks as complementary items at special prices.
Improve the way you do business online
Most of us have been through the purchasing process of any big online retailer. At some point during the buying, checkout, or post-sales process, you may have encountered a pop-up offering you a complementary item for a discounted price.
Other sites may offer you a list of possible add-on purchases after you make payment. It could even be a list of products that people who purchased your original item also bought.
All of these tactics are forms of suggestive selling and may be beneficial in your efforts to cross-sell.
Bundle products or services together
By offering package deals, you’ll have the opportunity to sell more. Bundling items together to make them more attractive to customers is a fairly common strategy.
For example, if you sell used cars, you might add a GPS, stereo system and speakers to some models to enhance their appeal.
A few product bundling techniques include:
- Pure bundling, where you offer a group of goods or services that are only available in a bundle and aren’t sold separately.
- Mixed bundling, which involves selling products both as bundles and as individual units.
Spend time deciding which items to make complementary
Cross-selling isn’t something you want to improvise. Think about the products or services you’re selling and plan in advance which ones you could promote together. Come up with a plan on paper before deciding how to arrange your cross-sell items in-store or online.
Your package offers should be cheaper than the combined price of the original items.
Ensure your website is ready
This is particularly important if you’re conducting most of your business online. Analyze your website and decide on the key pages or points during the purchase process where you could offer your customers a complementary item.
For example, if you’re selling cosmetics online, make sure that when your customers click on a particular good, they’re offered some other related items at a discount.
Use incentives to tempt customers
Another strategy you might adopt to increase sales could involve tempting potential customers to spend slightly more in return for a reward.
For example, if you priced some goods in the range of $70-90 and you used some cross-selling techniques (along with offering free shipping on purchases over $100) some of your customers will likely round up their shopping carts to at least $100 so they get the free postage.
Combine products and services
If you have complementary areas of your business, you may be able to increase sales by combining products and services.
For example, barber shops will usually try to sell you hair products to go with your haircut. Likewise, gas stations sell gasoline while also serving as convenience stores.
Get in contact with us at Comerica Bank today.
