The Right Way to Upsell

(Or how to get more money from your customers, but keeping them happy at the same time)

Upselling seems an obvious practice, but some companies get it badly wrong and end up leaving customers with a bad impression.

Don't try to sell something to someone they are not interested in, but add to what they already want.

One of our clients sells a range of rope cutters, the rope cutters increase in power (and cost) depending on the type and thickness of rope you want to cut. You can also get the spare blades from our client.

So, for example a customer might ring up wanting the least powerful cutter because they are only going to use it to cut the thinnest of ropes. The wrong thing to do would be to try and sell them a more powerful cutter. Trying to get the customer to upgrade might lose you the sale because you appear to be selling them something they're never going to need.

Instead, when a customer rings up wanting a rope cutter, our telephonists also ask if they want to purchase a spare blade to go with it. This is something the customer will need eventually, anyway, so 8 times out of 10, they say yes. This means our client has an additional sale and, more importantly, the customer is happy that they've bought more than they planned.