10 Ways To Improve Your Sales Through Upselling

Up-Selling is the key to many company’s sales growth goals. In its purest form, up-selling is simple selling the customer as much of your products or services as they can benefit from. Beyond that is abuse. Less than that, and you risk cheating the customer out of the opportunity to buy your best.

Up-Selling opportunities occur whenever you have a customer contact. For that reason, they extend far beyond the traditional sales process.

Here are 10 ways that you can use Up-Selling to improve your sales:

1. Train your sales people to sell in packages. Upgrade your basic offering to include a broader range or products or services. We offer sales assessments as part of our sales training programs. By not giving the client the option to refuse them, they always take that option. As a result, we do a better job for our clients. Both the initial sale and the repeat business have increased.

2. Design your marketing materials in packages. These should reflect the packages that you want your sales people to offer.

3. Design up-selling pairings for every offering. When a prospect calls for one thing, you should be ready to add the pair to the deal. One of my clients sells golf cart parts. They now pair oil with tune-up kits. This helps the customer save money and avoid violating the terms of the manufactures warrantee.

4. Design up-selling pairings into your web offerings. Look at Amazon.com for a great example. When you buy one book, they automatically suggest another that is matched to your interests. The buyer benefits by learning about a new book and saving on shipping.

5. Teach customer service people to offer additional products or services. I work with several telephone companies that up-sell additional services whenever someone calls for service. They do it by asking about the client’s problems and suggesting products or services that would be helpful.

6. Train field service people to look for opportunities to up-sell. Cable TV companies can do this by suggesting additional cable boxes, channels or features. Sometimes it just takes a simple suggestion. Other times, a free trial is a helpful tool.

7. Sell new offerings to old customers. Software companies do this every time they get a new version. But how many other things could be sold the same way. If you are happy with the product, you might be willing to up-grade for the right features or price. Obviously this requires building a database of current customers.

8. Train your people in the benefits of your additional products or services. Teach them to see it from the customer’s point of view, not their own. Many non-sales people are reluctant to sell something they do not fully believe in. Show them testimonials to reinforce the fact that buyers who buy more are happier with their purchases.

9. Train your staff to listen for up-selling opportunities. It can often be as simple as asking a question or two or listening for particular issues that can be addressed by your offerings.

10. Reward your sales and non-sales people for up-selling. Restaurants often give their staff a bonus if they sell wine. Software companies often give a higher commission rate if the sale has a service plan included.

Recognize that many of your customers will eventually buy what you sell, but they will buy it from someone else. Up-Selling gives you the opportunity to capture the sale and increase the customer’s positive experience with your company.


Steve Waterhouse, the President of Predictive Results, helps companies and individuals increase their sales through employee selection and sales training.
You can learn more in his blog at www.customerfocusedsales.com.