Cross-selling: It’s a Win-Win
Add value to your customer and grow your revenue—ella’s way
Have you ever gone to a fast-food restaurant, ordered “just the burger,” then driven off with regret that you didn’t also have fries? Maybe even a drink?
The employee at the restaurant has failed at one of the easiest examples of cross-selling: why just get the burger when you can have the whole meal—for not that much more money?
Cross-selling works that way for any business: you’re not trying to sell random, unrelated products (just as you wouldn’t add a footlong sandwich to your burger order, but you would add fries). You’re selling your customer something related to what they’re already buying—and ideally, that add-on offers them even more value.
Successful cross-selling requires a little know-how. Here are my top four tips:
1. Timing is everything.
One of the cardinal rules of cross-selling: don’t try to do it until your customer has already committed to the first purchase. You don’t want to seem overeager—or appear to care more about making money than helping your customer solve a problem. It’s even okay to wait until a later time to offer additional products, as long as you don’t wait so long that the opportunity to add on goes cold.
2. Keep it relevant.
If there really isn’t another relevant product to sell, then it’s not a good opportunity for cross-selling. Period. Your customers will know if you’re trying to force something on them that they don’t need, and you’ll run the risk of damaging the relationship instead of building it.
3. Keep it simple.
Let’s go back to the fast-food restaurant. They generally don’t ask if you want fries, or fries and a drink, or fries and a milkshake, or a milkshake, or a milkshake and a drink and dessert. They just ask if you’d like to make it a combo. If you offer too many choices in an effort to sell, even more, your customer will feel overwhelmed and may choose not to add on anything at all. Go into the conversation understanding their pain points so that anything you try to cross-sell is specific, simple, and meets a need.
4. Don’t forget your social proof.
I’m going to repeat my previous advice: showing your customers how others like them have benefited from what you’re selling will increase your likelihood of closing the sale. In that sense, cross-selling is basically like any sale—if you have testimonials, five-star reviews, or any other evidence to show your customer that the product or service in question has already been proven to solve a problem like theirs, they’ll be more inclined to make the purchase.
Circling back to the fast-food restaurant one last time: can you think of a time you ever regretted getting the fries when you were hungry enough to eat them? Probably not. Time your cross-sell right, make sure it’s relevant, don’t offer too many other options, and show proof that other customers were pleased with their purchase—and you’ll be well on your way to growing your revenue. As an added bonus, your customer will be even happier because you’ve added value. It’s a win-win.