What is Cross-Selling?
If you’ve ever shopped at Amazon, you’ll notice how good they are at recommending similar products to you at check-out. That is cross-selling at its finest.
Cross-selling is the art of offering additional products and services to a customer who has already made their decision to buy.
In this post, we’ll show you 15 easy ways to implement cross-selling in your strategy. You don’t have to use all of these. Remember, less is sometimes more.
1. Speak to Your Customer
Use direct references to your customer. Refer to them by name and use “you” a lot. This gives the customer a tailored experience and makes them feel their needs are understood.
2. Do Your Homework
Study your products carefully and find complementary products that fit together. If you have a service that extends the buyer/seller relationship, even better. An after-sales warranty extension is a good example.
3. Group and Show Items Together
Whether you run an online or physical store, make an effort to display product pairings together. This helps the customer understand how the items complement each other.
4. Be Reasonable
Don’t cross-sell products that are more expensive than the chosen item. We recommend offering additional products that are 25% of the initial purchase.
5. Make Buying Easier
A customer that has just bought something can easily be persuaded on an up or cross-sell. Offer a complementary product that’s cheaper and less complex than the initial purchase to ease the buying decision.
6. Choose a Place
Display products or services near check-outs or places where customers are prone to staying. This simple act will trigger impulse purchases without your intervention.
7. Empower Your E-Commerce
If you run an e-commerce store, make sure you have some form of website analytics running in the background. By gathering your buyers’ behavior and patterns, you can fine tune your online platform and decide which items pair well with each other.
8. Show ‘Bought Together Items’
Amazon uses this trick effectively. Using the information gathered from your website analytics, you can display similar items that other customers bought to your existing buyer.
9. Add a Stimulus
Try to draw more attention to your additional products by offering an incentive to your buyer. Free shipping or wrapping is a good way to entice customers to cash in on your cross-sell. However, make sure you consider the cost of the added incentive on your operation costs.
10. Bundle Offers
If you have products that are very well-connected, you can bundle them together for an easy cross-sell. Offer a discount on the bundle so customers can visualize their potential savings. The upside to this is you are able to move stock faster.
11. Use Your Products
If you sell products that need to be used together, make sure you inform your customers about that. They will most likely listen to you to avoid damaging their product. What is in it for you? If you sell a car and offer a servicing package, what do you stand to gain in the long term? Think about it.
12. Add Credibility
An easy way to sound credible is to get experts or celebrities to endorse your products. Another way is to offer customer reviews of your product that exhort the benefits of your product or service.
13. Mention Items During Early Stages
If you wait till the later stage of the process, buyers may already have considered other products and your new recommendations will simply confuse them.
14. Offer a Next Order Discount
Retain your customers by offering a next purchase discount. Mention this early and they might just decide to subscribe for additional service years.
15. Don’t Push Too Hard
The trick lies in selecting the right promotion for your product. Pick only the right cross-selling strategies that fit your product. For example, cross-selling a warranty makes no sense to someone buying perishables. Create value for your buyer by offering suitable recommendations and you may just gain a lifelong customer.
