Once you start an eCommerce business, you’ll notice that customers don’t buy the product you want to sell in the first place. Sometimes they don’t buy what you want them to buy at all. The reason can be high-margin products, or goods that are high in stock or maybe their shelf life will expire, and so on. You can continue to sit back, or you can help your business and increase its profitability at times. For this smart marketers devised the so-called Upsell strategy. What is it?
Upselling meaning/definition — selling a product/service that benefits you first and then the customer.
Here are some upselling examples: a customer has chosen a teapot in your online store, but you earn only 18% of the gross profit on it. There is a similar teapot at +/- the same price, but you earn 40% on it. Of course, it is more profitable for you to sell the second teapot. Everyone will be satisfied.
People often confuse Upselling and Cross selling. These are completely different strategies, but more on that later. Right now I’d like to talk about a skill that will help you sell exactly what you want.
Right Upsell strategy
There are a number of rules, which I personally developed, based on my own or my friends’ successful sales — TOP sellers on Amazon, Ebay and other marketplaces. To find out how to choose the right marketplace, click here.
So, here are the rules:
- Upsell is most effective from the second sale, so… gain the customer trust. It is possible to sell right away from the beginning, but you need to be a pro.
- Approve the client’s choice.
- Don’t offer anything at the beginning.
- Find the right moment and not intrusive start to tell about the disadvantages of the product chosen by the customer. You can use personal experience, statistics or imagination.
- Offer the buyer a product which you need to sell.
One last rule that I’ll mention separately:
Don’t think that Upsell is cheating — No. Your goal is really to find a product/service that will have the same features, but with a greater benefit to you! The alternative you select should not be worse!
I’d like to emphasize once more that this set of rules — the author’s guide and has no analogues on the Internet. Of course, who am I to tell you about my unique strategy? There are many “mastodons” in the field, and it would be more correct to follow their instructions. Something like: “push customers with unfinished purchases in the cart, do Upselling only at certain times (imagine there is even a right time), offer additional bonuses like free delivery, because, as the picture below shows, the highest rate of refusals in the cart is because of expensive delivery.”
I could tell you about these “cross selling and upselling strategies”. But… My aim is not to retell a story that was told hundreds of times on other websites. My aim is to show you what is not shown yet. Maybe it will seem silly to you, but this is my experience, the successful experience, and maybe for you it will be useful.
Upsell examples
Let’s get back to the topic… One day my friend Vincent took an order for 1000 Logitech computer mice by phone from his regular customer. This Upsell example was one of the first in my life and therefore the most vivid. I got the sense and maybe you can also…
So, the dialogue was something like this:
– Hi, Vincent!
– Hello!
– How’s it going, how’s your arm? Healed?
– It’s fine, I won’t do any more extreme snowboarding.
– What about you?
– Our boss decided to upgrade the mice in the office to wireless one. I was browsing the website and came across the Logitech M185. What do you think?
– I’m using this mouse. I’ve been using it for 5 years now. The price is one of the best in its segment.
– Great, I need 1,000 of them. You’ll give me a good discount?
– I’ll do it for you, of course.
Vincent supposedly starts placing the order… and then…
– Alex, you know… I have just looked at the statistics of our service for these mice… I don’t like the picture with returns. They have frequently begun to be returned with a breakdown. Wait a minute, I’ll check…
Vincent turns off the microphone on his phone and drinks coffee + chats with me about what hot chick he met at the gym recently.
– Alex I talked to the service administrator and he said that these mice have a problem with lasers now. Somehow they are different. Maybe Logitech decided to save money or rejected a batch… In general, I don’t want to take the responsibility, or else you’ll curse me for selling you something bogus. Let’s probably choose another model for you?
– Really? Of course, let’s order something else! What do you recommend??
Bait is swallowed…
– I’d choose Microsoft… The code is 16544 on the website. This model is 30% more expensive, but it shouldn’t be a problem.
– Okay. I’ll buy it. We have enough budget anyway. Thanks, buddy. Love you.
– Likewise, good luck.
I understand that is a very dry dialogue. In life … Vincent’s tone was not that of a salesman; he spoke as if he had seen this statistic, talked to Dexter, and so on. As you understood he was playing and making things up, a real actor. There were no stats, no frequent warranty returns. It’s all fantasy. To say he did a bad thing — No. He sold really good mice and made 90% profit on them. And if he had sold Logitech, the margin would have been only 20%.
Then Vincent saw the statistics of returns. I am not persuading you to constantly fantasize, it can be a real statistic, your experience etc. Also, every product/service has flaws, nothing is perfect. This point can be called the “carotid artery” in the Upsell strategy — by clicking on it you can offer anything and he will agree. In real life it is not easy to find the “carotid artery”, but Vincent was a master.
Likewise, we are masters at what we do, particularly at automating the sales process on marketplaces.
I gave Upselling examples based on dialogue. Let’s look at this strategy with other examples:
The customer wants to buy standard headphones, and you offer a model with noise reduction. The model where you make more money. You need to tell the customer about this feature, because they may not know about it.
Someone is looking for a SAAS application to automate the sales process at marketplaces. Of course, here you can only advise Sellbery.
By telling the benefits of each plan, you can easily control the customer’s choice while not imposing this choice on him.
The customer decides to buy 2kg of dog food. Here it will not be difficult to convince him to choose a pack with a larger weight, as it is a priori cheaper, it will last longer, there is no need to overpay for delivery, etc. Often you can hear from the buyer that I want to try it first. In such a case, there is no need to push. As mentioned above — Upselling works effectively from the 2nd and subsequent purchases.
Upsell vs Cross sell
Let’s sum up. Upsell is selling another product that is more profitable for you, Cross sell is selling related products. Ideally, you should apply both of these strategies.
The main advantage of Upsell:
Selling your priority products — perhaps they need to be sold because they have a shorter shelf life, or there is more income there, or it is a new product that needs to be advertised sooner.
The main advantages of Cross-selling:
Increase in revenue by an average of 35%.
It is not necessary to choose only one strategy comparing all the advantages and disadvantages. For example, someone is a supporter only of Upsale, because Customer lifetime value is more than in Cross-selling. Someone thinks Upsale is too complicated, so he uses only Cross-selling. The truth, is somewhere in the middle. Use Cross selling and Upselling strategies and you will gain success.
What does Sellbery have to do with Upselling?
If you are a seller on several large marketplaces at the same time, you need a lot of time and effort to implement Upsell and Cross-sale strategies. You will need to analyze and train your staff, then to analyze again. It must be hard for you processing orders first on one sales channel, then the other, the third. Also need to manage product inventory, price updates. What marketing strategies are there, you won’t have time for that.
