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Cross-selling is the act of selling complementary products to a customer who has already bought one item from your company. Cross-sells increase revenue, improve retention and reduce abandonment rates. Here’s what you need to know about cross-selling and how it can help your business
Cross-selling is a marketing strategy that involves offering additional products to customers who already have an existing product. It can also be known as up-selling, or cross selling. Read more in detail here: up selling definition.
Cross-selling is a sales strategy that aims to maximize the value of a trade or transaction. While it is most usually associated with retail, it may be used to a wide range of sectors in both the B2C and B2B markets. In this post, we go further into cross-selling and provide examples, recommendations, and script templates for incorporating it into your sales operations.
When Should Cross-Selling Be Used?
Cross-selling is the practice of recommending more items or services to customers who have already made a transaction. The concept is that you can make more money from a single sale while simultaneously increasing the value you provide to consumers who are already in the market to purchase. Cross-selling is often employed soon before, during, or just after the principal transaction.
What Is the Difference Between Cross-Selling and Upselling?
Cross-selling differs from upselling in that it refers to recommending a more expensive or premium version of the product or service being bought. In this case, a sales representative is focused on providing a higher-quality solution to someone who has previously indicated interest, rather than selling more things for more cash.
Use the notes features of customer relationship management (CRM) software to keep track of your cross-selling success. CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot allow you to enter notes in lead and contact profiles in addition to managing leads and organizing data. Sales representatives may use this feature to report on if and how they tried to cross-sell, as well as the outcome.
Notes on the Salesforce lead profile (Source: Salesforce)
Cross-selling Examples That Work
Cross-selling occurs on a daily basis, sometimes without our knowledge, during sales discussions or marketing campaigns. For example, after purchasing a product on Amazon, you are likely to get emails or see online adverts for additional products that might complement that one. Cross-selling does not have to be limited to product-to-product or service-to-service.
When a product is linked with a complementary service, such as purchasing a service warranty when purchasing a new or used automobile, cross-selling works well. This strategy is successful across all businesses and verticals. In reality, cross-sells are thought to account for 35 percent of Amazon’s income, with successful cross-selling increasing earnings by 30 percent. The diagram below displays instances of cross-selling in action:
How to Increase the Effectiveness of Cross-Selling
Because of the income and profitability it provides, as well as its capacity to establish more meaningful client connections, cross-selling is a very successful way to expand a firm. When done incorrectly, though, you risk being seen as more sales-focused than customer-focused, which defeats the goal. Here are a few pointers to ensure that cross-selling is done correctly and with sales integrity.
Make Alternative Solutions
You need something to cross-sell even before you create a sales strategy describing how cross-selling methods will be implemented into your everyday sales activity. Cross-selling possibilities already exist in certain businesses, such as a coffee shop clerk promoting food products when you buy coffee.
Many others, on the other hand, may need you to start from scratch by developing a complementary product or service to your principal offering. You may design a native software utility to support the core application or establish a side service to assist improve the user experience. You may add an accessories section to your clothing lines that goes well with the clothes.
There are many possibilities for developing complementary solutions in your company. This is your opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition and expand on your unique selling offer.
Concentrate on Creating Value
Attempt sure you first understand their wants and why they made the original (main) purchase before you start looking for conversational holes to make a cross-sell. By inquiring about the difficulties they’re seeking to address and their preferences for a product or service provider, you demonstrate that you’re more interested in assisting them rather than simply trying to make a profit.
This degree of openness aids in the development of buyer-seller confidence. When you understand a customer’s demands, it’s also easy to add value to their purchase with suitable additional solutions. Assume someone walks into your electronics shop looking for a newer TV to watch their favorite programs on.
Because you know that streaming is their top priority, you might locate them a reasonably priced flat-screen TV and cross-sell a suitable smart device like a Roku or Apple TV to meet their streaming requirements. This solution not only demonstrated that you are focused on their demands, but it also boosted the total value to the client based on the priorities they provided.
Ascertain if the timing is appropriate.
When it comes to cross-selling, the timing of your endeavor is crucial. Make sure you do it just before the translation, during the transaction, or soon after. To keep the initial transaction fresh in the buyer’s memory, post-purchase emails with suggestions are often delivered a day or two after the first transaction.
If you wait too long, such as a month or a year, the buyer may be pleased and comfortable with their current situation and unwilling to make any changes—a typical sales complaint. Make sure your drip email campaigns are set up to deliver cross-sell messages within a day or two after a transaction, and educate your sales professionals to make their cross-sell efforts as close to the point of sale as possible.
Simplify the way you do business
No one likes to put in more effort than is required to create product or service enhancements. As a result, you’ll need to make sure that the complementing solutions can be obtained with minimum effort and that the add-on doesn’t need a lengthy procedure.
For example, in the insurance industry, if an agent tries to encourage the insured to bundle their house and car insurance, they may make it simple by sending the personal data obtained from the home insurance underwriting to the auto application, which simply requires extra vehicle information. In addition, the insured would be able to pay the premium as a single payment rather than many invoices.
If the cross-selling strategy was used after a purchase had been made, the procedure of adding an add-on should be just as simple. For example, if someone buys a pair of shoes and receives an automated email, the email should include a link to related goods that allows the customer to add the item to their basket and check out with one click. Getting a consumer to complete an add-on purchase requires a lot of simplification.
Script Cross-Selling
We’ve produced some script and email templates to assist you get started with cross-selling in your sales and marketing efforts. Before adopting the script, your sales management team should make sure that all of your sales people are familiar with it.
The retail industry (In-person) After you’ve decided on a product, but before you check out
This [product] is an excellent choice that you will undoubtedly like. I would also propose combining it with [complementary product] since you said that [priority/preference/problem they want fixed] was why you wanted to shop for it today. It’s fantastic for many of our consumers because [value provided by complimentary product/pairing].
Service to Businesses (on Conference Call) After the Proposal Is Accepted But Before the Deal Is Completed
It’s wonderful to learn that you’ve decided to collaborate with us on your [product/service] requirements. Many of our customers also like combining this with our [complementary product/service]. As a result, you’ll have the value of [value gained via pairing].
Following a purchase, you will get a marketing email.
Greetings, [customer name],
Thank you for your recent [product purchased] purchase. We’d like to propose the following things that go well with your purchase as part of enriching your entire experience with our brand:
Item name
Information about the item
[Image]
[Add to cart and checkout link]
Item name
Information about the item
[Image]
[Add to cart and checkout link]
Thank you for your interest in downloading!
Your Script Cross-Selling are on the way!
Quick Tip: If you’re looking for a unique way to express yourself, try
To better organize information regarding cross-selling possibilities, monitor transactions, and connect with your sales team, use a CRM like Freshsales. Create a free account right now.
Freshsales is a great place to start.
Pro tip: Store your Script Cross-Selling and other sales resources in your customer relationship manager (CRM) using the document management tools. Pipedrive, for instance, lets you upload documents, spreadsheets, and presentations to a centralized location for everyone on your sales team to access. Once there, users can download or access their sales resources while being able to make changes where needed.
Template storing on Pipedrive (Image courtesy of Pipedrive)
Conclusion
Cross-selling allows companies to generate more income from a single transaction while also adding value to a customer’s purchase by recommending similar items or services. This strategy is utilized across all sectors while conducting sales interactions and writing marketing letters. The samples and templates we’ve supplied will assist you in expanding the services you provide to your consumers while also enjoying the endless financial rewards of a successful cross-sell.
Cross-selling is a marketing technique that can be used to increase the number of products or services that a customer buys. It is similar to upselling, but it involves selling another product or service to a customer who has already purchased something else. Reference: cross selling vs upselling examples.
Related Tags
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