The cost of finding new customers or clients is a big expense for most businesses. "Upselling" those new customers maximizes your return on that expense. It's a simple approach any business can implement quickly and get immediate results.

Upselling is a procedure designed to get more money at the point of sale. You implement it by offering your customers or clients an upgraded product or related item at the time they are making their first purchase. Customers will never be more receptive to an attractive offer from you than when they're paying you money. You personally experienced upselling if you ever called to order a product advertised on a TV infomercial. The order taker automatically offered you an additional related product at a special discount only available if you ordered it now.

Many businesses avoid upselling because they're afraid the customer may get irritated and not buy at all. I've found the opposite is true. Customers appreciate your thoughtfulness in offering them an added benefit they didn't know about. Some business owners have told me they don't upsell because it's not feasible in their business. They really believed that until I described the upselling offers used successfully by some of their competitors. Every business can implement a successful upselling program.

What To Offer
A new distributor for an MLM company called me recently. She wanted advice about how to increase her profit margin on new sign ups. I suggested adding a training manual as part of the initial package for all of her new distributors. She took my advice and personally collects the payment for the manual. She instantly pockets a 60% profit on the cost of the manual in addition to the commission her company pays her for each new distributor she sponsors. Plus, each of her new distributosr gets a valuable training tool.

Think about your business. What else can you offer customers or clients while they're making their first transaction with you? Can you offer them...

• A discount on a related product or service?
  
• A volume discount if they buy more now?
  
• A special priced combination package including the initial product or service?

Your offer should include preferential special pricing. Most customers will accept your upselling offer when it's a good value and the price is no higher than 60% of the cost for the initial product.

How To Present an Upselling Offer
Upselling has none of the characteristics usually associated with selling. It's so easy that I've seen even unskilled order takers achieve high acceptance rates by reading printed scripts. Upselling is simply offering a suggestion to an already receptive buyer to enhance the value of his or her purchase.

Present your upselling offer casually, as almost an afterthought. For example, if you were speaking with your customer in person or by phone you might say: "Your website will be up in 48 hours. If you'd like, we can double your server space, include unlimited autoresponders and a shopping cart for secure credit card orders. The regular price for all of this is an additional $40 per month. But I'll give it to you for just an additional $25 if you order it today." You can make this same offer on paper or post it on a website. It doesn't have to be verbal to be effective.

Most businesses I've surveyed report acceptance rates between 40% and 60% for their upselling offers. This is a big increase for so little effort. Plus, the profit from the upselling portion often exceeds the profit on the initial product or service because there are no additional expenses involved.

If you're not making upselling offers to every new customer or client, start doing it now. It's an easy way to boost your profits fast with little effort and no expense.

Copyright 1999 By Bob Leduc

Bob Leduc retired from a 30 year career of recruiting sales personnel and developing sales leads. He is now a Sales Consultant. Bob recently wrote a manual for small business owners titled "How to Build Your Small Business Fast With Simple Postcards" and several other publications to help small businesses grow and prosper. For more information...