Upselling & cross-selling—the art of suggesting additional upgrades to a purchase as well as closely related products—can be one of the most significant levers at your disposal when it comes to growing average order value (AOV) with relatively little marketing effort. These strategies are applied to customers that are already interested in your brand and products, which is precisely why they can be so effective. In fact, Amazon has stated that up to 35% of its revenue comes from cross-selling efforts. Another study found upselling tactics are responsible for approximately 4% of all eCommerce sales. All eCommerce sales. WHAT!?
So your job is to show your customers relevant upgrades and additional, complimentary products at the right time during their path to purchase. If done well, upselling & cross-selling can build upon trusted relationships while driving impressive revenue results to your bottom line. But if done poorly, your brand risks coming across as greedy or overly aggressive.
Let’s get down to business. Below are some cross-selling and upselling gems your brand needs to add to its bag of tricks
Cross-selling and upselling often occur at the point-of-sale with a salesperson — as in the examples above — but customer success managers can also play a role in either process.
CSMs can cross-sell and upsell when they spot an opportunity further down the line with a customer — once they’ve already purchased the initial product.
Throughout email exchanges or phone conversations, customers might mention an interest in expanding into a different vertical or wanting more capabilities with the product they’re using — which can be a signal that they’re ready to hear about other options. Below are our best practices to learn how to cross-sell and upsell as a CSM:
Get to know your audience for starters
You may already know about buyer personas, but it’s important to get to know your audience once they’ve already bought your product, too. Use demographic and psychographic information about your customers — along with customer feedback — to create personas for your customers and understand their goals and challenges to identify the most helpful, relevant products you could cross-sell and upsell.
Build out customer journeys
Along the lines of the first step, map out customer journeys to identify how they will use your product and how it will help them grow. When your customers get to the point where they’re seeing results (thanks to your product), they’ll start telling other people about it and driving referrals.
At that point in the customer journey, they’ll likely be excited to hear your cross-sell or upsell pitch and spring some extra money for your additional offering.
Wait until they’ve reached this point before trying to cross-sell or upsell. During the period after they’ve just purchased your offering — while they’re onboarding and before they’ve seen its value — you’ll have a hard time selling them on additional products or features.
Think about problems and offer solutions that map to products
Before you even hop on a call or email and attempt to sell to an existing customer, take some time to review your product offerings and try to align them with your customer journey.
That way, you’ll have a clear idea of common challenges your customers face — and exactly which of your products you can try to cross-sell or upsell as a possible solution.
Practice active listening
You might be able to cross-sell or upsell to your customers on the fly during a phone call or over an email exchange — so make sure to hone in on your active listening and reading skills for signals your customer might be ready to hear your offer.
If the customer is mentioning wanting expanded capabilities or a desire to reach their goals faster, it might be the right time to mention how your other products or services can help get them there.
Emphasize premium benefits (eCommerce)
If you want a customer to purchase the highest quality (and most expensive) version of your product, it’s important for them to understand why it’s worth the extra money.
For instance, one of the most common upsells people encounter on a regular basis is at fast-food restaurants. Combo meals are generally available in more than one size, and can be “upgraded” for a small fee. In this case, the benefits of paying more for the meal are very clear: the customer gets more food.
The same should be true when you upsell your customers. Make sure they see a direct benefit to paying more. If possible, list the benefits of the more expensive version in plain english. Try picking the top 3 reasons that this product is worth it, and run with them.
One strategy for demonstrating the value of premium benefits is using social proof. Highlight reviews that specifically speak to why the product you’re recommending is worth paying more for. If you need to generate more reviews, this is a great time to create a post-purchase lifecycle email marketing campaign.
Apply this concept to an eCommerce brand
Now, let’s look at how we can apply these concepts in ecommerce. Let’s say your site sells phone cases, and offers two popular models, one priced at $20 and one priced at $30.
Both cases protect against drops, but the $30 case has the additional benefit of being waterproof.
If a shoppers adds the $20 case to their cart, you can run an on-site engagement that attempts to upsell them to the $30 version. How would you use copy to communicate the benefit of paying more?
Bad copy: Wait! Spend an Extra $10 for a Better Case!
Good copy: Wait! Upgrade to Our Waterproof Model for Just $10 More!
The first example is not only poorly worded, it doesn’t tell the shoppers what the actual benefits of upgrading are. It just says the other case is “better.” To reiterate, a successful upsell should explain clearly why the shopper should pay more, rather than just encouraging them to do so.
Ensure relevance
One of the best ways to upsell customers is through a product recommendation engine. Using artificial intelligence, these tools examine purchase history, browsing behavior, and viewed product pages to predict which of your products a shopper is most likely to buy. Among the many capabilities of this technology, it fully automates the upselling process.
While upsells have the power to be very effective, every shopper is different, and some respond to this strategy better than others. Fortunately, key indicators from browsing behavior and past purchases can help you in understanding your customers and identifying upsell opportunities.
For example, if a shopper is consistently looking at your new arrivals, or has frequently bought full-price items in the past, they’re likely to be a Quality-over-Value shopper. They’re less interested in scoring a deal, and more likely looking to purchase newer, cutting edge products.
For these shoppers, upsells are a fantastic tool. Upsells allow you to personalize their experience and show them the very best you have to offer.
Meanwhile, if the shopper heads straight for the sale page or has a history of buying mostly clearance items, it’s wise to adjust your strategy. In this case, cross-selling other sale products may be more effective than trying to upsell something at a premium price point.
Focus on creating value
While the goal of successful upselling is to get shoppers to spend more, upsells should ultimately create value for the customer. While you obviously would prefer that everyone took advantage of the upsell, some users won’t – and it’s important not to let that negatively impact their experience.
Upselling sometimes gets a bad rap because it can be used in a way that seems pushy. While badgering a customer into buying the more expensive option may eventually get some of them to buy in once, it reduces the likelihood of the customer returning. It’s vital to find a balance between presenting the upsell as an option and becoming aggressive about it.
You should also aim to emphasize the value created by an upsell without diminishing the quality of the item they initially wanted.
Apply this concept to an eCommerce brand
For a moment, let’s go back to the phone case example, in which the shopper has a choice between a basic $20 model and a $30 waterproof model. The copy we came up with was:
“Wait! Upgrade to Our Waterproof Model for Just $10 More!”
This method presents the benefit of the upsell (water protection), the value added by the upsell (small price for the upgrade) while not coming across as overly pushy.
However, this same upsell could easily go bad if we changed the friendly copy to something like:
“Wait! This case offers no waterproofing protection. By proceeding with this purchase, you acknowledge your phone could easily be destroyed.”
Although this is an extreme example, it’s illustrative of how off-putting aggressive upselling can be. Upsells like this make the basic product seem essentially worthless, which isn’t true. Some people simply don’t care if their case is waterproof, and trying to scare them into upgrading can quickly devolve into a bad experience.
Poor user experiences reduce conversion rates and devastate customer loyalty. Given the fact that it’s 5x easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one, upselling should never jeopardize the customer experience.
The end result of upsells should be happy customers who feel like they’re getting a good value, regardless of whether they took the upsell or not. By finding a balance between persuasiveness and customer care, you’ll find a happy medium that leaves everyone satisfied.
Take advantage of example use cases showing you how to strategically add cross-selling and upselling tactics to your playbook
Consider your post-purchase funnel. How does it intersect with sales reps and customer success managers?
As detailed in the examples above, cross-selling and upselling happen at the point of sale with a salesperson, after a customer has been using a product for a while with a customer success manager, or at various points during the customer journey.
Sales reps and CSMs can also propose cross-sells and upsells more indirectly via email by asking customers to check out new products or services on their own — and having the customer come to them with questions.
Customer education
Blog posts and knowledge base content also provide compelling ways to start the cross-sell or upsell process. Where customers seek out information on their own — whether that be through knowledge base articles, blog posts, or watching videos — marketers and CSMs can include copy letting them know about additional products or upgrades they can try to make their experience even better.
Online stores
Have you ever spent time online shopping, and then received the news that “you may also be interested in” another item from the website? That tactic represents another form of upselling or cross-selling.
Ecommerce websites can prompt upselling and cross-selling depending on which products the visitor clicks on and selects to encourage them to keep buying more.
Closing thoughts
Bolster your sales with cross-selling and upselling.
Cross-selling and upselling aren’t always straightforward. Doing either right takes real tact, optimal timing, keen awareness, and empathy. If you can keep a pulse on how your customer is feeling, have an idea of the features or products they stand to gain the most from, and know when they’ll be most receptive to an additional offer, you’ll be able to upsell and cross-sell with the best of them.
Upselling is a fantastic way to increase your average order value. However, like any tool, it must be used thoughtfully. By leveraging a combination of common sense, clever copy, and technology, customer satisfaction can rise along with your AOV.
