Increase the profit on every sale by using cross-sell

There are a number of tactics you can use to increase the profit on each sale. This month I thought I’d focus our attention on ‘cross-sell’.

Cross-selling is one of the easiest tactics to apply to any business.

Once again, it’s a simple, highly effective way to increase the average order value and to primarily increase the profit on the sale… for ZERO extra cost to you.

To keep things simple, let’s use McDonald’s, the fast food franchise, to demonstrate how the cross-sell works…

You go into McDonald’s and ask for any of their main dishes, such as a Big Mac or Chicken Sandwich – the reply from the person serving you will be...

‘Would you like fries with that?’ Basically, they are using a wellrehearsed ‘Cross-sell Statement’ that makes it easy for the buyer to say ‘yes’.

So, to define cross-sell more accurately…

A cross-sell is when you sell a product or service that compliments the product or service initially being bought.

Be sure your cross-sell adds related value to your customer’s purchase and you can’t go too far wrong.

Good Examples Of Cross-sell

Here are a couple of good examples of cross-sell:

Example 1: The Sunglass Hut Cross-sell

Buy any designer pair of sunglasses from the Sunglass Hut and, when you go to pay, the shop assistant will draw your attention to four ‘plastic balls’ on the front of the counter (with a price of £20 clearly shown). 

Each one contains a different coloured cleaning cloth for the sunglasses. Their cross-sell script goes something like this:

“Thank you, Mr Jones. Because you are ordering today, would you like to choose any one of the cleaning cloths in front of you and I’ll add just £9.99 to your order?”

Note the following:

- The assistant has been welltrained and uses the name of the customer by looking at the card passed to them

- This is a simple one-sentence cross-sell

- The cross-sell in this example is probably adding close to £9.50 in pure profit to the sale!

Example 2: Kitchen Devil’s Knife Set

One of the things I’m going to ask you to do from now on in the development of your business is to spend 30 minutes or so each day watching shopping channels like QVC and The Shopping Channel.

These programmes have some of the best marketing strategies on show as they run through infomercials one after another.

Be careful, though – make sure your wife or husband or partner doesn’t start watching as well – or they’ll be dragged in like the rest of them!

For example, the well-known infomercial selling the Kitchen Devils Knife Set, selling for about £300 is very powerful.

They have the chef literally throwing food in the air which then lands on the knife to be split perfectly in two. When you order, this is what the telesales person says…

“Mrs Jones, because you’re ordering today, we have a special offer on the Kitchen Devil’s Presentation Mount. Made of beautiful solid wood, it will show off your knife set on any work surface in your kitchen. Can I add just £9.99 to your order?”

It’s hard to turn that down, having just spent £300 on the knife set!

Most people want to parade their new knives and what better way than to have the perfect showpiece for them! Three short sentences for an increase in profit of about £9.50, with a product that unquestionably complements the original purchase.

Example 3: Men/Women Fashion Retailors

A store selling men’s tailored shirts can offer matching cufflinks, ties and collar-stiffeners.

A store selling ladies fashionwear can cross-sell matching shoes and handbags with any purchased dress or skirt.

Example 4: Lawn Care

Offer a pruning service, grass removal, weed removal from borders, etc., or how about a discount on leaves and snow removal in the winter if they agree a contract for the season’s lawn care?

Example 5: Amazon.com

Amazon were the pioneers in the online cross-sell.

Whenever you choose a product to buy, they back this up with other recommendations. For example, ‘buyers of this book also bought these books’ (see example on previous page).

And if you run an online business, or you generate sales online then upsell should be an integral part of your business on EVERY product or service you sell.

For example, I generate a large number of leads online and a contributory factor to that is the ‘cross-sell pages’ I have that load once the initial lead has been generated. They are designed to cross-sell people to my primary FREE service called the ‘Sales Accelerator ROADMAP’ (see back page for details). And when I take a business owner through this amazing piece of software, they are much more likely to want to work with me (see an example of the cross -sell page opposite). 

There are few other strategies that you can use in your business that have such an immediate and big impact when applied.

Once you’ve created your cross-sell, it should be used indefinitely (but, of course, test other ones against it to see what works best).

However, if you’re in need of a quick influx of extra leads and/or sales and of course profits, then simply adding a cross-sell to your products and services will give you exactly what you need, for absolutely no extra cost.

That’s why I said earlier every business should use cross-sell!

Example 6: Any Other Product Or Service Sold By The Business

The beauty of cross-sell is it gives you the opportunity to sell other complementary products or services the business is selling.

But there will be many more products and services you can include once you start thinking about it.

The important point to take from this is to look for the opportunities in the business to present related products or services. Then offer these additions at a discount as a cross-sell.

In many cases, you’ll find that some customers will want these products or services, but didn’t think about buying them – either because they didn’t think they need that product or service at that time or didn’t relate that need to their current need. Either way, you helped them and both of you received extra benefit.

Be aware of opportunities in the business to sell additional products or services to customers, at the time of their initial purchase (and, of course, after this – but more on that in later issues).

It really is very easy to use cross-sell at the point of purchase.

So if you’re not taking advantage of these potent and easy-to-apply strategies, I guarantee you’re missing out on potentially huge volumes of sales and profits from your clients, customers or patients. 

Remember, it takes just a few minutes to put in place many cross-sells for all your front-end products or services.

Taking advantage of this opportunity will increase the sales and profits of your business within a very short space of time.