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Cross-selling is a sales strategy where the seller encourages the customer to spend more by recommending related products that are already being purchased. The idea is that the customer spend more and buy him more things than he thought he would actually do.
What is Cross Selling?
Cross-selling is a strategy that capitalizes on the “just in case” mindset of customers. It is an art of enhancing the shopping experience of customers, while focusing on getting the most out of them. Many retailers and ecommerce stores rely heavily on cross selling because Cross-selling is a sales technique used to make the customer spend more to buy a product that is already related to being purchased. It’s easy to confuse cross-selling with upside. Cross-selling involves offering the customer a related product or service, while generally turmoil involves trading up to a better version of what is being purchased.
Amazon has reportedly credited 35 percent of its sales as making sales through its “customers who bought this product” and the “often purchased together” option on each product page. This approach prompts a retailer to purchase a compatible – or necessary – product.
Examples of Cross Selling
Cross-selling involves offering different complementary products to your customers. These are products that optimize or improve the original product by adding new functionality. For example, think of a phone case or the insurance they always try to sell to you when you buy an electronic device.
But it’s not just about offering everything you can think of. The key to this system is to add value to the user to indicate that you really know what they need, as in any other marketing action, there should be both planning and strategy behind cross-selling.
Cross-Selling Strategies & Techniques
Like upselling, cross selling strategies are also used at each stage of the marketing funnel, so the strategies can be divided into three stages
- Before Sale- Product bundling and product recommendations at customer touch points make them look related to each other. E-commerce websites have recommendations and suggestions to increase the chances of cross-sales as the most popular deal’, ‘best offer’, ‘just for you’ etc.
- During Sale- Recommendation of salesperson and parasitic offers at the point of sale in retail stores and ecommerce websites.
- After Sale- Personalized emails, SMS and calls to entice customers to choose a related product.
Difference between Cross-Selling and Upselling
They are similar, but not identical, these two concepts are generally mixed. However, it is important to clearly distinguish them. Cross-selling, as we have already seen, encourages customers to buy other related products that complement their purchase.
However, the upselling tries to get the customer to buy a different, more expensive version of the same product. They have different strategies with the same goal to increase the average checkout price. With cross-selling we get that product by adding other products, while we are fussy, we sell more expensive, and therefore more profitable, products.
Let’s look at this with an example: When the salesman at a car dealership tries to convince customers to buy a model with more additional features, he is using upselling strategy . If, once the customer has purchased the car, he also provides insurance or a roof rack, which is cross-selling, cross-selling: final product + added product. Upselling high-priced final products, in both cases we increase the average checkout price, but in different ways.
Benefits of Cross-Selling
The most obvious advantage of cross-selling is that it increases sales volume, but it’s far from just one, let’s take a look at the rest.
- More sales – this is one of the main reasons and for this reason you are reading this article. But be careful, it’s not an increase in sales, but rather that each customer buys more products with each order.
- Optimized costs – Managing just one order with multiple products will always be cheaper than placing separate orders with just one product.
- Greater client loyalty – Keeping in mind the needs of the user will make him feel more satisfied, because you are adding more value. This will result in greater loyalty to your brand.
- Selling “unknown” products – This is the right position to show all the products you have, but it may be less popular.
