What is cross selling? Right cross selling strategy

In this article I’ll take apart the Сross selling meaning. I'll show you cross selling examples for products.

There are several methods for increasing sales and profitability. One of these methods is cross-selling. If we look at the cross selling definition, it is the sale of similar items to new or current consumers. For example, if we sell the phone, cross-selling would include a case, protective glass, an additional camera, and other accessories that the buyer would require.

Cross selling is the most successful marketing strategy for increasing sales and profitability. However, knowing only one cross selling meaning, does not guarantee that you will be able to perform it efficiently.

Cross selling strategy

There is a financial business called Wells Fargo which faced a scandal in 2016 concerning obsessive cross-selling and millions of dollars were fined to the firm. There are many cases like this, believe me! The key principle you must grasp when developing a proper cross selling plan is this:

No intrusiveness, simply a willingness to assist the consumer!

This is literally the only guideline, and it’s very simple, but most people don’t follow it, and then blame it on the strategy.  Friends, it works.

Just don’t concentrate on making money immediately; instead, focus on helping your clients, and the money will come.

Cross selling example

Let’s imagine, I own a pet store and a new customer wants to buy an aquarium. If I start being, like an annoying salesperson pushing him to buy all other stuff for an aquarium, it will scare him away. He can change his mind about buying an aquarium from me.  Perhaps even make a complaint or leave a negative review for such pushy behavior.

The line between cross sales and customer benefits is razor-thin. In order to avoid overcomplicating the concept, I suggest making it a natural conversation with customers. Not to be salesy, find out more about the customer. Simply ask them follow-up questions. In a not in sales manner, find out about the customer more. Ask the customer: What kind of fish will you be having in the tank? And is the aquarium a gift for the boss, or maybe a child, or you decided to treat yourself? Have you ever been engaged in aquariumistics, or for you it’s a new experience?

Try to tell a story to a buyer from your experience, it came be a made up or true story from your life:

“You know I was buying the same aquarium and decided not to  buy a base cabinet… And it was a mistake. The aquarium doesn’t look good without it. So… at the end of the day, I had to buy a base cabinet.

Over time, my wife and I began to notice that on the online images the aquariums are much more attractive than in reality. And our friends didn’t share our view and this particular purchase… Doing some research, I realized that the main difference between my aquarium and the ideal we liked in the pictures was the back stone background. But I decided not to put it at all. It was a mistake. The view of the plain wall through the aquarium spoiled everything. Long story short, we bought the stone background. It was expensive, but it’s worth it!

 Still, aquariumistics is a very exciting hobby. All these decorations, choosing and maintaining aquarium plants… uh … love it. The truth is that when I was a beginner, there were a number of problems which almost killed the desire to do aquariumistics. Then smart people explained that you must clean aquarium soil once a month, change 30% of water weekly, use special chemicals for the whole ecosystem (e.g. like algicides), and put the light controller to turn off the light at the right time to prevent the development of algae. Now the real underwater world is at my home.”

For greater credibility show photos (can be downloaded from the Internet).

Notice in this example I never once said, “Purchase this…, buy that…” I made no recommendations. It is not necessary to be pushy and try to sell everything. The customer can analyze your mistakes and add merely a mountain of products – cabinet, background, siphon, soil, decoration, snags, plants, chemicals, and much more. From my story, a customer can analyze the mistakes I had made and in order to avoid tons of issues, would like to buy all that I didn’t buy at first.

The customer will not see you as a salesperson with the intention of selling, but a person who wants to help and you will gain credibility. As practice indicates, choosing the cross selling products to offer to the main product will double or triple your revenue organically.

And here’s another secret:

Sell related products/services as if they were selling them to yourself. You’re not going to sell yourself shy products, would you?

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling products or services. Try to help the customer. Use real examples or maybe base it on some statistics, your experience, reviews that you remember.

Another personal example of mine:

“I purchased a GoPro 9. To use it on a vacation trip. As it stated on the feature description – the camera can withstand up to 32 ft. I didn’t dive that deep, but the camera started to glitch underwater. Upon arrival, I wanted to use the warranty and contact support but it fell on the ground when I was using a non-branded selfie stick.”

The GoPro 9 salesman should have explained the value of purchasing a waterproof case and monopod using the right cross-selling strategy. I should have been helped on the website or their offline store. Despite the manufacturer’s claims and declarations, the underwater feature of GoPro without a case malfunctioned for me and to others, I bet. After I bought all the necessary accessories for GoPro and now successfully used it for two years I decided to buy a quadcopter. And this, my friends, is called upsale.

How to do cross selling – hard or not?

Offering cross-products is not difficult, but it is a skill that must be learned, or have a natural ability to understand customers’ needs. Not to pushy, but to be organically helpful to customers – it will pay off.

Cross-selling is a boost to current excellent sales, not a substitution to the company’s sales strategy. Of course, time and automation of business procedures are required to accomplish all of this qualitatively, especially if you sell on many marketplaces. That is exactly what our Sellbery product is intended to achieve. So, employ the proper cross-selling approach, and we will help you in establishing a strong foundation in the form of time savings and automation of the sales process on marketplaces.

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