Business Marketing Advertising

Do you want fries with that?

Upselling and cross promotion is a great way to increase your sales without spending more money on advertising and promotion. When I was working in a restaurant, the restaurant managers gave us a lot of training on how to upsell the customers.

You wonder why they put the beautiful, mouthwatering dessert tray right at the entrance of the restaurants? When you go to Olive Garden, the wait staff always ask you if you want free wine samples? When you go to McDonalds, they always ask you “do you want fries with that?” If you go to Starbucks, they probably ask you “Do you want some breakfast as well?”

The restaurant industry is do extremely well in upselling. Customers are expected to be “upsold,” or they wouldn’t even think it is anything abnormal.

Are you doing any upselling on your business?

If you are selling a book, do you recommend your customers about another similar book that they might be interested in (think Amazon)? If you are selling cell phones, do you upsell your customers with more accessories (think ipods and tons of its accessories)? If you are a service provider, provide different packages to your customers, so they can choose a higher price package with more services (think car wash business).

We can go on and on. All you need is a little bit of creativity. Maybe you can re-package your service, promote the lower price products. Once you get a customer, try to upsell them for a bigger package that meet their needs.

Don’t feel bad about upselling. Let your customers decide what they want

This is an age old tactics that have been used by many big companies. You can also use it in your small business as well.