Increase customer value
by cross-selling

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Cross-selling is the art of selling your other products and services to an existing customer. Not all your customers will have bought all the different lines you offer. Make sure they’re at least aware of them by cross-selling at every opportunity.

It’s much easier to sell more products and services to an existing customer than finding a new customer. They already know you and trust you, assuming you’ve done good things for them. The risk of doing more business with you is much lower for them than using someone they don’t already know. Capitalise on that.

When you have more than one product or service, make sure all your customers know about all of them. It’s surprising the number of times I’ve known customers say to suppliers “I didn’t know you did that.” New, lower value, products can provide a stepping stone to your higher value, more profitable products.

A Low-cost Action Plan for Cross-Selling

1. If you sell more than one product or service, list for each customer which ones they don’t use. This will give you an amazing list of opportunities to sell to people who already know you and trust you.

2. If you only have one product or service, how about having some more? Think about things that your customers use alongside yours. How much more could you make if you sold those as well? Could those new products and services give you an entry point into new customers? Could you then sell them your main product or service?

3. Work out some rough profit figures, based on selling to a percentage of your existing customers. Does that give enough to re-invest in selling the new idea to new customers? Even if it doesn’t the extra profit may still be worth the effort.