Years ago in my misspent youth, I was taught that there are three ways to increase your sales numbers: Get new customers, reactivate former customers and get more business from existing customers. The latter being the easiest and fastest means to bigger commissions.

 

What my tutor didn’t tell me is that there is another adjunct to those three principles; Up-selling. Increase the dollar amount of your sales by showing the customer how they can actually save money by spending more at the moment of sale. As every car salesman knows, no one buys the “Sally Rand” (a stripper) model of any vehicle, at least no one other than a person who understands that a car is just transportation. 

 

The car dealers advertise their basic models of vehicles knowing that most customers will opt for the upgraded audio system, power windows, power seats, bigger engines, automatic transmissions and all the appearance upgrades. This same principle applies to nearly every other type of sales. The basic unit is used to get the prospects attention, but it is in the upgrades that the profit is made for the supplier. Those upgrades are often a cost savings to the customer because the added features make for better productivity, or higher usage, or a wider application . . .

 

Internet purveyors are also very good at up-selling. With your free subscription to their newsletter you get a limited time chance to buy their valuable e-book for only $9.95. Or, you signed up for the beginner’s course in fly-tying and you can save $50 if you upgrade to their complete course, today. Or, pay only $39.95 for this great e-book on treating and curing psoriasis and receive three bonuses; an e-book on how to avoid hangnails, a pamphlet on how to remove nasal hair and a free sample of facial cream that used by the stars. 

 

The smart up-sellers don’t offer the whole enchilada, instead they shoot for increasing their selling prices by about 30 percent. Anymore could induce sticker shock and a cancelled sale. 

 

Some old time salespeople think that it is easier to down-sell than to up-sell. It is their philosophy that it is easier to come down in price to a lesser product than the reverse. But, sales psychologists will tell you that once a buying decision has been made, it is far easier to upgrade the purchase to a “high value” package of add-ons.

 

The next time you get an e-mail offering that heralds “free shipping” on your next order, realize that you are being up-sold. When you read the car dealer full page display ads in your local paper, you know that this is for basic equipment and if you want wheels and tires, you are going to pay more. When you sit with the “finance manager” after making the buying decision on your new “Belch-fire Eight” and he begins to tell you about financing and insurance options, you are being up-sold. When you respond to an ad for new carpet at a low price per square yard, as the order is being written up, you hear, “Did you want a pad and installation with that?”

 

These are rather simplistic examples, but up-selling has a place in every type of business. The name of the game is “Get in the door with the basic model, but offer upgrades.”