How to Use Suggestive Selling to Increase Your Sales
Guest Post
As a small business owner, or the head of a marketing team in your organization, you need to train your team to always seize every opportunity to increase sales.
There are several books you can read on effective selling techniques. However, there is one basic technique we may have forgotten.
The effectiveness of this sales technique is in its subtlety. Think of the time you went to a grocery store to buy bread and some eggs. Think of how the store assistant recommends milk and sugar to you. Or think of when you go to a phone store to purchase the new Samsung Galaxy S5, and the store assistant recommends a power bank to go with it.
See? You see the store assistant as being sensitive to your needs, even though in reality you probably end up purchasing more goods.
You need to teach your sales team the basics of upselling and cross selling to increase sales.
Upselling is the act of upgrading a customers’ purchase. An example is when you purchase a car, and the car dealer offers you insurance for that car for a little extra.
Babajide, an Account Manager for a major IT firm in Lagos advises that for you to upsell effectively, the customer must have already made the initial purchase, and the ‘’upgrade’’ must be of value to the customer.
Cross Selling on the other hand, is offering the customer ‘’related items’’ to the initial purchase. Amazon does this very well. After you purchase a book on Amazon, you see something like ‘’people who bought this book, also bought this book’’.
These suggestive selling techniques, when used properly can dramatically affect your sales.
When teaching your team this technique, teach them to
Listen attentively to the customer.
Show the customer how the upgrade (when upselling), or the related item (when cross selling) complements the initial purchase.
Show empathy and not be pushy to the customer.
Mason Frederick shares relevant knowledge that you can use to grow your career in marketing and build your small business.
