Upselling: Dig Deeper into Your Customer Base

If convincing your current customers to spend more seems like a hopeless uphill climb, consider this: A recent Gallup Global Management study found it costs five times as much to win over a new client than it does to serve an existing one.

That makes upselling an essential component of your ongoing work with a customer—not only to solidify your relationship but to make that relationship more profitable for you. Upselling can cover everything from traditional system upgrades, such as faster processors, higher-resolution monitors and laptop bags, to more comprehensive services and solutions. The following six strategies can assist you in compelling existing customers to do more business with you:

• Know what they need — Talk to clients on a regular basis and make certain you understand what their needs are. Have them prioritize issues. Is accounting a major concern or is marketing a bigger issue? What's immediate and what's further down the road? Don't focus on what you'd like to sell them. Listen carefully to what they say and, from there, identify those upselling opportunities that best match their requirements.
• Don't sell products and services. Offer solutions — Now that you know what your customers need and what you can offer to address those issues, try to lay out a variety of alternatives. "Offer them solutions that are incrementally better and at incremental price levels," says Maura Schreier-Fleming, author of Monday Morning Sales Tips.
• Educate them — If you offer a client three different upsell options, make certain they fully understand how each alternative functions and their varied advantages. That means genuine education, not a sales shtick. "That way, they get to see the true value of what they're buying," says Dan Campbell, procurement and vendor relations manager at Corporate IT Solutions in Norwood, Massachusetts.
• Quantify — One of the most compelling strategies to successful upselling is quantifying cost versus benefit. For instance, if a customer has downtime that costs him or her $5,000 a month and a marketing software package that can help attract new customers to fill that void runs $2,500, put those two numbers together to show the payback on the investment.
• Stretch the timeline — An even more effective means of quantifying is illustrating how the upsell will benefit the client over the long term. Taking the example above, that one-time $2,500 software package will help cut into $60,000 that's going out the window every year. "Don't limit your approach to the short term," says Schreier-Fleming. "Show them that they need to be concerned down the road as well." Don't forget to point out the downside of simply doing nothing, Schreier-Fleming adds: "Ask them how they think things are going to improve if they just keep doing the same thing they've been doing."
• Follow through — Training and support after the sale solidifies your relationship with a client, which builds a level of trust and leads to additional upselling opportunities in the future. "Appropriate training shows how valuable the new technology can be," says Campbell. "We're like wildfire — once we're working with a client, we keep spreading."

Upselling is a matter of knowing your clients' needs and goals and staying on top of them as consistently as possible. In that sense, upselling really isn't a type of sale — rather, it's ongoing service that benefits both your clients and your bottom line.