How Do You Successfully Upsell?
Unlocking the secrets of successful upselling, this article presents a no-nonsense guide peppered with insights from seasoned industry experts. It delves into the art of understanding client needs, presenting added value, and leading with strategic questions. Learn to refine your sales technique and deliver a long-term content strategy that resonates with customers.
- Understand Client Needs and Present Added Value
- Ask Good Questions and Lead with Value
- Deliver Long-Term Content Strategy
Understand Client Needs and Present Added Value
Successful upselling hinges on understanding client needs and presenting added value. I once upsold a client by identifying a gap in their current solution and positioning a premium service as the ideal fit. By showcasing how the upgrade aligned with their goals—improving efficiency and ROI—I secured the deal. The key factors were active listening, strategic timing, and demonstrating clear benefits. Effective upselling isn't about pushing products; it's about aligning solutions with client success.
Ask Good Questions and Lead with Value
When you ask good questions and always lead with the idea of adding value, the effects can be powerful. One of our larger clients started their relationship with our firm by making a small purchase. I am a sales manager and became involved after a few weeks as trust and rapport were built by our lead sales rep with the client.
In this case, our rep showed genuine interest in understanding our client's business and objectives. Most important, she listened fully to the answers and asked excellent follow-up questions to uncover more. This consultative approach allowed our client to feel comfortable and openly participate in a collaborative approach. It became clear the client was experiencing some hiring and training challenges around managing the day-to-day issues of their corporate network. The conversation went from a relatively small solution at two locations to us taking over the network for all 22 locations for this growing company.
Our rep identified and then fully uncovered the client's pain points around sourcing, updating, and managing the equipment necessary for all locations to communicate with Corporate HQ.
She engaged the right team members from our group to engage with the customer's team and they crafted a complete solution the client was excited about: A "fully managed" solution for all 22 locations where we provided the network plus equipment and management of all issues that kept the client's network running 24/7. Besides management of all components, we ensured all software updates were current, monitored daily troubleshooting, and more.
Our rep's consultative approach and willingness to start slowly by understanding the company and its unique challenges, building trust, fostering open communication, and naturally adding value once problems were identified was the key to fully developing this client.
A "small" sale can lead to much more when you lead with value, take time to understand, then demonstrate a solution that solves your clients' problems by saving them time/money or any combination thereof.
Deliver Long-Term Content Strategy
A client approached us to create a 90-second video showcasing their entire product range. While this would have been a great standalone piece, we saw an opportunity to deliver even more value. We explained that once the main video was produced, we could create multiple smaller cutdowns, clips, and images of each individual product, giving them a huge bank of content to use across social media, ads, and their website, for relatively little extra cost. What made this upsell successful was framing it as a long-term content strategy rather than an added expense. We didn't just sell them a bigger project; we showed them how a single investment could stretch much further, providing months of marketing content instead of just one video. They immediately saw the benefit, and the project scope expanded significantly.
