How to cross-sell and upsell to customers

Blog overview:

• Driving repeat sales, including cross-sells and upsells, can generate more ROI for your sales strategy than what you earn from new customer acquisitions.
• The right mix of cross-selling and upselling strategies can increase your average customer lifetime value (LTV).
• Call tracking software offers a number of tools and data points to improve your strategy and the execution of your selling efforts.

Want to increase revenue generation for your sales team? You might want to consider how your current sales strategy is serving your existing customers.

Although it’s common to think of sales as the process of converting new customers to your business, the customer journey doesn’t end at the initial point of purchase.

Increasing customer retention and driving repeat sales from your current customer base can actually offer greater ROI over time than using sales to attract new customers to your business. This is commonly referred to as cross-selling or upselling.

Cross-selling is defined as selling a different product or service to an existing customer, and upselling is a technique that is used to get a customer to spend or purchase more with your company.

Of course, new customer acquisition is important to any business’s growth strategy, but the baseline costs are also much higher. Research suggests that the cost to convert a new customer is five to 25 times higher than the cost to retain an existing one.

Given those numbers, it pays to ensure that your sales strategy and infrastructure are built to support cross-selling and upselling to your existing customer base. With the right approach to your current base, you can improve customer satisfaction and increase the average lifetime value (LTV) of your typical customer.

Looking for ways to strengthen your cross-selling and upselling efforts? Here are some tips and tricks to guide your work.

Discover new strategies for cross-selling and upselling

Effective cross-selling and upselling requires team-wide commitment. Here are some of the best practices you should bake into your sales strategy to support your larger selling goals:

Check in with your customers regularly

After you’ve made the sale, stay in touch with customers and make sure their needs are being met. As customers become more comfortable with your product or service, they may be ready to increase their financial commitment, or they might discover new pain points to be addressed through upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

Offer special promotions to current customers

A little financial incentive may be all the convincing your customers need to try out bigger and better products or services from your business. Limited-time promotion windows can be a great way to drive impulse upsells.

Use surveys and customer feedback to identify pain points

The better you understand your customers’ needs, the more effectively you can upsell and cross-sell additional products and services. Surveys and feedback forms are a great way to solicit insights that not only guide sales strategies, but also provide opportunities for new products and services.

Ask open-ended questions

When communicating with existing customers, it pays to ask questions and get detailed answers. Instruct sales staff to invite comments and other types of feedback from customers on their current customer experience. This can be a natural source of ideas to guide messaging in upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

Offer free trials of upgraded services or products

Many customers may be interested in expanding or upgrading their services but may also be concerned about the value they’ll get from those upgrades. A free trial can be a no-obligation option to get their foot in the door with a new product or service when this occurs. Free trials let the customer evaluate the value of upsells and become accustomed to increased performance and service.

Bundle and save

One tried-and-true cross-selling tactic is to offer price cuts on existing and new services by bundling them together. The value created for your customers is a strong incentive to accept these bundles, and your business can enjoy increased revenue from that individual account.

Speak directly to customer-specific pain points

Reference past conversations and data points when upselling and cross-selling to your customers. This relevant messaging is likely to spark a stronger connection with your customers and improve your odds of sales success.

Focus on simple solutions to problems

Rather than emphasizing the spectrum of benefits that can come with a new or improved product or service, hone in on simple messaging that addresses the biggest pain points customers are facing.

Upsell gradually over time

You don’t have to pitch the most expensive product or service package to customers right away. Taking this aggressive approach can disappoint customers and increase churn. Instead, prioritize upsells that move existing customers to the next level of service at a manageable price increase.

Improve your cross-sell and upsell efforts with call tracking software

Strategies are an important component of successful cross-selling and upselling. That is why the right sales tools are essential, because they can determine the ceiling for success and make all the difference in your sales team’s execution of these strategies.

Here’s a look at how call tracking software can give your sales team the resources to realize your lofty selling goals.

Improve internal sales training and coaching

By recording phone conversations between customers and sales agents, you can achieve several goals required to support some of the above cross-selling and upselling strategies.

First and foremost, call recording and call transcription make it easy to review call content to identify both the pain points customers may be facing and their overall satisfaction with their current experience. Conversation Intelligence uses machine learning to provide automated analysis that can be applied to training and coaching efforts.

Digital recording and transcription documents this data to be reviewed at a later date, saving sales agents the task of taking down notes — which allows them to give their full attention to the customer. At the same time, these recordings can be used to guide ongoing sales training and coaching as sales teams work to achieve established best practices and execute the organization’s selling strategy.

New cross-selling and upselling techniques can be implemented through individual and team-wide sales training efforts. Execution can be guided through live call monitoring as sales agents master these tactics. Conversation Intelligence can also track each agents’ success in achieving specific coaching and training goals, such as using the right terminology or keywords when discussing services with customers.

Use call tagging to understand the buyer’s journey

Each customer’s historical data can play a role in effectively cross-selling and upselling in the future. Software solutions such as call tagging make it easy to track customers through a phone interaction, even when they cross multiple points of engagement, menus, and other interactions.

Call tagging also lets sales agents know if the customer is ready for or open to a sales offer. Cross-selling and upselling success is often a matter of timing. If your sales agents can deliver relevant information and sales pitches as customers seek better solutions to their needs, your selling strategy will ultimately be more effective.

With call tagging, sales agents can review customer histories in Lead Center to trace each customer’s path to reach that conversation with the sales agent. This makes it easy for the agent to quickly understand what the customer is seeking, where they’ve gone in search of answers, and how the agent can fill this need and improve customer satisfaction. In an ideal scenario, this facilitates a successful cross-selling or upselling conversion.

Start the cycle over with lookalike audiences

An existing list of customers is the perfect starting point for a successful remarketing strategy. Through a marketing tool known as “lookalike audiences,” your business can leverage past cross-selling and upselling success to target other customers that might respond favorably to similar sales tactics.

Lookalike audiences use your existing remarketing lists to identify new target audiences based on shared characteristics. Similar pain points, business challenges, industries, organizational roles, income levels, and other data points can be used to build profiles of existing customers who are likely interested in upgraded products or solutions.

The value of lookalike audiences is maximized when your sales team has a deep understanding of the common needs of your customer base. With a knowledge of these trends in hand, marketing solutions equipped with machine learning can target existing customers with effective sales tactics that offer a superior conversion rate compared to more conventional sales strategies.

Through this targeted approach, your sales team can reliably tag high-value prospects and engage them with the messaging most likely to resonate with their needs. This remarketing tactic also allows your sales team to more easily predict customers’ needs and take a proactive approach that improves the overall customer experience.

CallRail’s platform of marketing and sales solutions is a powerful asset in your effort to build your customer base. These tools also provide ongoing value in maximizing sales in your current customer base, achieving new efficiencies in sales ROI, and building a better, more solutions-oriented brand experience.

See for yourself how CallRail can improve customer retention, lifetime sales, and revenue generation throughout your sales funnel — start your 14-day free trial today.