What Are Upsells and Downsells?
Nearly every business uses upsells. When you buy a pair of shoes, you’re offered polish to go with them or when you buy a burger at a fast food franchise, you’re asked if you want fries with it. These are time-honored examples of upselling in retail to increase the price point of each transaction.
Another time-honored way to ensure you don’t lose a sale entirely is to offer a downsell. This is aimed at people who may have reasons for not needing or purchasing the main offer (usually a lack of funds) but may still want some element of your product or service.
The philosophy of upsells and downsells for any business is fundamentally the same. When your customer is in a buying mood, you want to offer them something else they may be interested in because that’s when they are most likely to buy. Here are 5 tactics to help you gain more profits with your upsells and downsells.
FREE Checklist: Creating A Sales Funnel For Upsells and Downsells
Downselling, Upselling and Cross Selling Techniques
1. Know Your Customers
Until you know your customers, it will be very hard to run any successful offers at all. Knowing
your audience inside and out enables you to ensure that every offer you make solves problems for your customers. It will also assist you in knowing just the right upsell or downsell to make and when to make it.
2. Ensure Your Upsell Is Related to Your Original Offer
When you choose either an upsell or a downsell, they need to be closely related to the first offer. If not, it will be confusing. An example of this practice might be offering a “How to Lose Weight and Get Healthy” eBook and as an upsell offer you could add a “30-Day Menu Plan with Grocery List, Recipes, and Cooking Instructions”.
3. Keep Your Upsell and Downsell Offers Limited
One danger about upselling and downselling is the temptation to keep adding offers when people turn down the offer you’ve given them first. However, you don’t want to confuse your customers with too many choices. Plus, you want to ensure that the upsells or downsells aren’t giant price decreases or increases. Consider 20% -25% up or down either way.
4. Try Creating a Bundled Offer
One way to offer an upsell that looks amazing is to make the upsell a bundle offer. For example, you’re selling this eBook, and you also have the grocery shopping list, recipes, and instructions to help them follow the book. Plus, you even have group coaching. You can put all that into a bundle right in the shopping cart and let them pick that instead of their original choice.
5. Test Everything
When you want to offer anything, it’s important to consider different price points, various upsells, and different downsells. Conducting some A/B testing can show you, for example, whether your audience would convert more to the bundle offers or to a more direct upsell or downsell opportunity. You can’t know what they like without testing.
Free Checklist: How To Create A Sales Funnel For Upsells and Downsells
Adding upsells and downsells to your original offer will increase the price point of initial purchases – thus ensuring that you make more money. Plus, downsells will keep customers who may not be ready to commit to the higher-priced offer. This will get them on your email list and show them the quality of your work, and still be related to your first offer.
When you create an effective sales funnel it puts your upsells and downsells on autopilot and consistently turns prospects into paying customers if you structure it the right way. Download my free Sales Funnel Checklist which outlines the best practices for making your sales funnel produce the intended result, lots of traffic, lots of prospects and lots of sales.