Why upselling is important to you.
As 2020 comes to a close, Covid is still a major concern on the game and hobby trade. Events are mostly cancelled across not only in the United States, but also around the world, and will likely still be until sometime mid 2021. Business owners and store managers are adapting quickly from an event center to a more retail focused business. So today, let’s talk about upselling and how you can raise your average receipt sale and bring up your bottom line.
As we talked about here, retail stores need to adjust tactics and focus on add-ons and upselling their products to customers. This important concept can be implemented by everyone from big box stores to craft fair vendors. Have you ever seen an iPhone sales chart?
Well, this is a form of up-selling. You are also looking to upgrade an item to a more expensive price point. The idea is that the customer is going to be something, now try to upgrade them to the better version. With our iPhone, Apple enforces this strategy twice. The Apple iPhone 12 Pro or the iPhone 12 Pro Max. The price line even lists the Max as a larger display and a link to compare them. Later down in the sales process, they offer a memory upgrade. Using the offered payment plan they are able to show you that for only $4.14 more per month, or $100 difference, you can double the memory in your new phone. For another $200 from the upgraded phone or $300 from the base model.
If you were already looking to buy an iPhone, Apple wants to make sure they can have the largest ticket sale with you and by offering their same phone with different options they can. For a few dollars more you can get double memory! Better photos! Whatever feature or benefits they want to say. So why not use the same idea with products in your store?
- “I see you are buying 6 booster packs of Pokemon, do you want an Elite Trainer Box instead? It includes 8 booster packs, an energy pack to help you build your deck, and a bunch more stuff”
- “Do you want a sealed booster box instead of all these packs?”
- “We have these new character sleeves that would match the cards you are getting, did you want these instead of the plain color sleeves?”
Adding upselling and add-ons together will help you build up your average sales per ticket, which means more revenue and less labor costs. Every time you are able to upsell a product, you are bringing in more revenue. More revenue per transaction means more money generated per hour.
Things become very good when you are able to train your staff to add on and upsell. Upgraded a customer into an Elite Trainer Box and also a Pikachu binder? You might have trained your staff from taking a $20 to $30 sale into a $50 to $60 sale by having them ask and show the benefits or features of doing so.
Do you already have a training plan to teach how to upsell? Do you have a specific example that helps build sales? Let us know in the comments below.
