What is Up-Selling?
Upselling is to sell similar products but of higher quality and more price. It involves the process of convincing the buyer to buy a better version of a similar product which will add more value to their purchase.
Up-selling Examples:
When you go to any shop, suppose you ask for a certain laptop. The seller would suggest you another one with more features and attractive qualities which are not in the one you have decided to buy. By persuading you about the newer features, the seller would make you buy the expensive one with more features. This is what upselling is.
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What is Cross-Selling?
Cross-selling is a process where the seller tries to convince the buyer to purchase some additional products which are complementary or related to the previous one. In this case, the seller tries to show the customers the extra value they are getting and hence earn the maximum revenue from them while creating a better shopping experience for them as well. They make the customers buy more than what they have decided.
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Cross-selling Example:
Suppose you go to a clothes store and ask for a Shirt of a certain colour. The seller would suggest you buy matching pants, shoes or jackets etc. This is what cross-selling is. You will probably create a perfect outfit in your mind adding those pants, jackets or shoes to the shirt you wanted to buy and end up purchasing all of those.
Difference Between Up-Selling and Cross-Selling:
● Upselling helps in increasing the sales revenue. It makes the buyer spend an extra amount of money for the same kind of product but with better quality. Whereas cross-selling, not only increases the sales revenue but also increases the number of items sold that come from different categories.
So Upselling increases the actual revenue whereas cross-selling increases the overall revenue of a shop.
● In upselling, the seller understands the needs of the customer and accordingly shows some better quality products. But in cross-selling, the seller suggests some related products from his side to make the customer purchase those for a better experience.
● In upselling, the seller persuades the customer to spend extra money on the products he wants to buy in the first place. But in cross-selling, the product that the seller wants the customer to purchase may not be his need at all. So both require a different skill set to convince the customer.
● Upselling aims at increasing the average purchase of the shop. It helps in incrementing the total amount of money a particular customer spends for shopping. Whereas cross-selling ensures the increment of average sales per customer. It means they buy more products and also spend more than what they have decided.
● In upselling, the sale of a particular product goes higher and the profit is mostly due to that one product. But in cross-selling, the overall sale of the shop increases and the profit amount gets dispersed through different products.
● Looking at both upselling and cross-selling from a different perspective, upselling is to sell additional features of similar products whereas cross-selling is to sell additional products by making them related to the existing product which the customers want.
Bottom line:
Both Of those are great tools to market your products or services without any extra effort. They are great if you want to increase your customer base. Also, they both aim at the ultimate same goal which is to increase the revenue of the business. But both require different approaches with which the sellers should convince the buyers. To upsell and cross-sell products, the seller should have the knowledge and skills to undertake what the customer needs and how she can be convinced to spend that extra amount of money either for a high-quality product or for some other products.
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