The wholesale and retail industries have their jargon just like any other. An industry word we hear quite often is 'upselling'. It doesn't much apply to wholesale, although it could, but we hear it a lot in relation to retail sales. Do you know what upselling is? More importantly, do you know why you should be doing it?

Upselling and cross-selling are often confused by sales personnel who aren't properly trained. Needless to say, they are two separate things. You should probably be doing both.

Differences Between the Two

Upselling is the practice of encouraging customers to self-upgrade, as it were. In our industry, this means encouraging them to buy a more expensive pair of sunglasses than they otherwise would.

On the other hand, cross-selling is the practice of pointing customers to other products they could purchase in addition to their sunglasses. You might recommend that a customer purchase a case to protect their new sunglasses.

Both practices drive sales. Both improve revenues and the bottom line. But for the remainder of this post, let us focus our attention on upselling. It is definitely something you should get used to doing. If you have a sales staff, you should encourage them to do it as well.

Sunglasses and Impulse Purchases

To some extent, people plan to purchase new sunglasses. But that doesn't mean they go into the shopping experience already knowing what they want. They browse until something reaches out and grabs their attention. This is where the impulse comes in.

You can take advantage of that impulse to suggest a more expensive version of what the customer is currently looking at. In doing so, you don't focus at all on the price. You focus on features. You can talk about brand, color, or anything else that makes the more expensive pair more attractive.

On those occasions when customers have not planned a purchase, any decision to do so is an impulse decision. This is the best possible scenario for upselling. You have a customer who sees something that gets her excited. She is ready to buy. Now you can point her to an upgraded model just by playing into her eagerness.

Here's Why You Should Do It When Selling Sunglasses

On its face, upselling might seem like a dirty trick that borders on dishonesty. It is nothing of the sort. Upselling is really a product of knowing your customers. Before we go any further, consider the following Marketing Metrics stats cited by Optinmaster:

• Your chances of selling to a new customer are 5-20%
• Your chances of selling to an existing customer are 60-70%.

Think about that for just a minute. You have regular customers who have already purchased designer sunglasses from you. They have bought aviators and wayfarers. You have sold them sports sunglasses, polarized sunglasses, cat eyes, and more. All of these, preferably, were wholesale sunglasses bought in bulk to save you money and increase your profit margin.

They are already loyal to your brand. By upselling, you are introducing them to products they might not otherwise consider. Doing so could boost their loyalty even further. As long as they are happy with both product and price, you can bet they will be back for more.

Retail Is All About Sales

The reality of retail is that it is all about sales. There is no need to make it any more complicated than that. So if sales are the ultimate goal, upselling should be a part of your overall strategy for achieving that goal.

Perhaps a future blog post will get into specific upselling techniques. For now, it's enough to know what upselling is and why you and your staff should be doing it.