Nothing was working! The first month as their sales manager I found myself watching our sales numbers take a dive right before my eyes in the current tough economy. My initial knee-jerk reaction was to give bigger discounts. That didn’t work. I changed direction with focusing on the “perfect solution” sale followed by strong closing tactics. It was important to capitalize on the few opportunities we were getting. That didn’t work either. If anything these changes were making things worse.

An Epiphany

Ironically these potential customers “wanted” all the features we presented. They liked the idea of the perfect solution and yet we were being kicked out of their buying process early on. Why?

After doing a Quincy Analysis… we found that our competition was not proposing to the customers needs but were playing off their desire to practice conservative spending. We gave them the perfect solution… they gave them the basic needs to get by until economic times change. Even with a great discount we were too high and not addressing the real issue. Designing the “perfect solution” was not winning deals. A change in strategy was needed. Up-Selling became the answer.

“Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.” –Ayn Rand

Customer Driven Up-Selling

Just to be clear… I’m not talking about you up-selling the customer but the other way around. This is an important distinction. While I show/explain how I can solve their issues I don’t heavily sell to them. I will definitely explain the value and ROI if there is one. But that’s it. If I have done my job… up-selling by the customer takes place. Let me give you an example.

Tough Economy Up-Selling Success

The customer would like 20 phones. I have talked about all the phone choices previously not necessarily hard selling in any one direction. The initial proposal includes only basic phones. Until we can get in front of the customer to go over choices we are now priced competitively. Upon discussion of the proposal, almost always the customer will up-sell themselves to a nicer phone for some if not all users. I let them build their own perfect solution. This strategy is crucial as it keeps me in the game against my competition much longer. Simple but effective.

• Probe for solutions: Find the “hot spots”.
• Propose the basics: Be especially careful to not quote “would like” products but focus on the basics with “definitely need” products as options.
• Let the customer add options: Up-selling themselves.

Strategy Explained

When the customer would look at all the proposals they would see ours as too high. Ultimately the competition would be as high but they were letting the customer up-sell after the fact. We never really got a chance. We looked like we were pushing product… they looked like they were consultants with the customer making wise decisions.

In today’s economic environment creative “out of the box” tactics are needed. We have found that customer driven up-selling is a sound sales practice. Customer is happy with the solution… we’re happy without giving away the farm… a win-win.

Chris Lott

Chris has over 15 year’s Sales Management experience including Business Ownership, Product Management and Web Design/Marketing. He’s a national sales team strategist and trainer. Chris is the designer of the popular totallysales™ sales playbook with thousands of copies downloaded. He’s a nationally syndicated author with his articles on SalesBlog! rated as a “top must-read” on consultative selling.