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Cross selling software
for higher sales
Cross selling can be used as
an effective tool of getting additional revenue from clients, offering
them similar or complementary products. Studies show it costs four times
more to gain a new customer than it does to keep an old one.
Cross selling involves five fundamentals:
- You have to know your
products very well.
- You have to know your
clients. To get the best results identify which customers are your
best target.
- Ask questions and
listen for clues.
- Pay attention to
clients' needs and only suggest relevant products.
- Suggest, don't
impose. This way clients will feel comfortable and more likely to
accept your offer.
Most of the time, cross
selling is a natural process, involving a simple operation: telling
customers about your products. In software marketing, the publisher
needs to establish which software product can be correlated with another
one and be sold together as a package deal. Both the selection and the
price can be based on several customer and product criteria, which
should be set up before deciding on using the cross selling technique.
These bundles may be added to the online shopping cart or advertised as
a special software promotion on the site.
Successful cross selling can be achieved by applying several rules:
- Right timing. Don't
push sales if it seems the client doesn't have the financial
resources at that moment. Try to find out what the client's budget
is and make your offer accordingly.
- Relevance. Suggesting
too many software products unrelated to the original one may
overwhelm the client and lead to failure.
- Post recommendations
on the site. Professionals, experts or other customers may post
their opinion and their recommendations on the site. It can show up
as a list of related items bought by other customers that purchased
the same product.
- Place cross selling
items throughout your site, where they can help shoppers learn about
your software products and business. Try mixing and matching
different items to see which combinations work best.
- Offer a range of
prices: low cost items may be considered impulse buys, but the
clients may also purchase higher priced items that fit their needs.
The most important aspect in
cross selling is customer satisfaction with the first software product
they purchase, alongside with price and how well additional products fit
their needs. In order for cross selling to work, the focus should be on
the customer, not on pushing a certain software program. Before talking
about additional products or services, the customer's problems must be
solved. Also, the customer needs to know how useful is the product
you're trying to sell in the first place.
What's the most important downside of cross selling? Annoying clients to
the point they leave without buying anything. This occurs if you
continue to sell after the customer says he's not interesting or when
you're pushing a product that's not useful to the customer. In the end,
combining customer service and cross selling will lead to increased
online software sales. |
| Published date: June
27, 2006 |
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| Copyright © 2006,
http://www.avangate.com all rights reserved. This
article was written by a Web Marketing Specialist at Avangate B.V. The
author has in depth knowledge of internet marketing services and website
analysis applied to the software industry and e-commerce development.
Avangate is an eCommerce platform for electronic software distribution
incorporating an easy to use and secure online payment system plus
additional marketing and sales tools, such as an affiliate management
system, automated cross selling options, software promotion management,
software marketing services as well as consultancy on how to increase
online software sales. |
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