Want to Sell More? Try Strategic Up-Selling

Last week, FEI marketing whiz Marka gave savvy salesperson Zoot a tip for increasing FEI’s share of customer (SOC). This week, Marka offers Zoot another piece of advice for selling more to customers. Remember, fire = print.

Zoot and Marka stood in line at Olympus Burger, waiting to order lunch.

“I’ll have a #4 with grape leaves,” Zoot said.

“Would you like to ‘Hercules Size’ that?” the cashier asked.

“Sure!” Zoot exclaimed.

Marka snickered. “Looks like the salesman just got sold—up-sold, to be precise.”

“Huh?” Zoot asked.

“Up-selling,” Marka explained “involves persuading a customer to upgrade to a more expensive product.”

Zoot rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Sounds like up-selling could help us increase share of customer.”

“Absolutely,” Marka agreed. “We can target customers at the point of sale—as you just experienced, work up-selling tactics into sales calls, or up-sell via outbound marketing activities.”

Zoot and Marka grabbed their food and sat down to eat. A ravenous Zoot immediately bit into his burger, but kept right on talking. “There’s just one problem. The Olympian economy is weak. Consumer spending is down and business budgets continue to shrink. Many customers are scrutinizing their fire-buying activity. In this environment, how exactly do we get customers to increase spending?”

“Price will always be a major issue, regardless of economic climate,” Marka replied dismissively. “We can attack the price objection on three fronts. First, through intelligent branding. We position our higher-priced products as luxury models. We’ll rebrand the pricier FireLighter II as FireDeluxe. We’ll finish FireDeluxes with gold trim and package them in fancy foil-stamped and embossed boxes. We’ll design an elegant logo. We’ll run a marketing campaign that positions FireDeluxe as ‘The Fire Solution Your Business Deserves.’”

“All this will position FireDeluxe as unique, luxurious, exclusive—in other words, worth the extra drachmas,” Zoot said in agreement.