I still thought it wise to touch on this point just to make sure you give this some thought and make sure you have taken advantage of this opportunity as much as possible in your business.

In almost any business, you should always attempt to offer incentives to any employee that has any sort of contact with a customer.

It’s obviously standard practice to offer incentives or commissions to sales persons who are responsible for generating sales in your business, but it doesn’t stop there.

You need to understand that every customer contact point is always an opportunity to generate more business and you need to take advantage of every customer contact point you have.

Its certainly not only sales people that have regular contact with customers. You could have financial people, receptionists, technicians, service providers and many other types of employees who have regular contact with customers.

Taking advantage of as many of these as possible can have incredible impact on your business, and not only from a sales point of view.

A customer contact point can be used for all of the following:

1. Provide details on additional products or services that may offer additional value to your customers.
2. Request feedback on your quality of service, eg. Get a testimonial, complete a customer survey.
3. Request feedback on additional services your customer would like to see you provide, or changes to your service that would provide them increased value.

All of these can be of value to your business, from generating additional sales, to getting valuable feedback on your quality of service or additional services you can offer.

By offering all employee types incentives for performing certain actions when in contact with the customer, you gain the benefit of the customer responding to the action (accepts offer, provides feedback etc) and the employee gains whatever incentives you have defined.

Some examples:

1. A receptionist mentions a special offer you may have running at that point in time and tells visitors or callers if they want to take advantage of this they should email, call etc Mr Salesman and use coupon code XXXX. A unique coupon number per employee allows you track who generated the lead or action.
2. A fitness trainer staff member can make recommendations for specific health products that will further benefit the customer, and all they need to do is visit XXX website address or call XXX number and quote that unique coupon code to take advantage.
3. An accounts receivable employee can be given the power to offer customers increased payment terms on outstanding invoices if they take advantage of XXX offer right now. Or if they take advantage of offer XXX, they will receive a 10% discount on a previous outstanding invoice.

Every employee is a potential salesperson. Empower them to make offers, recommendations or receive feedback from customers, for a little incentive and you have a powerful additional sales force that can really have a big impact on your future sales.

This strategy also makes for very happy and productive employees who will go above and beyond in their job because now they have the incentive to do so. You get the business benefit, and at the same time, a very happy employee base, who will think twice about moving over to your competitors who don’t offer any types of incentives in their business.

If you’re not already doing this you’re almost guaranteed to increase your profits by implementing this strategy, and the great thing is, it’s really easy to do so.

To describe it simply, it’s the process whereby you attempt to get a customer to purchase more then they originally intended by recommending additional products or services that add value to the original sale, once they have already decided to purchase something, or right before they are about to do so. The important thing to note that this must occur at the same time the original sale is taking place.

Here are some easy examples of some common up sells you may have already encountered:

• adding side dishes to a food order
• suggesting a premium brand of alcohol when a brand is not specified by a customer (such as offering Captain Morgan if a customer simply requests a “Rum and Coke“).
• selling an extended service contract for an appliance
• suggesting a customer purchase more RAM or a larger hard drive when servicing his or her computer
• selling luxury finishing on a vehicle
• offering tripod, filters, and lens wipes with a purchase of a camera
• suggesting a brand of watch that the customer hasn’t previously heard of as an alternative to the one they are considering.

As you can see up selling is used almost everywhere by everybody, simply because it really is that powerful.

Once the customer has already decided to make a purchase, psychologically he is committed to spending money with you and will be wide open for adding something else to the sale.

Here is another great example that shows how a pet store drastically increased the value of a sale while at the same time leaving the customer thinking what a great deal they got, and as a result, very satisfied.

When the clerk sees Sam looking at the budget-priced gold fish, she leads him over to the much more impressive tropical fish.

“As you probably know, you will need a fish tank,” she says. “These beautiful fish only live in salt water. We have these $75 salt water tanks on sale for just $49.95.”

By the time Sam exits the store, he has purchased much more than the twenty cent gold fish he originally came in to get. He is proudly carrying home several exotic species, a $50 fish tank, fish food, a light, and other accessories. The sale went from a tiny twenty cent transaction to nearly $100. The store’s profit margin rose right along with it.

As you can see upselling is a great strategy that not only increases your average sale price per customer, but also ads additional value to your customer purchase.

Keep in mind that as an expert in your business, you need to become a trusted advisor to your customers, and make sure you use upselling to offer a more complete solution to your customers needs.

In many causes a customer will choose to purchase something for a specific need that they perceive will resolve their problem, however in many cases, its simply not enough, and it’s your duty (for your customer and your bank account) to recommend a more complete solution to resolve their needs.

Remember upselling is as much getting customers to purchase additional products or services from you, then it is for them to purchase an upgrade on their initial sale.

A good example in the fitness business is the guy who advertises a low priced once a week personal training session which has good response, and then recommending a more advanced intensive service you provide that may consist of 2 days per week:

It can go something like this:

“This program works well, however if you get on program XXX you should be able to get double the results in half the time.” If a product or service works much better with a complimenting item or upgraded version, be sure to tell customers about it.

You should always have a mode “advanced” version for every product or service you offer that you can recommend to prospective or existing customers, or you missing out on additional revenue.