What Is The Difference Between Upselling And Cross-Selling

Photo culled from Leaderonomics.com

UPSELLING AND CROSS-SELLING
Today I passed by Las Palmas after church for lunch. I ordered my food and motioned to the lady selling the water to come over. I asked to buy sachet water (which costs Ghc0.20).

She looked at me, smiled and put a bottle of Voltic water in front of me (which costs Ghc2 - 10x more) and tried to convince me to buy that instead. That is UPSELLING.

One minute later, another lady came over, smiled at me and put a bottle of Malta Guinness in front of me and told me that will go well with my meal. She tried to convince me to buy that in addition to my meal. This is CROSS-SELLING.

Upselling is a sales technique used to get a customer to spend more by buying an upgraded or more expensive version of what's being purchased...in my case, they were upselling me buying bottled water for Ghc 2 instead of the sachet water I wanted to buy.

Cross-selling is a sales technique used to get a customer to spend more by purchasing a complementary product that's related to what's being bought already. In my case, they were cross-selling me Malta Guinness to go with my drink.

The goal of upselling and cross-selling is to increase sales by increasing the order value. By selling me malt and Voltic water, I would have spent an additional Ghc5 which means more sales for Las Palmas.

If implemented properly, upselling and cross-selling can boost your sales significantly. No matter what business you run, it is possible to implement upselling and cross-selling to increase sales.

At Invent Electronics, we are currently integrating upselling and cross-selling on our website. I will share the results 2 months from now.