How To Increase Profits By Upselling

When you go to McDonalds and order your meal and the clerk says, "Do you want fries with that?" they are being more than helpful – they are upselling you.

Whatever business you are in there is scope for an upsell. Upselling is selling a second product, as soon as you take the order for the first. As a general rule, the upsell - or add on sale, as it is sometimes called - tends to be either a deluxe version of the product already bought or a relatively minor product.

For example, when I was selling industrial chemicals, having secured an order for a 45 gallon drum of chemical, I would then go right on to sell the buyer a dozen aerosols of some other product.

It is generally easier to sell the add on product, because of this important psychological fact: once the decision to buy has been made a warm glow comes over the buyer as they eagerly anticipate the benefits that will come to them as a result of buying the product.

They relax. The spell is broken.

That's the perfect time to offer a second product. The only stipulation is it must have a logical connection with the first product.

On line, this could not be easier. All it involves is an extra page on the website, between the sales page and the order page. So, instead of being taken straight to the order page, when they click the "Buy" button, they are take to an intermediate page which says some thing along the lines of . . .

Thank you for your order. As you are ordering today, you can take advantage of a very special deal for our brand new book The Dirty Secrets Of Search Engine Tweaking. This exciting new publication will make getting your website on the first page of the search engine results a walk in the park. It is normally sold for $97. But, as you are ordering today, you can grab this at the bargain price of only $47.

This price is only available in connection with your purchase today. You can buy this later, but it will be at the regular price of $97. By making the wise choice today you save 50 bucks!

If the customer accepts the offer, they are taken to the order page which includes the add on product. If not, they are taken to an order page for just the original product.