7 Tips for Effective Upselling | Landscape and Tree Care
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Why upsell?
The data is pretty clear about how difficult it is to find new clients. On most occasions, you only have a 20% chance of selling to a new customer. However, your chances skyrocket to 60-70% chance when selling to existing customers. This is great news for landscape and tree care businesses. Most items you can upsell are high margin, low cost services. These are relatively easy to sell and don’t require many man hours.
1. Identify what success means to your customer
Add-on services shouldn’t be sold as a one-size-fits-all solution that you serve to every customer. To effectively upsell, take the time to talk to individual customers about their specific needs and find ways your business can benefit them. Showing the customer that you understand their problems and know what is best for them will go a long way towards gaining their trust.
2. Be transparent
As mentioned above, trust is a huge part of upselling. Customers who don’t trust you are much less likely to be repeat customers, let alone purchase add-ons. It’s essential when you upsell to a client that you’re transparent about cost. Think about it from their point of view. How frustrating would it be to you if your landscaper said that you needed to purchase extra services but was reluctant to address cost?
3. Use past customer experiences (social proof)
As you upsell more, you’ll gather information on the best way to approach common scenarios. Explain to clients how the add-on you’re selling them has helped other customers in the past, or what happened if a customer didn’t address certain issues. The goal isn’t to scare customers or coerce them into buying something they don’t need. It’s to provide evidence to the customer that you’re an expert, you’ve helped other customers like them, and that you have their best interest at heart.
4. Offer Discounts
Discounts are a great tactic to successfully upsell. When you’re pitching clients the value of the item you’re upselling, include that they’ll be able to get a discount off the normal price. This will incentivize the client to choose the add-on now instead waiting because they’ll be receiving a discount.
5. Train salespeople and estimators to upsell
In order to upsell, your sales team and estimators need to be trained on how to properly upsell. If you have someone in the building who is an expert sales person and knows how to upsell, use their knowledge to train others with less experience. If you need to bring in an outside resource, no problem. There are many resources available to you to train your employees on upselling techniques.
6. Offer add-ons in your quotes
After your team has been trained on how to upsell, start including optional add-ons into proposals. You won’t be blindsiding customers with add-on services because they should already have been discussed with the customer by the estimator.
7. Offer incentives to your crews to upsell
Turn upselling into a game. Offer incentives to your sales people, estimators, and any crew members that upsell services. This will make up selling less of a hassle for your team and keep upselling in the front of people’s minds. There is a right way and a wrong way to incentivize employees. Since the benefit to the company is monetary gain, the incentive for the employee making the sale should be monetary as well.
Conclusion
Upselling is an underutilized tool in the green industry. The fact that it’s much easier to sell to existing customers and that add-ons can be high margin items make upselling a great option. You’re creating more profit with less work. As you develop a system and culture of upselling, you’ll see increasing returns using this formula. The reason upselling is taught in almost every sales class in America is because it works.