Master the Art of Upselling and Cross-Selling in Events
Jul 20, 2022 Durgesh
More often, upselling or cross-selling may just become a mechanically driven revenue generating activity for organizations who may not consider engaging a strategic approach. The risk is that, in the long run such organizations may jeopardize their brand value and lose important stakeholders and greater prospects while being occupied by only churning out profit driven methods. This is because, without understanding your clients or without being creatively desperate for your clients’ best interests, all your efforts towards selling your suite of exquisite products may just become a great running of short stint.
You Can Only Cross-Sell When You Upsell – So, Understand Your Client and Lay the First Foundation
The point here is to understand that either upselling or cross-selling will work wonders only when you really intend to work wonders for your clients. The keenness to understand what really drives your client, and is the product you are pitching would stand the test of time while also being relevant for your client is crucial. Can your client expand their budget horizon or are they budget conscious? All these questions if assembled and worked on prior to the actual selling will deliver the best results. That’s because you have started to understand your clients. By understanding them, you customize their needs and by knowing about their earlier transactions and experiences, you tailor, create, and ideate for your client’s best interest. This is how you gain the best traction and a greater mileage in the long run.
Build Relationships – Let Your Attendees Make the Most of Your Event
Sometime it’s good to surprise your clients. As an event organizer you have all the free will, you have the magic wand. You can simply sit to only ideate on how to benefit them.
- Design special packages for attendees that assure their loyalty – An exclusive meet-up with experts that they longed but hadn’t had an opportunity to attend could work. An expert meet-up with discounted ticket cost will invite more attendees.
- Go that extra mile to build a network of attendees who think and act similarly - Collaborate and combine your various attendees who think similarly or are like minded. By doing this you are bringing together not one, but several clients on one platform to whom your one product could be the silver bullet.
- Develop the network - Organize exclusive events for the network and design sessions for the event such that they correlate with each other. Run a campaign and invite attendees on ticket basis to whom each session should entice and should be of tangible value.
- Follow-up with events that command higher value – Once your network of clients is set-up, elevate your event design by adding more sophistication and upgradation in terms of knowledge, tools, and arrangement. Tell your attendees and clients why your products are the best by delivering facts, graphs, historical data, and experience of using your product. According to Marketing Metrics, the probability of selling to an existing client is about 60% higher than selling to a new prospect. So, building and nurturing existing relationships and stakeholders are absolutely crucial.
Let Your Upsell Not Sound Like “That One Last Effort for an Extra Earning”
How to master the art of upsell? As crucial as it sounds, upselling is in all certainty not a walk in the park as it may ask for concrete methods and measures. Though many a times things may not work according to plan, never look desperate. Be confident of your product and let it ease through your client or attendee’s wish list. You have to effortlessly feed it to them for their sumptuous consumption. Design your sessions such that you have planned a specific session for an upsell and a different one for a cross-sell. Let that design too be out of sheer purpose and reasoning, and importantly this is how your attendees should feel. The moment you have pitched for an upsell, let the alternate for that complimentary add-in linger within the minds of your attendees. The sheer conviction with which you gain traction on your upsell will create an instamatic impact upon which you pitch in for your complementary products which will leave the clients wanting for more, and this is how you may learn to master the art of cross-selling.
Do Not “Force” Cross-Sell
Remember to also not portray your flagship product (for an upsell) as an isolated, disjointed product that is incomplete without your add-ins or your complimentary products. This may happen when you become stubborn about cross-selling.
Get the Right Knit of the Wool – Design Your Upsell and Cross-Sell
When it comes to designing your upsell, you begin by having the right and relevant product for your attendees. For example, you call a set of attendees who are on the lookout of learning about the advantages of an electric car, at a time when the fuel (diesel) cost is out of reach of the purchasing power. You ensure you invite an expert that your attendees always needed and longed for a higher knowledge on this topic. A great pitch with a great product will certainly work.
Track and Record
Following a trend is crucial. Your past events should be a learning for your future events. Tracking the kind of attendees who were convinced for an upsell and the reasons that made them respond to a cross-sell is a great metric to have. Measuring the attendance of your attendees along with the percentage of upsells that happened in a single event, and the nature of attendees that dominated that percentage is also helpful.
If organizing an event is a huge canvas - upselling or cross-selling on that canvas is an art based on empirical design.
