Upselling techniques that close new sales with old prospects

Good salespeople like to give buyers lots to think about. They offer plenty of options to choose from. And often clients will choose to move forward with only a portion of what you recommend. They like your ideas, but budget, resources or timing limited their initial implementation.

They probably even told you they’d like to “wait and do the other things later.” And, if you’re a savvy seller you pinned them down to dates of when they’d do the “other things.”

But busy as we are, and aware of how clients are looking to conserve spending, you may not have revisited those “other things” in quite a while.

Now’s the time to upsell
You could have a great opening to further penetrate an account where you already have a good relationship. Take a look at your past proposals, says sales guru Kendra Lee. They could be full of fresh upselling opportunities.

That doesn’t mean trotting out stuff that didn’t sell before, says Lee. Rather, she suggests looking deeper: at the underlying problems that prompted the ideas in the first place. Often, these problems don’t have simple answers, which is why they never got fixed. So come at them with a fresh approach.

For example, don’t ask, “Hey, why don’t we take another look at that idea I suggested six months ago?” That just makes you sound stale. Instead, try something like this: “I know we talked about Problem X six months ago. I thought about it, and if it’s still a problem for you, I have a new approach we could consider.” That shows you never give up.

To learn more from Kendra Lee, read her book, Selling Against the Goal.

photo credit: pointnshoot