5 Hacks to Up-sell with Idealpos

There's many ways to improve your bottom line and increase sales in every business. The little tricks made by suave product placements, well thought out marketing materials, or the small items near the POS for impulse buys, are all targeted to the customer to help them part with more money.

But there's always one more chance for you to squeeze a little bit more from your customers. Up-selling! Let's look at what you can with Idealpos to increase your sales just a small amount with each customer, and adding more money into your bank.

1.Staff Training
It makes logical sense that if you are going to up-sell to the customer at the last moment, your staff need to be involved. You're reliant on your staff to know your products well and be confident in offering the customer a better version, a larger size or an improved quality product. For instance, in a bar a customer might order the house wine. This is the bartender's chance to respond to the customer as he grabs a glass with "Yes, a nice shiraz. Did you know though, for only one dollar more, this shiraz (holds up another bottle) is much more robust and fruity for today's weather". The second bottle might only cost one dollar more than the house, but you have already made up the shortfall in a single glass! Staff are a vital key to up-selling. Without staff even attempting to up-sell, your relying on the customer to choose the more expensive option.

2. Staff Incentives
It's human nature to be competitive, so if you can come up with a fair way to challenge the staff against each other to offer an up-sell, they'll go at it. It could be something as simple that the person who sells the most gets a gift voucher of $20, or a product of their choice. It doesn't matter the prize, what matters is that the staff are incentifized to offer the product, and everyone wins.

3. Customer Display Screens
When a customer is standing at the point-of-sale ready to pay, grab their attention with products or services that you offer with flashy graphics or animations. Using words such as "Today's Special" and "Limited Time Offer" help to create a sense of missing out. If they don't buy the item now, it will be more expensive if they want it later. Words such as "Premium Range" and "Platinum Level" will also entice customers to want to own the product.

4. Sales Prompts "Would you like fries with that"?
It's one of the most famous up-sells in the world because it works. The fries are not that expensive, most people will get them, and they cost McDonald's hardly anything at all. Find your business' fries and market them. All of the stock item in Idealpos can be configured with a custom message that displays over the sales screen when it is entered, to help staff ask the question. On any stock item go to the advanced tab and enter your fries.

5. Promotions
Promotions offer you the ability to bundle items together that, if all purchased individually would amount to more than if purchased together. Promotions are best when used with all the previous ways to up-sell items. Staff can offer promotions to customers, the customer display screens can display them and sales prompts can remind staff to ask customers if they would like fries to make it a meal deal.

The key to up-selling is that it should be a small increase to what the customer is already buying, with a defined improvement from the customer's point of view of their purchase.