Cross-Selling, not to be confused with Up-Selling, is when you have client’s who already buy product “A” from you and you have another product “B” that they could use, so you point this out, you “Cross-Sell” them product “B”, helping them out and making you more profit.
If you were to ask most print shop owners for a list of all the clients who buy letterheads but have never purchased envelopes, or who buy only trade show flyers but never anything else. . . or ask a restaurant owner what he’s doing about getting his lunch crowd into his place for dinner. . . you’ll get a BLANK STARE about 90% of the time back as your answer.
Are these owners just stupid or lazy? Maybe both 
But what I’ve found in most cases, is the owner of the business is too busy working IN their business, than ON their business. They’ve done it this way since 1972 and why do anything else, (background noise of crickets chirping, in an empty restaurant).
I purchased a book the other day, from a company that gets it… Amazon!
They track everything, they fill their databases with customer information and know how to use it. You probably already know, when you buy something from Amazon, other books, products, etc. you might be interested in are suggested to you for purchase, and at time even incentivized with a discount or free shipping.
Why they’ll even email you after ordering with more cross-sells to buy, why stop at the order. And now and then, you’ll receive another email, showing you a list of other books similar to the one you purchased a month ago, just about the time you should have finished reading the book you already purchased.
Do you do this in your business??? You should be and doing it consistently, not making excuses why you can’t.
People who are really good at making excuses are rarely good at making money.
You spend lot’s of money getting those customers, why leave money on the table you could be putting in the bank, or back into getting more customers. If you don’t have the time, hire somebody to plan and do it for you, you can’t do it all yourself, that’s most likely why your where you’re at now.
You need to plan and set goals to shoot for in business other wise, why be in business… get a job.
Or you can try this: track each and every customer purchase as well as what they don’t buy from you that they could. Then make a plan, tailor offers, campaigns, incentives to each group, to get those who buy “A” but don’t buy “B” or “C” to buy “B” or “C” or both items, and of course get those who buy “B” and “C” and not “A” to buy “A” also, you get the point. Beleave me, its way easier to take the time and painstakingly increasing the value of each customer you already have, then to go out and get more new customers and only use a portion of their value too.
And don’t make the mistake of assuming your customers know and remember and think about every product and service you offer. You have to tell them. Remind them, over and over again. Often. By what ever legal means you have at your disposal.
When I owned my print shop, I would set an appointment and go to each one of my customers after they had bought from me for a while, and survey them, going over what they were buying from me and letting them know about the other things we offered. I was amazed, the first time I did this, hearing things like “I had no idea you sold envelopes” “you guys do forms” “I didn’t know you could get full color brochures” the list went on and on. After doing this, you guessed it, we had more work coming in the following months.
So, like I said before, don’t ASSUME the customer knows what all you have to offer, point it out!
Until next time,
PS. If you need help with this kind of thing, I do offer consulting on a limited basis, just ask. Pretty cool how I just worked in that cross-sell 8)