by Mark Barber | Business Development Manager, 10COM Web Development
As a freelancer or agency professional, you’re probably primed to believe that bigger is better. The problem is, most projects don’t start out as expansive, highly lucrative jobs. So if you’re overlooking little leads, you could be missing out on major opportunities.
You may have noticed that you encounter quite a few small leads. Though clients’ goals would be better served by much larger projects, most clients simply don’t realize how much work should be invested into a fully fleshed-out marketing strategy—not until an industrious partner helps them understand.
It’s your job to convince leads that making more lofty investments will enhance the value they receive. However, if you lack skills and expertise in upselling and cross-selling, you could be stuck inching your way toward success.
At 10COM Web Development, we’ve mastered the subtle art of persuading clients to see the merit of bigger projects. We’ve outlined our most successful upselling techniques and coupled it with big-picture strategies you can employ within your organization, as well as ways to leverage leads from the Wix Marketplace into fruitful partnerships.
7 time-tested upselling strategies
When it comes to upselling and cross-selling, gimmicks and attempts to razzle-dazzle clients will inevitably fail. No one likes to feel as if they’re being tricked, so don’t rely on charm. Instead follow 10COM’s 7-tiered approach to value-added upselling, a strategy we’ve developed through years of trial and error.
Adjust your mindset
Listen to the client
Sell needed solutions
Know your numbers
Limit options
Add value as a bundle
Follow up with leads
1. Adjust your mindset
When coaching sales representatives, we start by tweaking the way they approach so-called “small tasks”.
There are no small tasks—only growth opportunities.
That being the case, when it comes to leads generated through the Wix Marketplace, we take the information clients provide in the project brief with a grain of salt. We encourage you to do the same. As long as we have a client’s contact details, we can open up a meaningful conversation, make a connection through that dialogue, discover the client’s deeper needs, and generate tailored solutions.
If you can stop thinking of small tasks as dead ends and start approaching them as exciting challenges, you’ve already made progress.
2. Listen to the client
Inexperienced salespeople tend to dominate the conversation. On the other hand, successful representatives let clients do the talking. Think of it like a patient-doctor relationship. You wouldn’t expect a physician to walk into the exam room and immediately begin prescribing medication without first listening to the patient’s symptoms. So why would it be logical for a sales representative to begin spouting off solutions before hearing about a client’s needs?