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by Gauher Chaudhry

Imagine, you are selling the coolest looking cowboy boots on the Internet and everyone is dying to buy a pair from you! At $200 a pair with a gross margin of 20%, you think you are making a mint. You competitor is selling similar boots on their web site for the same price, but their overall profits always seem to be 75% higher then yours. Why?

They managed to increase the average transaction of each of their sales by hitting their customers hard with an "upsell." When their customer is ordering their cowboy boots, your competitor asks the customer if he/she would like to also receive a cool cowboy hat for only $20 more. This is an example of an upsell. Trying to get more money out of the customer at the point of purchase.

The most common example of this technique being used are at fast food restaurant chains. They offer to upsize your combo for an extra 50 cents. This technique has been ingrained into McDonalds employee heads so hard that when you order anything, you always hear, "Would you like fries with that?"

Sometimes I wonder if McDonalds has gone to far to make sure employees apply these concepts. I once went to McDonalds and ordered some "fries" and the cashier replied back "Would you like some "fries" with that?" Hmmm, I think the first order of fries will be enough, thank you.

You should sit back and come up with a list of products or services that you could use as upsell items. You should only offer your upsell items at a special price, available only with their initial order.

Not only should you upsell, you should also back-end sell!

Most marketers are successful because they apply back-end selling into their marketing efforts. Back-end selling is when you sell other products or services to your existing customers after they have purchased an initial product.

It is always easier to sell products or services to your existing customers because you have developed a relationship with them when you sold your first product or service to them. You will find it less expensive to sell to old customers as compared to selling to new customers.

Your conversion ratio will be dramatically higher with existing customers! Everytime you continue selling back-end products or services to existing customers, you will be building a life-long relationship. You should continually bring out new back-end products or services to sell to existing customers. They will keep buying and buying and buying...

You get the point. Nuff said.

Many businesses sell their front-end products (initial products) at almost zero profit in order to generate back-end profits. These businesses do not care even if they lose money on the front-end products or services, they want the back-end profits!

One of the prime examples is Ken Evoy, who sells the Make Your Site Sell book for only $17 U.S. This 800-page book is worth a heck of a lot more money, but Ken figures he will recoup his costs selling his back-end products such as his latest ebook Make Your Knowledge Sell at a much higher price.

Trust me, you will find it hard to develop a profitable business if you sell only one product. You will be spending too much time and money trying to acquire new customers.

Integrate upselling and back-end selling in all your marketing efforts and you will almost instantly raise your sales and profits.