Cross selling involves five fundamentals:

• You have to know your products very well.
• You have to know your clients. To get the best results identify which customers are your best target.
• Ask questions and listen for clues.
• Pay attention to clients needs and only suggest relevant products.
• Suggest, dont impose. This way clients will feel comfortable and more likely to accept your offer.

Successful cross selling can be achieved by applying several rules:

• Right timing. Dont push sales if it seems the client doesnt have the financial resources at that moment. Try to find out what the clients budget is and make your offer accordingly.
• Relevance. Suggesting too many software products unrelated to the original one may overwhelm the client and lead to failure.
• Post recommendations on the site. Professionals, experts or other customers may post their opinion and their recommendations on the site. It can show up as a list of related items bought by other customers that purchased the same product.
• Place cross selling items throughout your site, where they can help shoppers learn about your software products and business. Try mixing and matching different items to see which combinations work best.
• Offer a range of prices: low cost items may be considered impulse buys, but the clients may also purchase higher priced items that fit their needs.

Whats the most important downside of cross selling? Annoying clients to the point they leave without buying anything. This occurs if you continue to sell after the customer says hes not interesting or when youre pushing a product thats not useful to the customer. In the end, combining customer service and cross selling will lead to increased online software sales.

Adriana Iordan

Adriana Iordan is a Web Marketing Specialist at Avangate B.V. She has in depth knowledge of internet marketing services and website analysis applied to the software industry and e-commerce development.

Avangate is an eCommerce platform for electronic software distribution incorporating an easy to use and secure online payment system plus additional marketing and sales tools, such as an affiliate management system, automated cross selling options, software promotion management, software marketing services as well as consultancy on how to increase online software sales.

Copyright ? 2006, Avangate B.V all rights reserved.

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