How to Create a Successful Cross-Selling Strategy?

If you own a restaurant business, you must know how highly tasking and competitive it can be. On the one hand, you have your work cut out trying to satisfy ever-demanding customers, and on the other hand, you are under tremendous pressure to make a profit. 

It is not enough to cook a great meal and sell it at the right price. Your restaurant needs to be able to optimize sales and maximize profits. That means adopting marketing and sales techniques to take your business to where you want it to be.

One technique that your restaurant could master today is a cross-sell strategy for small businesses. This guide explains what cross-selling is while also comparing this strategy with other techniques, including upselling and suggestive selling. We hope you will learn a thing or two about improving the sales margins of your restaurant business.

What is Cross-Selling?

Cross-selling is simply a sales technique that involves an employee trying to sell a related or unrelated item to what that customer intends to purchase. 

In the restaurant business, you can get a customer to purchase items that they probably never thought of buying with cross-selling. For example, if a customer orders a waffle, you can convince this customer also to order ice cream, a smoothie, or soda. 

The thing with cross-selling is spotting the opportunity when it arises. There are several cross-selling techniques in retail, and we examine a few cross-selling techniques in restaurants below.

Cross-Selling Techniques in Restaurants 

Here are some cross-selling techniques that you could try out in your restaurant:

Keep An Organized Menu List

Your menu list can have related food items bundled together to keep your customers’ eyes glued to those foods and drinks that they may otherwise have not thought of buying.

Train Staff To Cross-sell:

This is the most obvious strategy and probably the most effective. Your workers should be able to recognize an opportunity to cross-sell to your customers without seeming pushy. That comes with training and on-the-job practice.

Discounts Work

While a customer may not be interested in buying an item on your menu, offering a reasonable discount may convince them to do that. 

Never Take "NO" For An Answer

This goes along with the training of your workers. If the customer wants a particular smoothie and you do not have that smoothie in your restaurant, you give them a choice to order another smoothie or something completely different at a reasonable price. The idea is to help the customer and lead them to make a buying decision.

Prepare For Tomorrow

You can offer your customer a side dish to whet their appetite. It is a good way to introduce a new food item on your menu list while getting valuable one-on-one feedback from your customers. Based on their positive feedback, you can then cross-sell this side dish to the customer when they next show up at your restaurant.

It is important to understand that the success of your restaurant is not dependent on your application of just one sales technique. Your restaurant business will grow exponentially by successfully combining cross-selling and upselling strategies. 

Cross-Selling and Upselling Techniques on Restaurants 

Now that you know about some cross selling techniques in retail, another sales strategy worth mentioning that can significantly improve your profit margin is upselling. 

As the name suggests, the upsell marketing strategy involves a sales technique that trains your employees to improve sales and profit by encouraging customers to purchase related items to the item they are buying.

For example, a customer buys a $5 smoothie, and your employee encourages this customer to include add-ons to the $5 smoothie. By having add-ons like cherry and toppings to the smoothie, the price of the smoothie rises to $10. So rather than just selling a $5 smoothie to a customer, you were able to sell that smoothie for $10 with the upsell strategy.

Upselling techniques in restaurants are nothing new, but many businesses fail to use this powerful strategy to make money.

So, how to upsell as a server?

If there is a better way to upsell, an observant server would probably know how to do it. Servers are an excellent resource for information to help you develop your restaurant’s best upsell and cross-selling techniques. 

Some customers may prefer one server over another for no apparent reason. If that server is not available, a customer may not purchase additional items or choose not to buy anything at all. Therefore, servers must work as a unit, with each offering a friendly smile, calming voice, and courteous demeanor. 

Upselling techniques in restaurants are nothing new, but many businesses fail to use this powerful strategy to make more money. Combining both cross-selling and upselling strategies for your restaurant business will make it grow exponentially. 

The Difference Between Upselling and Cross-Selling

Both these sales strategies target one thing, which is to increase profits. However, these techniques are different from each other. Let us look at upselling vs. cross-sell.

With cross-selling, you try to sell other products to a customer alongside a purchase, while with upsell, you try to sell add-ons to a purchased item to enhance its value. By improving the item’s value to the customer, you increase your sale. 

Increased sales mean greater margins for your business. Many people have raised the upsell vs cross-sell debate, but the truth is neither strategy should be implemented alone. 

You can get the best outcome for your restaurant business when you have both strategies working in unison for the common goal of increased profit margins.

Other Selling Techniques

Between cross-selling and upselling, you can also use suggestive selling. It is a sales strategy where you encourage your employees to persuade customers subtly to purchase other menu items rather than what they frequently buy or might be used to.

Persuasion is the keyword in whatever suggestive selling techniques you decide to adopt. Your servers should understand the art of suggesting other items to customers convincingly. They should never be pushy or try too hard to sell a particular item. But why is suggestive selling important?

The idea is to convey to the customer that what they intend to buy is great, but there may be something slightly better or different. Customers need to feel like they are getting value for their money; this is where suggestive selling can play a vital role. 

This strategy can help you introduce a new menu to customers. For example, if a customer orders a simple garden salad and you have a new salad menu with a not too dissimilar price, your server could suggest to the customer that they try out the new salad dish.

The Bottom Line

Your restaurant needs to be profitable, and that is what we strive for. You can use a cross-sell strategy for small businesses today. The techniques mentioned here enhance your cross-selling strategy and make it work to the best benefit of your business.