Pursue add-on sales opportunities in a manner that will enhance, not degrade, the customer experience, with the help of advice from the Yahoo! Small Business Advisor Blog article “4 Tips for Sales Upselling and Cross Selling.” It’s important to try to make the most out of every sales opportunity, but the last thing you want to do is aggravate regular customers with overaggressive tactics. Effective upselling and cross selling should educate customers, thus improving their experience and leading to increased loyalty.

1. Identify a Searching Customer. Most importantly, never leave a client unattended. Salespeople should be trained to identify customers that seem to be looking for something, show them the available options and educate them on the differences.
2. Read the Body Language. Salespeople should always be looking to make additional sales, but pressing the issue when a customer clearly isn’t interested is counterproductive. If the client doesn’t make eye contact and gives one-word answers, it’s probably best to back off rather than risk making him or her uncomfortable.
3. Be Available. Be there to answer questions and make suggestions, but don’t take it to far. You don’t need to make them aware of every single product or package available. Focus on a particular item and give them time to explore and ponder.
4. Know the products. None of this can be done effectively if sales associates aren’t well versed on the entire product and service offering. Customers expect salespeople to be able to answer all their questions – don’t expect them to come back if they can’t!

Click here to read more from the Yahoo! Small Business Advisor blog, Profit Minded.