Why your business should use multiple upsells and downsells

Upselling and downselling is an easy strategy to increase the amount of money your customers spend during each transaction. Instead of acquiring more customers, you’re convincing people who already want to buy to spend more cash. But, it’s important to know how to effectively leverage this strategy in your sales funnel so you still provide a smooth buying experience.

In this blog, we’ll cover how upselling can benefit your business, how to leverage upsells and downsells with Kajabi, share some examples of upsell and downsell flows, and then share expert advice from Kajabi heroes James Wedmore and Brendon Burchard!

How can upselling benefit your business?

In general, upsells and downsells are beneficial for any business, but let’s take a look at the three most compelling benefits upsells offer a business owner:

1. Save time and money. With upselling, you’ll spend less time and less money on acquiring new customers! This is because upselling focuses on customer retention, or trying to make your already-paying customers happy so that they will buy more of your products.
2. Increase customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV refers to how long a customer remains a customer and how much they spend with your company. Upselling has the ability to increase a customer’s CLV, and if you can increase the average CLV across all customers, you’ll have a stronger business!
3. Build profitable and engaging relationships with customers. Upsells and downsells encourage consumers to continue engaging with your company, and hopefully, buying more of your products. As they keep engaging, you’ll communicate with them more, providing you with more opportunities to deliver why your products and services are valuable to them!

Notice a common theme between the benefits? At their root, these three upsell benefits come down to one thing: making more money. Upselling and downselling works to ensure you don’t leave any money on the table!

This is something we’ve found to be true with our own Kajabi Heroes utilizing our multiple upsell and downsell feature. In fact, the average transaction amount for an upsell is $58. That’s right - that’s $58 more dollars you could be making on top of every purchase! But the data doesn’t stop there. We also discovered that Kajabi Heroes using upsells in addition to primary offers earn on average twice as much than those who use primary offers only. We are talking about the difference between a $25,000 salary and a $50,000 salary! Now, that’s a big difference.

How upsells and downsells work on Kajabi

On Kajabi, an Upsell is used as a way to advertise another Offer after the initial Offer has been purchased. Your customer will complete a purchase and the Upsell will appear as a separate page after checking out and before the customer reaches the page where they create their account. 

Next, what is a downsell? On Kajabi, a Downsell is another Offer presented to customers that decline to purchase the Upsell. This gives you a second chance to make an additional sale. Downsells are typically an Offer for a different lower-priced product, or a discount on the Upsell product.

With upselling and downselling, you have the opportunity to craft really unique sales strategies. On Kajabi, you have the ability to leverage up to 10 upsells and downsells in your flow. We wouldn’t necessarily recommend using that many, but ultimately you have the flexibility to choose and design the flow that works best for your business.

Multiple upsell and downsell examples + inspiration

So, what can you offer as an upsell or downsell? There are tons of possibilities.

For both upsells and downsells, there is always the option to offer digital products, like online courses, downloadables, or private community access. These can be passive, so your revenue and profitability goes up with no extra work on your part. If you’ve got existing products in your library, see what pairings make sense to offer. What determines if a digital is an upsell or downsell depends on how the price of the product relates to the primary offer, or if you’re leveraging any discounts to entice the sale.

If you offer any sort of physical products, like a book, specialty equipment, or other merchandise, you could offer that as well. This works really well if the knowledge product primary offer references some kind of tool or equipment that you can prompt your student to purchase from you to improve their experience. 

Another option that makes a great upsell us an offer that provides a higher level of service to the customer for the primary offer. This could come in the form of coaching sessions, training webinars, dedicated customer support, guaranteed faster responses, or more detailed feedback on coursework. But consider - when providing a higher level of service, that often involves the resource of time. So, when planning these offers, make sure that you and your team have the capacity to take on the additional workload. And of course, make sure you price it accordingly so it’s profitable.

Looking for a real-life example? Here is an upsell and a downsell from pediatric sleep consultant Little Z’s Sleepers. After someone purchases, they are presented with an upsell offering unlimited online chat support. This is a great example of an upsell that allows the customer to opt for a higher level of service.

‍

‍

As for a downsell, Little Z’s Sleepers leverages the strategy of a discount on a digital product - in this case, an online course. As we can see from this offer, it’s a passive self paced course, so that means no extra time needed from their team. 

‍

Upselling tips from Kajabi Heroes

You saw some upselling examples earlier, but now it’s time for you to hear directly from experienced knowledge creators. Master knowledge creators Brendon Burchard and James Wedmore shared their tips, tricks, and advice for utilizing upselling in your sales strategy.

Brendon laid it out simply, “Use this feature [upselling]! Don’t leave money on the table. Upselling is a great way to capture easy additional revenue and make your advertising efforts more profitable and worthwhile.”

James’s top recommendation dives into the customer experience you provide with an upsell. He said...

“The number one tip I could give on how to do upsells is all within the experience that you deliver. A lot of people mess up upsells because the customer just took a leap with you to invest in themselves, and because of the upsell, now they're feeling like they didn't get everything they needed.”

How does he overcome this dilemma in his own use of upsells? After customers make a purchase, he thanks the customer and confirms that with their purchase they have access to everything they need to address their challenge. To introduce the upsell, he suggests that customers may find that the other product meets an additional and different need from why they originally made their purchase.

It’s important to remember that mistakes will be made as you navigate upsells for the first time. James spoke on the #1 mistake he made at the beginning of his upsell journey:

“The biggest mistake I made with upsells was relying too heavily on the success of upsells in order for me to be profitable. This is what people traditionally call the tripwire offer, where you have a low cost, front-end product with a ton of upsells on the back end.” To avoid this mistake yourself, James recommends making sure the sales funnel is profitable with the first product, and to only use upsells as a way to generate additional revenue and profitability."

Now that you’ve heard from the pros, it’s time for you to test out upsells for your own business! 

The bottom line on upselling

Upselling at its root is an affordable, easy way to increase the value of each transaction with your customer. By using upsells and downsells, you’re providing additional opportunities for customers to purchase products that meet other related needs. As a result, upselling can dramatically improve your bottom line with very little extra work on your part.

Ready to incorporate upsells into your own online course or digital product sales strategy? Kajabi makes it easy! You get everything you need in one place to build, market, and sell your digital products. You can implement your upselling strategy within the same tool for your websites, landing pages, checkouts and payment processing. As a result, your customer has a fantastic buying experience with no tech integration struggles on your part.

With Kajabi, you can add up to 10 upsells or downsells to your offers. That’s 10x the opportunity to make a sale without the additional work! As the pro, Brendon Burchard, says, “Use this feature! Don’t leave money on the table.”

If you’re already a Kajabi Hero, get into the app and start exploring upsells and downsells!

Fully explore everything Kajabi has to offer, and start building your business today - for free. Seriously. Take Kajabi for a 14-day trial spin at no cost to you!

Find more blog posts by category:

Online course blog posts
Membership site blog posts
Podcast blog posts
Coaching blog posts
Community blog posts