One of the most vital skills in running a successful retail business is the ability to upsell each one of your customers. It’s always important to find ways to increase foot traffic to your store, but once in your store, it’s important to find ways to maximize average dollars per transaction. One of the best and most effective ways of accomplishing this goal is by upselling products to your customer. In this month’s edition of the Retailer Corner, we look at different ways you can upsell your customers through add-ons.

Before upselling the adult consumer, it is important to understand where and when this should take place. The most effective place to upsell a customer is at the register when they are making their initial purchase. It’s always a good idea to have a good variety of the products you will be upselling within arm’s reach as it makes it easier for you to pitch the item to the consumer – and they have less time to decide. These items near the register can be considered add-ons. When shopping online and attempting to complete the purchase in their cart, you’ll often see pop-ups of additional items the retailer suggests to go along with the purchase. A brick and mortar retailer can do something quite similar – but at the register. If your store sees an average of 40 transactions per day and you can get eight of those customers to spend an extra $10, you’ve potentially increased your annual revenue by $29,000.

Add-on items shouldn’t be too large or expensive. Typically, an add-on item should be no more than $30-$40. Cutters and lighters retailing for $2-$20 are great easy little items for upselling a customer. If someone is buying a box of cigars as a gift for someone, consider selling them a cutter or lighter to make it an even better gift. If someone is meeting a group of friends for a football tailgate and is buying five cigars, then ask them if they have a lighter or cutter. It’s good to have a variety of cutters and lighters that are affordable and can fit the needs of any customer. You should ask every customer if they need a cutter or lighter for their cigars. We have a good variety of cutters and lighters under $20 from Vertigo and Colibri that would fit this need.

Other items to keep near the register and are great gift ideas are manufacturer samplers and gift sets. If someone is buying a box of Montecristo White it might be a good idea to also sell them on a Montecristo sampler that can give them more variety to go along with their box. These samplers and gift sets need to be small, so we would suggest looking for samplers that have three to five cigars at most. Santa Clara has a great mix of these samplers/gift sets featuring such brands as Perdomo, Montecristo, Gurkha, CAO, Tabak Especial, Rocky Patel, and Romeo y Julieta. All retail for under $50 and will help you increase your average dollars per transaction.

We hope you’ve found this month’s edition of the Retailer Corner of value. At Santa Clara Cigars, we are here to help all our partners fill their needs and improve their business. Please check out our website to see some of these great items that fit the description above.