It may sound counterintuitive, but often your customers don’t know what they really want.

And that’s an opportunity for you – an opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell. For instance, if your customer chooses to buy a trouser, you can suggest them a matching t-shirt (cross-selling). Or if they pick a $70 shirt, you can show them a better product in the same category, at $100.

While suggestive selling (AKA cross-selling/up-selling) is a good way to maximize your revenues from each customer, your sales reps need to know the art, for it to work.

One good idea would be training them. However, just booking training room rentals or seminar room rentals is not enough. Here are some tips.

1. Get the timing right
The first thing to train is the timing. When your customers come to your store, don’t immediately approach them. Give them enough time to settle in and take their own picks. Meanwhile, your sales executive can simply follow instructions. Once the customer had made up her mind, now is the time to unsettle them again. Show them a higher-end product or suggest them to add an additional item. Wait for them to open up to you, before you approach them. That’s the recipe for a successful deal.

2. Improve product knowledge
Encourage your salespeople to know the products inside out. If that requires providing training to them, so be it. Without thorough product knowledge, your salespeople wouldn’t even know what to suggest.

3. Develop listening skills
One common mistake most salespeople make is that they talk too much, almost pushing the customer to the mute mode. You need to do the opposite. Allow (in fact encourage) your customers to talk more. The more you listen the more you get to know them – their preferences, budget, etc. Now you can easily figure out the what and the how.