Picture the team member serving your next customer. Do they actually know the product – well enough to know what pairs with it, what complements it, what the customer might not have thought to ask for? And just as important, do they care enough to bother mentioning it?

Those two things – knowledge and care – are the difference between a transaction and an opportunity. The customer is standing in front of them, order already committed, ready to buy. A lot of businesses treat this as the finish line. It isn’t. It’s actually one of the best sales opportunities you’ll get all day.

Suggestive selling is the technique of recommending an additional product or service that enhances what the customer is already buying. Mailchimp describes it simply:

it’s “encouraging the customer to buy complementary products and services at the time of their initial purchase.”

Done well, it isn’t an extra sales pitch bolted onto the transaction – it gives you, in Mailchimp’s words,

“the best of both worlds… making sales while improving customer satisfaction.”

Lightspeed’s research backs this up from the retail floor. Their view: “suggestive selling isn’t meant to be pushy, but instead a gentle ask about what else your customers may need.” The timing matters too – Lightspeed found “the best time to suggest additional products is when the customer has already committed to a purchase and you have taken time to understand their needs.” One relevant, well-timed suggestion, offered casually as an enhancement rather than a pressure tactic, is what actually moves the needle.

You’ve almost certainly experienced this yourself, probably without thinking about it. “Would you like fries with that?” is one of the most famous lines in retail history, and it isn’t an accident. A case study by Shopney on McDonald’s cross-selling strategy found that suggestive selling techniques like this add between 15% and 40% in additional revenue. The line works because it’s relevant, it’s timed perfectly – right as the order is being placed – and it asks the customer to complete their purchase, not to buy something unrelated. As the case study puts it, “the goal isn’t to sell more products – it’s to help customers complete their purchase with logical additions.”

And the impact isn’t limited to the single transaction in front of you. McKinsey’s research into cross-selling and category-penetration found these techniques increase sales by 20% and profits by 30%. McKinsey also found that customers who purchase across multiple categories carry a significantly higher lifetime value – meaning a good suggestion today doesn’t just lift today’s sale, it shapes how valuable that customer is to your business over time.

So the opportunity sitting in front of your team, dozens of times a day, is this: a customer has already said yes. They’ve committed, and if your team has taken a moment to understand what they need, there is very likely one relevant, complementary product or service worth mentioning – not ten options, just one good one, offered casually.

This is why over the coming weeks, we’re going to cover everything about upselling and suggestive selling. We’re going to share our tips, leadership considerations and stories.

Stay tuned, and in the meantime – check in on your team’s suggestive selling. Are they asking that one extra question?