5 Suggestive Selling Tips For Food Trucks

A common request from food truck owners to their staff is to raise the averages per customer order. The typical response from employees is to roll their eyes and head to their station to finish up side work before the truck opens its service window. No one wants to be sold, yet we all want to buy. Selling has negative connotations of pushy salespeople. Now suggestive selling, that’s different. Someone who suggests something is doing us a favor.

Unfortunately one of the easiest strategies to increase sales, suggestive selling, has been abandoned by many vendors. Today we’ll discuss how to use the power of suggestive selling to build your all-important food truck sales.

Key Points To Selective Selling

Suggest

Your food truck staff should suggest what would enhance a guest’s experience, not sell them something they’ll regret later. That 100 pound woman does not need, nor will she appreciate a double cut pork chop, since most of it will have to wait to be eaten until she gets home.

Enhance The Customer Experience

The best up-sells enhance the customers food truck experience. Recommend a shot of reduced Bailey’s or Amaretto to pour over the cheesecake. Not only will it turn an ordinary cheesecake into extraordinary cheesecake but it can often doubled the sale. Often your guests will leave thrilled with taking this type of suggestion.

Sell The Benefit

There are certain items that were almost a given a catering client should order like drinks and desserts. If you ever meet with resistance with the drink up sell, use something similar to this script, “Our drink packs give you enough for each guest to have two drinks. You can pick from two flavors in gallon jugs: sweet tea, unsweetened tea, peach tea and lemonade. We give you the cups, ice, lemons, sweeteners and spoons for only $1.25 per guest. It sure beats heading down to [insert local grocery store chain here], loading up your cart with all of that and hauling it back to your office.”

The mental picture of wasting an hour, lifting heavy drinks to save a few bucks could make the sale. The benefit for your customers is time and energy savings!

Give Them A Reason Why

Why should I buy from you? Why should I take your suggestion. Sometimes you may offer a discount if the guest takes an up sell or if they buy two up sells. “We made too many of our fudge brownies. If you order the drink pack for only $1.49 a guest, I can throw in the fudge brownies. That’s a $1.25 a guest savings.

Sell Specifics

“Would you like dessert?” “Would you like brownies, or “Would you like to add our homemade fudge brownies to your order? They’re a little thicker and richer than regular brownies, but not quite as thick and rich as a piece of fudge. It’s the perfect bit of sweet after one of our meals.” Now which phrase would get you to buy?

Have any additional suggestive selling tips for other truck owners? We’d love to hear them. You can share your ideas in the comment section, our food truck forum or social media. Facebook | Twitter[