Do you want to increase the size of your sales without pressuring your customers and coming off as overly “salesy”? You don’t want to push items on customers if they don’t want them, and you don’t want your customers to feel like you’re actively trying to suck every dollar possible out of them.

It may seem like the only solution is to run discounts on items that tend to have less demand, just to get your inventory out for rental as much as possible. Fortunately, there’s a better way to increase the size of your deals.

Packaging items together is the best way to get bigger deals. Let’s explore why this is, and how you can use packages to find success.

The advantages of packages

The primary advantage of packaging items together is the beauty of being able to upsell customers without needing to sell them on it. You may have a party package that includes a dancefloor, a bar, a DJ setup, and staging equipment, as well as the associated services. A customer might see this party package on your website and realize that they weren’t considering getting a bar for this event, but it would go along great with everything else in the package. You’ve just sold an additional piece of inventory without saying a word to the customer.

This means more money coming in and fewer inventory items sitting in your warehouse taking up space, but the benefits go beyond that. Customers aren’t experts in the events industry, and may not be renting out certain equipment or services due to gaps in knowledge. This could lead to less income for the company and a worse experience for the customer if it is not addressed. This is another issue solved by packages.

A customer may assume that setup is included in their order, and become disappointed when they find a stack of chairs sitting at their event site half an hour before the event starts. They didn’t realize that you charge separately for setup services, and would have been willing to pay had they known. They may also neglect renting out important pieces of equipment because they don’t know how staging or DJ setups work. This is where packages become extremely useful.

With packages, you can include all suggested items and services that complement each other. This could include setup for their chiavari chairs, drapes for their stage, or any number of other items and services that your customers didn’t realize that they needed. Your customer gets everything they want — even if they didn’t know that they wanted it — and you bring in more money on each deal. It’s a win-win!

How to sell packages

Packages simplify the buying process, which makes it an easy call for customers if they like what’s included. This means packages should do a decent job selling themselves, but there are some best practices to boost their appeal. These include:

• Give your packages appealing names
• Create packages for various events
• Add levels to your packages

Give your packages appealing names

You may be tempted to label your first package “Party Package” and check it off the list, but this isn’t very good salesmanship. This description tells your customers very little about what’s included and isn’t very attention grabbing. Consider the title “Ultimate Baby Shower Package” or “Golden Wedding Package”. These names for your package communicate high value and the specific event that it is crafted for.

There are a million different types of parties, and someone shopping for a baby shower or wedding may assume based on the name that “Party Package” won’t serve them. On the other hand, they are almost guaranteed to at least take a look at the “Ultimate Baby Shower Package” or “Golden Wedding Package” when they see these. It’s important that you give your customers a reason to click on your packages, and a good name can take you a long way.

Create packages for various events

As you saw in the last example, creating packages for specific occasions can delight customers by streamlining their buying process and giving them exactly what they’re looking for. However, it’s not just the name that matters. Each package should be customized to fit the specific occasion it is designed for. After all, someone looking to rent items for a baby shower or wedding will be looking for a very different package than someone looking to rent for a corporate event.

In this way, you can make your company seem more equipped for many different types of events without necessarily needing to take on more inventory. That means you’ve delighted several different types of customers and enabled yourself to sell more inventory at no cost. That’s the magic of packages.

Add tiers for your packages

You may serve customers who look to rent for the same type of event, but at different scales, or with different budgets. Adding tiers for your packages allows you to serve all of these customers at the same time, and still manage to upsell on most package deals.

For instance, let’s say you specialize in corporate events and are looking to create different packages for customers with different budgets. In this case you could consider creating three packages: the “Intern-Tier Corporate Event Package”, the “Management-Tier Corporate Event Package”, and the “CEO-Tier Corporate Event Package”. Notice that these titles indicate both the specific event that they are designed for while establishing a ranking of value that can be easily understood without explanation.

The messaging in this example comes with the benefit that most customers may not want to cheap out on the “Intern-Tier”, but also may not want to splurge on the “CEO-Tier”. They’ll settle on the “Management-Tier” because it seems like the moderate option. This allows you to further upsell a large number of customers shopping for corporate events, while still enabling yourself to serve customers best fit for all tiers.

Large conglomerate companies utilize this strategy by owning several brands at these different tiers. For instance, TTi, a conglomerate company that specializes in tools, owns three companies that all sell power drills at different prices and quality (RYOBI, Milwaukee, and AEG). TTi knows that the highest percentage of people are likely to go for the medium option, but they are able to capitalize on all three levels. This strategy applies just as well for your party rental business with packages.

Package pricing strategy

Think about the last time you ordered fast food. You probably didn’t just order a single food item. You got the fries and drink with it too. This is an everyday example of using price bundling to market a package. The customer experiences more benefit under a single price, and the company displays more value and moves more inventory.

That’s why packages are such an effective tool in pricing strategy. While outwardly discounting low volume items can lessen their value from a buyer perspective, including them in a package at a discounted price adds value to the total package deal. You can simultaneously capture more revenue and provide increased value for customers while concealing any outward negative effects of discounting. The secret is combining complementary goods and services under a more appealing package deal.

Make packages work for you

Without packages, you rely heavily on your customers knowing exactly what they want, when in all likelihood, they don’t actually know what they want. Packages help you move inventory faster, and create a smoother buying experience for your customers that leads to better results.

You can build packages with Goodshuffle Pro’s Website Integration, which provides your company with tons of other added benefits. You can read more about it here!

Delight your customers and sell more with party rental packages.