A customer buying one thing often has a genuine use for related things. Optional products are how a quotation can surface those. This piece is about optional products and upselling in Odoo Sales.
What optional products are
Optional products, in Odoo Sales, are products suggested on a quotation as things the customer might want to add, alongside what they are already buying. They are presented as options, the customer can take them or not, and they let a quotation go beyond exactly what the customer first asked for, surfacing related products that genuinely complement the order.
Optional products and upselling
Optional products are a tool for upselling, and it is worth being clear about what good upselling is. Good upselling is not about pushing the customer to spend more for its own sake; it is about surfacing genuinely relevant additions, things that complement what the customer is buying and that they may well have a real use for, so the customer does not have to think of them unprompted and ask separately. A customer buying a product may genuinely benefit from a related accessory, a complementary item, an extension. Optional products surface those, so the customer sees them and can easily add them. Done with genuinely relevant suggestions, this serves the customer as well as the business.
How optional products work on a quotation
When a quotation is built and includes a product that has optional products associated with it, those optional products can be presented on the quotation as suggestions. The customer, seeing the quotation, sees both what they are buying and the suggested options, and can choose to add the options. The optional products are presented as easy additions, so that adding a relevant complementary product is a simple choice rather than a separate request. This works well with Odoo's capability for a customer to view and interact with a quotation online.
Setting up optional products
Setting up optional products means defining, for products that have genuinely relevant companions, what those optional products are. The practical work is thinking through the business's products and identifying the genuine relationships, this product genuinely complements that one, and setting up the optional products to reflect them. The key word is genuine: optional products are worth setting up where there is a real, relevant relationship, where the suggested product genuinely complements the main one and the customer might well want it.
Keep the suggestions genuinely relevant
The honest principle for optional products and upselling is relevance. Optional products work, and serve both the customer and the business, when the suggestions are genuinely relevant, things the customer might really want. Optional products that suggest irrelevant things, or that pile on suggestions indiscriminately, do not help; they clutter the quotation and can feel like pushy selling, which serves no one. A business setting up optional products should keep the suggestions genuinely relevant and sensibly limited, so that an optional product on a quotation is a helpful suggestion the customer is glad to see, not noise. Upselling done with relevance is a service; upselling done indiscriminately is an irritation.
The takeaway
Optional products in Odoo Sales are products suggested on a quotation as relevant additions the customer might want, and they are a tool for upselling. Good upselling surfaces genuinely relevant complementary products, serving the customer as well as the business. Set up optional products where there is a real, relevant relationship between products, and keep the suggestions genuinely relevant and sensibly limited, so they help rather than clutter. For how we approach Odoo, see our ERP practice.