FIND HIDDEN REVENUE BY CROSS-SELLING AND UP-SELLING

It can cost  four times as much to sell to a new customer compared to an existing one. By taking advantage of existing relationships and ongoing contact with customers, companies can sell more products and services, reduce the cost of sales, enhance customer loyalty, and drive revenue.

In this issue are featured tips on Cross-selling and Up-selling. These articles define what cross-selling and up selling really mean; address the correct timing and key steps for successful cross-selling and up-selling; and discuss how these can help you bring dormant accounts back to life.

What is Cross-Selling & Up-Selling? If you are not effectively cross-selling  and up-selling, you are leaving money on the table every time you close a sale. What’s worse, your customer is leaving some of their ROI there as well.

Effective Cross-Selling: How to do it. This article focuses on helping you select the right customers who present the greatest need for a certain product or solution. This may be a new product added to your portfolio, but keep in mind it could also be an existing product. Certainly there are customers who are a good fit, but which customers present the greatest need for this particular solution?

How Can I Bring Dormant Accounts Back to Life? It’s a common situation - you have completed a project or engagement but you see lots of potential to offer other services to the client. Sadly, you failed to leverage that first sale toward more business so the account became dormant.

What is Cross-Selling & Up-Selling?

If you are not effectively cross-selling  and up-selling,  you are leaving money on the table every time you close a sale. What’s worse is your customer is leaving some of their ROI there as well.

What is Cross-Selling & Up-Selling? 

Let’s start with how Miller Heiman defines cross-selling and up-selling.

Cross-selling (verb) 

(1)   Expanding  the  number  and  quality   of  relationships between key people in the buying organization and the selling organization,

(2) Making additional relevant solutions available to the buying organization (e.g., new products).

Up-selling (verb)

Converting an initial order into a more profitable order. Typically manifested by the customer’s commitment to (1) additional units of the seller’s solution or (2) a premium version of the seller’s solution. This doesn’t mean selling one’s customers something they don’t need; it does mean selling one’s customers more of something that they do need.

Why don’t these two selling activities happen more often? Fear. Fear caused by the misconception that “asking for more” raises the risk of losing the sale. To eliminate this fear, it is critical to leverage quality business information. By taking the time to gather in-depth information about customers and prospects, salespeople can gain a greater insight into their accounts, uncover new business opportunities, and avoid many of the fears that get in the way of performing cross-selling and up- selling activities.

3 Steps for Leveraging Information

1. Select the right targets

2. Understand the customer’s business issues

3. Create a Valid Business Reason for your customer to take your call.

Each of these steps demands increasingly deeper understanding of the customer’s  key initiatives and the big issues that transcend all the potential buyers within the organization. That means taking the time to become informed on selected targets, their issues, and the business reasons that will motivate them to schedule a meeting or make a purchase.

Closing is Not the Time to Start

The worst time to start thinking about cross-selling and up- selling is at the end of the sales cycle. By that time, it’s too late. By incorporating the steps above into your sales strategies, you will be continually looking for ways to get the most out of every sale, while giving your customers the greatest value in return as well.