What is Cross-selling?

Cross-selling is, simply put, selling additional products and services to the customers along with the primary purchase that they make.

Believe it or not, you may have experienced cross-selling on your last trip to the burger king– “Would you like fries with that?” Your order taker suggests fries if you order a burger since those two food items are usually ordered together. This is a case of cross-selling.

Here are some other examples of cross-selling:

• The suggestion of a printer when you buy a computer

• The suggestion of ink when you buy a printer

Cross-selling is not just beneficial to businesses who earn additional revenue, but also beneficial to the customers as they get to complement their initial purchase. Let’s see more benefits of cross-selling.

Benefit of Cross-selling

• Cross-selling allows you to cultivate your existing customer base which is the easiest way to earn revenue. According to Hubspot, the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%, whilst the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%. Also, it is 5-25x more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to grow existing customers.

• It helps in improving your revenue substantially. Even though, the price of related products can’t be compared to the price of the original purchase, if properly arranged, cross-selling can draw really substantial revenues. For instance, in 2006, Amazon reported that a tremendous 35% of the year’s sales came from cross-sales.

• It improves the customer satisfaction rate as your customers get to save time by purchasing everything that they need from the same place. This provides them a lifetime value and turns them into loyal customers.

Ways to drive cross-selling

1. Provide Cross Product Training

The first step to get your reps to excel in cross-selling is to equip them with a good knowledge of all the products that are to be cross-sold. For example,

• A bank employee would need to sell life insurance policies to the customers along with the bank products.

• A medical device sales rep who is primarily responsible for selling pacemakers should also have the knowledge of the ILR (implantable loop recorder). Chances are that the same doctor will be using both the products and it will provide a cross-selling opportunity.

So, it’s crucial that you take a close look at your company’s product catalog and identify the products that can be sold together and provide cross-product training to your reps.

2. Reinforce the Training Regularly

Once the formal training is done, you need to ensure that your reps retain the knowledge that they have gained in the training. In order to do that, you need to reinforce the training content regularly. Regular reinforcement ensures that your reps remember crucial sales information for a long time and are able to recall and use it effectively when they have to cross-sell.

3. Make them Rehearse Cross-Selling

It’s crucial to build practical knowledge around your sales reps’ theoretical knowledge. Because your reps might have a good knowledge of all the products that need to be cross sold. But to succeed in the real sales world they must practice their sales conversations. This is where video coaching comes in.

Here’s how you can use video coaching: Present a cross-selling sales scenario to your reps and ask them to record a video responding to it. This gets your reps to record and practice their response several times until it comes out perfect. This way, you ensure that your team practices their sales conversations.

Once they submit their response– their trainer or manager can evaluate the video– give points and feedback according to the performance. They can also mark some best videos from the reps as “Top Videos” and share them with everyone.

Finally, reward all the reps who scored highest in the coaching. Also, reward the ones whose video is marked as the “best video”. This way you provide a safe environment for your reps to practice and ace their sales conversations. It also fosters peer-to-peer learning.

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4. Incentivize Cross-Selling

When the time comes to begin cross-selling make it worth-while for your reps as they make the extra effort of making additional revenue with each sale. A sales contest can help you do that by recognizing and incentivizing your reps’ hard work and performance

Run an individual or team-level sales contest and encourage your reps to raise the revenue by cross-selling. At the end of each month, select the top 3 reps who have made the largest amount of money through cross-sales. Reward them with exciting prizes.

Want to present creative incentives and awards to your contest winners? Get ideas from the blogs below:

This way you will be able to create a competitive and fun work environment for your reps and motivate your them to actively cross-sell.