What is Cross Selling?

What is Cross Selling?

Cross-selling is a Selling technique in which the seller tries to sell an additional product or service to the customer in addition to the core product which the customer intended to purchase. 

This is done by trying to sell related products as per the context of the customer. With this approach, the seller is able to make additional revenue and at the same time customer is able to derive more value from the purchase transaction.



An Example of Cross-Selling

Let us try to understand this technique with the help of an example.

Let’s say you went to an Electronics store to buy a laptop. When you meet the sales executive, he shall ask you about your needs and the purpose for which you will be using your laptop. During your discussion, you mentioned that you require a laptop for office work.

After a while, you finalized one laptop for purchase at the store. Now during that time, the salesperson may propose to cross-sell another related product say a mouse or a headset which will prove to be helpful to you as part of your office work. This way seller tries to match your needs by trying to cross-sell a few additional products or services.

Seller may also offer some discount on the additional products being sold. For example, they may offer complementary antivirus software or laptop warranty services at discounted prices. This way as a customer you may also be able to get more value out of the price paid, otherwise, you might have bought it separately without much of a discount.


How Cross-Selling helps?

Cross-selling helps both the seller as well as the customer.

The seller gets to improve his organization’s revenue and also build a deeper relationship with the customer by providing more value for their buck.

Similarly, the customer also benefits by saving time and money which they might have spent exploring the other related products themselves later.

Contrary to what a newbie salesperson might think, Salesperson, should not hesitate to try to cross-sell add-on products and services to the customer. Cross-sell can be very helpful to the customer if the salesperson is genuinely interested in adding value to the customer.


Benefits of Vertical Selling over Horizontal Selling
Are you a Newbie just delving into your Sales Career?
or
Are you a Sales Manager looking for assigning a territory to a newbie in your team?

or
Are you a Newbie startup looking to start with Selling your Product or Solution?


If answer to any of these questions is "Yes", 
Then you should focus on Vertical Selling instead of Horizontal Selling!


Surprised? In this post, I would tell you why is that so!


What is Consultative Selling

In B2B Sales, One of the often-heard approaches of sales is Consultative selling or Solutions selling. In this post, let us discover what exactly is Consultative selling.


What is Consultative Selling:

Consultative selling or also known as solution selling is an approach where Salespersons engage their prospects in a different way compared to conventional transaction based sales. In this approach, sales reps try to engage with customers more often like a Sales Advisor or like Solutioning consultant. 

5 Step process for Consultative Selling

 In my previous post, I wrote about Consultative Selling fundamentals. In this post, let us discuss more on this topic and try to understand the steps behind Consultative selling so that any beginner can practice the art of consultative selling in an organized way.

Here are the 5 steps you need to follow in order to practice Consultative Selling:

How to track Sales Deals Effectively
Hi, Hope you are doing great. In this post, I wanted to bring out a list of most important items to track for effective Sales Deal tracking.

To meet Sales Quota, Your Sales persons should follow a well defined sales process to efficiently close deals at the fastest pace possible. But very often even with a good sales process, teams might miss hitting targets. One of the obvious reason is lack of effective tracking. Sales Management is no less than Project Management and effective Project Management is all about timely tracking.

Let's us take a look at some of key things you should track to meet your sales targets always.
Essential Tips for B2B Sales
Getting a meeting from a C-suite executive of a mid or large corporation is one of the most daunting task for a salesperson in B2B. This is because, unlike other prospects who are in the lower hierarchy of an organization where the salesperson can pitch in multiple times and try out different ways to approach the prospect, with a C-suite executive, the salesperson stands just one shot.

That's the reason why sales professionals should have a foolproof strategy while approaching a C-suite executive while trying to get him for a sales meeting.

Here are 3 B2B Sales tips from my experience which can help you get a reply from C-suite executives while trying to get their response for a sales meeting:

Btw, before we get started, If you are new to ToolsonCloud, Feel free to check out website to learn about ToolsonCloud CRM. It can definitely help improve your sales productivity.




1. Try asking for a referral within the organization.


Most of the time, top-level executives especially CEO, CMO, CFO or COO would be involved with multiple internal tasks that they would hardly get any time for an external salesperson which is you. Even if they find your short sales pitch to be interesting, they would hardly have the bandwidth for a meeting. This is the reason they would try to defer it. But most of the time, CXOs would be ready to delegate it to their Subordinates or Executive Assistants. 

A few of the executives would refer you to another person in their organization on their own, but not the case with everyone until you ask them for that. So, next time you send a cold email, try asking them for a referral in their organization whom you can talk for discovery interviews or sales meetings.



2. KISS - Keep It Short & Simple


Almost every CXO of an organization is a busy person hardly having any time even for self. During these moments, if you get a chance to talk to him on phone, don't waste his time asking long discovery questions which you can ask others within the same organization. Try to keep your talk short, crisp and to the point instead of trying to blabber round and round about a concept just to gain his attention. Instead of getting his attention, chances are there that you would lose his interest which is lethal in sales.

Hence, the next time you get to talk to a C level executive, try presenting key benefits for him which you can offer via your products, instead of asking him his 5 year vision of his organization and asking generic time consuming questions as to what are their challenges. Ideally you should ask these questions, only if you have a longer meeting planned with the executive, especially for a discovery interview.



3. Follow Up


Following up is the key to sales success. But it takes key precedence if you are trying to sell to busy C-suite executives. Often CXOs would be traveling a lot, meeting people around the world. This means he would stay away from his base office often. Chances are there that in his run-up to catch up on his own work, he would forget about your last meeting. This necessitates that you follow up with the executive by cut-off date before any competitor pitch in and grab the deal.

So, the next time you finish off a meeting with an executive, make sure you ask him when he shall be available for the next meeting and make sure to add that date to your CRM so that it can remind you for another meet-up.


I hope you enjoyed reading the post. Do let me know your thoughts on this.

Have you tried ToolsonCloud CRM yet? It certainly helps you throughout your B2B Selling process from lead capture to deal follow-up reminders. 

Try ToolsonCloud CRM today. Moreover, it's free.

7 Must Have Data Fields in your Sales Deal Tracker
While dealing with multiple activities associated with a sales process like Prospecting, Suspecting, Meeting, Closing, etc, you might have come across a situation where you have a lot of sales deals in your pipeline. A few of these deals would be in their initial stages while a few would be somewhere in the middle of the sales process which is just about to complete. 

SPANCO - 6 Stages of a Sales Cycle for Successful Selling
Hey Fellas,

I was just going through my last year's Sales training workshop notes and just came across the term SPANCO. Being in Sales, you might be hearing this term often. But in case you haven't yet heard about this, Don't worry, we have got you covered!

Go ahead! let's check out SPANCO! Cheers!

SPIN Selling method to accelerate your Sales towards Closure
If you have been doing B2B Sales, then SPIN selling must be a familiar term for you. If it is not, then its high time you adopt SPIN selling methodology within your sales process.