Tool Box
Issue No. 11 - June/July 2003
Cross-selling and Related Matters
Maximising the Value of Customer Relationships
by Max Franchitto
Cross-selling and its now more politically correct term ‘related-sales’ have been the missing link in the sales and marketing process for the lifetime of marketing, as we know it.
It would, therefore, be safe to say that just about every services organisation has allocated extensive resources in developing effective cross-sell strategies.
Unfortunately success has been limited by a variety of factors not the least of which has been the expectations of the evermore demanding “customer”. They ask that they be sold the core product or service to satisfaction before they will even consider you for the related sales.
The banking industry allows for an interesting example, in that the customer is saying, “if you cannot sell me my banking needs to my satisfaction, why should I consider you for all my other financial services needs”.
All generalising aside, it has now finally dawned on many service organisations, that if your core activity with the customer lacks credibility there is no way that the related-sales relationship is ever going to develop. So the challenge remains at ground zero, ‘do it right first time’ (DIRFT) and we will consider you for an opportunity to ‘doing it right second time’ (DIRST).
Research has shown that only 25% of customers will even consider you for a second offering if you don’t do it right the first time.
So, how does an organisation go about creating a DIRFT culture that will allow for a related-sales strategy to succeed?
Critical success factors
There are no magic steps to this development except to say that we must go back to mastering the basics of all marketing principles.
“Know your customer well enough to share their same priorities when it comes to your products and services”.
Customer knowledge must rule in the related-sales strategy of the organisation and customer value and economics will then evolve to benefit all parties in the re...
