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By Tai, August 23, 2007 4:47 pm

In a fast-food restaurant

Would you like your Burger with Fries and Pepsi? That’ll make a combo and save you 75 cents!

If you have eaten in a fast-food restaurant, you might have experienced this kind of offer. Similar selling can be found in any industry, from recreation to health care, from construction to education.

Did you find the offered made to you useful? Confusing? Annoying? Let’s examine this sale technique, namely Cross-Sell.

Cross-Sell defined

Cross-Sell is a practice of suggesting related products or services to a customer who is considering buying one product.

Why Cross-Sell

• Relatively lower expense and efforts than other marketing methods
• Keep competitors away
• Enhance customer loyalty

A Highly Personalized Customer-Centric Approach

Trust is an Ingredient

Cross-Sell works when the customers already have had a degree of trust in the products or services, either by branding or previous experience.

Convenience is the Essence

Not only sets of relating products, what Cross-Sell truly offers to customer is Convenience. Sales team must always bear in mind that Cross-Sell only works if it can save the time and efforts of customers from selecting what they want and need.

Problem Solving and Satisfaction

First and foremost, the product or service that the customer is considering must solve their problems. Salesman should focus on identifying customer’s problems and show them how the product or service can solve the problems. Only after solving the core problem, talking about additional products and services is beneficial.

The rule of thumb is always talk about how the products/services would benefit the customer, rather than how good such offers are.

Highly Personalized

Although Cross-Sell is systematic, practitioners do not want to apply for all customers. Because Cross-Sell bets at buyer behavior psychologically, it must be highly customized to meet each and every customer it serves.

Effective cross-selling is all about guiding customer through self-discovery of what they need. In some cases, salesman also ‘educates’ customer on what they would want.

Avoid what drive “No thanks”

When the customer haven’t shown explicit trust in the company brand, and is still reluctantly exploring the products, s/he might find Cross-Selling too aggressive.

When it is the customer’s first time using the service, it can be harder.

When the customer is the independent type, s/he might find Cross-Selling annoying.

Salesman must fight against the temptation of pushing to product to focus on the customer’s need.

Don’t strictly follow scripts. In this case, best practice is customization, not the scripts.

Cross-Work

To the customer, the person or team doing Cross-Sell is mostly from Sale department. Inside the company providing the project or service, it’s Cross-Work.

It involves all departments in the company to work together so that each team members would know well all products and services the company has to offer and how the link between them. In this type of inter-teamwork, competition won’t work as effectively as collaboration.

In certain cases, the job of Sale team is easier thanks to Marketing team’s efforts.

IT gets involved: Analysis and Data Mining

Data Analysis

Software can assist in generating enterprise simulations. What-If scenarios can be done on screen. Relationship between products and services is easier to track. Scalability is supported.

Such tracking software can also link to Accounting systems for better information management and forecasting.

Data Mining

Collecting customer information and product information, Data Mining uses sophisticated algorithms, standards and scales to produce

• Personalized profile for each customer based on their preference
• Analysis of buyer behaviors and market
• Prediction of sale and procurement trends

By applying such practice, companies can achieve higher level of Business Intelligence to boost their strategies to which Cross-Sell is merely a part of.

Case Study: Amazon

Imagine the process you go through in using Amazon service.

Firstly when you visit the site, it will show you a list of personalized products that you might be interested in by analyzing your cookies. If you login using your account, it aggressively records your preferences including searches, orders and wish-lists to create a even more personalized list of recommendations.

Next, as you traverse through list of items, it never ceases to give your recommendations, reviews and comparisons.

Then, when you have selected a product, it recommends you to . The related product is shown on the basis of pre-defined analysis.

Besides, apart from presenting products, Amazon gives you additional services like Wish-lists, Checklists, Anniversaries recommendations.

***

As a customer, have you given a “wow!”?

As an entrepreneur, do you think you can do it better than they can?

As a business analyst, how would you create a system to match theirs?

A glance at another sibling: Up-Sell

Up-Sell is a sales technique whereby a salesman attempts to offer the customer with more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons.

Up-Sell shares many characteristics with Cross-Sell, but requires more advanced techniques.

It would be covered in another article.

Reference

John Boe, Cross-Selling Takes Teamwork

Tom Atkinson, Cross-Selling: Serve Well, Then Sell

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By Tai, July 22, 2007 12:17 am

Janet Penley discussed ten examples of how wiki(MBTI) research can be utilized for better Marketing Strategy development and implementation:

1. More in-depth consumer psychographics for defining target audience
2. More refined framework for understanding the purchase decision
3. Additional depth and reliability in small-scale, low-budget qualitative research
4. Better refinement of a product/service’s positioning
5. Additional direction on product/service development and modification
6. More effective promotional communications, copy writing and testing
7. Improved agency-client relationships
8. More productive brainstorming activities
9. Better business plan
10. Additional perspective on team creation

Full article: Janet Penley, Using Type to Develop and Implement Marketing Strategy

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By Tai, June 22, 2007 7:19 am

Communications Solutions 2006 Product of the Year Award Winners Announced

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By Tai, May 28, 2007 6:04 pm

This is a fun story

Once, Chen Stormstout - a marketer who worked for one of the world’s leading FMCG companies - returned to his poor, secluded hometown, and was greeted stately by his relatives.

His uncle rejoiced “We have been poor farmers for centuries. This is the first time our line has ever been this honored by the success of our child. All thanks to Chen. He’s our VIP now. He can be our manager; let’s call our hero Marketing Manager!” The whole family applauded his idea.

Suddenly a niece cheered “No. A Marketing Director is higher, let’s call Chen Marketing Director!” The whole family cheered even louder; they knew a director is someone really important.

Chen’s cousin, who also studied business in the province college, cleared his throat and said pensively “But the Marketing Director still reports to the Vice President of Marketing, PR, Advertisement and Communication. Why don’t we call him Marketing VP?”

Everyone paused for a while when Chen’s aunt interrupted the silence “Boo! When your mother and I went to complain the musty cakes to XYZ, that VP was effusive in his apologies to us. He declares something about customer first and all the stuffs I didn’t bother remembering them all. I see that a customer has even more power; let’s call Chen Marketing Customer“.

Finally the sage in the crowd spoke deliberately “Now, to complete your sophisticated loop, customers are managed by a Marketing Executive, that is Chen. Why name him something fancy, only to make him lose his identity?!”

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By Tai, May 8, 2007 2:47 am

“In our factory, we make lipstick; in our advertising, we sell hope.” - Charles Revson, founder of Revlon

The basic question in customer-driven enterprises goes: “What do you actually sell?” or “What is the essense of your business?”

IT people sell Opportunities

The purpose of IT solutions is to help users save their time and efforts in managing their works by automating certain workflows. By saving time doing repeating tasks, the workforce now can concentrate on generating new ideas and innovation, thus bring more Opportunities to the organizations.

The rapid development of the IT industry also revolutionizes the way people do business, whether it is sale, delivery, public service or advertisement. e-retailing, e-marketing, e-market research, social networks are just a few to name. What these have to offer is the Opportunity to reach, satisfy and get money from different market categories.

My value: I sell Inspiration

Beside a thinker, a doer, a problem solver, a solution definer, I bring to the organization my uniqueness: Inspiration.

My passion - and also what I’m naturally good at - is to inspire people, with my commitment, loyalty, faith, warm heart and energetic zeal.

“Outward, I offer solutions. Inward, I inspire to achieve such ambitions.”