Technology As Innovator

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

1. To you, what is team effectiveness? And why should we work in team rather than individually to some extent?

~~> Answer

• Quality of output
• Sustainable development of team
• Organizational values
• Knowledge management
• Balance of different factors as expected by different parties

Why work in teams

• To solve problems that exceeds one person’s capability
• To learn from different people
• For networking

2. When we establish a team, what should we consider to be the most important things?

• Defining, communicating and having all participants agreed on Vision
• Having the right people doing the right jobs

3. Do you like to work with Homogeneous or Heterogeneous team? And Why?
(_ Homogeneous team: Are composed of members with the same gender, age, race etc. Members share the common knowledge and skills. Cohesive, less conflict
_ Heterogeneous team: Are composed of members with different gender, age, race etc. Members have a wide range of knowledge and skills. Less cohesive, more conflict)

~~> Answer

Homogeneous teams

Advantages

• Less prone to conflict
• Easier empathy
• Relationship more quickly built
• Requires less training on communication
• Brings in-depth networks to the team/organization

Disadvantages

• Less different points of view

When to apply

• Deadline is tight. Required to finish known tasks quickly

When to avoid

• Tasks required innovation
• Customer is from a different background of the majority of the team

Heterogeneous teams

Advantages

• More ideas
• Promising more resources when researching
• Variety in evaluating the products
• Brings wider networking opportunities to the team/organization

Disadvantages

• Cost for cultural / communication training
• Cost for conflict management

When to apply

• Tasks require innovation

When to avoid

• Deadline is tight

4. Do you avoid conflict or eager to meet it? Is conflict needed for team development? In this case, how is the role of the team leader?

~~> Answer

Conflict is inevitable and avoidance is not advised.

On the positive side, conflict is needed for team development, as it makes way for:

• Evaluating objectives, working environment, standards, process, working attitudes, compensation
• Team empathy
• Alerting of unbalance in management

The role of a leader in conflict management is to

• Anticipate possible conflicts
• Define process for conflict management
• Communicate frequently to members on objectives, works and personal issues
• Facilitate conflict management as early as it is known
• Escalate to higher management (if any) - or seek help from more experienced people - if conflict resolution is beyond one’s ability
• Take responsibility to higher management (if any) if unsolved conflicts affect productivity

5. What do you think about “task interdependent”?

~~> Answer

Task interdependence is more and more common as organizations continue to develop. There are some points one should be prepared for:

• Understand organizational behavior theory
• Practice teamwork
• Continue self-improvement
• Share knowledge and experience so other people can perform better, which in turn accelerates one’s job

6. Can you suggest how we can make team work efficiently and maintain its high performance? (About reward, communication, structure, leadership, etc)

~~> Answer

From team members

• Maintain positive attitude
• Find pleasure in work
• Practice lifelong learning in profession knowledge, from other people, and in teamwork
• Be honest and open about needs and issues

From middle managers

• Improve management skills. Know when to do what to whom
• Prioritize tasks effectively
• Balance between goals and members’ needs
• Encourage open communication
• Create opportunities for team members

From executives

• Communicate vision, values and expectation to the organization
• Continually process and compensation systems

7. Any differences between studying-purpose team and working-purpose team?

• A student group’s leader has no real ‘power’ to enforce members to do their tasks. They have to perform this with the help of lecturers
• College groups have less chance to experience diversity
• Tasks assigned to college groups are under many assumptions, while real tasks in the industry require a greater variety

8. Can you share some of your experience (some problems and solutions) you have met as a CM of Business Club while working in a team?

~~> Answer

• Problem: no power to enforce members to do their tasks.
  Solution: have backup plan when assigning tasks, be ready to do others’ tasks
• I am the youngest in my team and it’s hard to build trust in the position of a leader.
  Solution: prove myself by quality of work and commitment
• Problem: work with people with ego, who will do well if their ego is satisfied
  Solution: satisfy their ego, while balancing many factors

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May 2007

Tai