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.

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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

Self-help gives your a Weapon

Are you sure that weapon fits you, or have you had the might to wield it?

Self-helps are designed to give you techniques, rather than a foundation on which techniques are applied. Imagine: a foundation of your character is like the base and frame of a house and techniques bricks and mortars. The beauty of the house’s bearing may attract people at first, but it is the base and frame that keeps it stable and functioning as a shelter - a house’s first and foremost purpose. Imagine further: how does someone neglected for his/her inner beauty running around trying every patches of advice look?

Besides, one thing I don’t feel easy about many self-helps or quick fixes is their headlines: “Self-helps for Lazy people”, “How to perform this in 10 minutes”. It’s true that these headlines sell for rushing people. It’s true that some can be more efficient applying these quick fixes, but is it true that one can be truly more effective after some hours? All successful people work hard; differentiation in level of success depends on how smart each individual works. All work hard, no other less painful way. Realize the clear line between selling and helping.

Foundation is your Might

Foundation consists of principles of good living. Many principles are universal across the globe, and stand through time. Integrity, temperance, courage, responsibility… are a few to name. Referring to human, the foundation is your character.

It’s easier to teach ones with firm foundation some techniques and they will continue to develop by themselves.

Foundation is the streamline which guides you through life. Your behaviors, attitude and skills all depend on the foundation you build within yourself. It is what makes your thinking, feeling and doing consistent. Your character is the root answer to any doubts and questions.

Most of all, developing a foundation is neither easy nor quick. No shortcut is available. Reviewing back, self-helps are not corners for you to cut either; they extend and strengthen your foundation.

One example: How to win friends

Certain self-helps teach you to

• Smile
• Remember the name
• Encourage others to talk about themselves
• Talk in terms of the other person’s interests
• Make the other person feel important
• and etc.

What do you notice? They are all actions. What lies beneath to make an infrastructure and bind these actions together harmoniously is the foundation we’re discussing.

One foundation is your genuine friendship. You will win genuine friends if you are a good friend in the first place. Some principles integrated into a good friends include honesty, loyalty, giving. When you are good in nature, you have friends. Applying techniques helps you to hasten and beautify the process.

Principles are primary. Actions and techniques are auxiliary. Do not confuse them.

How to utilize full power of self-helps

Once you have had the internal strength of foundation principles, only then, I believe, will you see the true power of self-helps: like One with Might and Masteries equipped with Good Weapons and Techniques.

Another Illustration

1. When one rapidly add good practice to his doings while the foundation has not been strong enough…

…it is no more than this degenerate

2. Instead, develop your inner strength and you’ll cover them all

It takes a great deal of Confidence and sometimes Courage to be able to grow in a stable and sustainable manner.

Best Practice is a concept asserts that with proper processes, techniques and testing, a desired outcome can be delivered with fewer problems and unforeseen complications. Best practices aim at optimizing procedures to the highest possible level of efficiency.

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A system can be broken down to features vertically and releases horizontally. Successively, features and business rules are shaped by Uses Cases. At the bottom line, a Use Case describes one best way to accomplish a goal. By writing Use Cases, Business Analysts are dealing with one major dimension of Best Practice everyday.