April 2001
Optimizing Online
Interaction: Cross-Selling And Upselling
BY RICHARD BERGER, ATOMICA CORPORATION
[Go right to Using
Targeted Electronic Marketing To Build More Profitable Customer
Relationships]
There is no better client than an existing one and no
better time to sell, and sell more, than when that prospect is on the line
-- or online -- with your employees. Knowing your customers' profiles
and being able to match their needs with your full range of products are
essential to increasing the productivity of your contact center workers
and indeed all members of your sales force, wherever they work.
Optimizing the interaction between customers and employees must include
taking advantage of upselling and cross-selling opportunities. The trick
has always been to offer more while pushing less (the client needs to feel
served, not attacked) and to improve the customer experience by meeting
real needs with real solutions.
The best techniques for upselling and cross-selling require up-leveling
skills and product knowledge. Establishing a friendly, helpful
relationship and closing the first deal -- first -- are basic. The key to
increasing the value of that sale is to empower the customer contact with
convincing information about why spending more is better. This is when the
value of having the full weight of your company's capabilities, products
and knowledge about individual customers, general trends and new
opportunities have to be presented with full (sales) force.
When your customer-facing employees are interacting with customers,
they have an immediate and real opportunity to make those customers
happier by offering them products that answer more of their needs.
Upselling and cross-selling, like any productive sales tactics, require
training, enthusiasm, full product knowledge, diplomacy and intuition. But
even the best customer or sales representatives -- those who build good
relationships quickly, who are genuinely empathetic and committed to both
the company and client service -- are stymied when the information they
need to close a sale is not easily accessible, comprehensive and
comprehensible.
Prepare For The Unknown
Customers in direct contact with sales representatives will ask unforeseen
questions. Regardless of how well-prepared customer service agents are,
they will not know all the answers or have all the details at hand. Those
details, however, may well spell the difference between an upsell or
cross-sell win or loss. Every unanswered question or incomplete response
diminishes the potential of closing a bigger sale, and provides an opening
for your competitor to make a sale.
This is where a robust, intuitive system that delivers specific answers
on demand, across any platform, becomes invaluable. Questions about
competitors, product promotions, new products and old products will be
asked. Enterprises need to figure out how to empower their employees with
all the answers.
Whether you're dealing with field sales representatives, employees
manning help desks or online customer interaction staff, offline and
online sales, service and mail management, all require the same basic
tools. You need skilled agents with the right answers at their fingertips.
Having the right answers at the right time takes more than a pop-up
note, a promotional hint or an e-mail reminder. It requires that the full
weight of a company's knowledge be available to the front-line customer
contact representatives. It also requires information access channels to
be fast, painless and intuitive.
High-performing salespeople need to have full client and information
profiles, from financial data on payment and credit histories, to records
and descriptions of past purchases, to up-to-the-minute knowledge about
company "specials." They also absolutely must have a full
picture of how previous buying patterns can be leveraged to cross-sell and
upsell other products and services.
Data And Delivery Disconnect
Too often, there is a disconnect between the wealth of your company's
knowledge and your ability to deliver tailored information on time and on
target to maximize sales opportunities. Optimized cross-selling and
upselling opportunities -- and maximum customer satisfaction -- are
achieved when contact sales representatives can easily get the answers
they need, in a form they understand.
As easy as that is to conceptualize, actual answer delivery is an
elusive beast. Data can be collected from structured and unstructured
sources. The information can be classified, randomized and editorialized.
It can be collected, dispersed, pushed and pulled. It can be sorted into
hierarchies, published in documents or produced, on command, as hyperlink
lists. It can be too limited or too overwhelmingly detailed.
Fundamentally, it's all still just data.
Customer relationship management solutions aim to help companies
identify and keep their most valued clients. The hundreds of CRM products
on the market also attempt to address the problem of consolidating CRM
information with the broader knowledge in information silos throughout
enterprises. With the Abdereen Group prediction that the CRM market will
reach $24 billion a year by 2003, it's clear that the market is still
looking for the right solutions.
There are any number of systems available that allow employees to get
relevant information about the customer, a product or a possible new
selling opportunity. Consolidating that information is a different story.
The task must be accomplished in milliseconds, with full information from
a variety of sources, delivered to the employee in a highly relevant and
easily digestible format.
Your front-line employees need more than statistics about their
contacts. They don't need lists of places where they can get more
information. They do need a full view of what's available and what's most
appropriate to offer to their "live" prospect (who won't wait
while the agent goes rummaging through old databases, hoping to come up
with a "hit").
When the employee has to take a number of steps to find the
information, asks the wrong question or receives an off-base answer, then,
as often as not, it's already too late to make the sale. Companies need to
redirect their thinking about how they provide their employees with the
information they need. Having the data is just the first step. Far more
important is integrating that data and delivering it as correct answers.
Another factor too often ignored in the CRM and knowledge management
equation is the necessity of arming employees with exquisitely simple,
intuitive and smart tools that allow them to respond to questions as their
customers ask them. Answering these questions quickly allows employees to
close this deal and move on to the next opportunity.
Roadblocks To Success
Providing the right information at the right time to take advantage of
pressing sales opportunities requires marrying CRM with knowledge
management. But a number of harsh realities hinder the productive
implementation of high-value knowledge-based services to support sales
efforts. They can include high costs, steep learning curves and complex
implementations.
It is also an industry reality that those valued employees who interact
most effectively with customers do not necessarily also have the advanced
computer skills many of today's systems require.
Information lodged in a variety of databases must be prioritized, and
organized to meet company goals and reflect company values. User access to
this data must be painless. The results must be up-to-date and accurate.
The frustrations of finding and implementing a low-maintenance system
with high-producing results -- and one that employees will actually use --
has long been a sore point in the industry. Piecemeal solutions that
attempt to cobble together legacy systems and integrate those data with
up-to-the-minute results can create mountains of information that
distressingly few employees ever manage to successfully access. Tracking
and reporting engines have traditionally failed to effectively monitor
implementation successes or to pinpoint either weaknesses or strengths in
the system.
Solutions
Overcoming these shortcomings may not be as daunting as it sounds. Many
content management and document management systems do a good job at
sorting through and organizing your proprietary information. But
translating these results into accessible, high-value, relevant answers
may require another step in company processes.
What may be needed is a broad, easily implemented solution that allows
companies to integrate a variety of systems and processes, consolidate
information from external and internal databases and organize and package
the information so it can be delivered as answers.
That way, when customer contact employees see the opportunity to sell
wider, deeper and broader, they can have the relevant information they
need to make a convincing case.
Even the best customer service representative, or the best sales
support staff members, will face unanticipated questions. A company
equipped for delivering answers serves its clients, employees and own
bottom-line best.
Call it an enterprise commitment to winning -- by cross-selling and
upselling knowledge.
Richard Berger is vice president, Marketing and Product Management,
of Atomica Corporation (www.atomica.com),
The Knowledge Warehousing and Delivery Solutions Company. Atomica's Answer
Engine and Knowledge Warehouse technologies offer ease of use and instant
delivery of high-value, relevant answers.
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