What Are The Do’s And Don’ts Of Cross Selling?

Transcript

Hi there, this is Blair from BravaTrak.

I've been thinking further about cross-selling in contact centers. Your agents are the lifeblood of your center. They play a critical role in building relationships with your customers. Yet, their perception of cross-selling has been tainted by their everyday experiences.

They buy a hamburger and they're asked if they'd like fries with that. They go to pay for their petrol, and they're asked if they'd like to purchase the latest fuel company promotion. They get a haircut, and they're asked if they're interested in a styling product.

The Do’s And Don’ts Of Cross Selling

Everywhere you turn, companies think that pushing their products is the right way to cross-sell. The result is that most agents are uncomfortable with cross-selling because they don't like how it's done to them. It's safe to say that most of your customers don't want to be out-right sold when they're calling about a problem with one of your products or services.

What your customers are interested in, is what's in it for them. Not what's in it for you. To be successful at cross-selling, you must get your agents thinking about their customer's needs, not flogging your products. Consequently, smart contact center leaders require their agents to use a sales process that emphasises customer education over a hard sell. Practically, that means a few things.

How Do You Successfully Cross Sell? Here’s A Proven Strategy

Rather than indiscriminately attempting to sell the same thing to everyone, you're best served by identifying specific triggers for the cross-selling conversations. For each conversation that makes sense to your customers, you need your agents to lead in with a rationale for the discussion that has to do with them, not with you.

You'll also want them to connect product features, to show how those features benefit the customer. And, rather than push the customer to buy, you really want your people to offer further education, if the customer is interested in finding out more.

The last thing you want is for your agents to be pushy with sales. You want them to let your customers know what options are available to them, how they would be of benefit, and how they can find out more if they want.

That's my take. What do you think?