If sales managers taught their sales and support staff to interview and listen, they would dramatically increase sales in their territory.
I just read an interesting white paper that said sellers have a hard time cross-selling existing accounts because they’re out of their comfort zone. They are fine selling products/services they know well and avoid selling those they don’t know as well.
Now, some of my clients argue that their sales people keep one because they make more money than the rest. the other. I agree with both of them, but lean heavily toward this comfort zone observation.
Anyone who has been involved with my training knows that I strongly encourage extensive prospecting on existing accounts. It’s the easiest place to get more business and increase sales volume because you have contacts, credibility, and access, if you choose to use them.
However, sales management has to make this happen. So if sellers are uncomfortable with or don’t like the money they’re making from cross-selling, what’s an astute sales manager and profit center leader to do? I suggest “Effective Listening.” Easing the burden of promoting products/services and enforcing the tasks of interviewing and listening for key words and phrases.
If a salesperson uses their contacts to reach out to senior executives (C-levels and profit center leaders) and asks “Issues and Concerns” questions and listens to feedback that reflects challenges, issues, and unmet opportunities, related to sales. person’s total solutions portfolio, you’ll learn a lot about other ripe cross-selling opportunities.
For example, one of my clients sells civil engineering and construction services. Many of the people are very knowledgeable about environmental engineering and are connected to some powerful people in government agencies or corporations. Getting these people to sell roads, buildings or other engineering services would be a huge mistake and a huge missed opportunity.
This is why. If they tried to sell these other services, they would do such a poor job that they would lose credibility with the executive regarding these other services. As a result, the company would lose a great opportunity to break into the ground floor. However, if this person does not use his credibility with the executive, the company will have to compete with all other providers.
Now, if this environmental person were conditioned (from training and role play) to ask generalized questions, such as “What are the issues and concerns you have with upcoming engineering projects” and trained to listen to words, phases etc /might get trouble spots from the executive that your company could help with. The environmental person would then report the findings to a sales manager who would assign someone experienced to assist.
The beauty of this is that the environmental person would not have to worry about promotion. You just have to ask a few questions and/or listen to comments made in informal conversations, in meetings or in a formal interview. The responsibility of “selling” would be removed and the risk of blowing the deal would be removed as well. However, the qualified lead would be available along with a primary contact to resolve it.
However, with that said, sales management has two key responsibilities to make this “effective listening” process happen. First, they should set up training sessions with cross-selling services to teach people the keywords and phrases to listen for. Most of the training that other services of a company do is usually “How to sell” instead of “What to listen to”.
Second, management has to have an allocation and monitoring process. The qualified leader must be attended to and the person with the relationship networks (transfers their credibility) to the expert with the powerful leader. If this process is not handled diligently, it will fail because the expert and the person with the contact each have other things to do and/or their own agenda.
So what about the money piece? More precisely, what does the green person or any seller gain from using their contacts for cross-selling? Keeping the job is a good WIFM. Recognition and money are other obvious incentives. However, I strongly believe that if sales management makes it easy for people, i.e. shows them how to interview rather than promote, i.e. push services, and gives them back-up talent as needed, Salespeople and/or professionals will naturally provide good leads that will allow the business to cross-sell more. See, one of the biggest motivators for sales people is closing – getting that order is a real race. It doesn’t matter what size or what. is the yes On the contrary, the thought of “no” is the biggest impediment.
Sales managers have to get out of their routine and be the trainers and managers of the cross-selling process. Telling vendors they have to do more, training them how to sell it, throwing in monetary incentives are 20th century tactics that didn’t work so well then. Relationship Selling: Using Contact, Research Selling: Learning About Contact Issues, and Network Selling: Using Contacts to Enable Others is the 21st century strategy for successful cross-selling.