Resell Before You Cross-Sell
Whenever I catch-up with a partner for a chat, at some point the discussion inevitably turns to the issue of "cross-selling". More specifically, a little moan about how their fellow partners don't understand the value the partner can provide to the referring [cross-selling] partner's clients and so don't try hard enough to cross-sell to them.
It's around this time I ask the partner what effort they are putting into reselling their services?
Nine times out of 10, the answer to that is a blank face looking out to space.
So for this BD Tips Wednesday I thought I would quickly highlight how reselling could be doing you a lot more favors in developing your book of business than cross-selling.
"Reselling": refers to the practice of selling a service you provide to clients of yours who currently doesn't use that service.
"Cross-selling": refers to the practice of selling a service you provide to a customer of one of your fellow partners.
The crux here is that in the first instance you are driving the business development activity, whereas in the second instance you need to rely on a third party to help you with your business development activity.
Cross-Selling
In business development we call the act of waiting for a third party to do or act on something for you a "dependency event" - in that you are 'dependent' on them doing or actioning their part before you can fulfill yours.
Cross-selling is a dependency event.
By and large, "dependency events" are not good for building a book of business. The opportunity goes stale. The client moves on. People we need to help us are busy.
So, while cross-selling can be a useful tool to have in your business development toolkit, it shouldn't be the great big hope you have to kick-start your flagging book of business.
Reselling
To "resell":
draw a matrix box.
across the vertical outline all the services you provide to your clients.
across the horizontal list your top 25 clients (assuming you have 25 clients, if not put down as any as you can).
put a tick in each of the boxes where you provide a service to that client.
take a step back.
look at all the areas where you provide a service, but are not providing that service to that client.
It should look something like this:
All of those blank white spaces are your resell opportunities. They are not dependent on any third party - it's down to you!
Now you know all about the Resell Matrix you can get out there do some reselling and stop worrying so much about the cross-selling...
Further Reading
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