Cross-Selling: Your Untapped Gold Mine!

To cross-sell effectively, you’ll need to define the “competitive advantage” that shows the client why buying from you will benefit them. Take these four steps to cross-sell your clients by showing them that you can meet their needs more effectively than their incumbent agent.

Many producers seeking to cross-sell have fallen into the proverbial trap of just telling their clients that they have other products available, i.e. Life, Health, and Financial Planning. It would not be uncommon for a P/C producer to tell the client, “We have an Employee Benefits department that can help you with that too, if you’re interested. Let me know and I’ll get them to call you.”

Too often the client’s response is, “We’re happy with our current situation, but thanks for asking.' This is cross-marketing — making the client aware that there are other products available through your firm — rather than cross-selling.

Cross-selling, at its core, is no different than selling a new piece of business. Yes, the originating producer has a relationship now, but there’s still an incumbent agent who owns the line of business that the cross-seller wants. And, there’s a decent chance that the buyer is fairly satisfied with the incumbent.
 
FOR THE CROSS-SELLER TO WIN, THE INCUMBENT MUST LOSE

Cross-selling is both art and science. The art of cross-selling has to do with the originating producer knowing when to bring in a partner who has different products and expertise. It has to do with timing, empathy, listening, and relationship skills. But there’s a science to this business as well. The cross-seller must think of every Commercial client for whom the agency doesn’t write the entire account as an opportunity that some other agent already has — and a potential new sale — by taking the attitude that the incumbent must lose. This philosophy will help generate a pro-active strategic approach that significantly increases the probability of winning and booking the new revenue.

For the sake of clarity, let’s identify the four parties in a cross-selling situation.

1. The Buyer: A client of the agency in one line of business (for example, Comp) that he purchased from:
2. The Producer: Sold this business and is working to retain it, and expand the account by working with:
3. The Cross-Seller: Has an opportunity to obtain a new piece of business from the Buyer by replacing:
4. The Incumbent: Writes the Buyer’s line of business (i.e. Group Health), that the cross-seller wants to get.

Although tapping into the cross-selling goldmine of revenue pays significant dividends, too few agencies have benefited from cross-selling, for two reasons:

1. The Producer doesn’t ask the Buyer for cross-sell opportunities; or 
2. The Producer asks for the opportunity, but gets told “no, not interested.”

GETTING THEM TO ASK

There might be several reasons why the Producer never asks for the cross-sale:

1. Lack of confidence in the Cross-Seller
2. No personal financial benefit from asking (“What’s in it for me?)
3. Unwillingness to take the risk (“I just don’t want to take a chance on screwing up a good relationship.”)
4. Superiority complex (“No other producer is as good as I am.”)
5. The leech theory (“I’m tired of taking other producers in on all my accounts and never getting anything in return”)

Whether these are good reasons or not hardly matters because they’re real in many producers’ minds. As a result, the Cross-Seller never has a chance. The solution: Change the people, change the compensation, and change the culture.

GETTING THE CLIENT INTERESTED

Now, we’re getting to the real problem with cross-selling: Most Cross-Sellers have no strategy for obtaining the opportunity to get an introduction. They can’t tell you who the incumbent is, or effectively articulate how they are better or different than the incumbent. As a result, the producer lacks the ammunition to get their client interested in seeing the Cross-Seller.

THE PRE-CALL STRATEGY

The solution: If you’re the Cross-Seller, look at every cross-selling opportunity in exactly the same way you would a brand new piece of business. This requires developing a pre-call strategy:

Begin by learning who influences the buying decision within the Buyer’s account — i.e. CFO, COO, HR, president. Then find out who the Incumbent is (agent, agency, and carrier) and how long they’ve had the account. (You can download a Pre-Call worksheet from The Wedge Group web site at www.thewedge.net/forms). Once you have this information, ask yourself this basic question, “Why do they (the Buyer) need me?”

The answer is easy, although not always simple: They need you because of what you can do that the incumbent does not. It’s your proactive services; it’s your strengths where the incumbent has weaknesses, it’s the knowledge that this prospect is being underserved. It’s your responsibility, as the Cross-Seller, to articulate what makes you different and better and to give this information to the producer, in the form of sound bites.

This information gives the Producer the ammunition to blow the cross-selling opportunity wide open, and radically improve your chances of winning and booking the commission. It’s time to stop relying purely on your good name and experience, and hoping that the Producer’s client relationship with the Buyer is enough to get you in the door!

Seeing these golden opportunities for what they truly are — selling — will put you on the path to more money in a short period of time.

ACTION STEPS:

To cross-sell effectively, you need to develop and use a clear and concise competitive advantage — using the KASS approach:

1. Know It — It’s imperative that you know your “competitive advantage” cold. Competitive advantage can be defined as the areas in which you have strengths and your competition has weaknesses. There are many talented and skilled producers with years of experience who have helped numerous clients, yet can’t clearly define how they’re better than their competitors. You must know and be able to define this difference.
2. Articulate It — It’s not enough to know that you’re better. You need to express your superiority clearly and concisely.
3. Show It — Have written service timelines delineating what services you will provide and when. Provide customized worksheets, spreadsheets, or reports that will help the Buyer understand what they have, what they need, and what you will do about it.
4. Share It — When you know your competitive advantage, can articulate it, and have a means of showing it, it becomes easy for the Producer to share this information with the Buyer and get you in the door.