For any company that has more than one product or service, the best sales opportunities often lie in cross-selling different lines to existing customers. To focus attention on this area and to identify the success the company is having cross-selling, the company should produce and update a Sales Opportunity Grid on a quarterly basis. | | | |
It all starts with a template in Excel that shows the customers on the left and the different business lines across the top. It is usually more effective to put the core business on the left and then arrange the rest in their order of gross profit contribution and sales difficulty. The process works as follows: Start by putting in the annual value that you have sold of each product or service to each customer during the last 12 months and put a total on the right hand side. The cross-selling gaps on the chart will immediately become visually apparent and you can identify where the best opportunities may lie. For example: If you have three products, you would sort by the total column and look at the 20 largest customers by sales volume. Then you would put an X against any service that you know you cannot provide to that customer. What is left is a grid with glaring blanks that represent sales opportunities. Use the results to identify: Core customers to target to sell ancillary business. Ancillary customers to target for your core business Whether your ancillary businesses are really contributing to the success of your core business and vice versa.
You may get a strategic “Aha” from that analysis but at a minimum you get information to drive your sales plan. On a regular basis (at least quarterly), identify all customers to whom you have sold anything within that period and fill in the grid for any purchase(s) recorded and use the information to drive your salespeople and your incentive compensation plan. At its simplest, this will help you identify and target all your existing and historic customers who are potential but untapped customers for other services. At its most complex, it is a management tool that will help you identify whether the model is working and proactively develop specific sales targets for your sales force. |
