This is Steli Efti with Close.io, let's talk about the power of the upsell.
Recently I was giving a webinar with Lincoln Murphy from SixteenVentures and Gainsight.
Lincoln is awesome, and if you're in SaaS, I highly encourage you to read his blog and
everything he writes.
So we were giving this webinar about upselling, especially about the upselling opportunities
in 2015, and how to think about it and how to prepare for it, and how to put a process
in place for it.
I wanted to record a quick video after the webinar, inspired by it and share some more
thoughts and go a little bit more in-depth on my philosophies, my strategies and my thinking
about the power of upselling.
So first of all, I think that most people, most sales people as well as most companies
truly underestimate the power of their current customers.
They think once somebody has become a customer selling ends.
Your job in sales is done.
And nothing could be further from the truth.
You need to understand that once somebody becomes a customer you still have to sell
to them every single day.
Just selling, if you're doing it right, and if your product or service is good, should
become easier and easier and easier.
No sales are easier than second and third and fourth sales.
Once somebody has gone over the hurdle of trusting you, of researching the market and
deciding for your solution, and you've developed a relationship.
As long as you deliver on your promises, it should be incredibly easy to keep selling
to them and give them more value through your products and services.
The other thing that people kind of misunderstand, or have a blindspot for, is that they think
the biggest opportunities for future sales is in people that haven't bought from us yet.
When in reality your current customers are your best prospects for future sales.
Your current customers are by far your best prospects for future sales.
So you need to treat them as your best leads.
Your best opportunities.
If you do that philosophically, incredible opportunities open up and ways to generate
more revenue for your business, ways to make more sales for you as a sales professional,
that are going to be so easy and so smooth you won't even believe it.
Now, if it's so obvious that your current customers are your best prospects, and if
upselling is the best and easiest way to make more money, why isn't everybody doing it?
Why do I even have to talk about it?
Well, the answer is really simple: The answer in one word is: fear.
Yap, you got it right.
It's fear.
People are afraid to reapproach their current customers to sell them some more services,
products or other things.
And why are they afraid?
Well, for a multitude of reasons.
Number one, they're afraid because they might rattle the cage, they might upset their current
customers by trying to sell them something else.
Well, that fear is totally unreasonable as long as you know that what you're selling
is good.
As long as you know that you're creating and delivering value, there should be no way that
you have to hide from selling them some more stuff.
As long as you give them more value than what you're charging them for, you should try to
sell them as much as humanly possible.
It's actually your responsibility to, if what you're selling is good and valuable and actually
helps them succeed.
That's one.
People are afraid because they don't want to pitch somebody that already pays them money
because they don't want to upset anybody.
Get over yourself!
Number two, people are afraid to actually go for the upsell, go to their current customers
for future sales because they don't want to hear bad news.
Sometimes sales people will suspect that maybe a customer is not that happy.
Maybe they're not that successful.
Maybe they didn't get as much value out of the service or the product as it was promised
to them.
So, as long as I... most sales people or companies think that, as long as I don't hear from my
customers, that's a good thing.
And I don't want to proactively go out there and have them tell me how happy or unhappy
they are.
They're afraid to hear bad news, they're afraid to hear their customers tell them: Your service
sucks, your product sucks, or something is wrong with it.
So as long as the customer doesn't approach them, they don't want to approach proactively
the customer, because they don't want to hear things that might be bad news for their business.
Well, again, get over yourself.
You have to understand that if somebody is unhappy with your product or service that
it is a massive opportunity to both improve your product or service hopefully, improve
the way you sell and the promises you make and make it right for that customer.
Actually turn something negative into something positive.
If you go for the upsell and your customer is telling you they're not happy, that's not
a bad thing... that's not like: Holy shit, I wanted to sell them some more and now they're
telling me that they're not happy with what I sold them in the first place... that's a
great thing!
That's an opportunity for you to actually turn a potentially very, very unhappy customer
into a happy one.
Find out why they are unhappy and see if there is anything you can do to turn that around.
Anything you can do to make them successful and happy, that's your responsibility, and
that's your opportunity.
And once you do, you know what I realize is that...
most companies, because they're hiding away from their customers, especially from the
ones that might not be as happy currently...
once you actually do, if you're a company that does show up when things go bad, that
does show up when a customer is not as happy, and then turns that situation around and delivers
on the original promise... that creates an incredible opportunity to really bond with
your customers and develop a relationship that's really powerful.
So don't be afraid to hear bad news, that's actually a good, a healthy thing that your
business and you need in order to grow.
And it's a normal thing.
Once in a while customers are unhappy, and if you don't talk to them proactively, most
of them won't tell you, so you won't know, so you won't have a chance to actually fix
anything.
So there's a massive opportunity to actually find out if things are wrong to fix them and
make them right.
So now that we know that your current customers are our greatest opportunity for future sales,
and upselling is really an amazing way to make more money and make it easily, and we
know why we might not have done it so far, and what our personal and organizational fears
are that have prevented us from it, now that we know these two things, how do we move forward
to actually put some tactics and best practices in place?
Well, very simply.
Number one: you have to make the upsell part of the deal.
Make it part of the way that you sell from the very first interaction with your customers.
When you talk with your customers and you qualify them, why not qualify them for future
upselling opportunities?
Why not ask them: "Hey, you know, how are you intending to grow the business?
How are you intending to grow the usage of our service?
What's kind of your vision for the next twelve months?
If everything went right, would you use the service or our product at the current capacity,
or would it grow?
And to what degree?"
Why not try to find out what the future opportunities are with the current customer, rather than
just focusing on the short term, and short-sighted current opportunities of today?
Let's talk a little bit about tomorrow as well.
To know what to look for and to know what to work towards.
The other thing is: let's prepare the customer as well.
Let's tell them that: "Hey, I'm going to try to upsell you in the future.
Hey, if I deliver my promise today, I will come back to sell you more.
Just so you now and you're prepared for it.
And is that a fair deal?If we deliver all this value to you, keep our promises, is it
fair that I will reapproach you in three, four, six months when you've accomplished
x, y or z to actually deepen our relationship and get you to the next level of our service?"
Tell them!
Prepare them.
Make them aware that that's the way you like to work.
Not just sell them something today and then never hear from them, and they never hear
from you again, but actually over the long term keep delivering more and more value and
have them buy more and more from you.
You know, if you start early, it's going to actually set the tone for the direction of
the relationship.
The next thing is, not just make it part of the early deal, but I know some companies
that actually, where the sales leadership will demand from every sales rep when they
present their opportunities in the morning.
You know, what are the opportunities I'm trying to close this week?
To not just show the current dollar value or amount that the opportunity or the deal
has, but to talk about future value opportunities, future opportunities for sales.
And in some organizations they're so religious about the upsell that they won't allow their
sales people to close deals that don't have a chance for growth.
They will only focus on closing customers today that will grow over the next twelve
months with them.
That's pretty aggressive, but it's a pretty amazing way to actually, not just close any
customers, not just be so short-sighted in your sales, but really take a long-term approach
and maximize the value you deliver, and the value you get back as a business from your
customers.
The next thing is, you know, most of the times, and I hinted to this before, most of the times
sales people are really reactive in the way they talk to their current customers and accounts,
rather than being proactive.
And when they are proactive, they usually are just proactive once in a while when there
is some kind of a sale going on, some kind of a promotion...
how about checking in with your customers every quarter, every three months, and checking
in how they're using the product, how successful they are... and if they're happy and if they're
successful, actually trying to find ways to deliver more value to them.
So being proactive in the way that you communicate and interact, and making it a habit to actually
check in with your current accounts and your customers once a quarter regardless if there's
a promotion or anything else going on in your business, to see if your customers are successful,
and then sell them more to make them more successful.
The other thing is, you know, you have to start small.
A lot of people are thinking: well, how do I do the upselling?
What should be the script?
How do I know if they should be using more or not?
Well, why don't you just start by writing down ten names, right now, you know, you can
stop the video, we're almost at the end.
Pause the video and write down 10 of your customers...
if you don't have that many customers, write down five or three, it doesn't really matter
that much, but write five to ten customers down on a piece of paper that you think are
happy.
You would assume they are happy or you know for a fact they're happy, and call them today.
Or send them an email right now, today, to ask them, you know, if there is other ways
that you can serve them, to ask them to jump on a quick ten, fifteen minute call, to explore
if there is ways to grow with your service.
And you can upsell them on buying more of your current service or product.
You can upsell them on buying a different tier or plan, you know, a premium version
of your offering, you can upsell them on buying, a different thing, a completely different
product or service that you offer to similar customers.
You can try to upsell them to grow into their organization.
So if one department is using your solution or product, you could ask, and try to grow
into other departments, and broaden your usage.
So there is so many ways that you can deliver more value, and it's your responsibility to
find out which of these are the best to tackle next, and you should always think about what's
the next thing I can sell, what's the next thing I can deliver value to my customers
for.
Because if you keep your promises and if your services or products are great, the upsell
is where an amazing amount of opportunity lies, right in front of you, ready for the
taking.
It should be as easy as that.
You just have to do it, and do it regularly.
Alright, so I hope that that was helpful, I hope that you'll take these upselling lessons
and philosophies and thoughts and implement them in your plan for 2015, and make next
year even bigger and better.
And if you want more of these lessons, if you want more of these videos of me sharing
some of the sales insights and sales tactics, just subscribe to our YouTube channel...
you know, just subscribe somewhere to make sure that you get all the videos, and you
can always get in touch with me personally: steli@close.io Shoot me an email if you have
questions, if you want to add something to the discussion, looking forward to hear from
you guys.
Go, and service your current customers better by upselling them every single day.