Ignite Your “Cross-Selling” Initiative by Focusing on Client Value Delivery
By Wendy Bernero
Original Post Link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ignite-your-cross-selling-initiative-focusing-client-vr9yc/?trackingId=cXfOMfl7kGehrdmsFjo7Bg%3D%3D
One of the most impactful ways to achieve profitable revenue growth is broadening the array of high-value services you deliver to existing clients. While the most common “cross-selling” approach is relationship-based, offering your closest client contacts the opportunity to learn about additional firm capabilities, the most effective approach is deeply understanding your clients’ industry sector and their business challenges and opportunities, and then collaborating with your strongest client contacts to devise services tailored to help achieve their business goals.
By way of example, let’s say you handle U.S. commercial contracts for a European luxury retail company and work closely with the company’s U.S. General Counsel. In reading your client’s annual report, you learn that one of its strategic challenges is maintaining its competitive position in the U.S. market. You speak with your partners, Mary and Jacob, who head your firm’s intellectual property and antitrust practices respectively and have extensive experience helping luxury brands protect their competitive advantage. They suggest ways the firm can help the client achieve its goal and agree to develop some specific recommendations for the client. They send you to some case study examples of work they have done for similar clients. Your next step is to set up a meeting with the U.S. General Counsel. Which of the following approaches do you think has the greatest likelihood of success?
Technical skills approach: “I know you have significant intellectual property and antitrust legal needs, and I would like to introduce you to my colleagues Mary and Jacob who are brilliant in this area. Could we arrange a lunch so you can meet them?”
Business solutions approach: As a luxury retail company, we know your strong U.S. brand is critical to your company’s success. I was discussing with my partners Mary and Jacob your company’s desire to further protect its competitive position in the U.S.. They have an incredible track record of protecting the competitive advantage of companies in the luxury goods space, such as (name some non-competing client examples), and they have some ideas and recommendations that I think you would find valuable. Would this be of interest to you.
Experience and research prove that the second approach not only generates more interest, engagement and client meetings, but also wins higher fee engagements. Why? Because instead of selling technical capabilities you are demonstrating your knowledge of and interest in your client’s business and making your services relevant to advancing an important client business goal.
Bottom line
Deeply understanding your client(s) and devising ways to deliver value to them is well worth the effort. It builds an enduring foundation of trust and credibility that will benefit you and your firm for many years to come.
Steps to Ignite Your Cross-selling Initiative
Yate has developed a three-step methodology that you can implement to accelerate profitable revenue growth through cross-selling:
Identify your clients’ most critical business opportunities and challenges.
Design cross-practice solutions and service offerings, where your strongest capabilities intersect with identified client business needs.
Collaborate with each client to co-create a customized solution that advances their business goals.
Operationalizing Your Initiative
Begin by segmenting your clients by sector and then tier the clients within each sector based on your relationships with the client and your account team’s level of readiness to engage with the client to co-create a high-value solution.
Segmenting by sector is important to determine how the firm can help clients with similar business models build or preserve their competitive advantage.
Tiering by readiness enables you to scale firm resources and help prepare the assigned firm team with research, background materials, scripts, and other necessary actions essential to successfully engaging with the client.
Sector Groups: You will work with each sector group to identify (i) the business needs and challenges facing clients, and (ii) to identify the highest value, most relevant solutions and service offerings that your firm can deliver to clients.
Tiers: Each Tier will be given an action plan to advance their readiness to engage with clients. Tier 1 clients will proceed directly to preparation for client engagement with the support of your team to handle all aspects of the sales process for each client including deep research, relationship assessment, goal setting, value proposition development, engagement scripts and rehearsals, progress tracking, and follow up. (Yate Collaborative offers this service if you choose to outsource it.
Suggested tier parameters are outlined below:
Tier 1
Firm serves on client panel for significant areas of work.
Has deep understanding of the firm’s strategy and business goals.
Has received positive feedback with senior client executives in the past 18 months.
Has recently and successfully completed a major matter of significance to the client.
Tier 2
Firm has a longstanding, positive history and relationship with the client.
Understands the client’s business goals.
Receives regular assignments and positive feedback but has not yet had the opportunity to add significant value.
Need to strengthen our senior-level relationships.
Need to showcase the value we can deliver.
Tier 3
Firm sporadically receives meaningful work and maintains good relationships.
Needs to enhance understanding of client’s business strategy and goals.
Needs to clarify value delivery opportunities.
Needs to enhance senior-level client relationships.
Tier 4
Firm has fragmented client relationships due to departures and/or reorganizations.
Firm formerly did work for the client and knows opportunities to deliver value exist.
Needs to start by rebuilding relationships and reintroducing firm capabilities.
Tier 5
Prospects and former clients of the Firm who we believe have critical business challenges and opportunities that the Firm is well-positioned to address.