The traditional perspective on cross-selling, if we were in discussion at a training session, would likely involve me asking the participants why we should engage in it. Common responses would revolve around increasing sales, driving market penetration, and enhancing customer loyalty to fend off competition. While these reasons may hold some truth, let’s shift the focus to this question: where is the emphasis placed?

The traditional rationale centers on the benefits to the company – more sales, increased market share, and customer retention. However, there’s a notable absence of consideration for the customer. This observation holds true in our experiences at Anthony Cole Training Group, where, despite our 30 years of engagement in this conversation nationwide, rarely does anyone express that cross-selling and up-selling strategies should occur because they genuinely are in the client’s best interest.

As sales leader, you should lead the charge to adopt an approach that will foster comfort for you and your team and also elevate the quality of the relationships you have built with your customers over time. To achieve this, we must entertain the possibility that the most compelling reason to broach the topic of relationship expansion with a client is the potential benefit to their best interests. It could be that your client is struggling with a problem they need assistance in solving. Here are ten keys to helping your team with client expansion, a much better term for cross-selling or up-selling:

1. Remember the focus is on the client, not you or your company
2. Take a consultative approach
3. Demonstrate empathy
4. Be curious and ask the right questions (takes practice)
5. Engage in active listening
6. Ask if they need your help
7. Be their guide
8. Make it your goal to take care of the whole client
9. Focus on stewardship instead of selling
10. Guide them to make sound decisions

You will encounter doubt and skepticism, no doubt. Your salespeople will likely think but not share the following:

• If I ask for other business, they might think I’m greedy
• I’ll ask for other business after I’ve proven I can do a good job for them
• I’ve already asked them - they said they aren’t interested
• I can’t ask for other business because it might jeopardize my current relationship
• They already have a relationship with someone else that does that for them

If your team truly believes that they are stewards for their clients, many of these objections fall away. After all, by its very definition, stewardship is the job of taking care of something that has been entrusted to you. We will often coach salespeople to “think like the CEO” and ask CEO-like questions. Understanding the bigger picture that the prospect is operating from is always additive. A consultative approach to this will involve asking questions about growth goals of the company or retirement goals for the individual. What is keeping them up at night or getting in their way of reaching their plans? Understanding the environment and industry your prospect or client is operating in is essential. Remember the word “entrusted”.  As you reflect on your team’s success or challenges in the areas of cross-selling and up-selling strategies, have they earned the trust and operated as a steward for their clients? Let’s eradicate the term cross-selling and focus on relationship expansion and serving the whole customer.

As we work with companies across the country and this topic is introduced, what’s interesting is the resistance that we often receive. The pushback typically comes in a number of different variations. One reason that we will hear is, “Hey I'm a veteran. I've got 20 years of experience. I've been down this road before. I know what I'm doing.” Another excuse we hear is “Listen, I'm really busy. I have a lot going on. I have a lot of calls I need to make. I don't have time for this.”  Other salespeople will say, “I'm just going to wing it. I will rise to the occasion.” And that last one makes me chuckle, and my answer is respectfully, you will not rise to the occasion. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to sink to the level of your preparation, which in your case, might be none or very little.

Sure, there are many things that a salesperson has to do well to be effective and drive consistent results year after year. You have to know your stuff, and you need to be charismatic, and be able to connect with people. You need to build relationships. You need to sell consultatively. You need to be asking all the tough questions. All of that is true. But most importantly, for your prospect or client’s sake, is that you've got to be prepared. It must matter to you enough that you will not think of a sales call as just a sales call. It must matter enough to you that you are at the top of your game every time you roll out into the field and you roll up to a prospect. You're not going to rise to your level of the moment, you're not going to rise to the occasion. That's the athlete in college telling the coach, "Put me in, and I'll show you what I can do." And the coach saying, "Why don't you show me what you can do in practice, and then I will put you in." That's the role of an effective sales leader and coach.

Let's dive right into this best practice of pre-call preparation. Are you or your team doing this or not? And if you're doing it, how well is it going? What is the current status of pre-call planning? Is it something you do all the time? Is it something you do only when you have the time? Is it having the intended effect of increasing your confidence as you go on the call and increasing the effectiveness of your questions while you're on the call?

Let's talk about combustion points. A combustion point, loosely defined, is any opportunity in the delivery of a company's products or services where something can go wrong. There are many things that can go wrong on a sales call. And the purpose of pre-call planning is to engineer out those combustion points. It is designed to not only minimize them, but also to give you a much greater sense of confidence so you can go into that call and get done what you need to get done. We would define that as being very consultative in your approach, asking lots of robust, fierce questions, and being a great listener. And if you don't pre-call plan for that, it is very likely that when the heat's on and it matters the most, you're just going to defer to whatever is known, whatever is comfortable, and whatever is easy. And for most salespeople, what is known and what is comfortable and what is easy, is to talk. They talk way too much.

A good ratio might be 80/20. 80% of the time it should be the prospect talking and 20% of the time it should be you talking. And your 20% of the time talking should be spent asking the questions that then get your prospect to spend 80% of the time talking. That's how it should work. Imagine a sign over your prospect's head that is flashing, wait, wait. And that is an acronym for “Why Am I Talking?”  

If you are convinced that your team needs a structure for pre-call planning, you can download a free worksheet HERE!

One of my most treasured memories of my younger days was buying and trading baseball cards. Perhaps I am being a bit too nostalgic, but those days were good days, and growing up in Cincinnati during the 1970’s I was a huge fan of the Cincinnati Reds and the Big Red Machine.

I particularly remember studying the back of each baseball card because it told the story of each player. And I can still recall the quote “everybody plays to the back of their baseball card” which is a reminder that year over year statistics can be used to forecast future performance.

In our business, one of the greatest sales challenges that most companies face is how to properly gain insight from sales data. Some companies just chase a bunch of data without any regard for the story that the data tells. Other companies struggle when they launch sales coaching without any data at all which means they are simply guessing on both whether their people can improve and what it will take to cause that improvement.

Pull-Through Rate

All of that leads us to what we call the “pull-through rate.” Let’s start with not getting this confused with your hit ratio or close ratio. Both a hit ratio or a close ratio are computed in the same way by dividing the number of wins by the number of presentations or pitches. This sales data insight means a company that delivers 100 presentations and wins 30 new clients has a hit ratio of 30%.

What is Pull-Through Rate?

A pull-through rate is a different sales data insight altogether. It is calculated by comparing the relationship between first-time or initial sales calls and the number of wins. For example, a salesperson who has 200 first-time sales appointments and who winds up with 30 new clients has a pull-through rate of 15%. For years Anthony Cole Training Group has taught that most prospects are not qualified to do business with you and the numbers across the country support that conclusion. In fact, our own pull-through analysis supports that conclusion as our pull-through rate runs around 20%. Nearly 80% of all the firms we have initial conversations with never become a client of our firm.

Pull-Through Rate Example

Finally, one of the most interesting parts of the pull-through sales data insight is that it allows your sales team to “dollarize” each sales call. For example, if your average sale is $50,000…and your pull-through rate is 15% then every time your team goes on that first initial call, they are in theory making $7,500 every single time they run a sales call.

Conclusion

I still have my baseball cards (at least the ones my mom did not throw away). And the back of each card still has the statistics that tell a story. What does the back of your salesperson’s card look like? Do you like the story it is telling you?

It has always been a difficult task for advisors to be able to reach the prospects they call and email each day. They call…and they email…and they keep following up, wondering if anybody will ever do one of two things: 

1. Answer the phone.
2. Return a voicemail/reply to an email.

While certainly not a new development in selling, engaging with prospects has become increasingly and dramatically more difficult. If we go back to 2009, it took around 8-10 outreaches on average to engage with a prospect. In today’s world, that number had risen to 16-18 attempts. Keep in mind that these are averages. Sometimes it takes even more attempts to get the prospect to pay attention to you.

Why has the number of outreaches required more than doubled in the last decade? There are three main reasons: 

1. Distraction: Prospects are busier than ever before and are constantly battling the numerous distractions that come their way. Their mobile device buzzes and they have to look. The email notification on their phone or computer sounds and they can’t resist. Some have estimated that the typical person picks up and puts down their mobile device between more than 100 times each day.

2. Competition: There is more of it than ever before and it’s fiercer than ever before! In financial services, competition from other financial institutions is only a small portion of the battle. With online companies and non-traditional providers, competition can be, and is, literally any company.

3. Commodity: Unfortunately, in some industries including banking and insurance, the prospect believes that the vendor calling them and the vendor they currently use are essentially the same. The prospect just doesn’t see any meaningful difference. To them, a bank is a bank. An insurance broker is an insurance broker. A technology provider is a technology provider.

Of these three reasons, #3 is the most concerning (or it should be). And here’s why… If you don’t differentiate yourself from your competition by providing value, your prospect will do the differentiating for you. But they won’t use a measuring stick of value. They will more often than not use a measuring stick of price.

Here is another sobering statistic about the world of modern-day selling. While the average number of needed attempts has increased to at least 18, most salespeople quit after less than 5 attempts. Maybe they think the prospect is being rude by not replying. Maybe they think that, “in the good old days,” people used to return calls. Regardless, the world has changed. Advisors in banking and insurance must be very proficient at breaking through these three barriers, standing out from all the other bankers, and be memorable.

If you or your team need help refining your value proposition, we can help.  Just reach out to one of our Sales Training Experts.

1. They are taking longer than ever to make decisions.
2. They are involving more people in the decision-making process.
3. The odds (while never really in your favor) are becoming increasingly in favor of the incumbent provider.

About five years ago the average number of people on a decision-making team was between 3 to 4 people for sales that were of some complexity in the B2B world. Now in 2024 most experts believe that number has increased to between 5 to 7 people who now make up the prospect’s decision-making group or team.

Why has this trend become the 3^rd certainty in the life of a salesperson? I can give you 3 reasons:

1. In a difficult or uncertain economy, prospects become very deliberate or conservative about making changes in existing relationships and/or spending money on new products or services. Spending freezes are not uncommon.
2. Prospects take comfort in the “safety in numbers” approach. The thinking is that two heads are better than one…and six or seven seems even better.  The prospect’s belief is that this approach minimizes the chances that something will get missed.  And if something goes wrong, it is harder to blame a team of 7 as opposed to a single decision-maker.
3. Buyers have fallen in love with the pursuit of consensus. But the problem is that consensus is rarely if ever reached.  After all, if everybody is thinking the same way about something then somebody is probably not thinking.

So how do you as a salesperson adjust? 

You must make sure you are having a conversation with all of the people (not some of the people) on the decision-making team. Is that a hassle? Yes, it is. But decision makers that are not accounted for during the sales process represent a huge red flag. 

And finally, you had better be incredibly effective in making sure that the existing relationship is breakable, and you must have demonstrated tangible proof of the value that you and your company can bring to your prospect.

Put the odds in your favor. Make certain that you have these issues uncovered and understood so that you have a more qualified prospect with a high likelihood of closing.