Resell before you Cross-sell
Richard W Smith LLB (Hons), CF APMP
Professional Services Firm Strategist | Pricing Consultant | Client Acquisition Guru
Week 2 of the BD Tips Wednesday via GSJ Consulting!
Whenever I catch-up with a partner for a chat, at some point the discussion inevitably turns to the issue of "cross-selling". More specifically, a little moan about how their fellow partners don't understand the value the partner can provide to the referring [cross-selling] partner's clients and so don't try hard enough to cross-sell to them.
It's around this time I ask the partner what effort they are putting into reselling their services?
Nine times out of 10, the answer to that is a blank face looking out to space.
So for this week's BD Tips Wednesday I thought I would quickly highlight how reselling could be doing you a lot more favors in developing your book of business than cross-selling.
"Reselling": refers to the practice of selling a service you provide to clients of yours who currently doesn't use that service.
"Cross-selling": refers to the practice of selling a service you provide to a customer of one of your fellow partners.
The crux here is that in the first instance you are driving the business development activity, whereas in the second instance you need to rely on a third party to help you with your business development activity.?
Cross-Selling
In business development we call the act of waiting for a third party to do or act on something for you a "dependency event" - in that you are 'dependent' on them doing or actioning their part before you can fulfill yours.
Cross-selling is a dependency event.
By and large, "dependency events" are not good for building a book of business. The opportunity goes stale. The client moves on. People we need to help us are busy.
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So, while cross-selling can be a useful tool to have in your business development toolkit, it shouldn't be the great big hope you have to kick-start your flagging book of business.
Reselling
To "resell":
It should look something like this:
All of those blank white spaces are your resell opportunities. They are not dependent on any third party - it's down to you!
Now you know all about the Resell Matrix you can get out there do some reselling and stop worrying so much about the cross-selling...
If you need help with any of this, reach out.
Richard & GSJ
You have to be fishing in the right place with the right bait to catch the fish!
7 个月Nice.
11,560 Followers...37 years guiding business-aware small firm lawyers. Powerful insights into the basic essentials of small law firm financial health await open-minded owners and budding owners alike.
8 个月Well said #RichardSmith.... Getting lawyers to plan business development properly is a challenge. Getting those who do plan to execute consistently is in another realm altogether. Given that the poor financial health syndrome of many law firms is 99.99% revenue-related, one might suggest that more of the available intelligence should be directed at making time for learning some very simple B. development techniques that are demonstrated to work well. Where can the necessary time come from? a) Cessation of navel-gazing! b) Cessation of involvement in unnecessary or largely useless tasks. Be smarter, use the intelligence...get home earlier for more family time, well funded by a financially healthier, less stressful, practice.
Trusted by some of the world's largest Professional Services Firms. Amazon #1 Best Selling Author/Keynote Speaker. Talks about #businessdevelopment #professionalservices #practicegrowth
8 个月BD 101. Incredible to compute how many people don't do this.