Don’t Rely on Sales Teams to Drive Up/Cross Sell Value-Adds
As a payment service provider (PSP), you need to adapt your cross-sell and upsell strategy to B2B buyer preferences in the digital age. Gartner research found that 75% of buyers now prefer a “rep-free” sales experience. Gartner also found that 76% of buyers will avoid doing business with suppliers who send irrelevant messaging, and 58% avoid buying from companies that send too many messages. On the other hand, the company found that buyers still want timely and useful information.
Selling value-added services is one of the best ways to inform and educate merchants about options for expanding their payment solution’s capabilities. Of course, it’s also key to improving your KPIs for customer retention, expanded accounts, and better margins. However, the processes that sales teams have traditionally fallen back on to cross-sell and upsell don’t lead to the results you need, and – this may surprise you – but they never will.
Why Current Sales Teams Will Never Reach Upsell Goals
Many PSPs are caught in a vicious cycle that limits upsell and cross-sell effectiveness. PSPs’ compensation structure prioritizes and incentivizes new MIDs, not value-added services. The return for sales reps on upsell and cross-sell activities pales in comparison to the well-established and lucrative “new merchant” spiffs and residuals based on transaction volume reps receive for selling merchant services. Furthermore, tracking commissions on value-added services is more complicated than selling core products, particularly if a value-add is from a third-party.
Navigating through the complexity of post-purchase cross-sell and upsell typically takes time – time that sales reps would rather devote to selling new MIDs and providing tailored and personalized service to merchants. And if that white-glove treatment during the sales process is missing, merchants won’t be interested in upsell and cross-sell offers. Therefore, selling value-added services typically only occurs when it’s essential to closing a deal. Sales reps don’t bring them up to avoid complicating the sale, and, unfortunately, PSPs leave money on the table. It’s difficult to break the cycle.
Why Mastering Cross-Selling & Upselling Is Essential to Business Growth
While post-purchase upselling and cross-selling can be a challenge, PSPs need to find a way to master them – they’re an essential part of business growth. Marketing firm Wiser Notify lists some statistics that every sales leader must remember:
- You have a 60% to 70% better chance of selling to an existing customer than a new one.
- Cross-sell and upsell activities result in up to 42% more revenue.
- B2B upsell strategies lead to a 20% to 40% increase in customer lifetime value (CLTV).
- Post-purchase upsell can result in a 20% increase in profits.
Pursuing only new business will result in slower growth than building a strategy that includes upselling and cross-selling value-added services in addition to acquiring new merchant accounts.
A New Approach to B2B Upsell Strategies
The good news is that you don’t need to attempt to train or retrain your sales team to cross-sell and upsell. You can let a merchant engagement platform leveraging smart payment terminals do it for you. The platform delivers eye-catching, graphical, guided workflows that merchants receive when they power up their devices each day. These workflows will help you increase accounts with value-added services you already offer and accelerate the adoption of new value-added services when you bring them to market. The workflows the platform delivers inform and educate, delivering information that merchants need about apps that can help them operate more successfully. Furthermore, you can communicate with all merchants in your portfolio or target specific merchants with information on value-adds that address their specific pain points or help them keep up with industry trends.
With guided digital workflows, you can cross-sell and upsell:
- Merchant cash advances
- Loyalty programs
- Gift card solutions
- Fraud prevention services
The Benefits of Smart Cross-Selling & Upselling
The ability to upsell merchant services with digitalized processes empowers you to overcome the pain points associated with traditional processes –and without involving your MID-focused sales team make cross-sell and upsell offers consistently to all merchants you determine and based on a regular cadence that makes sense for your merchants. Additionally, with an offer review rate of 93%, you can increase brand and product awareness, introduce new value-added services to your market more quickly, and increase value-added sales by 10x than with traditional marketing and sales processes.
Meet the D2M™ Engagement Platform
More effective upselling and cross-selling and better merchant engagement ROI are within reach. B2B upsell strategies that include automating processes with an effective merchant engagement platform complement sales teams’ capacity with upsell and cross-sell offers you can count on.
Contact us for a demo to see how easy and successful cross-selling and upselling can be.