For a marathon runner, the second half of the race is where a judicious start and ample preparation pay off. It’s also the time to maximize efficiency. Sales professionals in the second half of the 2022 fiscal year may know the feeling. Having exploded out of the start of the year, now comes a time where maintaining connections with clients is crucial. Each opportunity is precious, each step forward an act of will.
It’s a good opportunity to reflect on the first half of the year and to ask questions like: How can I maximize the value of my client interactions going forward?
For Cybba Account Director Cameron Collier, one key to maximizing success with sales partners is focusing on a company’s needs. By addressing the specific problems facing a particular company and shifting from a transactional approach — selling widgets — to a problem-solving approach, Collier explained, a sales professional is better able to bring their client’s goals and their own into alignment.
“In today’s SaaS and tech environment, there has been a shift in this dynamic, leaning more toward a consultative and solutions-based methodology,” Collier said. “This shift is the difference between solving a problem and selling a product. By solving a problem, you become an invaluable part of your client’s business and open the door to innumerable opportunities.”
At Cybba, Collier helps e-commerce clients with their digital marketing and advertising needs. Founded in 2017, Cybba uses in-depth customer segmentation, digital display ads, onsite optimization, email remarketing technologies and other tools to design and develop custom campaigns in conjunction with the company’s clients.
Read on to learn more about opportunities to upsell and the strategies Collier employs to better service his clients, build trust and add to the lifetime value of his sales partnerships.
What’s one strategy you’ve found to be particularly successful when upselling an existing customer?
Successfully managing customers is the life blood of any gainful company regardless of the space they operate in. When partnering with customers in the B2B space, it’s important to have a complete understanding of why they’re partnering with you and the business goals they’re hoping to achieve.
Remember that customers have partnered with you for a very particular reason. By fully understanding how each of your company’s solutions help your partners and proactively adapting your strategy to better meet your client’s goal, an account manager can begin effectively identifying solutions based upsell opportunities.
Recently, a particular B2B partner was faced with the business issue of having to scale up the hiring of qualified candidates to a certain sector of their business. They leveraged Cybba to help drive strategic awareness for the openings and improve application submission rates. This customer was nationwide but had specific needs for certain locations. By understanding their problem, we positioned a strategy that would more appropriately target these areas and leveraged data-proven channels that these qualified job seekers would more likely engage in on the web. This consultative solution led to a 25 percent incremental upsell and, more importantly, an uplift in qualified candidate applications.
When trying to upsell a B2B customer, what’s one approach customer success representatives and account managers should actively avoid?
When working through expanding a B2B customer’s accounts, the most important approach that all customer success reps and account managers should actively avoid is what I call a “solutions dump.” Understanding your customer’s goals and the problems they’re hoping you can solve is the most crucial part of managing customer relationships.
During a “solutions dump,” a customer success rep or account manager runs through each of your company’s capabilities and solutions hoping that one catches your customer’s eye. It’s the equivalent of throwing something at the wall and seeing if anything sticks. The most successful CSMs and account managers will have identified the main objective of the partnership and positioned strategic solutions that further get at the shared goal. By tying a strategic upsell opportunity back to the goal of the partnership, customer success reps and account managers will drastically increase the likelihood of securing incremental spend.
This consultative and targeted approach not only improves upsell generation, but also builds a foundation of trust with your customer. You are telling them that you fully understand the problems they are trying to solve.
By solving a problem, you become an invaluable part of your client’s business.”
What’s a key difference between B2B upselling methods and those traditionally used to upsell customers in a B2C business?
Traditionally, upselling — and sales in general — has been about meeting personal quotas or goals. In today’s SaaS and tech environment, there has been a shift in this dynamic, leaning more toward a consultative and solutions-based methodology. This shift is the difference between solving a problem and selling a product. By solving a problem, you become an invaluable part of your client’s business and open the door to innumerable opportunities. Understanding your customer’s business goals and sharing impactful recommendations can result in account managers and customer success reps evolving from a point of contact to a trusted strategic partner.
