Cross-selling is big in the classifieds arena. Up-selling and over-selling are also popular in this industry.
But now there’s a new kid on the block—bundle selling is where it’s at in order to keep up with today’s digital generation as they grow older.
I like to shop at David Jones. It may have something to do with the fact that DJ’s gave me a charge card when I was still at university while every other financial institution was far too sensible to do so.
I especially like grazing in the men’s fragrances area where you can walk in smelling like a businessman and walk out smelling like another businessman.
On one occasion I was sliding by the counter avoiding eye contact with the sales staff. The Trussardi Sport caught my eye. As I was walking through a generous fog, a delightful young sales woman who had been tracking me for some time caught my eye. She asked me if I had tried the Davidoff Cool Water. I replied that I was already the proud owner of a bottle of Cool Water.
Thinking I had gotten out of that nicely, she immediately slipped into cross-sell mode. Here is how the conversation went.
“Have you tried the pre-electric then?” she enquired.
“No. I am a confirmed non-believer in pre-electric” I replied. “The whole idea of putting liquid on your face before applying an electric razor just seems like lunacy to me.”
I thought that would be the end of that, but she bounces right back at me, stating with deep conviction that pre-electric was God’s gift to blokedom because it allows the razor to sail freely over the skin without stretching it this way and that. Then she leaned forward and conspiratorially advised the upside of this product feature: “That way you won’t get all jowly later on in life”.
Checkmate. I did the only thing you can do at a time like that. I offered her a job.
Cross-selling usually presents as an option when you have a customer all jazzed up about the last thing you sold them and you call them again to sell them something more expensive. The idea is that you leverage your relationship. For some sales people, managing customer relationships for profit is purely instinctive. Others need a $2m customer relationship management database just to remember their names. My name must be on a couple of these. I am always being phoned up by some clown who thinks $790 per head is a good price for a ticket to the State of Origin.
In the classifieds space, cross-selling is really big. You ring up your local paper to sell Aunty Mavis’s piano which she regrettably left you and you wind up off-loading the entire contents of your house to someone in Bendigo.
The problem here is that every community paper you didn’t advertise in rings you up. In between these calls, piano wholesalers who presume that your ad didn’t work ring and offer you derisory amounts as if it was your lucky day.
The same thing happens when you try to sell a car, only the wholesalers are a lot sleazier. They spam you with a promising text message just when you have given up hope, but it is downhill from the moment they say hello. Those CRM databases can be a real pain.
Up-selling is what happens when you buy a car. You walk in planning to buy a car for $19,990 drive-away and you wind up spending $40,000. In the media space, up-selling is what happens pretty much as soon as you answer the phone. The final phase of the up-sell is when you get asked how much money you have and you get an offer for all of it.
Under-selling is where you assume that your world-class inventory will get you over the line. This has become fairly rare in the media. Media owners cottoned on to the idea long ago that as soon as advertisers discover something that consumers really love, you get to price it by thinking up a number. The last time a media owner under-sold something was in 1894.
Over-selling is what happens when you do the rounds with a property you reckon is red hot yet well-priced, but no-one agrees with you. You log on to your CRM database and all it comes up with is people who have already said no. This last happened in the media at 4.45pm yesterday.
Bundled selling is where it is all at today. In the developing media landscape, bundled selling requires the skills of a specialist generalist. Quality sales people working in environments like PBL and Seven/Pacific need to develop a communicable understanding of the new cross-media elements, or they have to turn up to every meeting with a posse of specialist specialists. I’ve been in a pitch like this. Everyone was very nice, but I didn’t know who to call back.
It can only get more complicated as today’s digital generation start earning real money. Their television viewing is selective and their newspaper reading is erratic; they roam the web at will with your credit card so they are sure to roam it with their own later; and they listen to their iPod or their MP3-enabled mobile which kind of makes your radio a bit irrelevant.
So if you are selling a single medium it is definitely time to multi-skill or you can probably look forward to being run down by a phalanx of cross-sellers sooner than you think.
If you own a single medium, it might be time to find some new friends. I refer any doubters to the headlines of June 20 which announced a strategic alliance between Optus and Australia’s most formidable media owner PBL, which already has a famous squirrel grip on TV, magazines and online.
