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How to Increase Upsell and Cross-sell Revenue with Account-Based Marketing?

B2B Account Based Marketing

You are already sitting on a heap of gold – your existing customers.

Don’t wait for someone to address the opportunity that your customers already have with them. This can be fully utilized with the implementation of upselling and cross-selling.

One of the key channels of sales and the process of Account-based marketing (ABM) is to Upsell and Cross-sell. Both offer increase in revenues and the lifetime value of a customer. This simply translates into higher ROI.

The adage, a leading ad publication points out that, ‘most companies that adopt Account-Based Marketing increase their closing rates by over 30%, given how targeted their programs are.

We have identified some opportunities that could be identified in most scenarios. You could pick one or more of these tactics that fit your organization’s marketing environment.

ABM for B2B companiesOpportunities to Upsell and Cross-sell

1. Chatbox for customer support – If your website has a chatbox used to support customers with their queries, you could use this touchpoint to educate your customers about other products.

2. Invoicing – This is not just a statement of charges that you apply to your client, this is an opportunity that could be used to educate about new products and possible proposals. Use analytics to figure out their existing problems and offer solutions as products.

3. Review meetings – You could be connecting with your customer over a review meeting or call. Review meetings need not be always about status checks and next steps. Let the agenda also offer solutions for improving their business.

4. Newsletters – Owning an email communication is a must. Don’t let go of the real estate via email to talk about new product features, upgrades, premium solutions, and other selling opportunities.

5. Account relationship calls – Account-based marketing thrives on building strong relationships. These relationships require timely touch-base over calls. Listen to your customers and offer genuine solutions that benefit both your customer and your organization.

If you notice, there is no single person who will be communicating about new opportunities. It is the solution delivery team, customer support agents, accounts team, marketing team, and sales team involved in this effort. All come together to make it happen!

Now you know about the plausible opportunities that exist while using ABM. Next, let’s get down to the process of how exactly can you increase revenues, with upsell and cross-sell tactics as a part of ABM.

How to increase upsell and cross-sell revenue with Account-based marketing?

“All too often, the critical processes of cross-selling and upselling are left to chance in B2B organizations, which limits growth potential from current customers,” according to a recent presentation by SiriusDecision analysts Kerry Cunningham and Bob Peterson titled, “The Science of Cross-Sell and Upsell.”

Don’t let that happen to your business. Deliberate efforts always point to deliberate and tangible results.

We have a few reasons why upselling and cross-selling work great with Account-based marketing.

  • No lead gen effort – The huge effort of creating a fresh lead pipeline and other activities associated with lead gen do not exist. With ABM services, the lead gen process will be eliminated because you are dealing with your existing customers.
  • Relationships – You already have a relationship with your customer so, it also eliminates selling time to a great extent. You will be making some calculative and educated calls and you know who you are targeting. It becomes a lot easier to strike a conversation and build a context.
  • Decision maker – When you already know the decision maker, it keeps the sales cycle shorter, creating more likelihood for a sale to happen.

ABM ebookWith these advantages, we will step into the initial process

1. Use Insights – Customers are people who you already know. The good part about knowing them is that your account management and analytics team would have insights into their purchase behavior, their likelihood of using a solution, and their key problems. With this, you know what to sell to who. Your account management or CRM tool would have necessary integrations and features that would be able to provide such data. In fact, your team should ensure that these tools are configured for gathering such data. Using this purchase behavior of existing customers you can further create personas.

2. Target personas – You will be defining who exactly you will be reaching out to. Create a list of customers who will fit into the persona definition. Each persona is a different definition that you are assigning to your targets. Package personas based on their purchase behavior and insights that you receive. For instance, it could be CTOs from the manufacturing sector because that’s where your solution belongs. You could define it further by using the revenue range and need for the solution during a year.

3. Create Content – Now, you know who you are reaching out to. You need content that they can connect to. It is not a generic blast of email or an ad. In fact, at this stage, you could use programmatic tools to customize the ad that will be shown to a certain target group. Not only by the target group, but you will also need content customized to the channel of communication. For instance, you will create a different script for customer support associates, content for your newsletter, or a personalized note to the client.

4. Collaborate with teams – This is not the effort of either a single person or one team. It is a collaborative activity for all teams. The communication should resound in unison across teams. Talk about who your target is and what needs to be communicated to them with both sales and marketing teams and any other team that meets the customer touch points.

5. Automate outreach – You now know what reaches whom. Try and make it an automated process rather than a manual effort. Automation also further helps in attribution and gathering insights.

6. Measure and track – Automated processes provide deep insights on customers’ content consumption appetite, time relevance, preferences, possible recommendations, and other data points that help in a personalized approach. Use further insights to rebuild a cycle of upselling and cross-selling.

Most successful marketers who have reaped results out of Account-based marketing recommend that you ‘just get started’. This activity does not involve heavy investment. You can get started with a simple worksheet and a Linkedin account too. We also have a detailed process that tells you How to introduce Account-based marketing in your B2B inbound efforts.

Sales ebook

inbound marketing
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