Unlocking Growth Opportunities: New Revenue from Cross Sell & Upsell
The channel partner business has an ever-shifting landscape; vendors (product manufacturers) change, products change, revenue models change but one thing which is constant is the need to find more business, revenue and hence the growth. Over the years channel partners sell products to thousands of customers. But how often this past sales data, i.e., installed base (IB) is utilized effectively to generate more business for their organization? – Well, the answer is rarely!
This blog focuses on how the historic sales transaction data i.e. installed base (IB)can be used to increase revenue and the profit margins for the channel partners.
One of the most often over-looked way of generating new business is to look within the organization. Acquiring a new customer is expensive because of the substantial costs of marketing campaigns, sales and promotions whereas existing customers have already been through this initial and expensive funnel and thus tend to be the most profitable ones for the company.
Stats suggest that acquiring a new customer revenue is anywhere 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining and generating recurring and incremental revenue from an existing one.
Over the years channel partners have been selling products to thousands of customers and this data can turn out to be a gold mine for the partners if mined correctly! But still, the usage of installed base data if often overlooked. This is because though many channel partners have adopted CRM system, they have not fully embraced the digital transformation of their business and sales practices. Understanding your Installed Base at the right time and being able to show value to your existing customers is the key to success.
The latest of the technologies such as Big Data Analytics, Data Mining combined with Machine Learning can sift through the terabytes of install base and can provide very useful insight into existing customers and new leads to sell different products to them.
Channel partners can utilize their historical sales transaction data in the following areas:
Renewals – Traditional product maintenance services, cloud services, SaaS and other product subscription services, all of them require renewals and these are good source of recurring revenue for partners. Typically, these renewal services do not have very high margins however these are easier revenue because of existing relationship with the customers. Many times, channel partner sales reps are busy pursuing net new opportunities and some of these low dollar renewal opportunities slip off to their competition.
Product Refresh – The usual lifespan of a hardware/software product is anywhere between 4 to 6 years. Once you sell a product to your customer, ideally you should go back to that customer when Product End of Life (EOL) event nears and offer a new version of that product as a refresh. How often do you do that? Stats suggest that 30-35% of the customers refresh their products when the product’s EOL gets announced. So, is your competition eating your lunch?
Cross-sell / Upsell – With smart data collection, focus on customer behavior analytics and technologies like machine learning, the time is now to focus on cross-selling and upselling which helps channel partners to generate more revenue. Through a customer journey-based and data-driven approach, channel partners can find new cross-sell and upsell opportunities that can increase revenue, retain customers and build customer loyalty.
Finding white spaces – White Spaces are untapped business opportunities; machine learning techniques analyze the partner’s existing install-base and find these customer-specific untapped opportunities. White Space analysis discovers a specific relation between customers, their vertical, their region, their existing products and finds the probability of them buying the new products. Once armed with the data, channel partners can prioritize their target customer list and win more deals.
Net New Logos across vendors – With efficient and proper analytics of customers historic sales data (IB), new customers (new logos) across vendors can be identified. Typically products from different complementary vendors are aligned together to build, deploy and operationalize any IT infrastructure Past sales data can unearth selling opportunities across different vendors; and channel partners can introduce new vendors’ products to their existing customers.
Are you ready to utilize your Installed Base data and uncover new sales opportunities with your existing customers?
Identify Install-base-driven new business opportunities and sell more using Yagna iQ Smart Leads product suite. Understand and get to know more with https://www.yagnaiq.com/vendor-maximize-revenue-cross-sell-upsell/ or email us at customer.success@yagnaiq.com