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Cross-selling

Cross-selling

Verb

[kraas sel·luhng]

Cross-selling, in sales, is when a customer is persuaded to add an additional, complementary product to their purchase. Cross-selling is important because it boosts overall revenue and can also increase the customer's satisfaction since the related product serves to improve their experience with the product initially being purchased as well.

The key to cross-selling is o understand the customer's needs and anticipate a product that would help improve their experience with that product or service. Cross-selling is not effective and can lead to dissatisfaction is the complementary product is irrelevant, inappropriate or incompatible.

Cross-selling is similar to upselling, which is when a salesperson persuades a customer who is already making a purchase to opt for a more premium option.

An example of cross-selling in B2B SaaS would be a company that sells their CRM to a customer also marketing a document-management technology that would help support the function of that customer's business.

Example: Rick, a sales manager at a SaaS company for invoicing software had a big day. He made a sale of his company's software to a large client who wanted to improve the workflow of their accounting department. Rick also sweetened the deal by cross-selling a partner company's subscription management software.

More Partnership terms beginning with
C
Customer relationship management (CRM)

Noun

[kuh·stuh·mr ruh·lay·shuhn·shuhp man-ij-ment]

Customer relationship management, or CRM, is a software used to build and manage communication between a company and its customers or prospective customers. It's primarily used by sales, customer success and marketing teams to improve and streamline processes including lead tracking, customer segmentation information and task management.

CRMs are used to increase sales and improve retention by shortening the sales cycle, and monitoring and following up regularly with active customers. A good CRM tool will help attract, delight and engage in order to scale your B2B SaaS business.

Example: B2B SaaS companies use CRM (customer relationship management) software in their business as a centralized place to manage  connections with customers and prospects.

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Cannibalism

Noun

[canna-bal-izm]

Cannibalism (also called product or market cannibalism) occurs when a product released by a company competes for market share with an existing product of theirs. The new product "eats" demand for the old, reducing sales and profit of their existing product. Some amount of product cannibalism is expected with new product launches, and companies normally consider the financial risks and rewards of releasing new products carefully.

Cannibalism can result in overall positive or negative effects on a company's bottom line, and can be either intentional or unintentional. When it's intentional, it's referred to as a cannibalisation strategy.

Example: Leo's team released a new file sharing software, but it soon became apparent that the demand for their other file sharing softwares was plummeting in favor of the new release. They'd caused cannibalism by putting out a product that ate up demand for their other products.

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