Cold calling new prospects is like going on a blind date. Sure, it can be useful at times and it might actually lead to something long term, but more often than not, you’re repeatedly starting over from scratch.
A mentor once asked me, “If you walk into a case and don’t sell everything that’s in your bag, did you also leave your wallet behind?” Because if you aren’t offering your full portfolio to an existing customer, you’re actively leaving money on the table. That mantra has stuck with me ever since.
Later in my career, when I ran sales training for a division of a top 10 global MedTech company, I continually drove the value of cross-selling to our new sales hires. It increases customer loyalty and retention, and shortens the sales cycle, which are critical considerations in a highly competitive environment.
During our webinar on this topic, we ran a poll asking attendees how often they leverage cross-selling, and a majority responded that they only do it occasionally. That came as a surprise because simply utilizing your existing relationships for cross-selling can improve sales by 30%. At the same time, I’m well aware that there are challenges in trying to sell your entire product line to one provider. If there weren’t, everybody would be doing it.
One such challenge is that making a change can be difficult for physicians whether you’re offering them a revolutionary new technology, or just a different product for a procedure they’ve done thousands of times. With how important every single surgery is to their respective patients, it’s not hard to understand why surgeons are inclined to stay with what works for them.
The other factor that makes cross-selling a challenge is how most people have been trying to do it. I know I used to go from facility to facility, staring at the OR board, trying to figure out where my opportunities were. Of course, I could only see what was literally right in front of me. But now thanks to AcuityMD, you can see where your available whitespace is at the click of a button.
Just by looking at your current product users in Targeting and toggling on the Cross-sell feature, you can see the procedure volume opportunity for the rest of your portfolio in seconds. Not only that, you can also see how much of a doctor’s business you actually have on your sold product. If it’s not 100%, that’s not quite a cross-selling opportunity by definition, but it’s an opportunity nonetheless.
The Peer Networks feature in the AcuityMD platform can be another powerful tool for your cross-selling plan. As discussed above, being able to leverage your existing relationships with a product user is a tremendously valuable factor in cross-selling, but as we also noted, physicians can be resistant to change, even if they know you well.
Right within a provider’s profile in AcuityMD, you can access their Peer Network and instantly see if they have a peer that can be a champion for you. That will increase trust and lower resistance.
How quickly and easily you can find both available opportunities and potential champions for your product ties into the final factor that makes cross-selling such an effective tactic to me - speed. If my sales cycle is normally 6 months factoring in every step from introduction to close, imagine if I can eliminate 4-5 of those steps and shorten that cycle. That timeframe can be critical as the year is running out and quotas loom large.
If you aren’t regularly using cross-selling as a tactic, identify your longest-standing relationships and see what else you can deliver to them. I think you’ll be surprised how much opportunity is out there just waiting for you.
Kristina Meyer
Director of Sales, Growth Accounts
AcuityMD
