Читать книгу Never Say Sell - Tom McMakin - Страница 17

This is why we hate the word upselling in connection to expanding our engagement with a client. Saying “May I supersize that for you, Ma'am?” smacks of manipulation and the power of hidden suggestion.

Cross-selling, too, is a word often found in books written about how to more deeply engage with clients. The problem is we are not sure what cross-selling means, exactly. When we cross-sell, are we offering different capabilities to a client, or are we offering the same capabilities across the client organization to different buyers within that organization?

Rather than borrowing words from the world of product sales that are not a perfect fit with expert services, let's start over and actually describe what we are trying to do.

What if we flipped the questions “How should we upsell?” and “How can we cross-sell?” to the much simpler “How can we help?” Even that simple word change invites a mental shift away from a transaction and toward a relationship that looks more like a friendship, encouraging us to imagine what we would do if our client's well-being was our highest priority, which – returning to Walt – is exactly our job.

A couple of additional thoughts about language: We think about ourselves being part of a profession that includes consultants, accountants, lawyers, engineers, and strategists. Rather than repeat that long string, we will refer to those in our profession as “experts” or “expert services providers.” These will serve as umbrella terms to describe those who, like us, offer services built on trust and credibility.

Finally, in addition to the interviews we conducted for this book, we've decided to tell some of our own stories. These stories reflect our collective experience, and they are based on real people and companies we have worked with over the past 25 years. Some names and identifying details of the individuals and companies involved have been changed.

Enough preamble, though, let's dig in.