Just want to share my story back when I was working with AIG. Actually AIG Indonesia just started to cross sell many of its products in mid 2007; however it becomes a successful program not so long after implemented. Many existing clients bought many different insurance policies which previously they don't realize the importance
Behind this success story there are a lot of hard works of market research of knowing what our clients’ need. We don’t want to scare the clients or make them angry by selling the product that they don’t need, right? We also realized that our clients or customers in general, are smart people that usually did research of their own hence the additional products offered to them should be in-line with the research. AIG did it by breaking down each of client’s business into small details and try to open communication door as widely as possible (with clients and also between employees).
AIG also conducted regular product training for its employee. This also supports the success of cross-selling in terms of product knowledge. Hence we would know the appropriate products for certain type of clients.
As a conclusion, knowing your product and your client is success key for cross selling and another important point is to manage effective communication with co-workers to search for opportunities and with clients to change it into money.
2 comments:
That's one very good example of customer-oriented strategy there.
It takes me quite long to think of good ones in Thailand because most of them are just copying what other companies in other countries have done before, especially the companies that are established from other countries.
One that I can think of very quickly is 7-11 where they tried to make people use cards for purchasing like in Japan. However, they failed badly because they never understand the purchasing behavior of Thai consumers.
Another example would be Dentsu in Thailand (where I've been interned few years ago). They rarely get any new customers. What they do are just sticking to the old partners that existed from Japan such as Toyota and Ajinomoto. This is why Dentsu is not the no.1 in Thailand.
Like Dimas and Pshanin said, knowing customers very well ensure the business success in the long term. In my country, a soft drink production company (Alpine Company) started to produce soft drinks for about 20 years. This company is one of the successful businesses.
While it was in the inception of business, they only emphasize on the soft drink market to penetrate the market by advertising and to understand the potential and existing customers by hiring a research company. Accordingly, it was success in the market but the company did not stop the research program to know customer behavior more and more. After 10 years, the company noticed that they can produce other product which is purified water.
Actually, market for purified drinking water can be said saturated. But Alpine decided to start purified water production as a strategic business unit by the reliable customer behavior research. It is also success unbelievably because the company differentiate the product by means of packaging, distribution and even service itself. Because of its product and service, existing success companies have been suffered and their market share have been taken by Alpine.
By that reasons, every business have to know their customer very well if they can go into successful areas and they should keep on doing marketing research to know their customers required.
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