Burn the Churn

Staying on top of your churn rate—the metric showing how many customers leave your business over time—is vital to your success as a high-performance seller or as a leader of a team. But many teams look at the task all wrong. They assume the solution is simply a growth exercise. In fact, the secret to burning the churn is by treating it as a growth acceleration activity…one that includes skillfully tackling retention rates.

Here’s how to understand the distinction. Imagine you’re training to be a runner and need to improve your time. A growth mindset alone would say the solution is to simply run faster and more often…only to later realize that this is a one-way ticket to injury and frustration. But with a growth acceleration mindset, that same runner gets into cross-training activities. They improve overall performance by focusing on where they are most effective—retaining all their strengths—so that they can fully negate shortcomings in other areas.

You must apply this to your team and your business. With cross-selling (just like with cross-training), you better and stronger with your existing base of customers. And then you grow. Not the other way around.

Here are seven proven ways to get started on burning the churn for better sales performance today.

1. Understand the risks at stake

Your churn risk is a sliding scale that depends on how much you’re selling to each customer. A client of mine puts it this way: a customer that buys one product from you is at 40% risk of leaving for a competitor later. If they buy two products, that risk drops to 25%. It gets even better. If that same customer starts buying three or more products from you, that risk drops to 1%.

2. Name each of your opportunities

Cross-selling is not an abstract exercise. You must know exactly how much more you can sell to each of your customers. It varies because everyone’s business needs are different. Get straight about the numbers by digging into your CRM and looking at the data for every customer. That’s the poorly guarded secret (and yet seldom emulated) behind why top sellers always know which customer have the greatest cross-selling potential. Know your numbers cold.

3. Focus like it’s a diet

Just like the way an athlete is selective about their nutrition, a high-performance seller is choosy about where to focus their cross-selling activities. You must create a plan to target your best customers—the ones that the numbers tell you have the greatest potential for buying more from you. Just as important, prioritize the opportunities that are most likely to close within this fiscal year. The work you can accomplish now matters the most.

4. Get inside

Cross-selling is about more than just expanding your territory. It’s about drilling deeper into your existing customer’s org chart. Build your network through insider selling. That means you must go wide and deep within your contact list. Whomever you are dealing with today or tomorrow might not be the same person you did last year. Count on turnover. Just as important, expect to discover that it’s an entirely different person responsible for decision making when you expand your selling into different areas of your customer’s organization. You’ll only learn this, of course, once you get insider selling working for you.

5. Value is everything

As a seller, it’s your job to show your customer the value they are getting for their dollar when they buy from you. Value-based selling is the quantification of what you say your product will do. That means looking at each feature in what your customer bought from you and defining the benefits they enjoy. Your customer won’t do this for you! And it’s an essential first step before you can even begin to think about having a cross-selling conversation with them. Value earns you that right.

6. Ensure optimization first

You can’t cross-sell and emphasize value to your customer unless you’re sure they’re using their current products to the fullest extent possible. Remember: they bought from you because they either wanted to improve something or prevent something. Show them! By unlocking the full optimization of a purchase, you put meaning behind your promises. People don’t forget that.

7. Initiate a business review

Undertake a business review with the customer you want to cross-sell. Do this to highlight the value behind what you’re selling and explore ways that you can increase the number of people in their organization who would also benefit from the solution you offer. This review entails sitting down with them, reviewing their data, defining the value and asking their opinions to gauge what matters most to them.

Get each of these actionable steps working for you today to start burning the churn. Remember: growth plus retention equals results. No exceptions. When you get this right, you’re using the same resources to accelerate your sales. That’s why it’s the smart way—and the only way—to grow your business