So you have some clients. That's great! 6-12 months go by, and things are going swimmingly. You're meeting your goals, your clients are happy, and things are status quo. Well isn't that great! But, you're missing something...what possibly could it be? The UPSELL. A relatively simple concept, yet daunting to most. Why would you try and squeeze more money out of a great client that you are performing well for? Well, if that's your mindset, there's the second thing you are doing wrong.
The upsell is tricky; it's not about milking dollars, it's about showing your client why they are your client, providing inside strategy and knowledge to say " you need this." And with that, here are the 5 most important steps to remember about upselling:
Have A Plan
You cannot come out "guns a blazin" when trying to upsell. This process can take months to come to fruition. That's why you always need to have a plan. Whether that plan comes in the form of an annual marketing plan and timeline, or a specific campaign statistic to help bolster your point to upsell. Let's say you see the necessity in integrating a client's Salesforce portal with their marketing platform to get better visibility through automation. Be able to show them why this needs to happen, show them any disconnect between the marketing and sales team, show them the urgency to spend money to make this happen.
The "One Time Cost" Versus "Upping The Retainer"
Not every upsell is the same (obvi...). At Revenue River, we have two separate buckets an upsell could fall under. The one time sell, or the increase in retainer upsell. An integration of your sales CRM to align with your marketing platform is most likely a one time fee, although a much bigger project, once it's done, it's done. Scheduling a press release for a client through PR Newswire, once again, probably going to be a one time fee, unless this is an ongoing marketing action. Adding Growth Driven Design into your clients scope of work is a great example of expanding a retainer. GDD is great to continue building on your website with the ever expanding discovery and strategy process, that can easily stretch across months and months of work.
Presenting The Need To The Client
Although this may seem like one of the easier steps, it really isn't. There is a right time and a wrong time to bring up a potential upsell opportunity. If your company is anything like ours, you will have weekly or bi-weekly client status calls. These calls should follow a pretty strict agenda. These calls CAN be used to bring up an upsell opp, but I would advise against it. An upsell is a big deal, and should be the main focus of conversation when you are discussing additional billing and what it could do for an organization. My suggestion would be to bring it up initially on your weekly call, stating that you want to schedule an additional call to discuss the prospective upsell campaign. This will help ensure that the focus is solely on the upsell, making sure that everyone's minds are in the correct frame.
Get The Correct Pricing
So you've had the discovery call for the upsell, the client is interested, now comes the fun-ish part. The pricing of the upsell is always full of conversation, and if you've had previous experience with this type of pricing, it should be an easy one. But, how you present it to the client is important. We have an upsell document that helps outline what the client will be receiving, and by when, and for how much. It's not just an email that a client receives saying "hey here is what it costs...k bye". A clean document, that must be signed by both parties, is the absolute must in order to remain professional. It doesn't need to be much, in fact, it shouldn't. Even if we are talking an expansion of their current retainer, it's very easy to outline what the new monthly deliverables will look like in one to two pages.
Of course you will run into some unique situations, but I can almost guarantee that if you follow these 5 steps, you will effectively, and sometimes even successfully achieve what you are setting out to do. Showing your clientele that you truly care for the success of their campaigns can be shown exponentially through your comfort level to reach out and say "hey, you need this, this is going to help your campaign" (that sounded very short and dumb, but you catch my drift). If you are ready to kick your marketing up a notch, and even the opportunity to be upsold by myself, get in touch.
