Feedbackly.com - Very effective cross-selling for shopping centers—a customer experience guru tells you how
As a global growth hacker for over seven years, I know that consistently achieving major new growth requires a holistic approach to the marketing, sales and business practices of a company.
I’m always looking for new insights, so I am very pleased when I encounter professionals like Jaakko Männistö, a customer experience (CX) guru from Scandinavia.
I have published several of his insightful articles.
Today we’re talking about shopping center and cross-selling.
—Christian Dillstrom
WHAT CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT EFFECTIVE CROSS-SELLING FOR SHOPPING CENTERS?
I’VE HEARD ONLY SAD STORIES ABOUT THESE KINDS OF EFFORTS.
I don’t doubt it. I have experienced the problem firsthand. We have implemented a lot of customer-experience measuring devices in the biggest shopping center of Scandinavia.
And, to be honest, at first the cross-selling results were pitiful.
SO, THINGS DIDN’T WORK OUT IN THIS CASE.
WIN SOME, LOSE SOME, RIGHT?
On the contrary. I could not accept the failure; that’s never an option with me. Because there are always reasons for the failure.
By identifying and removing the causes of the failure, you can turn failure into success. It was not easy, and it took a long time for me to figure it out.
But now I know exactly how to help shopping centers cross-sell very effectively.
YOU HAVE MY ATTENTION.
WHAT IS THE SECRET OF MAKING IT WORK?
To put it simply: ownership. The customer has to have a sense of who is actually responsible for making the offer and fulfilling the offer.
Who owns it?
Some vague entity called “the shopping center” or “the mall”—or a particular store selling particular things?
Posting notices about cross-selling in the public spaces of shopping centers does not really tell costumers that anyone specific is responsible for the cross-selling offer.
So even many of the costumers who have acted to receive cross-selling offers—thus showing that they are open to spending more of their money on these offers—do not actually use them.
They wonder whether the offers are still valid.
But we do succeed in measuring customer experience while generating many sales with upsell offers presented at points along the customer journey in particular stores of different shopping centers.
So, it matters whether the prospective buyer receives the offer in a public space of a shopping center or in the context of a specific store.
The same customer-experience measurement and upsell offer
that works in a store won’t work in the public space.
SO, YOU JUST POST CROSS-SELLING NOTICES IN THE STORES OF SHOPPING CENTERS?
No, we do a lot more than that. To obtain really high sales conversion, we fill the stores with very low-cost but high-quality consumer engagement points.
To maximize the number of costumers, we “pay” them for taking the time to give us feedback by giving them a chance to win the latest iPhone in our monthly random drawing.
People love these kinds of contests, and they also love iPhones.
Also, there is a kind of magic to the customer-experience survey. Something happens when a person is asked to talk about his experience as a costumer.
He feels appreciated.
And this feeling results in greater sales conversion when it comes to the cross-selling offers that this customer is presented with.
That’s it. To be effective, shopping-center cross-selling must happens in the stores; and the way it happens is through measurement of customer experience.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS, THOUGH.
HOW DO YOU ACTUALLY GET THIS WORKING?
With a great customer success team. Our team helps the marketing and sales departments of shopping centers to get everything in place in the stores.
1. We handle the contracts, offering as many low-cost customer experience measuring points as possible.
2. We set the customer-experience queries and define the most suitable cross-selling offers. 3. And we continuously optimize the cross-selling offers.
What we need in return from shopping center management is their support and willingness to actively enlist stores to be a part of the cross-selling. If too few stores participate, the number of cross-selling offers will also be too few.
But that’s all we ask.
We require very little from the shopping center management or from the stores themselves; our customer success team will take care of things.
OKAY, SO IT’S EASY FOR SHOPPING CENTERS TO START DOING THIS.
BUT WHY WOULD THIS INTEREST THEM?
Because they want to make money.
There are two kinds of shopping centers:
1. those that charge a percentage of sales as part of the rent, and 2. those that charge only a fixed rent.
If you charge a percentage of sales as part of the rent, of course you want stores in your shopping center to increase their sales as much as possible.
Cross-selling helps make that happen.
But let’s say you charge the stores of your shopping center only a fixed rent. It’s going to be easier to rent space to new stores and it’s going to be easier to raise the rents of stores you already have if effective cross-selling is dramatically boosting the sales of the stores.
The shopping center wins either way.
If the stores make more money, the shopping center makes more money.
HOW MUCH WILL ALL THIS COST THE SHOPPING CENTER?
Nothing.
NOTHING?
Nothing. We charge participating stores for the cost of the service.
And we give them a great deal, because we want as many of them as possible to be a part of the cross-selling. We don’t charge the stores right away, though.
We give them 30 days of free service so that they can test our system at no risk.
No store will have to be left out of the cross-selling because the price of trying out our service is too great.
I’M SURE THAT MY SHOPPING-CENTER CLIENTS WOULD BE INTERESTED IN PURSUING THIS.
HOW DO THEY GET STARTED?
They just need to click here to book a free teleconference to get started.
BACKGROUND
Christian Dillstrom is a global growth hacker who has growth-hacked more than 10 percent of Fortune 500 companies over the last seven years. Mr. Dillstrom is responsible for over 100 marketing and sales innovations. Over 350 million of his marketing solutions are currently active on the Internet.
Every month, 18 million business people read his Growth Hacking articles at SlideShare. Click here to read them.
Mr. Dillstrom has founded and managed three global startups and has evaluated and consulted with over 300 startups around the globe since 1999.
To get in touch with Christian Dillstrom, book a free teleconference with him, please click here.
