Page 53 - Banking Finance December 2023

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financial challenges in trying to meet their cross-selling centric to customer-centric approach. This approach is also
prospective. To cross-sell to an existing customer, there must known as wealth management of the customer or one-stop
be sales across business units. "Cross-selling has become a shopping offers. Customer demands the financial services
necessity, for many banks and financial institutions. depending upon its growing financial maturity. Thus, each
Everybody wants to do it, spends a lot of time and energy customer's preferences and receptiveness to cross-selling
planning to do it, but, at the end of the day, the results fall solicitations may vary time to time and the banks have to trail
far short of the goal". Organizations usually focus on core and anticipate these changes. Industries and types of businesses
processes, not customer needs, which create great are very diverse and intrinsically vary the type of cross-selling
potential for conflict. The reason many cross-selling and its conception varies as well. One company may consider
initiatives fail is not the strategy behind them, but rather cross selling as cross specialty selling, whereas another company
the strategy's implementation. may consider it as strategy of a one-solution provider Cross-
selling can also crop up on a cross-company basis.
In non-customer-focused organizations, the sales force is
structured according to product areas and individual business Cross Selling in Retail Banking
units, and salespersons likely have clear product At present Retail banking is facing the pressure of improving
responsibilities and incentive schemes that focus their the quality of service, along with Cost reduction to remain
efforts on one product area or business unit. In some cases,
competitive in a tremendous volatile and uncertain market.
organizations have relied too heavily on sophisticated
Improving customer service is essential for banks in the
customer relationship management technologies that were
current economic and market scenario, where product and
far more focused on segmentation of customers than asking price no longer provide a clear competitive base. The pivotal
for their business. When executed efficiently, cross-selling
role in delivering superior customer service is of distribution
can bring in some positive results such as augmented sales, channels as customer relations begin and end with these
better levels of customer satisfaction, loyalty, and a elevated channels. Nowadays along with providing the conventional
level of spending per customer.
banking services, banks have started offering a bouquet of
financial services to their customers, together with cross
Cross Selling and Up Selling selling of financial products. The main aim is to offer a one-
Up-selling and cross-selling can be a technique to profit stop shop for wide-ranging customers' financial needs.
generation for various business houses. Cross-selling and up-
selling are often puzzled with each other and used For this reason, many banks have started deploying
synonymously but in fact there is slight difference between customer relationship management systems not only to
the two types of selling techniques. Both help in profit retain the existing customers but also to attract new
generating by offering bouquet of products related to its main customers. For example, Banks not only sell core banking
product line, or numerous versions of the same product. Cross products (saving a/c, current a/c), but also sell additional
Selling is selling the customer supplementary or related products such as credit cards, insurance products, mutual
products. Some fields in which cross-selling is most obvious
include those of the banking and financial services industries.

For instance, a banking customer may visit a branch for
account checking and later is sold an investment or
insurance product. On the other hand, Up Selling is selling
the customer a more expensive version of the product. Here
the approach of seller is not concerned with selling an
additional product to generate additional commissions, but
rather with selling a higher-end version of the product the
customer originally came to buy.

Organizations may have Product Centric or Customer centric
approach. Efforts to cross sell must transform from product-

48 | 2023 | DECEMBER | BANKING FINANCE