The concept of cross-selling has waned in recent years on account of lackluster performance. Overall, the cross-selling success ratio in banking has hovered around 10%. Obviously, the cross-selling idea has not worked for most institutions, despite supporting it with best in class CRM solutions and other resources. What can they do to benchmark themselves against the leader?

The answer lies in right-selling. The right-selling concept differs from its predecessor in that it envisages offering the “right” (and not just any) product to the right customer, at the right time and price, through the right channel. In order to realize this, the bank must first align channels, products, processes, people and strategies, which can collectively help it to achieve its right-selling objectives.

Successful right-selling not only yields immediate business, but delivers long term advantage by way of improved customer stickiness and advocacy. This sets the ball rolling for a cycle of continuous customer engagement and sustained right-selling wherein one feeds the other. Right-selling also optimizes marketing spend by targeting the right communication to the right audience at the right time and place, replacing the carpet bombing approach of generic marketing campaigns.

In an attempt to boost profitability, banks try to push their less or unprofitable customers away from the branch towards cheaper, self-service channels. However, since these are not geared to improving cross-sales, the banks lose what little chance they had of improving product usage among these customers in a face to face interaction at the branch. Clearly, that negates any cost advantage the banks may gain by migrating users to low-cost modes.

Instead, the banks must endow their self-service channels with the “intelligence” to sense and act upon any right-selling opportunities that emerge to increase the contribution of lower-rung customers to the bottom-line. Striking the right balance between channel, product and pricing is the key, because all products cannot be sold to all customers on all channels – this is core concept of right selling.