How to Solve More Problems for Your Clients with Upselling and Cross-Selling

**Editor’s Note: This session preview originally posted ahead of the scheduled Channel Partners Conference & Expo in March. After the world’s largest channel event was postponed due to COVID-19, we repurposed this session for Channel Partners Virtual, Sept. 8-10. Eclipse Telecom’s Dave Dyson will present this program, now dubbed “Harnessing the Power of Your Relationships in the COVID Era and Beyond,” Wednesday, Sept. 9, at 12:10 p.m. ET.**

If you want to be a part of the rising tide among channel partners and learn how to sell more to your existing customer base in today’s market, you probably need to change your thinking and be bold.

The truth of the matter is that a new field of competitors has come into your backyard and they’re not stuck in the siloed selling of the past. At the same time, customers have changed, too, and if they’ve trusted you for your IT or telecom expertise, they’re probably eager to hear more about how you can help run their business more efficiently with additional technology. But how do you do that? And particularly now in a COVID-19 world?

Eclipse Telecom’s Dave Dyson

During his presentation at Channel Partners Virtual, Dave Dyson, CEO at Eclipse Telecom, is going to walk attendees through the upsell process and lay out a plan to turn your biggest fans into your growth engine.

In January, Channel Partners got to talk to Dyson about his upcoming presentation to provide some insight on what attendees can expect to learn.

Channel Partners: Upselling and cross-selling are topics that have been around for a long time. Why do partners need to hear about again?

Dave Dyson: Because old habits die hard. A lot us came up in the space developing expertise in one silo or one area. I’ll wind this back 10 or 15 years — the PBX guy sold the PBX, the telco channel partner sold the circuits, the WAN, the internet, the PRI, the POTS lines, etc. The data hardware VAR sold the servers, the Cisco routers and switches, the security guy sold the security. What’s happened over the years is that the walls between those silos started to break down.

Voice became an application on the data network. You can’t talk about the data network anymore without talking about security – or for that matter, you can’t talk about anything without talking about security. So as the walls started to come down, the client was starting to think about changing their buying patterns, and not “how do I buy a product from a product specialist in their silo but who is good enough to help me navigate how to put together all of these puzzle pieces to make all my stuff work and provide a great end user experience?”

CF: And, the channel partner?

DD: They’re still saying, “Well, I know how to sell PBXes” or “I know how to sell Cisco stuff “and I want to keep doing that because I’ve made a living for 20 years. The marketplace is forcing the change, slowly but surely.

That siloed selling mentality is very dyed in the wool and a lot of folks have had trouble making the pivot from how to staff your team to you compensate your team. How do you go from selling gross margin type products like hardware to subscription-based, monthly recurring revenue style products? How do you build your business cash flow doing that, and so on?

We all get stuck in our comfort zone of, “I know the things I know and I’m really good at the things I know. I want to keep making money the way I’ve always made it,” but unfortunately, the …