How Bigin's CrossSell Genie automates cross-selling

What cross-selling means for a small business

Cross-selling is recommending products or services from your catalog that complement something a customer has already bought. A customer who buys a camera might also need a memory card and a carrying case. Suggesting those at the right moment helps the customer and brings in more revenue without sourcing a new lead.

It helps to separate cross-selling from upselling, since the two often get mixed up. Cross-selling points a customer toward complementary products. Upselling moves them to a higher tier or a larger version of the same product. Both depend on understanding what the customer is trying to do.

Selling to someone who already trusts you is easier than starting from scratch. In Marketing Metrics, Paul Farris and his co-authors estimate the probability of selling to an existing customer at 60 to 70 percent, compared with 5 to 20 percent for a new prospect. Your existing customers are the warmest audience you have, and cross-selling is how you serve them more.

Why the timing of a cross-sell matters

Cross-selling works best when the customer is still engaged with you, which is usually right after they buy something. At that point, they are thinking about the purchase and are open to a related suggestion. Wait too long and the moment passes.

The hard part is acting on that timing by hand. When a rep closes a deal, they move straight to the next one, and the follow-up recommendation is easy to miss. This is where the CrossSell Genie helps, by reacting the instant a deal is marked closed won.

What the CrossSell Genie does

The CrossSell Genie runs automatically whenever a deal reaches the closed-won stage. The moment a rep closes a deal, the agent looks at the product tied to it and works out which other items the customer is likely to want. It bases this on how relevant the products are to each other and on patterns in what customers tend to buy together.

It does this without a manual review step. The agent prepares a recommendation and either emails it to the customer or saves it as a draft for you to check, depending on how you set it up.

Watch the full walkthrough

The video below walks through the entire setup on-screen, from finding the agent in settings to reviewing the drafted email. Watch it to see each step inside Bigin before you build your own.

How to set up the CrossSell Genie in Bigin

Set up runs through Bigin's settings and takes a few minutes.

• Go to settings and open the AI tab, then find the CrossSell Genie and click Try this agent.
• On the authorization page, give the agent permission to access your Bigin data and act on it, then click continue.
• Choose the organization where you want to deploy the agent, then click Continue.
• Assign a role and profile to the agent. Make sure that role and profile carry every permission the agent needs to do its job.
• Click save, then continue, and give the agent a name. CrossSell Genie works fine, or pick something more personal. Click done to return to Bigin.
• Create a rule that specifies how the agent should operate. Select the pipeline and sub-pipeline you want it to watch. Choosing the sales pipeline means the agent runs whenever a deal in that pipeline reaches the closed-won stage.
• Pick the product fields the agent should read as inputs, such as product name and product category. The agent analyzes the data in those fields to build its recommendation.
• Add a knowledge source. Click upload a doc and select a file that describes your products and how they relate, including which products pair well, bundle suggestions, and accessory matches for what your business sells.
• Choose how recommendations reach customers, by direct email or saved draft, and set the email address the recommendations send from.
• Click save. The rule is now active.

The knowledge source matters more than it looks. The CrossSell Genie gets more accurate when you give it a clear product document to reference, so it is worth writing one that reflects how your products fit together.

Choosing how recommendations reach your customers

You have two delivery options. The agent can send the recommendation straight to the customer, or save it as a draft so you can read it before it goes out. Saved drafts suit a small team that wants someone to review the message first. Direct send suits a setup you trust to run on its own once the knowledge source is solid.

Seeing the CrossSell Genie at work

Once the rule is live, the agent works inside your normal pipeline. Say a negotiation succeeds and a rep moves the deal to closed won. Open that record, go to the Emails tab, and you will find the recommendation the agent has drafted. It has looked at what the customer bought, checked your product knowledge base, and written a set of suggestions for that specific customer. If the email reads well, send it.

Managing or pausing the agent

Managing the agent is straightforward. Go to settings, open the AI tab, and click Manage. From there, you can edit the rule, delete it, or pause it for a while if you want to stop recommendations temporarily.

FAQs

What triggers the CrossSell Genie?

A deal reaching the closed-won stage in the pipeline and sub-pipeline you assigned to the agent.

Does it email customers automatically?

Only if you choose direct send when you set up the rule. You can instead have it save every recommendation as a draft for review.

What is the difference between cross-selling and upselling?

Cross-selling recommends complementary products that complement what a customer has bought. Upselling moves a customer to a higher tier or a larger version of the same product.

What does the agent base its recommendations on?

The product fields you select as inputs, the knowledge source you upload, and patterns in what customers tend to buy together.