Amazon has been cross-selling, up-selling, substituting and upgrading shoppers since 2006. Amazon attributes up to 35% of its revenue to cross-selling. Amazon claims that companies that up-sell and cross-sell on their site generate up to 10% additional revenue, although the average is more like one to four percent.
So, why has it taken the electrical distribution industry so long to get on board? The biggest challenge was structuring the data so that it could be leveraged to benefit distributors and customers.
That’s why NAED and DATAgility teamed up to create X-Check, a tool that provides immediate access to data about 400,000 products from more than 600 manufacturers.
X-Check is a subscription-based service that integrates with a company’s ERP and e-commerce platforms to convert opportunities into sales.
Are you missing opportunities?
Every call, log in, counter or showroom visit, and bid is an opportunity to increase revenues by cross-selling, up-selling, selling replacement parts, offering substitutes for non-stock items, replacing obsolete items, and suggesting accessories and complementary products.
X-Check puts all those product relationships at your fingertips. “Say a customer is buying a voltage tester. When the counter staff pulls up the product, they’ll see the tester, replacement leads, and accessory hip holster. They’ll also see complementary products and substitutes,” explains DATAgility CEO and Co-Founder Denise Keating. “It’s really about converting an opportunity into a sale for your company.”
Any salesperson who has ever missed out on a bid or submitted an incomplete bid because they didn’t have time to call, email, text, or search through catalogs, apps, or websites to find item numbers will appreciate X-Check. X-Check is one central location where users can cross-reference competitors’ products against their products.
Standard Electric Supply was an early adopter of X-Check and part of the initial beta-test group. Now, X-Check is a necessary, time-saving tool for their sales support staff, account managers and engineers.
“We had been using a competing product, but the data couldn’t be imported into our ERP system. It was good information, but we still had to look everything up,” shared Customer Service Manager Jeff Frisk. “Also before X-Check, the engineering group had to enter the products into the system manually. Keeping those up-to-date was quite a big task. And we didn’t have a complete substitute product file; it only included the products somebody happened to notice. X-Check is more complete. We have substitutes for just about every commodity product in our system.”
Is X-Check right for you?
For just hundreds of dollars a month, distributors can increase their sales volume by thousands, or tens of thousands per month. Pricing is on a sliding scale, based on your annual revenue, not SKUs, data, or the number of users. Monthly subscriptions start at about $350 and are affordable for distributors of all sizes.
To determine if X-Check is right for you, Keating has a special offer for NAED members. “Send us a product data file — a list of all the products you carry. We’ll tell you how many of your products we have in our database — what we call ‘product coverage.’ Also, if you tell us your annual sales volume, we’ll give you a price quote. You’ll be able to see for yourself the value of X-Check.”
How to get started.
Working with a distributor’s IT department, it takes only about two weeks to implement X-Check. DATAgility works with a number of ERP systems and e-commerce solutions so a customer can use the system 24 hours a day.
If the IT department is backlogged, but the sales team wants the benefits of X-Check immediately, DATAgility will provide an “Advance Smart Sheet”—an Excel spreadsheet with the same data that will be imported into the ERP. It has the same features and functionality and can be sent overnight.