Atomic Clocks
Time waits for no man. Keeping this mind, we set about inventing clocks to synchronize ourselves with lunar cycles. It was an impressive leap, beginning some 10,000 years ago when the Egyptians came up with sundials in 2100 BC. Sundials, or shadow clocks, first used by Sumerians, worked on the premise of measuring the length of shadows to deduce time of day. Weather played spoilsport as on cloudy days, and when the months changed, shadows would not correspond with the markings. The Romans tried to do better by pilfering Cleopatra’s Needles, the tools used by Egypt

Customers - Why Should They Buy From You?
There are a whole range of reasons why customers buy a product or service. They usually buy to solve either real or perceived problems. They want to move away from pain and towards pleasure. They want to feel better after having made the decision to buy a product or service than they did before.Customers will buy from you if you meet these criteria. However there are other reasons they will buy from you rather than your competitors.1 - If they think you're an expert and a specialist2 - If they think you're product or service is betterWhen I was sixteen and still at school, I worked in a department store on a Saturday. Cross selling was made easy for me then. For a while I worked in the menswear department. Someone came in to buy a shirt, and because all the related goods were displayed next to each other it was straightforward to ask whether the customer wanted a pair of cuff-links or a new tie to go with the shirt. If they bought a tie, the next cross sale was to suggest they also buy a spot-cleaner for the tie. A friend of mine worked Saturdays in a DIY store. Similar rules applied. Someone bought a tin of paint, and the cross sale opportunities were perhaps a paint brush; a brush cleaner; or even one of those implements to help keep lines straight. The basic rule to cross-selling then were - if you have a number of products to sell, group them together so that the customer doesn’t have too much of an effort in seeing the relationship between your products. That’s not to say that it will happen. Often the customer needs to be told about the relationship and have the idea planted verbally that they could buy more than what they originally came in for.

40 years later and the same rules apply. Trading on the Web has even made it possible to display not only your own diverse product range on the same page, but also relat

o each other it was straightforward to ask whether the customer wanted a pair of cuff-links or a new tie to go with the shirt. If they bought a tie, the next cross sale was to suggest they also buy a spot-cleaner for the tie. A friend of mine worked Saturdays in a DIY store. Similar rules applied. Someone bought a tin of paint, and the cross sale opportunities were perhaps a paint brush; a brush cleaner; or even one of those implements to help keep lines straight. The basic rule to cross-selling then were - if you have a number of products to sell, group them together so that the customer doesn’t have too much of an effort in seeing the relationship between your products. That’s not to say that it will happen. Often the customer needs to be told about the relationship and have the idea planted verbally that they could buy more than what they originally came in for.

40 years later and the same rules apply. Trading on the Web has even made it possible to display not only your own diverse product range on the same page, but also rela

a DIY store. Similar rules applied. Someone bought a tin of paint, and the cross sale opportunities were perhaps a paint brush; a brush cleaner; or even one of those implements to help keep lines straight. The basic rule to cross-selling then were - if you have a number of products to sell, group them together so that the customer doesn’t have too much of an effort in seeing the relationship between your products. That’s not to say that it will happen. Often the customer needs to be told about the relationship and have the idea planted verbally that they could buy more than what they originally came in for.

40 years later and the same rules apply. Trading on the Web has even made it possible to display not only your own diverse product range on the same page, but also rela

number of products to sell, group them together so that the customer doesn’t have too much of an effort in seeing the relationship between your products. That’s not to say that it will happen. Often the customer needs to be told about the relationship and have the idea planted verbally that they could buy more than what they originally came in for.

40 years later and the same rules apply. Trading on the Web has even made it possible to display not only your own diverse product range on the same page, but also rela

he idea planted verbally that they could buy more than what they originally came in for.

40 years later and the same rules apply. Trading on the Web has even made it possible to display not only your own diverse product range on the same page, but also relationships and partnerships with other companies. Yet research shows that simply because goods are displayed together does not hugely increase buyer behaviour.

Cross-selling from the sixties has evolved into CRM (customer relationship management) in the 21st Century. The theory is that the more products organisations sell to customer; the lower is the probability that the customer will buy elsewhere, and the more profitable that customer relationship will be.

CRM systems make it easy for the salesperson to identify additional sales opportunities. The first product a customer buys adds to the customer database of knowledge the company has about the buying habits and profile of the customer. If it’s a really sophisticated CRM system it will flag up to the salesperson cross-selling opportunities, and in some cases even provide the salesperson with the words to say.

Yet once again, research shows that even giving salespeople the words to say has increased cross-selling by only a very small percentage. Why?

Simple – sel