Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger.

• Position: Marketing News - Successful cross-selling - Brief Article

Remember John Belushi's diner on "Saturday Night Live?" Customers would come in and order various items, only to be given the same answer every time: "No hamburger--cheeseburger. No fries--chips. No Coke--Pepsi." If your clients are getting the same treatment from your staff, the problem may not be recalcitrance, particularly if you've recently gone through a merger or acquisition. The problem may simply be a matter of smoothing out the bumps in the road, says Michael Abrams, managing partner of Numerof & Associates, Inc., a St. Louis-based management-consulting firm.

"Successful cross-selling cannot rely solely on the talent of the sates force to simply promote the new array of products the way it did with the pre-M&A product lines," Abrams says. Rather, you need to create a "three-tiered system"--ease of use, a proper system of incentives and a strong coordination of service with internal support.

"Absent this system," Abrams says, "the new organization will likely wind up with a frustrated sales force and a similarly frustrated and dissatisfied customer base."

One major obstacle to a successful cross-selling strategy, he says, may be the sheer complexity of the new product line and the learning curve your sales staff may have to negotiate in order to be comfortable with it. It...