Cross-Selling, Up-Selling, and Down-Selling

This function is used in SAP CRM Marketing to propose cheaper or more expensive products as alternatives or additions to another product or products.

Cross-, up- and down-selling functionality is used in both SAP CRM Web Channel (Web Shop) and SAP Telesales where it is designed to increase turnover by generating additional sales.

Features

You can use product association rules to determine (see Activities section below) which products should be proposed under which conditions instead of or in addition to other products.

Cross-selling

For a given product or combination of products, you can specify that additional products are to be suggested for purchase.

Example Example

If a business partner orders a PC, you can cross-sell by suggesting that they also buy a printer or a particular software package.

End of the example.

Up-selling

You can define other products that should be proposed if you sell a specific product.

Example Example

If a business partner orders a fax machine, you “up-sell” by proposing a more expensive, better-equipped version.

End of the example.

Down-selling

Under certain circumstances, you may want to suggest a cheaper product as an alternative (“down-selling”).

Example Example

A telesales agent is able to view both more expensive (up-selling) and cheaper (down-selling) alternatives (depending on Customizing settings). As a rule, the agent will generally try to promote up-selling products to the customer, but to prevent a no-sale he or she may also be forced to propose down-selling alternatives instead. If you create up-selling and down-selling rules that are target-group-specific, you can control for which business partners you generally want to perform up-selling, and for which down-selling.

End of the example.

Activities

Manual Processing of Cross-Selling Rules

Cross-selling rules define the dependencies between products and are expressed in the following form:

Example Example

Rule 1: A + B + C E + F

This rule states that if products A, B, and C are chosen, products E and F are proposed.

Note that products E and F are only proposed if all three products are selected.

Rule 2: A + B + C+ D G + H

This rule states that if products A, B, C, and D are selected, products G and H will be proposed.

Note that products G and H will only be proposed if all four initial products are selected.

End of the example.

The products on the left side of the rule are known as the leading products, those on the right are the dependent products.

If you want to propose the same dependent products for several different leading products, you need to create a separate rule for each leading product. If you simply enter all the leading products together in one rule, then product proposals will only be triggered if all these products are selected.

Note Note

In SAP CRM Web Channel, only cross-selling rules with one leading product can be used.

End of the note.

Generating Cross-Selling Rules Using Data Mining and BAPIs

In addition to creating product association rules manually, you can also have them determined in SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (BI) using data mining techniques. These rules are then imported into CRM using BAPIs. These BAPIs act as an interface between CRM and the external system in which the rules are determined, be it SAP BI or otherwise. For information on generating rules in SAP BI, see SAP Library under Start of the navigation path SAP NetWeaver Next navigation step BI Content Customer Relationship Management Product Analyses Cross-Selling End of the navigation path .

The following BAPIs are used to create, change, and delete product association rules: BAPI_PR_AR_CREATEFROMDATA, BAPI_PR_AR_DELETE and BAPI_PR_AR_CHANGE. In addition, the following BAPIs have been created: BAPI_PR_AR_EXISTENCECHECKDATA, BAPI_PR_AR_GETLIST and BAPI_PR_AR_GETDETAIL.

Manual Processing of Up-/Down-Selling Rules

Up-selling and down-selling rules are based on the relationships between different products. The ranking value for the products determines whether they are proposed as up-selling or as down-selling products. Depending on the settings you entered in the IMG under Start of the navigation path Customer Relationship Management Next navigation step Marketing Product Proposals Define Procedure for Creating a Ranking Value End of the navigation path , you can either enter the ranking value manually or have it entered automatically. For more information about this, see Working With Product Association Rules.