Many companies are obsessed with winning new customers while neglecting the potential of the ones they already have. In the very first episode of Entre Directores Comerciales (in Spanish), Guillermo Iglesias, Head of Cross-Selling at Marsh, explains how B2B cross-selling works with large accounts in the insurance industry and the mindset shift it requires from the team.
Why B2B cross-selling is built on trust
Marsh is an insurance broker: it sits between the client and the insurers, and works with large companies, from around €30 million in revenue, that need cover for everything from property damage to liability or cyber risk. Iglesias's team doesn't hunt for new clients; it grows existing ones. That distinction matters: the episode suggests that perhaps 80% of a company's revenue comes from its current customer base.
A client may come to you for a one-off offer, but whether they stay year after year depends on trust, which takes a long time to build and is very easy to destroy. In insurance, the moment of truth is the claim: when a factory burns down, the client calls their broker, and that, according to Iglesias, is where real value is created.
The more lines of insurance you have with a client, the more loyal they are and the harder they are to lose.
The big blocker: the fear of selling what you don't know
When Iglesias joined Marsh around seven years ago, he found highly specialized teams: property executives, liability executives, cyber executives. Each managed their client relationships very well, but struggled to offer a line of cover outside their own, even though the company had consulting, engineering and all kinds of specialists.
The change came from a simple idea: the executive doesn't have to be the expert or sell the product, just spot the need and offer the client fifteen minutes with the right specialist. Iglesias describes it as a click across the whole organization.
We manage clients very well, but we're afraid of selling, of what we don't know. You're not the expert: what you do is open doors internally to our experts. You don't have to sell to them.
From reactive to proactive: training and follow-up
The key account manager used to be reactive, only showing up when something happened. Now they have to build bridges, and that requires enough training to hold an intelligent conversation about any line of insurance without being an expert. According to Iglesias, the first training sessions, an hour-long download from the consultants, didn't work; what helped was asking the specialists for three concrete tips to spot each need.
The other piece is follow-up. Cross-selling doesn't happen at renewal time but throughout the year, with weekly meetings to review opportunities with each executive and tools to create them: if a client has no credit insurance, you go and propose it. Timing matters too: just because an insurer wants to sell cyber cover doesn't mean that's what a client with an uninsured factory needs.
Selling solutions when there's no easy way out
A few years ago, Iglesias recalls, property insurance premiums rose sharply, especially in the food industry, and some insurers stopped covering the sector after a series of fires. In that "hard market", long-standing clients found themselves uninsured from one year to the next.
The answer was to improve the client's risk profile: bring in Marsh's engineers, explain what insurers look for and find the most cost-effective option. In one of his own examples, instead of €750,000 worth of sprinklers, a €150,000 business continuity plan that insurers also value might do the job. That, for Iglesias, is selling solutions rather than policies: finding out what the client really needs, not pushing whatever is on the sales list.
Knowledge, honesty and empathy
According to Iglesias, Marsh has a retention rate above 90% and clients who have been with the firm since 1975, when it arrived in Spain. The keys he highlights are knowledge, the honesty to speak plainly in tough times, and empathy. Talking in slogans might get you through a first meeting, but by the second one you'll be found out.
You also need to adapt the conversation to whoever you're talking to (a CFO is not the same as someone from legal or HR) and analyze wins as closely as losses. Every client won is shared with the team, because nobody wins a client alone.
