ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘sales-and-service’ CATEGORY

As Jim Baston continues the serialisation of his excellent service orientated book Beyond Great Service our protagonist Charlie begins outlining the solution to the sales and service equation to his team of service engineers...

If you're new to this series then you can catch up on the story so far by clicking here

Last time, Charlie introduced the strategy to the service team. This time he presents the details.

Great, then let’s examine the actual strategy in more detail.” Charlie powers up the projector again and moves to the next slide. The slide says:

Charlie reads from the screen and then advances to the next slide.

“Let’s talk about what we need to do to deliver an ‘exceptional experience that is valued by our customers and differentiates us from our competitors’,” suggests Charlie.

“The first bullet simply means that we have to do our jobs well; like responding quickly to a customer’s needs, fixing the problem right the first time, showing up promptly, doing PMs as scheduled, cleaning up after our work, etc. All the things that people actually pay us to do.”

“The second bullet refers to the interpersonal experience the customer has over and above the technical work that we do. It is the positive attitude, the welcome smile, the way we interface with people in the workplace, and all the tiny but important interactions we have with our customers or their customers/ employees/ tenants/patients/etc. during the course of our work.

The last bullet is a catch-all to remind ourselves of the importance of continual follow-up, and how such a simple act can help reassure customers they have made the right decision to work with us over any of our competitors.“Perhaps the critical bullet here is moments of truth. Each time we have an occasion to interact with the customer: a visit to the site, an email, a follow-up phone call, a casual meeting in a coffee shop, it’s an opportunity to reinforce in the customer’s mind all the positive reasons why they do business with us, through what we say and write and how we act. It’s the moment we have to help the customers say to themselves ‘That’s why I do business with Novus’.”

“The third bullet is the topic of our discussion today. It’s going beyond doing our jobs pleasantly and professionally and in a responsive and attentive manner. It includes our efforts to proactively look for ways that the customer can make improvements to their operations, and then take the time to discuss these recommendations with the customer.”

“The last bullet is a catch-all to remind ourselves of the importance of continual follow-up, and how such a simple act can help reassure customers they have made the right decision to work with us over any of our competitors."

“So, what do you guys think? Can we add real value for our customers while differentiating ourselves from our competitors in this way?”

Angus stands up. Charlie is surprised and more than a little concerned. It looks to Charlie as if Angus is going to walk out of the room. If Charlie can’t get Angus on board, then the whole initiative is lost, or at least, greatly compromised.

“Charlie, in all the time I have worked for this company, this is the first time that management has talked about business development by putting the customer first. Usually, the question is: ‘What other services can we sell to our customers?’ i.e. what can our customers do for us? What you’re asking, that is if I hear you correctly, is: ‘What can we do for our customers?’ The results might be the same—more sales—but the motivation is quite different. I like it!”

Charlie is thrilled. Getting Angus on side is a big step forward. A couple of other people offer opinions, and they’re along the same lines as Angus’. Angus remains standing and Charlie can feel a big “but” coming . . .

“But . . . ,” complies Angus. “Saying the right words is a lot different than doing

the right things. How are we going to make this work?”

“Yet another good question, Angus.” Angus smiles and takes a bow as the room breaks out in applause.

As Angus finally sits down, Charlie says, “We have a lot of work to do. Here is a summary of what we need to do from my perspective. Perhaps you guys might think of some additional things.” Charlie discusses the bullets on the next two slides:

Charlie goes through the steps in detail and answers questions as they arise.

He points out that since this initiative is driving the overall customer experience, then everyone who has contact with the customer must participate, not just the technicians.

Since this initiative is driving the overall customer experience, then everyone who has contact with the customer must participate, not just the technicians.Although the techs play a large role in this, they must be supported by the entire organisation.

Everyone who has contact with the customer; from technician to the accounts receivable person, all contribute to the overall experience and therefore must be in sync. That is why point number four references ‘all customer-facing personnel’.

After answering a couple of more questions, Charlie sums up by saying,

“Thanks everyone for your input today. I am really excited about what we are doing and I sense that you are too. Ken and I will get to work on the next steps. In the meantime, if any further thoughts come to you on this issue, please let Ken or me know.”

“Also, please be proactive in discussing with the customer those things you feel would be in their best interests to implement and work with us to ensure that they are properly followed up until we can bullet-proof the opportunity management system.”

With that, Charlie hands the floor over to Ken to discuss this week’s safety item.

Thinking about your business:

Is your business development strategy clearly tied to your overall plan to provide each customer with an exceptional customer experience?

Does everyone know what they need to do to deliver on your strategy?

Are support functions aligned to facilitate the efforts of the field team?

Next time Charlie seeks feedback from one of his ex-customers.

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In the Big Discussion we will take one topic, bring together three leading experts on that topic and put four key questions to them to help us better understand its potential impact on the field service sector...

This issue our topic is the relationship between Service and Sales and our experts are Nick Frank of Si2 Partners, Michael Blumberg of Blumberg Advisory Group and Jim Baston of BBA Consulting

In the first instalment of this topic our experts answered the question "It is often said service technicians are the greatest salesmen – what are your views on this?"

and now onto the second question of the topic...

 

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Is there a difference between selling service and selling products?

 

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Yes, there is an enormous difference.

Selling products requires the salesperson to focus on the form, fit, and function of the product and how it meets the customer’s needs. Selling products is about selling the tangible.

Selling services requires the salesperson to focus on how the service can help the customer solve a problem, improve their situation, or achieve a better outcome.

More importantly, it is about selling the intangible.

 

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In general yes, but not always.

If a service is very tightly defined in terms of the value proposition and delivery, then it can follow a very similar feature/benefit selling process of a product. In other words selling against a tightly defined customer specification. An example of a service sold in this way might be an extended warranty.

The difference comes when the customer need is less well defined. Here the selling process moves towards addressing a business problem and involves an element of co-creation between the customer and supplier.

The more co-creation that is required, the more business orientated the discussion becomes. Not only is the sales process very different in terms of the discussion and detail, but also the management level at which the decision maker sits tends to be more senior. So yes, the more co-creation is required, the greater the difference.

 

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In technical terms, there is a difference between selling service and selling products. You can touch and feel a product. You can see and hear it operate. You can see the craftsmanship in its features.

Selling a product often involves helping the customer see the benefits in the product’s attributes and purchase decisions rely on both the trust built by the seller and the product’s features and track record.

A service, on the other hand, may not necessarily be seen, felt or heard. Good service may even result in the absence of something (fewer unexpected outages, less downtime or fewer complaints for example). Selling a service is more about helping the customer see the benefits of the experience the service will create for them. Success in selling tangibles depends on the salesperson’s ability to help the customer envision the experience the service will provide. Purchase decisions for services tend to rely more heavily – if not exclusively – on the customer’s trust of the seller.

In practical terms I don’t think that this difference is very important when a field service professional makes a recommendation as a trusted advisor. In most cases the field service professional has high levels of trust from both a personal and a professional perspective. The approaches that he or she uses to justify the recommendation will be the same whether product or service.

 

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Look out for the next part of this series when we ask our panel "Is incentivising service technicians to 'sell' opening up new revenue streams or putting their “trusted advisor” status at risk?

 

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Ron Bucher, Director Worldwide Customer Support, AccuVein has been managing customer support for over 30 years in a wide variety of hi-tech companies in organisations both with and without field service and as such has an extensive and broad experience – so his forthcoming presentation at Field Service USA speaking on the challenge of separating product sales and post sales service is a session set to be full of deep insight.

Looking ahead of the conference Kris Oldland spoke with him about the challenges he will be addressing…

“What I have observed over the years is that for a lot of companies in any high-tech sector there is a certain amount of post sales account management required as all products have problems.” Bucher begins as we discuss why he has chosen to focus on the importance of ensuring product sales representatives don’t get absorbed into the post sales support process.

“In many companies the product sales representatives can get very consumed in managing post sales product issues and I believe almost all companies hire sales people to sell product and not to act as customer support managers.”

“So there is a hidden cost to every sales organisation if the service organisation is not managing all of those post-sales product support issues,” he explains.

Of course this issue, which is indeed a prevalent one, not only impacts the sales division’s efficiency but also can somewhat counter-intuitively negatively impact on the service department as well.

“Sales people tend not to be that experienced or effective in managing post-sales product support issues in a way that is optimal for the company – if they don’t understand the service process or the product, they can actually make the situation worse when they are involved in this process,” Bucher continues.

“The theme here really is if you can improve your customer support organisation  so that sales people don’t have to get involved in post-sales product support issues it is a win-win for the sales organisation, the service organisation and the company.”

One school of thought is that extended warranties and service contracts should be sold at that point of sale with the product as a solution, so once that is all in place it is easier for the post-sales customer service teams and the account management teams to make sure that everything does run smoothly for the customer. This is an approach that Bucher firmly supports.

“The best contribution any product sales rep can make to ensuring their customers are happy and ensuring their customers get the best post-sales support is to sell them a service agreement up front with the product,” he explains.

 

“Customers who have service support agreements are happier customers,” he adds.

“The reason is that when they do have problems it’s much less hassle for them. If a product is out of warranty, virtually all product companies will charge very high prices to fix an out of warranty product and the service level will be akin to ‘we will get to it when we can.’”

“It’s a world of difference to a customer, if they have that service agreement or   if they don’t. Customers don’t expect any product to be perfect, they expect every  product to fail at some time. What they really get disappointed at is how the problem is handled once the product has failed.”

“It is very easy for a customer up front to say ‘oh I don’t need a service agreement we’ll take our chances’ but that is the customer shooting themselves in the foot. A really good sales rep will explain to their customer what their experience will look like after the warranty expires if they don’t buy a service agreement and what their experience will be if they do buy a service agreement.”

“Customers buy a service agreement to eliminate and prevent pain.  It is not just an insurance policy – it is a higher level of service that you will get,” he concludes.

However, perhaps one significant barrier to adopting an approach that marries product and service sales is ingrained in the mind sets of many product sales reps.

Whilst, as Bucher explains customers do expect a device to fail, could it be that in building up the value of their product many product sales people just don’t want to admit that this is the case?

In focussing on talking up the reliability of a device as a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) or differentiator against the competition, do some product sales reps lead themselves up a blind alley from which they can’t back down at the last minute and say … but when it does actually break we have a service package…  is a reluctance by product sales reps to acknowledge that the device they are selling can fail part of the problem?

“They don’t want the customer thinking anything negative about the product while they are waiting for the customer to send them a PO for a purchase,” Bucher agrees.

“One way around that is to sell them the product and then come back to them again within 90 days to sell them a service agreement. A lot of high-tech companies will consider that to be a service agreement sold at the time of product sales if it‘s within 90 days of the product sale. So the sales rep still gets the commission as long as it’s within that period.”

 

However, an alternative approach is for product and service should be sold by separate teams, which Bucher sees as the optimum approach.

“Selling service is very different to selling product, as one of my colleagues used to say selling service is like selling the invisible,” he begins.

“The most successful model that I’ve personally had experience with is where the product sales and service sales are owned by separate teams. We hired an experienced commission sales rep, who was dedicated to telesales for service sales only and he worked with the individual territory reps who sold the product and that was by far the most successful model I’ve ever seen.”

“You do need someone selling service that a) enjoys commission sales and b) really does understand the service proposition and 80 to 90% of product sales people don’t really have the time to understand the value proposition of a service agreement and if you don’t understand it you can’t sell it.”

Although, whilst organisations can take steps to separate the sales and support functions, it is another challenge to get customers to follow suit.

One of the challenges which leads to sales reps being dragged into the support process, is that a good sales rep will take pride in building his relationships and won’t want post-sales product issues to put those relationships at risk. This can often result with the sales rep being positioned as the go to guy for the customer.

But if the service support structure isn’t strong enough that can lead to the sales rep having their focus directed in an unproductive place.

“You can’t blame the sales rep for getting involved if the service organisation is not strong enough to solve these problems on their own,” Bucher comments.

“I walked into a situation like at that at one point in my career where the top sales guy was spending 80% of his time managing post-sales product issues when I came in.”

“I started in a company where the company really understood the value in post-sales product support and really invested heavily in it. The sales reps never had to be involved after the product sale, and that was the school that I learned in and I took that learning to practically every company afterwards.”

 

“Sales people really don’t want to manage post-sales issues but if they feel like that are forced to they’ll do it because they have relationships with these customers, sometimes long lasting personal relationships and they’re going to do what they’ve got to do to make sure the customer is happy, so this is a two way street between service and sales.”

“My message to service managers is ‘if you think sales people aren’t very good at managing post sales product issues and sometimes make things worse, it is incumbent on you to make your service organisation strong enough so they don’t have to get involved.”

“The key take-away here is that your company could sell a lot more product if the sales reps are not involved in post sales service issues. And that’s a take-away not just for service managers but also for CEOs. Sadly, a lot of CEOs are spending sales resources on post-sales product support when they don’t even know it,” Bucher asserts.

However, whilst the issue is a considerable challenge, it can be overcome insists Bucher.

“It really is possible to run your customer support organisation in a manner where the customer would rather come to your group rather than the product sales guy - it takes a lot of work, first of all you’ve got to recognise the value of doing it,” he explains.

“You can’t just hire technicians. You’ve got to hire people who are not only good at fixing the product but are even better at fixing the customers. You’ve got to have people who have exceptional communication skills, they have to have exceptional personal relationship skills and they’ve got to be able to talk with vice presidents as well as they can technicians.”

“If you can hire those kind of people then you will be hiring people that will be doing the post-sales account management that consumes so many sales people.”

And while it sounds like a tough ask, Bucher clearly stresses that it is still possible.

“I run into customer support leaders who say you can’t find people who have all that. I’ve done it, in fact I’ve done that my whole career, I even lived that as a field service technician myself.”

“Tell me it’s difficult, I’ll agree with you, tell me it’s really difficult, I’ll agree with you, but tell me it’s impossible? I’ll show you it's not.”

 

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