Management – jimbaston.com

Preventative Maintenance for Business Promotion – Step 6

Jim — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 13:30:22 +0000

Today’s equipment typically runs on a software platform and it is important to keep that software current. Not updating software may compromise performance and may result in errors and ultimately failure. A key part of our field team’s role when performing maintenance therefore, is checking the equipment’s software version and updating it to maintain currency.

Updating the Field Service Team

In our efforts to support our field service team as they look for opportunities to help the customer, we must also ensure that we keep them current. As a service organization, we are always adding to our portfolio of products and services. If we do not continually update our field team on these new capabilities, then not everyone on the team will be familiar with all that we do.

This is problematic because if one of our field service professionals is unaware of a capability, they will not recognize that there is an opportunity to help.

Even if they are aware, if they are not comfortable talking about the capability at a high level with the customer, then they may avoid the discussion altogether.

There are some things that you may wish to consider as you determine the currency of your field service team.

Do you regularly update your team on your products and services?
Does this update include how each service provides value for the customer and which circumstances would make a customer a candidate to benefit?
Do you provide some suggested questions that the field professional could ask to uncover whether a customer would benefit from that product or service?
Do you provide opportunities for the field team to practice a conversation about the product or service in a safe environment (i.e. role plays)?
Do you help your team recognize the value to them and to their customers of keeping themselves updated on your capabilities?

We provide great value when our field service team uncovers opportunities that will help our customers to be better off. This proactive approach to service will differentiate us from the crowd by helping our customers realize that they are better off as a result of working with us.

To keep our business development by our field service team working in tip-top order, we need to maintain it.

This maintenance includes:

Checking for overall mechanical condition and wear
Replacing, refurbishing, or cleaning of the wearable parts and consumables
Checking alignments and readjusting if applicable
Lubricating moving parts
Checking and updating spare parts inventories
Updating software to maintain currency

By regularly addressing these key maintenance tasks, we can be assured that the proactive efforts of our field team will deliver a service that goes beyond keeping our customers’ equipment running well and measurably helps them them achieve their business goals.

Let’s Connect

As always, I welcome your comments and questions. You can connect with me via telephone or email or leave a comment right here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim Baston

“We cannot solve our problems with the
same thinking we used when we created them.”
– Albert Einstein

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Preventative Maintenance for Business Promotion – Step 5

Jim — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 13:30:38 +0000

In this blog series, we have been talking about steps that a service company can take to maintain a vibrant and effective program of engaging their field team in promoting their products and services. Like the equipment that we maintain for our customers, our own business promotion initiatives need regular maintenance to continue to run well. In this blog we will consider checking and updating spare parts.

Regardless of how good a job we do in maintaining our customers’ equipment, unexpected problems can happen. The key is to be prepared so that if a problem does occur, we can address it quickly with minimum expense and downtime. One of the ways we can prepare for the unexpected, is to have a back-up – in our case, recommended spares. Maintaining an inventory of spares is good practice and making sure it is accurate and current is an important part of the maintenance service we provide.

Ensuring Appropriate Backup Measures

The equivalent to spare parts for our business development initiative is having a backup process in place to deal with situations where our field team is either unable or unwilling to make proactive recommendations. For example, you may have members of your field team that are technically excellent, but find engaging in business development conversations with customers so uncomfortable that they will be reluctant to participate in the program, even if they recognize the service value. You don’t want to lose them but you know that if you push these individuals too hard they may feel forced to leave. At the same time, if the individual does not speak to the customer about the opportunities that they see, then the customer will lose out and the level of service will be compromised.

Plan for the Exceptions

In situations like this, it is best to have a back up plan so that the field professional can participate but not be subjected to the discomfort of the conversation. Our back up plan – or business development spare parts as it were – would be to provide these individuals with a way to communicate the opportunity to someone else within the organization who will follow up with the customer. This can easily be accommodated in both a manual or automated system and the back up could be someone from sales or management. The key is to have a clear process in place so that field service professionals can quickly communicate the opportunity to someone who will not drop the ball.

As you evaluate your process that supports the field service professional to make proactive recommendations to your customers, consider:

Is there a clear pathway for the field team to communicate their recommendations to someone internally to follow up with the customer?
Is it supported through your manual or automated processes?
Do you have a feedback loop so that the field professional is kept informed on progress?

By taking these steps, you will ensure that everyone participates in the initiative and that all of your customers receive the same high level of service, regardless of who calls on them. Next time we will look at updating software to maintain currency.

Let’s Connect

Jim Baston

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
The second best time is now.”
– Chinese Proverb

[1] This series of blogs is based on an article published for Field Service News – https://www.fieldservicenews.com

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Preventative Maintenance for Business Promotion – Step 4

Jim — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 00:29:19 +0000

An important step in any maintenance activity is to ensure that the moving parts are properly lubricated and that there is a regular lubricating schedule that is consistent with manufacturers’ specifications. Lubricating moving parts is critical. Proper lubrication will reduce noise, heat and extend asset life. Failure to lubricate will result in premature failure.

Management Support is the Lubricant

Our initiative to engage our field team in business development needs regular lubrication too. Lubrication is vital to prevent premature failure of our efforts. Management support is the lubricant of the initiative. Consistent and engaged management support will contribute to the efficiency and longevity of the efforts of our field service team. Initiatives that are poorly supported by management will never achieve the planned performance levels and will lose whatever momentum they have quickly.

As you assess management support as part of your PM program, consider the following:

How often do you speak of the initiative? Is it part of most conversations?
Do you speak of service promotion by field professionals as part of the overall strategy to serve the customer? Are the proactive efforts of the field team referred to as a service to the customer?
Do you regularly provide training for your team to enable them to perform capably and comfortably?
Do you offer reminders and refreshers to keep the initiative fresh? Do you provide an opportunity such as role-playing to let your field service professionals practice their customer conversations in a safe environment?
Do you make time to regularly coach the team on the desired behaviours?

Providing the coaching and support needed to maintain momentum and achieve desired results is difficult. Because coaching and support is not “urgent” (like responding to an emergency breakdown for example), and the results of the efforts tend not to be immediately visible, it often takes a back seat to other opportunities. Management must be disciplined. The effort is worth it, however. Research shows that the most important component of any initiative requiring behaviour change is how management introduces and supports the initiative, not the quality of the initiative itself.[1]

Next time we will consider the importance of spare parts and how providing the security of this backup will help keep the processes running smoothly.

Let’s Connect

Jim Baston

“Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.”
– W. Edwards Deming

[1] This series of blogs is based on an article published for Field Service News – https://www.fieldservicenews.com

[2] James Kirkpatrick, Transferring Learning to Behaviour

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Are You Fully Capitalizing on One of Your Most Valuable Assets?

Jim — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 01:51:45 +0000

Are you fully capitalizing on one of your most valuable assets – the knowledge and experience of your field service team? Sure, you depend on their expertise to provide maintenance service, troubleshoot and make repairs correctly and efficiently. But do you fully capitalize on their abilities to recognize additional work opportunities? They offer much more than the opportunity to identify more business. Their proactive recommendations can help your customers achieve results that they did not realize were possible and can differentiate you from the competition.

When you think about capitalizing on the proactive efforts of your service team, here are three questions to consider:

1. Do you see the field service professional’s promotion of services as an opportunity to serve your customers better or simply as a means for generating more business?

If we regard the field team’s proactive efforts as a service we will be more likely to treat it like one; we will be much more likely to support it, provide training for it and promote it like we would any other service we provide.

2. Do you discourage “selling” for the sake of merely gaining more business and insist that any recommendations by your field service team be directly tied to a customer benefit?

By focusing on how the recommendation will help the customer rather than how it will generate income, we will reinforce the service nature of the recommendations and show the field team why proactive recommendations are an integral part of their day-to-day service role.

3. Do you “convince” or do you “tell” your field team to promote your services?

To fully capitalize on our field team’s expertise, they must be willing participants. A field service professional who is not convinced that promoting services is part of the service that they deliver will never achieve their full potential. A willing participant must be convinced that business promotion is part of the service. We can do this by what we say, what we do and how we position business promotion as a service.

Our field service teams provide a valuable service when they apply their technical expertise to maintain or repair equipment – as do the service teams of our competitors. But we can offer more than this. We can enhance the value that our teams deliver and differentiate our business from our competitors by capitalizing on our field team’s ability to recognize opportunities to ultimately help our customers to be better off. By doing so, we will be capitalizing on one of our most valuable assets.

As always, I welcome your comments and questions. You can connect with me via telephone or email or leave a comment right here on the site. And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim Baston

“The human mind is our fundamental resource.”

– John F. Kennedy

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Are You the Reason Your Technicians Are Not Enthusiastically Promoting your Services?

Jim — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 13:30:34 +0000

It is no secret that field service technicians represent an excellent opportunity to increase revenues without adding to overheads. They understand the technology, know their products and services and are familiar with the customers’ equipment and their goals. And, of course, they have the ear of the customer.

Chances are you already have one or two techs who are great at developing new business and you recognize that, by getting all of your techs to act like them, you will experience tremendous growth.

If, despite your best efforts, your technicians are still not generating as much business as you think they are capable of, then perhaps you are the reason your technicians are not enthusiastically promoting your services. Perhaps it is your perception that is standing in the way.

Review Our Perception

Ask yourself this question: “Am I prepared to tell my customers what I have asked my technicians to do?” If your answer is “no”, then it may be because your perception is that your field service technicians’ proactive promotion of services is “selling” and that you don’t see value in this from the customers’ perspective. As a result, you are uncomfortable promoting this to them. After all, how compelling is the following: “We have trained our service technicians to sell so that we can get more business from you.” Now, I am sure that you would not be as blunt as that, but clearly there is not a positive message here for the customer.

Change Our Perception from Selling to Serving

But if we change our perception to one that recognizes the tech’s proactive efforts as a serving activity rather than a selling activity, then we start to look at what they are doing through the lens of how it benefits the customer. As a service, the technician is looking to uncover opportunities for products and/or services to help the customer achieve their goals. The focus is on identifying and solving customer problems rather than on generating more revenue. When this is the case, it makes good business sense to let the customer know what your technicians are doing. In fact, their proactive efforts can become a significant differentiator.

If our perception changes from selling to serving, our conversation with the customer can communicate the value of the technicians’ actions from the customers’ perspective: “We have encouraged our technicians to use their knowledge and expertise to identify steps that you can take to help you achieve your business goals. Would you have any objection if, in the course of doing their service work, they identify a product or service that will help you to be better off that they bring their recommendation to your attention?”

Benefits of this Change in Perception

This change in perspective will positively affect a number of factors that will be critical for success and which I will cover in a future blog. These include:

The technicians’ perception of their role.
The processes and systems that you create to support the techs.
How you talk about proactive recommendations.
The customers’ trust levels.
Sales of new contracts.
Our customers’ perception of us.

We offer tremendous value when our field service team takes proactive efforts to make recommendations to our customers that will help them to be better off. If your attempts to engage them enthusiastically are falling short of your expectations, look closely on how you perceive what it is that you have asked them to do. You may be the reason that your technicians are not enthusiastically promoting your services.

Jim Baston

“If you want to make the world a better place,
take a look at yourself and make a change.”

– Michael Jackson

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Is Your Field Service Team Missing Opportunities to Help Your Customers?

Jim — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 14:30:46 +0000

Here is a simple test for you. Count the number of “F”s in the sentence below.

Don’t read any further until you have decided your number.

If you said six “F”s, then congratulations! If you said anything else, don’t feel bad. Most people see three. Look at the sentence again. Did you miss the “F”s in “OF”? Now that you see the “F”s, it’s pretty obvious right? It makes us wonder why we missed it in the first place.

Now, think of your service business. Opportunities to help your customers should be obvious too. Or are they as obvious as we might think? Is your service team missing opportunities to help your customers?

Even with a Process in Place, Is Your Customer Seeing All the “F’s”?

Perhaps you have encouraged your field team to look for ways that you could help your customers achieve their business goals. You’ve set up processes and systems to capture any opportunities identified. You may have even told your customers your intentions and why your field team’s actions are not only unique but of great value for the them. Even with all of this in place, how confident are you that they are seeing all of the “F”s – that is, how confident are you that they are not missing any opportunities to help the customer to be better off.

Four Actions to Ensure Your Field Service Team Does Not Miss Important Opportunities

Here are four actions that you can take to help ensure that your field service team does not miss opportunities that are important.

1. Establish a customer visit routine

Whenever your field service professional calls on a customer, ensure that each one of them follows a specific process which may include steps like:

- Stopping by the customer’s office to explain the nature of the visit upon arrival and asking if anything has changed since their last visit.
- Stopping by the customer’s office after the work is completed to go over what was done and asking if there is anything else they would like them to address while they are there.

2. Have your field team follow up on previous recommendations

Your customers are busy and, even with the best of intentions, some of your recommendations will get forgotten. It’s a valuable service that you provide when your follow up reminds the customer to address something that had completely slipped their minds. This is particularly important if the recommendation would prevent something that could seriously and negatively impact the customer if it is not addressed.

3. If appropriate, have your field team ask the customer to take them on a tour of their facilities

While on the tour, the field professional can point out ideas where you may be able to help and even some issues that may not be related to your business at all but will help the customer see that there are improvements that can be made.

4. Share best practices between team members

Whenever a field service member makes a recommendation that benefits a customer in a significant way, share it with the rest of the team. What was the issue at hand? How did the recommendation help the customer? How many other customers might benefit from a similar recommendation? What do these customers look like? What questions might the field professional ask to uncover whether they could benefit from a similar recommendation?

Every time we make a proactive recommendation to a customer, we have an opportunity to help them toward achieving their business goals. But, recognizing opportunities is not always as easy as we may first assume. Andmissed opportunities might result in a problem for the customer. Help your field team establish a process that will minimize lost opportunities and further enhance the value that you offer to your customers.

Jim Baston

“I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one”

– Mark Twain

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Is Your Field Team Following Up on Their Recommendations?

Jim — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 13:30:32 +0000

At our workshops, I strongly encourage field service professionals to follow-up on the recommendations they have made with customers. It is a great way to uncover and revive opportunities. But much more importantly, it demonstrates exceptional customer service.

I often ask the field professionals who attend my workshop if they have made any recommendations in the last six months that their customer has not acted upon and that they honestly don’t know the customer’s intentions about it. Most hands go up.

When I ask why they think that the customer has not taken action, I get a mix of responses including that the customer might have:

Determined that the price was too high (often accompanied by nods of agreement – a discussion of value may be needed here)
Gone to a competitor
Decided not to take any action
Forgotten about the recommendation

It is this last point that I focus on.

The Customer Has Forgotten About the Recommendation

To illustrate the customer service aspect of following up, I share a conversation at the workshop that I had with a manager of a company about his service provider. He told me that after doing a routine maintenance, the service provider’s technician advised him that a critical piece of equipment was showing signs of failure. This manager went on to say, “The tech recommended that the equipment be replaced as soon as possible to avoid unplanned downtime. He wrote this recommendation on his work order and I signed it.”

“Time went by and I forgot about the recommendation – it completely slipped my mind. After about 5 months, the equipment did fail and, of course, it failed at the most inconvenient time. We had to scramble and we lost time and money. When the dust had settled, I had to explain to my management why I had not acted on the recommendation when it was brought to my attention.

“It was not a pleasant time for me. I was angry with myself for forgetting but that anger was soon redirected at the service technician and his company. Although he did the right thing by making the recommendation in the first place and duly recorded it on the work-order, he was back to our facility 2 or 3 times between the initial recommendation and the failure and not once did he remind me. If only he had followed up with me about the looming problem, I could have dealt with the issue proactively and avoided looking incompetent.”

Think of your customers. How many of them have not acted on your field team’s recommendations and, as a result, are headed for trouble? How valuable would a simple follow up be in helping them avoid embarrassment and possibly disaster?

Develop a Process to Follow Up on Recommendations

If you have not already done so, I suggest that you develop a process to ensure that all outstanding field generated recommendations are followed up in a timely manner. This is particularly important for recommendations that have been made and recorded as part of a work order but have not been converted into a formal proposal. These recommendations tend to be less visible and more subject to falling through the cracks.

A simple but effective process might include:

Positioning opportunity follow up as a customer service activity rather than a sales activity
Providing a summary of any outstanding recommendations on associated work orders so that they can be discussed with the customer by the field service representative
Teaching the field team a simple and professional approach to discussing open recommendations

No doubt your customers are busy and juggling multiple tasks in fast-paced, ever changing environments. It is little wonder that they forget some things, even things that are important.

Help your field team recognize the important role they play when following up on their recommendations and put in place the process to help them easily do so as part of the service that they provide.

Jim Baston

“There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.”

– Roger Staubach

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3 Ways to Support Business Development by Your Field Service Team

Jim — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 14:30:23 +0000

More and more service organizations recognize the value their field service professionals bring when they make recommendations to their customers that will help them to be better off. The challenge is to get the field team to embrace this business development mindset and maintain focus over the long haul.

To achieve this, we would be well served by supporting business development by our field service team like any other service we provide. Here are three things we can do.

1. Support the proactive efforts of the field service team with tools and processes.

Imagine that you have decided to offer a new service for your customers. Would you simply announce the new service and wish your team luck in delivering on it or would you provide every effort to ensure that the initiative was a success? I suspect that you would not leave anything to chance and that you would make the necessary investments to ensure that the field team was properly equipped and directed to make the new service a success.

Now think about the field team’s proactive efforts to make recommendations of products and services to your customers. Here are just a few questions to consider:

Have you made the same level of effort to ensure their success in recommending your services as you have in ensuring that they can deliver upon them?
What processes and tools have you employed to ensure that your field team can effectively identify and speak to the customer about your services?
How have you employed your field automation and/or other tools to support the efforts of your team?
Have you defined clear steps for your field team to take when making recommendations?
How will the current status of opportunities identified be communicated and updated?

2. Train the field service team on the details of the service that they are about to deliver and the skills required to do so.

Thinking back to the new service offering:

What training would you provide on that service and how would you explain why it is of value to the customer?
What would you want the field professional to know about the benefits of the recommended service and the types of problems the new service addresses or avoids?
How would you equip your service team to speak intelligently about the new service and explain how it will help each customer?
What skills will you equip your team with to deliver the service flawlessly?

Now consider the business development expectations you have for your technicians:

How will you equip your field team so that they can explain the benefit of their proactive efforts to the customer?
How is this different from simply promoting services?
What specific benefits can the customer expect from the field team’s recommendations?
How can the field team present recommendations in a manner that helps the customer see the benefit of taking action?
What specific steps do you expect the field service team to take when delivering on this service?

A field team that recognizes that their efforts are not solely intended for the purpose of increasing revenues, but rather to improve the level of service provided, will be more engaged and enthusiastic in doing just that. The fact that revenues will rise as a result of their efforts is a secondary reward for their ability to improve overall service levels. A clear understanding of expectations will also help to engage the team in this important service activity.

3. Measure performance for continuous improvement

Any new service offering will have to demonstrate a return on investment. Feedback about actual performance against plan will be analyzed and addressed. Without feedback you or your team would not have a clear view of the effectiveness of their efforts.

The same is true for engaging field teams in making proactive recommendations. Feedback on their performance will provide insights into what is working well and what is not. It will give you a clearer view of the effectiveness of the effort and guide steps to make continuous improvement.

An obvious measure is revenue but that is only the tip of the iceberg. Other related and critical measures are customer satisfaction and retention scores. In addition, if we are making recommendations that will help our customer to be better off, we should see a decrease in unplanned maintenance and an improvement in overall labour planning. These are just a few of the measures we can take to evaluate performance. There are several more.

We Need Ensure that Our Field Team is Properly Equipped

Engaging our field team to proactively identify and recommend products and services to our customers that will help them to be better off is a valuable service. When we view our field team’s efforts as a service, we can take a step back and evaluate if we are providing the right level of support to ensure their enthusiastic participation and their sustained success. Like any service we provide, we need to ensure that our team is equipped with the right tools, skills and processes and measure our performance against plan to focus on continuously improving.

Jim Baston

“One of the greatest compliments that we can receive is
when our customer tells us that they are better off for having known us”

– Jim Baston

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6 Steps to Delivering Your Brand Promise Through Your Field Service Team

Jim — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 15:30:29 +0000

The definition of our brand, when boiled down to its simplest form, is what our customers and prospective customers think and feel about our service and our organizations. We all have a brand. The question is, did we choose it, or did we let others choose it for us?

Our Brand Promises a Certain Customer Experience

We communicate our brand through every customer touch point, including through our websites, promotional materials and our written proposals for example. Our brand promises a certain customer experience. The delivery of our brand promise comes through the interaction between our field service team and our customers. It is critical that our field team acts and communicates in a way that is consistent with our brand and its promise because those interactions are our customer’s reality.

Here are six steps you can take to ensure that your field service representatives deliver your brand promise.

1. Define – Define your brand

By clearly articulating your brand and your brand promise, you can set the foundation to guide your technicians’ actions so that they are consistent with your brand promise. Start by answering these three questions:

How do you want others to think about you?
How do you want others to feel about you?
What do you want others to say about you?

For example, a service organization that wishes to build their brand promise around the proactive efforts of their field service team may define their brand as follows:

How we want others to think about us: “Our service provider does more than simply keeping our equipment/facilities/processes running well, they take steps to help us achieve our business goals.”
How we want others to feel about us: “We feel assured / We are in good hands”
What we want other to say about us: “We are better off for having engaged our service provider.”

2. Translate – Translate the brand into actions

Having a brand promise is not enough. We must translate that promise into action. What specifically do we expect our field service team to do to? How do we want our team to conduct themselves in order to communicate and reinforce our brand?

In our example above, one of the actions we would define for our field service technicians are what steps to take to identify and recommend opportunities that will help the customer. One large waste management firm who positions itself as an integral part of the community which they serve, teaches their drivers to be courteous and helpful to their “neighbours” as they go about their routes. They also train their drivers to look for and report any suspicious activity they see along their routes in an effort to prevent crime.

3. Train – Ensure your team has the skills to execute on the brand

F. Fournes, in his book Coaching for Improving Work Performance noted that the most significant reasons why employees don’t do what they are supposed to do are because they don’t know what to do or they don’t know how to do it. Once we have clearly defined the actions, it is important that we ensure that our team has the knowledge and the skills to execute them.

4. Leverage – Use technology and processes to support your brand

We need to evaluate the technology, tools and processes that we have at our disposal to determine how we can utilize them to support the efforts of our field service team. For example, how can the hand-held devices be used to help keep the field professional focused on delivering on the brand? What processes need to be modified to facilitate our field service professionals’ actions.

5. Model – Model the behaviour you would like to see

What we say and how we act are important indicators of how serious we are about the initiative. We must take care that our words and deeds are consistent with the brand promise. Our team will pick up on our behaviours and match them accordingly.

6. Measure – Measure

If we don’t measure how well we are delivering on our brand promise, how can we possibly know if we are successful, let alone have the information to allow us to continually improve? This measurement is more than simply asking if the customer is satisfied or if they would recommend us to others, but delves into how well we have met the promise that we made through our brand. For example, you might ask, “How well did we … [insert brand promise here]?”

Jim Baston

“Be the change that you want to see in the world.”

– M. Ghandi

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Proactive Recommendations by Your Field Team Are a Big Business Differentiator – Three Actions You Can Take

Jim — Thu, 30 Mar 2017 14:55:09 +0000

I meet service leaders everyday who encourage their field service teams to make proactive recommendations to their customers of products and services that will help those customers to be better off. The vast majority of those I speak to however, do not tell their customers they are asking their field service team to do this. That’s a pity. Proactive recommendations by your field team are a big business differentiator.

Why Don’t More Service Firms Promote Their Field Team’s Efforts?

Before we look at the how, let’s consider the why. It is interesting to note that most firms in my unscientific sampling do not let their customers know that they have encouraged their field service professionals to look for and make recommendations to help them be better off. This is true, even though the efforts of the field service team can add tremendous value. By taking proactive steps, the field service team can help your customers reduce costs, improve asset life, increase productivity and numerous other benefits.

If this is true, then, why don’t more firms tell their customers what their field team is up to? Perhaps it is because these organizations do not feel that the customer will appreciate the real value of these proactive efforts by their field service team. They may be right. Unless customers are educated about the value, they may not recognize the significant impact these proactive efforts can have on their ability to achieve their own business goals.

Therefore, one of the important steps that management must take is to inform the customer of this value and use it as an important differentiator in a market that is getting increasingly competitive. Here’s how.

1. Tell the Customer What You Are Doing

The first step is to tell the customer what you are doing and why it is of benefit to them. Point out that your field team is in a unique position to recognize actions that the customer can take to help them achieve their business goals. They understand the technology, they can see how the customer is applying it and they understand their own firm’s capabilities.

2. Ask the Customer for Their Permission

Once you tell the customer what you are doing, it opens up the opportunity for the customer to give you permission to engage them in this way.

The conversation might go like this. “Mr. or Ms. Customer, as you may appreciate, our field service team includes some of the finest technical minds in this industry. We have encouraged them to use their knowledge and expertise to look for ways that our customers can do things better and help them achieve their business goals. We have asked our field team to proactively speak to our customers about their recommendations. If during the course of our work for you our field service professional identifies something that they feel would be of significant benefit to you, would you have any objection if they brought it to your attention?”

3. Use the Proactive Efforts of Your Field Team to Sell New Service Contracts

Work with your sales team to create your unique selling proposition that clearly sets you apart from your competitors. Obviously it will take some thought and it will include the unique capabilities of your organization, but it will likely cover the fact that the customer can expect that not only will their equipment be running really well during the contract, but they should expect to be presented with ideas that will help them to be better off. Arm your sales team with case studies and testimonials. Now your sales team will have something tangible to present to the prospect that differentiates you from your competitors.

The highest level of service we can provide is when the customer can confidently claim that they are better off for having known us. Help your customers see the value of the proactive efforts of your field service team and use this to differentiate your business from your competitors. These three steps will help.

Jim Baston

“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.”

– Albert Einstein

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