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Preventative Maintenance for Business Promotion – Step 2

Jim — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 11:30:47 +0000

This series of blogs discusses the application of preventative maintenance in order to maintain our field team’s product and service promotion effectiveness. [1]

Step 2 – Replacing, Refurbishing or Cleaning Wearable Parts and Consumables

In order to help our customers to be better off for having hired us, we must continually be on the lookout for ways that we can help them achieve their business goals. Our field service team is in the best position to do this because of their knowledge of the technology, our company’s capabilities and our customers’ challenges and goals. However, in order for our team to be effective in making proactive recommendations, we must have the system and processes in place and working smoothly. Regular preventative maintenance (PM) of our systems and processes will help ensure that our field service professionals continue to provide recommendations that will be appreciated by our customers.

Last time I wrote about conducting a high level assessment before getting into the details of the PM. This time, I would like to focus our attention on the parts of the initiative that wear and need refurbishing or replacement – the opportunity capture and management systems and processes.

Opportunity Capture and Management Systems and Processes

Opportunity capture and management systems and processes are the backbone of the business development initiative and are the parts of the overall initiative that is most subject to wear and tear. If the systems are not working smoothly, then opportunities get lost, field professionals get frustrated and customers become disappointed. Failure to maintain the processes and systems will be a sure way to bring the entire initiative to a grinding halt.

Capture Opportunities

To keep systems and processes operating in tiptop condition, check to ensure that there is a clear and simple process to capture opportunities and that the process is clearly understood. Look for any opportunities that may have fallen through the cracks. Identify opportunities that are in limbo and the clarity and effectiveness of the process to follow-up.

Feedback Loops

Look at the feedback loops. Check to ensure that the feedback loops are working properly so that the field service professional is informed on opportunity status when visiting the customer.

Response Times

Ensure that management is responding quickly to address any anomalies when problems in the process do occur. Failure to address concerns about the processes and systems will communicate to the field team that you are just not that serious.

Simplify the Efforts of the Technicians

Speak with the technicians to explore for improvements in the process that will simplify their efforts. They are the ones who live and breath within the system and irritations, no matter how small, will slow down their efforts and discourage the desired behaviours.

Taking the time to check and address worn parts and consumables will ensure that the core of the initiative is working smoothly. Next time I will discuss checking alignments and readjusting if necessary.

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

“If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I would
spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”

– Abraham Lincoln

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

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Technology’s Revolutionary Impact on the Relative Importance of Soft Skills

Jim — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 13:00:14 +0000

If you are in the service business, then you know a little bit about change. Just about everything to do with field service has been impacted by technology; and it has changed the way we do business. Technology is also having a revolutionary impact on the relative importance of soft skills.

Technology has allowed us to improve efficiencies. It has enabled us to get a more accurate picture of the effectiveness of our business practices. And it has allowed us to empower our field personnel. Most of these changes have been good for the customer, for us and for our field teams.

Closing the Competency Gap

As the pace of technology increases, we can see the shift it is having on the relative importance of soft skills. And it truly is revolutionary. Emerging technologies in the field service business are reducing the competency gap between top service professionals and less skilled service providers. The result is that it is becoming harder to differentiate on technical skills. With remote diagnostics, artificial intelligence, visual reality and embedded information in the serviced equipment, the field service professionals rely more on their tools to troubleshoot and repair and less on their experience and technical expertise. This opens up the door for less “qualified” individuals who use these same tools to give comparable levels of technical service.

This means that, even though it is highly competitive now, it will become even more so in the future. Customers will have an even more difficult time distinguishing between service providers. Service professionals and service organizations alike will have to rely more on the service experience that they create when interacting with a customer to differentiate them from their competitors. The basis of competition will shift from who is doing the best job of servicing the equipment; to who can create the best service experience while doing the job.

It’s All About The Brand

This is not to say that technical competence will go by the wayside. Obviously, it won’t. Technical competence will remain important. But as technology levels the playing field between service professionals of different capabilities, technical competence of the individual and the organizations that employ them will no longer be a factor of differentiation. The winning service organizations of the future will be the ones that create a service “brand.” They will clearly define the service experience they want to create and invest in the processes and soft skills training of their field service team to achieve it.

Jim Baston

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

– Buckminster Fuller

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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.

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

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

– Roger Staubach

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A Lesson in Good Customer Service Delivery

Jim — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 13:47:52 +0000

I recently had the good fortune to work in Australia for an international client. It was a wonderful experience and a great adventure. It also provided me with a lesson in good customer service delivery. The lesson? Good customer service is not always the same for every customer. It all depends on meeting the customer’s expectations.

The hotel I stayed at was in Manly, a suburb of Sydney. We were literally on the coast and Manly boasted a beautiful beach framed by a wonderful promenade. Each morning it would be full of people, walking and running to start the day. I joined them. Every day before breakfast, I would head out onto the promenade for the 1 ½ km walk each way.

The first morning, I had a problem. I kept “bumping” into other people and spent much of my time pausing, stepping aside and apologizing. It was a strange experience for me and certainly did not contribute to a pleasant walk.

And then it dawned on me. I was having trouble walking more than 20 or 30 seconds without a near collision because I was trying to pass on my right while the oncoming people were trying to pass on their left. As a result, we were both moving in the same direction to provide room for the other and ended up blocking each other’s path. It turned out that they, like us in North America, tend to pass oncoming pedestrians in the same manner that they would pass an oncoming car. Since Australians drive on the left, they were naturally trying to pass me the same way.

Our Expectations Were Different and it Sets Us on a Collision Course

Once I realized this, my walking experience changed completely (for the better). I started passing on the left and things started to go smoothly. I passed others with ease and the aggravating start/stop I had been experiencing disappeared. I could spend more time admiring the view and appreciating the early morning sunshine. And, of course, so could they.

Good Customer Service: One Size Does NOT Fit All

This proved to be an important lesson of good customer service delivery. One size does not fit all. Good customer service for one customer does not automatically equate to good customer service for another. Each customer has certain expectations of how they will be treated and judge their experience on how well we meet or exceed those expectations. It is important that we are sensitive to this and adjust our interactions accordingly.

For example, a customer who likes to engage in pleasant conversation may appreciate chatting about last night’s game or handling a question or two about the picture on the wall behind their desk. Others may be entirely business focused and see such conversations as a waste of time – time they are paying for. But even the conversational customer will not appreciate personal conversations in the middle of an emergency or when they are running late for another appointment.

Start By Identifying the Customers’ Expectations

So, the lesson learned is simply this: each customer has different expectations of what good customer service is, and we would be wise to be sensitive to this and adjust how we interact with them accordingly. The challenge for us as service providers is to learn what those expectations are for each customer. That is a discussion for another blog.

Jim Baston

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SMART Meeting Requests

Jim — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 13:00:46 +0000

As managers and field service professionals, we are often in a position to arrange meetings with customers and co-workers. Using meeting requests are an excellent way to get the meeting synchronized in everyone’s calendar. However, meeting requests often lack key information and this can cause extra work for all participants.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can borrow from the SMART Email concept and write meeting requests that save time and add value.

SMART Emails

Several months ago, I wrote a blog on SMART emails. You may recall that SMART is an acronym intended to help us to write emails that stand out and that communicate professionalism and value.

S = Subject Line
M = Message
A = Action
R = Response
T = Timeline

You Can Use the SMART approach for Meeting Requests

We can use the same approach to create meeting requests that communicate relevant meeting information and help attendees come prepared. This will also reflect positively on our professionalism and competence.

Sample Scenario

Let’s assume that we have arranged to have a conference call with a customer next month to review an upcoming project. Specifically, the call is to discuss the site preparations needed to employ a large crane to lift a piece of equipment (let’s call it a “widget”) onto the roof of the customer’s building. There are to be three participants in the meeting, namely the customer (Mary Smith), the representative from the crane rental company (John Doe) and ourselves. A conference number and password has been arranged.

In a situation like this, it is not unusual to receive a meeting request like the one below:

When Mary and John accept the invitation, their calendars are populated with the above information. Five weeks from now when they see that they have a conference call on their calendar, there is very little information that will assist them. As a result, they may have to spend time and energy just to understand the exact purpose of the meeting. Chances are they will likely not attend the meeting fully prepared and valuable time will be wasted.

Applying the SMART Approach

Now let’s consider what we can do to apply the SMART email approach to this meeting request.

S = Subject line:	In an email, the subject line is like the headline in a newspaper. It should garner attention and provide the reader with an idea of what the email is about. The same can be true of a meeting request. Although our calendar invitation may not actually have a “subject line”, the headline should be included in the event description. This is where you can put a few summary words that will communicate the key purpose of the meeting and provide attendees with an understanding of what will take place before opening up the calendar event. There is also a field typically dedicated to “Location” where contact details can be included. In a face-to-face meeting it will likely be the meeting location. For conference calls or web meetings, it should include phone numbers, passwords or other connection instructions and information.
M = Message:	Most calendar invitations have a “notes” section. Here you should include important details for the meeting, including the agenda.
A = Action:	Like emails, you want to be clear of any actions that you expect participants to take in preparation for the meeting. For example, if Mary is to distribute electronic copies of the site map, or if we are to make inquiries with the city regarding a road closing permit, this should be clearly indicated in the notes section.
R = Response:	Responses that are required before the meeting should be identified, including how the response is to be provided.
T = Time Line:	The time line for the response or action requested should also be requested in the meeting request.

Revised Meeting Request Using the SMART Approach

Let’s consider rewriting the meeting that we are organizing with Mary Smith and John Doe using the SMART approach. The meeting request might look like this:

A meeting request of this nature provides all attendees with the information they need to be prepared and productive participants to the meeting. Notice some actions that can be taken to make the meeting request more valuable:

Our Events Summary makes a reference to the notes below.
We have included a reminder seven days prior to the event. This can remind us to send a confirming SMART email to the meeting participants and follow up on any actions not yet completed.
Although we did not use this feature, in most if not all calendar programs, meeting requests can also include attachments that may be referred to in the meeting. If this is the case, refer to the attachment in the notes so that they do not get overlooked.

SMART meeting requests provide us with the opportunity to stand out from the crowd and convey our professionalism and competency. It may take a little more time to set up, but it will save everyone time in the end.

Jim Baston

“When you go to meetings or auditions and you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.”

– Paula Abdul

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Six Components of a Robust and Failsafe Opportunity Management Process

Jim — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 15:27:47 +0000

If you are engaging your field service team in business development efforts, you will be aware of the importance of having a robust and failsafe opportunity management process. Poor processes drop opportunities, fail to keep everyone informed and generally defeat your efforts to get everyone enthusiastically involved.

In this blog, I thought it would be helpful to consider the Six Key Components of a Robust and Failsafe Opportunity Management Process for your team.

1. Clearly identify what you want your technicians to do

The process starts with having a clear understanding of what you want your technicians to do if they do find an opportunity to help. For example, do you want them to:

Simply pass the opportunity over to sales (or other) for follow-up?
Review their ideas with the customer and get their permission for a salesperson (or other) to call?
Review their ideas with the customer, provide pricing, and seek the customer’s agreement to proceed?
Other?

2. Provide clear expectations on how you want technician to be involved in the solution

Options can include:

None – they leave it up to the sales team
Some – they provide input then back out of the process
Most – they work closely with the sales team (or others) to determine the final solution
All – they determine the final solution, price it, and present it to the customer

3. Build in flexibility to accommodate different situations

Be clear on how you want the technician (and sales team) to act as circumstances change. Do your expectations of your field service team change depending upon the nature of the opportunity? For example, will their actions change depending upon the:

Size of the opportunity?
Products and/or service contemplated?
Nature of the customer?
Other?

4. Define how progress on each opportunity will be communicated

Typically opportunities take time to address. Customer visits are required, a solution must be developed and priced, customers need time to evaluate the solution, etc. To keep the field service team engaged and enthusiastic, it is critical to keep them informed of the progress that is being made.

This also allows the technician to respond professionally in the event the customer asks a question about progress on the solution. Having a technician respond with a flippant “I don’t know. Those guys in the office never tell us anything”, is not helpful and certainly not professional.

5. Make it clear on who will follow up and how the follow up will take place

It is logical to place responsibility for follow up on the sales team or the person who presented the customer with the final proposal. But, if the opportunity was quoted through sales or through another department, can the technicians play a role here?

Would it make sense to provide them with a list of outstanding proposals for each customer that they visit so that they can ask if the customer has come to some decision and perhaps provide supporting information?

I recognize that each company and each opportunity is different so this approach may not work in all cases. However, letting a proposal to replace an old piece of equipment before it fails fall through the cracks does not help the customer if the equipment fails because they forgot about the issue.

6. Actively work to keep things on track

No system is truly failsafe for every circumstance. Despite your best efforts, things will go wrong. When they do, we can show leadership by addressing the underlying issues and getting things back on track quickly.

We can also address those that don’t follow the process and ensure that they understand the importance of doing so. Failure to address problems quickly and consistently will tell everyone that the process really isn’t all that important after all.

Our technicians provide a valuable service when they take proactive actions to make recommendations that help our customers to be better off. We can help them and help our business by ensuring that the processes we have in place work consistently and correctly.

Jim Baston

If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.

– W. Edwards Deming

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Four Simple Steps Technicians Can Take to Uncover Opportunities

Jim — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 15:19:22 +0000

If you are encouraging your technicians to take proactive steps to recommend your products and services to your customers, you may be looking for ways to help them to explore for opportunities to help. Here are four simple steps that your technicians can take to uncover opportunities to help your customers to be better off.

1. Ask a simple question.

At the beginning or end of each maintenance service call, get your technicians in the habit of asking, “Is there anything else that we can do for you today?” This simple question will often result in new opportunities that otherwise might go to someone else or go unfilled.

Other questions you may wish your techs to ask include, “Have there been any changes in the building/process/operations since the last time I was here?” or “Have there been any issues or concerns related to the building/process/operations since last time?”

2. Take the customer on a tour of their own facilities.

This approach was shared with me by a seasoned HVAC technician who regularly took his customers on tours. He used it as an opportunity to showcase the work he was doing, point out equipment that was not under contract and suggest new ideas to make improvements. His customers appreciated the opportunity to learn more about their systems and he used the time to learn more about the customers’ goals and objectives.

3. Follow up on previously quoted work.

No doubt you have several proposals that have been sent to customers that have not had any follow up. To the best of your knowledge, no action has been taken by the customer, but you are not certain of the status. In many cases, it will be because the customer has forgotten about them.

Encourage your technicians to speak to the customer about those outstanding proposals. The customer will appreciate their interest and they will thank the technician if their follow-up prevented something from falling though the cracks.

4. Offer to demonstrate a new technology or software.

Technology is changing at a rapid pace and it is almost impossible for our customers to keep on top of what is going on. When there is a technology or software that you offer that can help customers get a competitive edge, then you will be providing a valuable service bringing it to your customer’s attention.

By taking the initiative to proactively explore for opportunities to help your customers to be better off, not only will you generate more revenues, but your technicians will actually be delivering a higher level of service. Your customers will appreciate the added attention and see great value as you help them achieve their business goals.

Jim Baston

“I learned that you don’t get anywhere by sitting comfortably in a chair.”

– Conrad Hilton

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Do You Tell Your Customers?

Jim — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 13:06:01 +0000

Your field service team can add tremendous value to your service relationships when they recommend products and services that you can provide that will help your customers be better off. They are in a unique position to do this; they have the knowledge of the technology, an inside understanding of your customer’s current processes and equipment and, hopefully an appreciation of your customer’s goals and objectives. They also have proximity to the customer. The question is however, if you engage your technicians in promoting your services, do you tell your customers?

Do You Tell Your Customers?

I recently spoke at the Field Service Forum in Amsterdam. I asked how many of the attendees either formally or informally encouraged their technicians to proactively recommend their services to their customers. About 60% of the room raised their hands. I then asked how many of those who raised their hands told their customers that they were engaging their technicians in this way and not a single person responded that they did. This is entirely consistent with other discussions that I have had.

How about you? Do you tell your customers? Do you tell them that you are encouraging your technicians to look for products and services to recommend to them? If you are not, you are missing out on an important opportunity.

Why Not?

Let’s examine one of the reasons why we seem so hesitant to let our customers know about the promotion of products and services by our technicians. I believe that underlying our reluctance is that we tend to see the actions of our technicians as a “selling” activity. And, it’s hard to promote “selling” as a benefit to our customers.

Where is the value for the customer in a conversation that goes like this? “Mr./Mrs. Customer, I want you to know that we have encouraged our technicians to look for opportunities for us to sell you more services so that we can increase the revenues we receive from you.” It’s hard to see any value in this statement, regardless of how noble our intentions or those of our field service team are.

Remember, It is a Service

The key is to keep in mind that we want our technicians to use their expertise and proximity to look for opportunities to help the customer and raise these with the customer when they find them. This is valuable because the actions of our technicians can truly help our customers to be better off and to achieve their business goals. Their recommendations therefore, are a service.

Yes, as service providers, we do benefit from this proactive activity through increased service revenues, but those revenues are our reward in return for the value of the service that we provide. By regarding the proactive activities of our technicians through a service lens, it becomes easier to promote their activities just like we would any other service that we provide.

Have this Conversation with your Customers

An excellent way to promote the proactive actions of our technicians is to have this conversation with our customers. “Mr./Mrs. Customer, we have provided direction and training to our technicians to encourage them to look for opportunities to help you operate your facility/processes more effectively while they are performing the service. Would you have any objection when they find something that will help you achieve your business goals, if they bring the opportunity to your attention?”

By explaining the actions of our technicians in this way, we are able to communicate the value of their efforts for the customer.

If you formally or informally engage your technicians in business development activities, I encourage you to tell your customers – and let them know why it is of value for them.

Promote their efforts to your customers as a point of difference. Let them know that you are providing your “heads” as well as your “hands”. When they recognize the value of these efforts and benefit from the resulting recommendations, they will be delighted that you have engaged your technicians in this way.

Jim Baston

“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”

– Woodrow Wilson

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My Definition of Effective Communication for the Service Business

Jim — Tue, 31 May 2016 14:25:35 +0000

I was engaged in a conversation recently about why communication plays such an important role in the world of service. It was an interesting discussion and allowed me the opportunity to share my definition of effective communication for the service business.

The quality of our communication is relied on to assess our competence

The quality of our communication is a major source of information that our customers rely on to evaluate our competence and the value of our work. As an intangible service, it is almost impossible for a customer to accurately evaluate actual work quality or competence directly. For example, if it takes us one hour to troubleshoot a problem, how does the customer know that the hour spent was amazing and that it would have taken anyone else a day or more to figure out the problem? The answer is that they don’t really know, so they look to their perception of the quality of our communication as an important input that they use to assess our competence.

Communication can be intentional or unintentional

It is important to remember that communication can be intentional or unintentional. For example, we can send an email as a way of intentionally communicating specific information. Unintentional communication may also occur based on the quality of that email. How the email is constructed (does it use good sentence structure, is it free from spelling errors, etc.) may communicate information to the customer that they use to evaluate our competence. So, for example, a poorly constructed email that has incorrect grammar and plenty of spelling mistakes, may unintentionally communicate an image of us that is not very complimentary.

We can limit the amount of unintentional communication that takes place. If we recognize that the quality of the email that we send will also communicate something about our professionalism, then we can intentionally make an effort to ensure that the email is constructed in a manner that contributes to the communication of our professionalism.

Effective communication for the service business

Which brings me to my definition of effective communication for the service business. Effective communication will achieve three objectives:

Accurately transfer information
Create the feeling of assurance in the receiver
Reflect positively on the sender

Obviously, accurately transferring information is important. Presumably it is the reason we sent the email or had a telephone conversation in the first place. To be effective, the receiver must understand the meaning of the message in the way it was intended by us as the sender. The second and third points are also important because they contribute to the perceived value of our work.

We’re in control

Fortunately, we can consciously construct our emails, conduct our telephone conversations and otherwise communicate in a manner that will intentionally convey our competence and professionalism. This will help ensure that the customer feels reassured by receiving our correspondence and recognize that they are in good hands. Correspondence of this nature will also reflect positively on us as professionals in our trade.

As service professionals, we have a choice. We can remain unconcerned about the importance that our correspondence has in providing insight to our customers about us and our competence and leave the resulting image that we create in their minds up to chance. Or, we can consciously and intentionally use our communication opportunities to effectively communicate so that we continually remind our customers that they are dealing with a competent professional.

Jim Baston

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

– George Bernard Shaw

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Disappointed with Technician Efforts in Making Recommendations to Customers? Teach Them the “5 Ps”.

Jim — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 18:56:13 +0000

In his book, Coaching for Improved Work Performance[1], Ferdinand Fournies notes that, although there are 16 reasons why employees do not do what they are supposed to do, 99% of the time it is because of only two – they either don’t know what they are supposed to do or don’t know how to do it. If you are disappointed by your technicians’ efforts in making recommendations to your customers, try teaching your technicians the 5 P’s for making recommendations.

The 5 Ps refers to the five steps technicians can use to effectively communicate their recommendations to the customer for those product and services that they feel will help their customers to be better off. This simple approach addresses why the customer should take action. It is easy to remember and it works as follows:

Permission: Every recommendation should start with asking “Permission” from the customer to proceed. It is as simple as stating the topic of conversation and then asking if they have time for that conversation now. For example, “Mrs. Customer, I just completed the maintenance service and I have a recommendation that will eliminate these unexpected failures and significantly reduce your energy usage. Would you have just a few moments to talk about this now?” Asking permission shows empathy for the customer’s situation and, if the customer is too busy, allows them to reconnect at a more suitable time.

Problem: The “Problem” is simply a statement of what has been found that would benefit from your recommendation. Ideally the problem statement can be reduced to a few simple sentences. For instance, “Mr. Customer, both of your units are over 18 years old and at the end of their useful life. As a result, you will continue to experience unexpected failures and parts will be increasingly hard to come by. It’s only a matter of time before you experience an extended and costly breakdown.”

Proposal: In this context, “Proposal” simply means a statement indicating what can be done to address the problem. In our case, our proposal might look like this, “This would be a good time to consider replacing the old units with new higher efficiency units. Because the existing units are working now, we can schedule the replacements at a time which will cause the least amount of disruption.”

Payoff: The fourth P, “Payoff”, refers to the benefits the customer can expect by taking action. Continuing our example, we might say, “The new units should give you years of trouble free operation and will significantly reduce energy consumption. Not only will the energy savings pay back your initial investment while your tenants enjoy a more comfortable workplace, but you can relax knowing that you are contributing to a greener environment.”

Pose: The fifth and final P is “Pose” as in “pose a question”. It is simply the call to action at the end of the conversation. Here are some examples: “Would you like us to put a proposal together for you so you can evaluate the options?” “Would you like me to arrange to have someone call you from our office to discuss this further?” “Would you like us to go ahead with this recommendation for you?”

I encourage you to introduce the 5 Ps to your team and look for opportunities for them to practice. Set aside a few minutes at each safety/service meeting for the team to role-play for example. As the field team becomes more comfortable with the approach, they will become more comfortable in using it to make recommendations to the customer that will motivate them to take action. And, by proactively making more recommendations to customers, your field team will be offering a higher level of service.

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”

– William James

[1] F.F. Fournies, Coaching for Improved Work Performance, McGraw-Hill, 2000

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