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.

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

“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.”

– Albert Einstein

The post Proactive Recommendations by Your Field Team Are a Big Business Differentiator – Three Actions You Can Take appeared first on jimbaston.com.

When I managed a service business several years ago, we introduced a new initiative where we wanted to stress the importance that we in management had in ensuring the success of the project and we adopted the motto “If it is to be, it’s up to me.”  We challenged ourselves to measure our performance through the lens of that motto and, if performance was not up to plan, ask ourselves as managers what we can personally do to get things on track.  Especially in the way of supporting our technicians when it came to making beneficial recommendations to our customers.

I have the good fortune to work with businesses that have embarked on a strategy of engaging their field service teams in promoting their products and services and, through this work, I am reminded of that motto. Even though it is the proactive actions of the technicians that actually generate the opportunities, it is squarely the responsibility of those that manage them to ensure that they act as expected and that they act well.

With that in mind, here are six steps that you can take to encourage and support your team to ensure they perform at their best when identifying and presenting opportunities to help their customers.

1. Teach your technicians how to do what you want them to do. For some of your technicians, speaking to the customer seems to come naturally but for the majority it is uncomfortable and feels “foreign”.  Conversations such as these however are a skill and, like any skill, can be learned.  Our job as manager is to teach our technicians what to do so that they have a studied approach they can apply when the next opportunity arises.
2. Let them practice. If you learned to drive on a manual transmission vehicle, you may recall how uncomfortable and perhaps terrifying it was when you first started.  Everything seemed so complicated, particularly since you had to do so many things at once while still keeping your attention on what was going on around you.  With practice, you soon became more comfortable – to the point that now, you probably don’t even think about the individual steps you are taking to drive smoothly through traffic.  This is the same for engaging in customer conversations about recommended products and services.  Practice allows your technicians to learn the skills more quickly and in a “safe” environment.  More practice leads to higher comfort with the approach and when they do find an opportunity to help a customer, they will be much more likely to take the initiative to make beneficial recommendations.
3. Recognize efforts from the customers’ perspective. Technician recommendations that can help your customers operate more effectively are a valuable service – as important a service as fixing or maintaining the equipment itself.  Instead of recognizing the technicians efforts solely from your bottom line, acknowledge how their efforts have contributed to the overall success of the customer.
4. Share customer satisfaction results. If you solicit customer feedback about your services, I encourage you to add a question or two to measure the customer satisfaction about the technicians’ proactive efforts.  For example, you could ask something like, “How satisfied were you with our technician’s ability to make recommendations that can help you run your business more effectively?”  As these scores trend upward, it will reinforce the value of your technicians’ efforts and help them realize that the customer really does see value in their proactive recommendations.
5. Seek and act on feedback from your technicians. Ask your technicians how they feel about their efforts in executing the strategy and what they feel would be helpful to keep them focused and on-track.  Through an open channel you will get great insight into what is working and what is potentially holding your team back.  Whenever possible, act on their feedback quickly to demonstrate the value of their insight and the importance that you place on their initiative.
6. Join your technicians in the field. If practical, set aside some time to ride along with your techs to meet key customers and observe them in action.  This provides a wonderful opportunity to provide on-site coaching for the technician about their proactive efforts in real time.  It also allows you to meet the customer and reinforce why your technicians are asked to make recommendations and the added value it provides for your customers.

Technicians who make proactive recommendations of products and services that will help the customer be better off are providing an exceptional service.  As managers, our role is to take the steps that will help them execute this plan as effectively as possible.

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

“If it is to be, it is up to me.”

– William H. Johnsen

The post 6 Steps to Support Your Technicians in Making Beneficial Recommendations to Customers appeared first on jimbaston.com.