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Technician Sales Training – Inverse Relationship Between Trust and Technique

technican sales training expertIn my last blog I talked about the 4 questions to ask when evaluating “sales” training for technicians.  In this blog, I would like to look more closely at the inverse relationship between trust and technique when it comes to promoting services to customers.

I feel that the technician is in a unique position to identify opportunities that the customer can act on to help them operate their facilities and/or processes more effectively. In fact, I believe that technicians have an obligation to reach out to the customer to discuss these opportunities to help and to assist them in making informed decisions. To me, this really isn’t selling at all, but rather an important part of the service.  And, this approach has a significant benefit. My experience indicates that service firms that engage their technicians in this way will create a sustainable competitive advantage and be rewarded with more business, higher customer satisfaction and unprecedented levels of retention.

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4 Questions to Ask When Evaluating Technician “Sales” Training Programs

service tech training

Are you thinking of providing “sales” training for your technicians on how to promote your services? Before making a decision, consider what you want the training to achieve. Below are 4 questions that are key when evaluating training programs that can help you ensure you get a higher ROI.

Those of you who have read my book and subscribe to this blog know that I feel that the technician is in a unique position to identify opportunities that the customer can act on to help them operate their facilities and/or processes more effectively. In fact, I believe that technicians have an obligation to reach out to the customer to discuss these opportunities to help and to assist them in making informed decisions. To me, this really isn’t selling at all, but rather an important part of the service.  And, this approach has a significant benefit. My experience indicates that service firms that engage their technicians in this way will create a sustainable competitive advantage and be rewarded with more business, higher customer satisfaction and unprecedented levels of retention.

Read more

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4 Questions about Business Development by your Service Technicians

Service Technician Training ExpertBusiness development by service technicians is often regarded by management as a tactic to be employed to build new business, rather than a differentiating business strategy to impart a superior service experience. Below are 4 questions to ask yourself to determine which approach your organization employs.

When service firms think of business development as a tactic they to tend focus on short-term activities that may achieve immediate gain at the expense of long-term growth. A tactical approach focuses on the question: “How can I get my service technicians to be more assertive in promoting our products and services to our customers?” The downside of the tactical focus is that short term tactical thinking can sometimes lead us to think of how the customer can serve our needs rather than how we can serve the needs of our customer. We may look at the opportunity in terms of “… let’s leverage our customer relationships to win more business.” In addition, a short term, tactical approach may obscure much larger opportunities to truly build a differentiated service offering. Read more

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6 Ways to Get the Most out of Training your Team

Jim Baston - Proactive ServiceService managers often ask me if they should attend our Proactive Service® workshop with their technicians. My answer is always “yes” and I explain ways to get the most out of training their service tech team. Although I am enthusiastic about the manager attending, this is a somewhat qualified response because these benefits of attending can be outweighed by how the manager acts during the workshop itself. Too often, I find the manager in the back corner of the room, huddled over their laptop or frantically texting someone on their phone. Frequently they will leave the room for long periods of time. To me, this is a lost opportunity and can actually have a negative impact on the training. Here are the 6 ways to participate effectively and get the most return for your training investment: Read more

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Technician Service Challenges – How to Keep a Customer

customer serviceIt’s happened to all of us. A preventable failure, a lost customer, and all this could have been avoided for the price of a cup of coffee. I learned this lesson many years ago interviewing customers for a client. I asked a range of questions about performance, suggested ways to improve technician service, keep customers and address some of the challenges they were facing or expected to face in the future. Our aim was to develop a service strategy that better anticipated and served the needs of their customers.

One customer told me it was lucky that he was still a customer at all. He told me of an incident that happened a few years previously that caused him some personal embarrassment and had him literally concerned for his own job. Apparently, after a routine maintenance call, the technician informed the customer that they had a problem with a specific piece of equipment. It was showing signs of failure and that it should be replaced. The technician duly included this in the service order summary which the customer signed. Read more

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5 Questions to Help you Evaluate How Proactive your Service Team Is

customer technician service checklistIf you are actively engaging your technicians in promoting your services, here are 5 questions to help you evaluate how proactive your service team is. These questions are part of our ‘How Proactive is Your Service Team’ Checklist.

Do you:

1. Position business development as an important service activity to be performed by your service technicians? When technicians recognize the valuable service they perform when making recommendations that will help the customer, they will be more likely to engage them in conversation rather than thinking that it is the salesperson’s job.

2. Have a fail-safe mechanism for handling leads from the field? When our office team does not follow up opportunities, we are in effect telling the technicians that we were “only kidding” when we asked them to explore ways to help the customer. Read more

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4 Components of a Better Technician Work Order Resolution Description

service tech training expertFrustrated by the poor quality of the information provided by your technicians on work orders? The importance of the quality of the work order resolution description is often overlooked. The fact is the quality of this information is very important! Below are 4 easily remembered components that your technicians can include to better communicate the value of the work they have performed. The four components are captured using the acronym CARE.

Whether we like it or not, what is written on the work order to describe the service that has been performed, is an important indicator to the customer of the quality of the work completed. This is because, under most circumstances, the customer cannot actually know the quality of the work itself. For example, how do they know if the hour it took the technician to troubleshoot the problem displayed brilliant detective work that would have taken any other person several hours to figure out, or if the hour demonstrated a poor grasp of the technology that another technician could have completed in only 5 minutes? The fact is the customer doesn’t know. They therefore look for evidence of the quality of the service and one of the most important factors that they rely on is how the work performed is described in the work order description. Read more

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You Said “Two” – The Importance of a Good First Impression

customer service expert

“You said ‘two’.” These were the three simple words she spoke to me and they set the tone for our business relationship and a lasting first impression. As I write this, it is early on a Sunday morning in Vancouver. I am staying at a downtown hotel and reviewing the details of a workshop that I am delivering to a group of technicians on Monday. I had decided to take a break and walk a couple of blocks to get some fresh air and cup of coffee.

One of the topics of discussion at the workshop will be the power of first impressions and how they can set the tone for a business relationship. When meeting customers for the first time, a poor first impression can greatly hamper our technician’s ability to build trust and negatively impact their ongoing relationship. That is because, once an impression is made, we begin to filter the information we receive about the person who made the impression to fit our view. And, it works for both positive and negative first impressions. For example, if a customer’s first impression is that we are lazy, they will filter their observations about us and pick up on any evidence that may reinforce that view and ignore evidence to the contrary. For example, they may come across us taking a well-deserved coffee break and chatting with one of their employees. If they are of the impression that we are lazy, then they may think, “There he goes again, taking another break! And now they are wasting the time of one of our employees as well!” If we are perceived as hard working by another customer and they were to observe the same situation, they might think, “Finally, she’s taking a break. And look how well she gets along with our staff”. Read more

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Spontaneous Empathy – Addressing Concerns Before the Customer Raises Them

customer service expert OntarioSpontaneous Empathy – anticipating concerns and addressing them before the customer raises them. I recently observed a server at a national (and very popular) coffee shop chain use this technique to great effect. It was a few weeks ago and I still reflect on the value of the gesture.

A friend and I were heading to northern Ontario for a few days of fishing. We started driving at 6:00 am and by the time we took our first break at 10:30 we were more than ready for a coffee. We were delighted to see the unmistakable sign of our favourite coffee chain ahead, conveniently located near some gas pumps. I dropped my friend off at the coffee shop to get our order to go and headed next door to fill up. The plan was for him to pick up the coffees and meet me at the gas pumps. When I finished filling up, my friend was still nowhere to be seen so I pulled up to the coffee shop and went inside. Read more

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5 Mistakes Service Companies Make Asking Technicians to Promote Services

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click image to enlarge

Through the years working with Service providers across several industries, I have found that there are 5 common mistakes that service companies make when asking technicians to promote their services. These mistakes can cost the service company in lost revenues, reduced customer retention and higher technician turnover.

Engaging technicians in promoting services is a focus of many service organizations today – and for good reason. A program of this nature can be a significant differentiator in a highly competitive environment. Technicians who use their expertise and knowledge to recommend products and services that help their customers achieve their goals provide tremendous value. They help their customers recognize that they are better off for having known them. And, a customer who recognizes this value in the relationship is very unlikely to take their business elsewhere. Read more