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Developing a Proactive Business Development Culture for the Time Strapped Service Manager

time management

You believe that you can offer a better service by getting your field service team to make recommendations aimed at helping your customers to be better off.  You have taken steps to support your expectations of a more proactive approach by your techs, including providing training and putting in place a process to capture leads and communicate progress on all opportunities.  However, you are disappointed that more techs have not fully embraced this strategy and time is not a luxury you have to devote to this problem.

If this sounds like you, then here are five steps that you can take to changing to a proactive business development culture when time is a limiting factor.

Don’t Stop Talking

Take every opportunity to speak about the proactive business development by technicians’ initiative and how it benefits customers.  Start and end every meeting by mentioning the strategy and tying it back to the topic at hand.

Remind your technicians that you have taken this approach because, when they use their knowledge and expertise to make recommendations that will help their customers achieve their business goals, they are providing a higher level of service.  Use every interaction as an opportunity to reinforce the value that they bring by taking this initiative.  Don’t stop talking.

Watch Your Language

People take important clues from the words that we use so it is critical that we use language that focuses on the service we are providing through the proactive efforts of our techs.  Avoid words like selling or promoting and focus every conversation on the subject on how it helps the customer.

Remember that you are offering a service by engaging your technicians in business development efforts.  Your reward comes when the customer recognizes the value in the technicians’ recommendations and rewards you with more work and greater loyalty.   Use words that communicate service.  Watch your language.

Become a Super Model

Our employees look to our actions to determine if we really mean what we say.  For example, if you are encouraging everyone to pitch in and go the extra mile, but show up each morning after 10:00 AM and leave by 2:00 PM with your golf clubs clearly visible in the back of the car, your message will have little, if any, effect.

Show your techs that you’re serious.  Talk about how previous recommendations have helped customers.  Step in quickly when there is a failure in the process or someone else in the organization doesn’t do their part.  Go out and see customers and let them know what you have asked your techs to do and why.  Become a super model.

Blow Your Techs’ Horn

When a technician makes a recommendation that the customer acts on, let everybody on the team know.  Tell them what the tech recommended and why.  Discuss how this will directly benefit the customer.  Make sure that everyone knows how this recommendation directly contributed to your customer’s well-being.  Blow you techs’ horn.

Have a Back Up Plan

Not everyone on your team will feel comfortable – at least at first – in engaging the customer in conversations about recommendations to help them to be better off.  If you have members on your team who are uncomfortable engaging the customer in this way, have a back up plan so that they can still participate.

Ensure your process includes situations where opportunities can be identified and given to someone else in the organization to discuss with the customer.  That way, a hesitant technician can still benefit their customers even if they don’t speak to the customer directly about their recommendation.  Over time, you can focus on helping these reluctant techs to become more comfortable and enthusiastic about their proactive role in the strategy but in the meantime, have a back up plan.

Although time is not a luxury that service managers have, we can maintain focus and achieve the change to a more proactive business development culture by integrating our efforts into our daily routines.

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

“One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself I could not change others.”

– Nelson Mandela

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5 Tips to Help Your Field Team Deal with Customers Effectively

business-man-with-bell

December is a wonderful time of year.  But it can also be a time of high stress.  Organizations struggle to get everything done before the holidays.  Employees try to balance the surge in social commitments while continuing to take actions to meet budgets.  Systems and processes are strained by increased demands caused by weather, quotas or any other number of things.

It is a time of year when systems and circumstance combine to create a stress-fuelled environment of tension and possible conflict.  To help your field team deal with customers effectively in these stressful times, consider the following five approaches.  This will help your team maintain good relations and build higher levels of trust and remind your customers why they chose to do business with you in the first place.

  1. Connect with the customer.

Whenever stressful situations arise, it is critical for our customers to realize that they have our full attention.  We can demonstrate this by connecting with the customer.  By connecting, we mean giving our customer our full attention.  That means putting things down, standing if appropriate, exhibiting open body language[1], making eye contact and actively listening.

It is also important to show a sense of urgency in our motions and our body stance (leaning slightly forward).  Connecting with the customer in this way shows we are taking the situation seriously and interested in getting the problem resolved.

  1. Acknowledge the situation.

We can remove some of the customer’s stress and concerns by showing them that we understand.  We can do this in a number of ways.  For example, the problem being experienced is having a significant and detrimental impact on production.  We could say something like, “I can see why this is so upsetting for you, particularly given the pressures you must be facing from production to get this up and running.”  You might even say, “I can understand how stressful this must be for you, I would feel the same way, if I were in your shoes.”

Notice that I am not suggesting that we take responsibility for the problem.  We are simply acknowledging the situation that the customer is in.  This continues to build upon the trust that started when we “connected” with the customer.

  1. Explain your reasons from the customer’s perspective.

When we have to say “no”, we can explain our reasons from the customer’s perspective rather than our own.  Let’s say the customer wants us to make a temporary fix that we feel will be unsafe.  The customer is adamant that it be done and we have to say “no”.

Rather than say something like “I can’t do that.  It’s unsafe and it could get me in serious trouble.  We will have to think of something else”, it would be better to say “no” from the customer’s perspective.  For example, we could say, “Unfortunately, this suggestion could prove unsafe and I would not want to put you or your tenants in harm’s way.   There are other options that we can consider, such as …”

  1. Give the customer’s motives the benefit of the doubt.

It is vitally important that we take every customer request as a request for which they feel they are entitled to (or willing to pay for) and not an attempt to take advantage of us.  This is important because it is our perspective that will largely govern how we respond.  If we feel that the customer is “always” trying to take advantage, then our response may not be balanced and unlikely to set the stage for cooperation.

If we have the perspective that the customer is innocently asking for something that they feel they are entitled to or are willing to pay for, then our response will likely be more empathetic and geared toward establishing a foundation for collaboration.  Instead of saying, “Sorry, that’s not in the contract.  If you want me to do that, you will need to call the office and give them a P.O.”, you might consider something like, “I want to make sure that I am fair to both your company and my own.  What you are asking is not in the existing contract.  Here is what I suggest we do to get this addressed …”.

Now I know that there really are customers out there that are regularly trying to take advantage, but does it hurt to respond to them the same way as we would to a customer with an innocent request?

  1. Have alternative suggestions ready.

If we do have to say “no” to a request or tell the customer bad news, we will help keep the situation calm and provide value by having alternative suggestions ready.  Imagine a scenario where our technician tells the customer that the equipment has failed and when asked what the alternatives are simply says, “I don’t know.  I will have to look into it.”  As the customer, how comfortable would we feel about the technician’s response?  What does it tell us about the technician’s understanding of our situation?

It would be better if the technician has an answer that includes two or three alternatives that can be taken and then help us decide which option make the best sense under the circumstances.  It would be better still if the technician has made a couple of phone calls and can give even more information such as price and delivery of the various options.

December is a wonderful time of year and also one full of stress and possible conflict.  We can help our technicians through this period of stress and the inevitable interpersonal challenges that they will face with just a few simple approaches.  It is a timely gift for the month of December that can be used throughout the year.

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

Stress is not what happens to us.  It’s our response
to what happens. And response is something we can choose.

– Maureen Killoran

[1] Arms uncrossed, legs comfortably apart, eye contact, etc.

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Are There Parallels Between How we Manage Food Budgets and Training Investments?

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that roughly 30% of all food produced worldwide is lost or wasted, along with all of the resources (water, fuel, fertilizers, etc.) necessary to get that food to consumers.[1]  The statistic brought to mind a compelling advertisement I saw a couple of years ago and got me wondering if we can draw parallels between how we manage food budgets and training investments.

The advertisement was created to make consumers aware of the enormity of the issue.  I can’t recall the exact details but I remember the image of a man at a barbeque with a grill full of food.  He is moving the food to a serving plate.  Every second or third time he bypasses the plate and puts the food directly into a garbage bin.  It is through the absurd nature of the act (who would cook dinner only to throw it directly in the garbage?) that makes the advertisement so effective.  Its point is that, although we would never dream of wasting food by throwing it directly into the bin, we effectively do just that when we throw out the leftovers three days later. This compelling image was intended to help consumers look at the issue in a new light.

Which brings me to training investments.  Like food consumers, no one knowingly makes an expenditure on training their teams with any intent of wasting that investment.  And yet, depending on how well we as managers support the training, we are effectively doing so.

Several years ago, James D. Kirkpatrick, consultant, author and trainer, made a presentation at an event hosted by the Canadian Society for Training and Development.  He presented a chart depicting the relative contribution to training effectiveness between management support and training quality.  He indicated that 25% of a training program’s effectiveness can be attributed to how management positions and introduces the training before the event takes place.  A further 50% of effectiveness will be the result of how management follows up and supports the training after the event.  According to his presentation, only 25% of training effectiveness can be attributed to the quality of the training itself.

This is not to say that the quality of the training itself is not important.  Obviously we want to ensure that the training content and delivery is of the highest quality.  Rather, it is speaking to the important role management has in ensuring that participants get the most that they can from the training event.  Without this support, Kirkpatrick’s research suggests that, like the food commercial outlined above, we are likely throwing training dollars directly into to the garbage bin.

Here are three things that we can do to get the greatest return from our training dollars in terms of skills adoption and behaviour change.

  1. Before the Training Takes Place. Introduce the training in context of how it will benefit the participants. What will they learn?  Why will this be beneficial?  What results should they expect by implementing the new skills?  Prepare for the training and provide necessary backup so that attendees can participate fully.  Arrange a venue that is suitable for the training purpose.
  1. During the Training. Although it is not always possible or practical to participate in all training that takes place, make a point of participating fully in training events when it makes sense.  Get an advance copy of the training materials and review them carefully.  Make notes in the margin of the workbook about examples from the day-to-day lives of the attendees that can help illustrate key points.  Participate in the training and avoid sitting at the back of the room eyes glued to the computer or cell phone.  Let others speak and avoid dominating the conversation, while making contributions of key points that are not otherwise raised.  Network with participants during breaks to get a sense of how they feel about the workshop and the key points they are learning. Be enthusiastic throughout the workshop.
  1. After the Training. Follow up with participants and assess how clearly they see the relevance of the training to their day-to-day activities.  Spend time to see how well they are applying the new skills and constructively provide feedback and coaching where applicable.  Identify key behaviours to review in future meetings and provide opportunities to practice new skills (role plays for example) when practical.

No one wants to throw training resources into the waste bin.  A good way to prevent this from happening is to recognize and act on our role as managers to support, reinforce and coach new skills and behaviours.  We must remember that, in reality, we are not paid for what we do but for what our team does.  Therefore it makes sense to do what we can to help our teams to be the best that they can be.

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 you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.”

– Margaret Fuller

[1] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations at:  http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/

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

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.

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.

“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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BYOB Service – The Competitive Edge

Close up of human hand holding brain

I don’t need to tell you that field service is a competitive business and getting more so with each passing day. Customers are more knowledgeable and demanding, competitors are innovative and tough, and the great things you do for your customers are often overlooked. It’s time to bring BYOB service to your customers and gain the competitive edge. BYOB stands for “Bring Your Own Brains” and the service company that offers this service encourages their technicians to bring their heads as well as their hands when providing a service for a customer.

In today’s competitive environment, the best way to stand out from the crowd and to take market share is to demonstrate to your customers that they are better off for having hired you. Not only is their equipment running in tip-top condition, which is what they would expect by engaging a professional and competent company like yours, but they can say that your efforts have made a contribution to their business that was beyond the scope of the work you were contracted to perform. Maybe because of their relationship with you they are operating more efficiently or safely. Perhaps your recommendations have helped them extend asset life or achieve some sort of important recognition or goal. Regardless, they can look to your relationship as bringing much more value than simply keeping the equipment running and they will reward you by renewing their contract and telling their friends and colleagues.

Of course, the only way to help your customers to be better off is to recognize what is important to them and identify and communicate those actions that the customer can take that will help them make improvements. Our field team plays a critical role here because they are the ones in the best position to gain an understanding of the customer’s challenges and goals and recognize steps that can be taken to address them.

This is where BYOB Service comes in. This helps technicians recognize that a critical part of the service that they provide is looking for ways they can help that customer achieve their goals and helping the customer recognize the value in taking action. BYOB Service providers show their field personnel that proactive conversations with their customers about their recommendations is not selling, but rather an integral part of the service that they provide. BYOB Service companies nourish and build upon the brains of their technicians through training, coaching and practice.

How about your service offering? Do you provide BYOB Service for your customers? Do your technicians recognize that their job is more than fixing things and keeping the equipment running efficiently? Do you and your management team nourish the proactive efforts of your technicians through ongoing training and constant coaching and support? Do your customers recognize your efforts and can they say they are measurably better off for having engaged you?

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

“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.”

– Woodrow Wilson

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Want your Technicians More Proactive in Promoting your Services? Your Perspective May be Getting in the Way

service tech training expertMany service managers I speak to see value in encouraging technicians to be more proactive in business development. Although many of those are taking steps to implement a formal plan for their service teams, many fail to achieve the results that they seek. If you want your technicians to be more proactive in promoting your services, check out your perspective. It might be getting in the way.

When it comes to engaging technicians in promoting services, many service managers see the role of selling as different from the role of service. They often describe selling and service as distinct and almost unrelated activities. With this view, when someone is selling they are not serving and when someone is serving they are not selling. The chart below illustrates this view of the relationship between selling and service activities.

The Distinct Activities of Selling and Serving

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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.

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