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What To Look For in Self-Delivery Training

Looking to Self Deliver Soft Skills Training – Here’s What to Look For 

Last time I wrote about why you might consider delivering your own soft skills training in a blog entitled If You Want Something Done Right.  I realize that delivering soft skills training may not be for everyone, but the rewards of leading your team through a workshop can be significant and long lasting.  It can literally be a game changer.  For those who are looking to deliver soft skills training, here is what to look for when evaluating programs. 

If you are thinking about delivering training for your team, there are two options available to you.  One is to create your own training program and the other is to purchase a program ready made for self-delivery.  For this blog, I will focus on the ready-made option.  What follows are the key factors to consider when evaluating soft skills training programs that are designed for self-delivery. 

Relevance:  There are many excellent training programs out there, but not all may be directly relevant to your needs.  The more the training reflects the reality of the day-to-day challenges your team faces, the more effective it will be.  Therefore, if your team are highly skilled service professionals working in a business-to-business environment, then a program geared for non-technical, salespeople serving consumers in a retail store, may not be as impactful as you had hoped – no matter how good the quality of the training program is. 

Preparation Instructions:  Although not part of the actual facilitation, preparation instructions are important, particularly if this is the first time you are delivering the program.  These instructions should include specific preparation steps, and timelines to ensure that you are fully prepared for the training.   

Detailed Facilitation Notes:  The facilitation notes should provide you with adequate guidelines on how to facilitate the workshop.  If a PowerPoint presentation is included, the notes should be associated with each slide.  The key is to provide step-by-step instructions to minimize the time needed for preparation while ensuring your facilitation delivers the learning experience intended by the program. 

Background Notes:  Since facilitation plays an important role in how well participants grasp the subject matter, it is helpful to have background notes on the facilitation process itself.  Where applicable, it is helpful to understand why it is suggested that you use a particular example or present the material is a certain way.  The notes should also provide additional information on the point being presented that would not typically be included in the facilitation notes themselves. 

Customization:  One of the great advantages of self-delivery is the ability to customize the examples and relate them directly to the content.  The self-delivery program you consider should allow for this and provide the opportunity and instructions on what to customize.   With our Proactive Service® Self-Delivery Workshop for example, we provide templates and instructions for the customizable elements.  

Videos and Video Access:  An excellent way to communicate information and create the learning experience intended.  Although not absolutely necessary, accompanying videos are a big plus if the training you are considering includes them. 

Follow-up:  Perhaps the most important component of any program is the follow-up that takes place after the training.  People learn by repetition and managers would do well by repeating the key learning points at every opportunity once the training is completed.  Anything that the training package you are considering has to enable you to do this easily is important.  In our Proactive Service® Self-Delivery Workshop, we provide ongoing access to view the videos after the training so that they can be used for onboarding and refreshing.  We also provide follow-up emails to keep the core ideas top of mind as well as short exercises that can use during regular service meetings to help participants practice the core skills. 

Making the decision to lead your own training session is not for the faint of heart but the rewards in the form of behaviour and cultural change can far outweigh the effort.  If you are considering leading your own session for your team, evaluate the program to ensure fit with your operations and that it provides what you need to support the behaviour change you are counting on. 

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. 
– Benjamin Franklin 

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If You Want Something Done Right

If you want something done right, do it yourself.  I am certain that this old adage is familiar to you, but in this era of specialization, does it still ring true?  Those of us who had to cut our own hair during the pandemic may feel it doesn’t.  And when you think of certain technical disciplines or fields that require specialized skills or knowledge that literally take years to master it doesn’t make sense at all.  

However, there is one area though where doing it yourself can make sense and can lead to a better result.  The area I am referring to is delivering soft skills training to your team.  

Now, you might be thinking that I have lost my mind.  Doesn’t training require a skill of facilitating that is honed by years of practice?  And doesn’t training require knowledge that may take years to learn?  Time is in limited supply and don’t I already have enough to do?  I’ll try to answer each of these, but first, let’s look at why training your own team can be so effective.

The purpose of training is typically to impart new skills that result in a desired change in behaviour.  You may send your team on spreadsheet training to become more proficient at preparing information so that their resulting reports are more accurate and reader friendly while at the same time freeing up more time for them to attend to other responsibilities.  But training in itself is not enough to guarantee you will get the change in behaviour that you are looking for.  Studies have shown that the quality of training is not the most important determinant of behaviour change.  The most important predictor of behaviour change related to training is management and how they talk about and support the training.  Specifically, it depends on what managers do before, during and after the training takes place.  Do they help participants understand how the training will help them in their job performance?  Do they communicate why it is important and how it will impact them personally?  Do they talk about the training in a manner that speaks of this importance?  Do they participate actively in the training itself?  Do they follow up on the training?

When you lead the training on soft skills, by your very actions you are communicating the importance of the training for your employees’ performance and personal success.  In addition, you have the opportunity to ensure that the training is directly relevant to the attendees by including examples and describing situations that resonate with them.  You can make certain that the training speaks to the overall strategy of the organization and your employees’ role in that strategy.  When you deliver the training, you are more likely to follow up and to mention various aspects of the training during future meetings.  In short, by delivering the training yourself, you can help to embed the concepts into the culture of your organization and clearly answer the question of why you are doing this.

Delivering training to your team also provides you with the flexibility to adjust the training schedule to meet the needs of the business.  You can schedule the training to take place all at once, or spread it out over several sessions.  You can create “homework” assignments to allow participants to practice the key concepts by applying what they have learned in the field.  And best of all, you can make these changes literally on the fly.

So, let’s go back to the questions raised previously.  Leading soft skills training for your team has great benefits, but doesn’t it require facilitation skills, subject matter expertise and time?  Let’s consider these in turn.

Facilitation skills:  Facilitation is an important skill that all good trainers rely on and it is true that good trainers have honed these skills over time.  But, with a little guidance, most of us with little or no experience can facilitate effective discussions that get the critical points across.  Remember, we’re not facilitating high-level discussions between world leaders to find the secret to ever lasting peace.  We are simply trying to engage the class in discussions and exercises to help them discover the key learning principles for themselves.

Knowledge: The knowledge required for customer service training is simply common sense.  In fact, customer service training is one of those subjects where everyone already has the core knowledge, including those who are there for the training.  Everyone knows that they should be polite, tuck in their shirts and practice good grooming to make a favourable impression for example.  Therefore, those that don’t demonstrate good customer service skills are typically not ignorant of what constitutes good customer service, they just choose not to apply what they know.  That means that the challenge of getting behaviour change in soft skills training is not a matter of teaching participants what to do, but rather why to do it. (And that is why management involvement is so important).

Time:  By training your team in customer service, you are taking time away from some of the other things that you could be doing.  There is no getting around this.  Time is a limited resource and if you spend it doing one thing, it has to come at the expense of not having the time to do something else.  The question has to be, is my time as a manager well used if I spend some of it training my team in customer service?  To answer this question, we need to consider how we are measured as managers.  Many years ago I was struck by the truth in the statement, “As managers, we are recognized not so much for what we do, but for what our team does.”  While we as managers are measured and compensated for obtaining certain results, it is our employees’ efforts that generate those outcomes.  So, if the performance of our employees determines our success, then it makes sense to do all that we can to help our employees perform at their best.  From this perspective, training our employees no longer looks like a separate task outside of the role of “managing” but rather an integral part of the role.  

So, if it makes sense to lead the customer service training for our employees, maybe we should change the old adage to read:  If you want customer service training done right, do it yourself.

“As managers, we are recognized not so much for what we do, but for what our team does.”

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Refresher Exercises Announcement

We are pleased to announce a new follow-up program for the very successful Proactive Service® workshop called The Refresher Exercises. The Refresher Exercises are designed as short modules for managers to include as part of their regular service/safety meetings to help maintain focus on business development by the field service team. The modules reinforce the key concepts of Proactive Service® and help actively engage field service professionals in proactive business development for their organizations.

The Refresher Exercises come complete with step-by-step instructions, videos and exercises for the manager to engage the field team and promote discussion on the team’s role in promoting services to their customers. The field team leaves each session with a commitment to apply the principles learned which contributes to the desired behaviour change.

The Proactive Service® Refresher Exercises Include:

  1. Eight individual exercise sessions ranging in duration from 15 to 30 minutes. (Note: Delivery of the exercises can easily be adjusted to increase or decrease the duration of each session).
  2. A concise facilitation guidebook providing helpful suggestions on how to present each exercise.
  3. A short slide presentation for each exercise session to guide the discussion.
  4. Links to streaming videos presenting the key concepts.

The Proactive Service® workshop is a program to help field service professionals take a proactive role in business development for their companies. It does this by helping the field team recognize that making recommendations to help their customers is an important part of the service they provide. Coupled with our post training follow up emails, these refresher exercises will help you integrate Proactive Service® into your service culture.

For more information on Proactive Service® and the Refresher Exercises visit www.jimbaston.com or email me at jim@jimbaston.com.

Jim Baston

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It’s Not Them, It’s You

I just finished a book that resonated strongly with me.  It’s entitled It’s Not Them, It’s You by Laura Sukorokoff.  The book discusses the role of management in employee engagement and I saw immediately how the ideas in Laura’s book would contribute to the success of any service leaders’ efforts to enthusiastically engage their field service teams in proactive business development.

When talking about “proactive business development”, we are referring to getting technicians to take a proactive role in looking for products and services that they can offer to help a customer to be better off.  It might be a product that will improve efficiency and reduce energy consumption or it might be a service that will extend asset life or improve the safety of the operation.  Whatever it is, the key to their proactive efforts is to help customers recognize what they can do to make improvements by bringing the ideas to the customers’ attention.

Our success in getting our techs to enhance the service they provide through these proactive efforts will be largely dependent upon their level of engagement.  A field service professional who is engaged, will be more likely to take these proactive steps more enthusiastically.

Now, there are several things that contribute to level of field team engagement including how the proactive role is described and the processes and systems to support their proactive efforts.  But a critical component, and one that can sometimes be overlooked, is how the manager engages their employees and that is largely dependent upon how the manager is perceived by his or her team.

Which brings me to It’s Not Them, It’s You.  In her book, Laura addresses this issue head on.  Her focus is on what managers can do to build strong, professional and trust-based relationships with their teams to engage them fully and enthusiastically in the business.  She introduces a simple, yet powerful, model that she calls RESPECT.  RESPECT is an acronym for the seven steps she has identified to engage (and retain) employees, namely:

  1. Develop a Relationship with the people on your team.
  2. Have Empathy for those with whom you work.
  3. Support the members of your team
  4. Promote the ideas of your team members
  5. Empower your team members to be great on their own terms.
  6. Have Consideration for their feelings.
  7. Trust them, and be trustworthy yourself.

What really impressed me about this book is that it does more than just explain the relationship between RESPECT and employee engagement and retention.  Laura provides solid and practical advice on how to interact with employees to build RESPECT and attain the desired engagement, all the while cognisant of the realities of management. For example, although Laura believes strongly in the importance of having one-on-one meetings with all direct reports, she acknowledges that this is not always practical to do this when you have large numbers reporting to you and provides suggestions on what to do in this case.  This is particularly important when the field team spends most time away from the office and often in remote locations.

If you are interested in learning more about It’s Not Them, It’s You and the work that Laura does in this area, visit https://www.cchangelearning.com 

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Preventative Maintenance for Business Promotion – Step 6

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

Updating the Field Service Team

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This maintenance includes:

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

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

Let’s Connect

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

Jim Baston

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

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Preventative Maintenance for Business Promotion – Step 5

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

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

Ensuring Appropriate Backup Measures

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

Plan for the Exceptions

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

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

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

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

Let’s Connect

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

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

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

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Preventative Maintenance for Business Promotion – Step 4

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

Management Support is the Lubricant

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s Connect

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

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

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

[2] James Kirkpatrick, Transferring Learning to Behaviour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim Baston

“The human mind is our fundamental resource.”

– John F. Kennedy

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

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

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

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

Review Our Perception

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

Change Our Perception from Selling to Serving

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

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

Benefits of this Change in Perception

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

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

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

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

– Michael Jackson

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Establish a customer visit routine

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

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

2. Have your field team follow up on previous recommendations

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

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

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

4. Share best practices between team members

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

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

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

– Mark Twain