“Change Your Focus…
Change
Your Business.”
Imagine,
for a moment, “Your service sales are
driving your box sales” instead of your “box sales driving your
services.” Why would they? Is this even viable. Is it wishful thinking? According to a ground breaking study we performed
for the CEA, consumers are expressing a rapidly growing need for proactively delivered
in-home support services. Services
they’re willing to pay for….but don’t know where to find them.
By the year 2010 more than 30 million consumers will
live in connected homes. This month “Visions” magazine was emphatic in
pointing out that connected consumers
will insist on more than delivery, set-up and an extended warranty. Like other home services, they want more than
a “crank’em and thank’em relationship. Connected-consumers want the same
on-call relationship they have with their tax preparer, insurance man or their
son’s teacher.
Ask the owner of a Data Doctors franchise. Ask them if
their customers are willing to pay for their services. Ask them if they end up selling these same
consumers products as a result of their services. Ask them what their points of
differentiation are and it will give you a clue as to how you should be
positioning your company.
Why change now? Because of what you now
know. You know you’re on the wrong end
of the deal. Do you agree that the trend
of product exclusivity and low margins continues to head relentlessly in the
same direction…Down? Lower margins and
less exclusivity are simply attributes of a business model moving from growth
to dormancy. It means, the boxes you’re
selling are no longer as relevant as the services you should be offering.
Selling services requires a dramatic change of
thinking. How much time do you currently spend
marketing your services versus marketing your products? If you spent as much
time marketing your services you’d already be on the road to dramatic
change. Creating compelling reasons for
your customers to buy your services will guarantee that you will sell more
products..
What makes selling services so difficult? Services are
invisible…they’re intangible, and to most of us, they’re about fixing
things. You normally can’t see services.
But products are tangible and the consumer is constantly reminded of their
value whenever they see the product. The
key is learning how to make your services visible. Domino’s made their pizza delivery service
highly visible by giving the customer a delivery guarantee. (more on this later)
This is not your father’s Oldsmobile. The services we’re referring to are not
the “fix-it” services we’re all familiar with. They’re more about design, support, and
maintenance. The CEA study is very
specific about which services connected-consumers need and want now and in the
future. This will be new data for most of you.
New Data, New Knowledge. We’ll begin by focusing on your old customers
first. Using our Customer Optimizer
Tool, and the same methodology we used in the CEA research, we’ll identify what
services your customers know they want now and ultimately
what services they never knew they’d want.
This is new knowledge. At this
point the task
is to tailor a specific offer, send it to them via
email, direct mail or on your sales floor and test the results. Taking action is a critical, and it’s what
stops most of us.
New knowledge always leads to action…right? Sounds simple
but strangely enough, this is the hard part.
Knowledge alone doesn’t lead to action. A knowing-versus-doing gap
exists in most businesses. Why? Because in life, as in business, we’re taught
to avoid risk. When Life Cereal was
introduced to kids years ago it approached this problem head-on in its first TV
commercial. “Let Mikey try it” was the
theme line. Taking “No Risk” leads to
the nasty habit of always being the follower.
It’s called Me-too Marketing. Our
approach to creating action is to minimize your risk by using our new knowledge
to create scenarios that we can test.
How should you price your services in a test? It depends on
the service you’re testing. If it’s a
once-a-year service it’s priced differently than a once-a-quarter service. It’s certainly based on the projected hours
spent, the level of expertise provided and the potential for adding any other
services or products. The standard hourly
service rate in the highly competitive IT storage industry is $360 an
hour. By the way, the IT industry is
also moving rapidly away from selling products to selling service. Service in the IT storage industry includes
“design, training, start-up and yearly maintenance.” Service is fast becoming the leading factor
when it comes to a customer’s choice of product.
How do you get everyone behind your new focus? Slowly. That’s
why it’s important to begin your transformation now. Change requires not only changing your focus
but the focus of everyone in your company. Your entire company not only needs
to know which direction your heading, but they need to see it. Most of what we believe to be true is thru
visual experiences. “I’ll believe it,
when I see it.” “What you see is what
you get.” “Show me the money.” Making
service more visually prominent is just the first step. Only when employees can see it will they
support it. Service must become visible,
relevant, credible and actionable.
Always take a test drive first. If you’ve read
this far, we think you’re ready to take a test drive. Neither one of us would
think of buying a new car without taking it for a drive. Both our Customer Optimizer and Sales
Optimizer demo’s are now available, as are pilot program discounts for early
adapters. Contact us to find our more
today.
Produced By and ©2006 - 2007 by Sell Service Solutions