Your technicians can learn to sell, but why should they?

It unfortunately happens to every field services organization at some point. There is a lull in demand and your technicians aren’t at full utilization. While forecasted seasonal demand gaps can be beneficial opportunities to catch up on training, schedule vacations and conduct preventative maintenance or inventory management. Unplanned gaps in demand that drag on potentially for weeks or months have serious implications to the operational efficiency of your service organization.

Organizations traditionally solve for unplanned demand gaps by seeking to minimize service organization labour costs by forcing vacation time, laying off workers, cutting partner guidance and potentially permanently downsizing. Most, if not all, of these tactics have severe impacts on team stability, morale and partner relationships. A novel approach towards tackling this unforeseen productivity problem is to teach your field service reps/technicians, to sell. As an independent channel they can generate their own demand consistently and especially during those moments where the quantity of work demand is less than available labour supply hours.

Several approaches for targeted technician selling campaigns have proven successful. Including but not limited to the following: going door to door, leaving door hangers or hosting a “lobby event” in apartment and multi-tenant buildings; reaching out to past clients for upgrade opportunities; working call lists for identified technology rollovers and upgrades; posting promotional offers within community facebook groups; having a friends and family event or community event to educate potential clients on the latest and greatest offerings. Technicians can work in teams that both prospect and then immediately fulfill any sales that are generated.

Benefits to customers are many, including enhanced customer service, gaining insights from the advice of their trusted technical advisor and the convenience of either scheduling an appointment or having the work completed immediately. Benefits to the organization are that unproductive operating expenses from the salaries of technicians stranded without work is converted to cost of goods sold labour for RGU acquisition and either installation, upgrade or repair activity. Technicians also benefit from additional income from sales commissions and from having purposeful work to do. We all know that there are only so many times you can organize your truck or go for a coffee or get caught up on any outstanding e-learning and safety or technical training.

In summary, teaching your technicians to sell is a journey in both service organization culture, team member aptitude and sales skills proficiency. But doing so is an investment that pays huge dividends and avoids the downside of unforeseen demand gaps.

Please leave your thoughts in comments and thanks for reading!

If you're excited about the potential to turn your cost centre into a profit centre by transforming your field service culture then please visit my website to Request a Free Consultation

#fieldservice #fieldsales #serviceexcellence

Glen Westerhof is founder of Mammoth Motion Corporation Operations Consulting and is an experienced Telecommunications and IT executive with 20+ years experience across telecommunications field services, IT operations, commercial security, smart buildings, retail, cybersecurity, data & analytics, business intelligence, digitization and automation.? He leverages his broad expertise to assist with business transformation, building a customer first culture and enhancing value.? He can be reached at?www.mammothmotion.com