At this point, we would like to discuss a few approaches that you can use to increase the turnover of your after-sales department. As always, we make no claim to completeness.
In this list, we will limit ourselves to levers that anyone can probably use in their current business. Of course, sales can also be increased by developing innovative new services. However, this will be omitted here.
If you are interested in methods for developing innovative new services, please read our article on Service Design.
1. regular review of spare parts prices
Prices are often simply adjusted annually according to defined pricing logic. In particular, adjustments are made to changing purchase or manufacturer prices. As a rule, however, you can get even more out of this than through standardized procedures if you make a little extra effort. The competition never sleeps and you will normally find many price curves and logics that no longer fit the current market situation.
This task actually falls under the remit of the pricing manager, but they too are usually lost in the day-to-day business, which is why they do not always work as strategically as one would wish. If you have branches in different countries, for example, you can check whether some national companies are not charging too much, resulting in a loss of sales and damage to your image. Discount strategies can also be examined more closely in this context. You could also consider adjusting prices several times a year. This often results in a small increase in turnover.
To the Pricing for replacement division we have already published an article.
2. continuous adjustment of hourly rates
Hourly rates are usually only adjusted from time to time. For many after-sales departments, this is not exactly a regularity. So if you are interested in an immediate increase in turnover, you should perhaps take a look at this topic. Check both the billing rate per hour and the billing of travel time and travel expenses.
Consider macroeconomic developments such as inflation and check the behavior of your competitors and related sectors. With a little experience, you can then derive sensible increases of your own from this. If you dare to tackle this task, you should be able to increase sales by roughly 2 to 3% per year. If, on the other hand, you have let this task slide for a long time and want to get to grips with it, you may be able to achieve even more.
3. charge hotline costs
Although up to a quarter of the employees of a After-Sales-In many companies, hotline costs are not billed to the customer if the hotline department works in the office. In principle, this means that you are doing many hours of unpaid work. People often shy away from this topic because they assume that the customer will not tolerate the introduction of hotline costs. But this is not true. You just have to be a little clever about it.
One possibility, for example, is the structuring of long-term contracts, as described in our article on the Design of service contracts have described. Ideally, the introduction of a fee will also go hand in hand with an improvement in the hotline service.
I have often seen that pretty soon after the first provider introduced a hotline fee, the entire market followed suit. So in the medium term, the risk of being the only market player that doesn't give away its internal service activities is limited. You shouldn't be ashamed of this as long as you provide good service. The rule is: what costs nothing is often worth nothing! - Dr. Simon Tonat
4. expand the maintenance business!
As long as an average of at least 50 percent of your machines sold worldwide are not under maintenance contracts, there is definitely still potential for development here. Of course, there are also regional differences. The Service culture in Germany for example, is generally very easy to maintain.
You cannot implement such a project overnight. You may even have to allow up to 10 years for this. However, some companies only achieve a share of 10 percent or less. That is not really acceptable. If you feel like you've been caught out, you should also read our article on Design of service contracts read.
5. build up a service sales organization!
Who should actually sell your services? This sounds like an obvious question, but in many cases it has never been clarified in any way. When in doubt, often nobody does it. Not the sales department, because selling a machine brings in a much higher commission, and not the service department, because sales is not seen as a separate task.
You need people who specialize in selling services. If you want to be successful, you have to work the market proactively and can't wait until a customer calls. Otherwise you just sell spare parts and repairs. Customers don't contact you on their own for contracts, consumables, advice and training. You have to actively sell here in order to increase your turnover.
The Differences between product and service sales have already been discussed elsewhere. The 7 elements of a successful sales strategy in after-sales we have in the ServiceLobby also described.
Of course, the approaches described are not absolute insider tips. Nevertheless, these are the points where experience has shown that there is still potential to be exploited in most service departments.
