Many companies have problems selling their after-sales services. The sale of primary products often works far better. Your sales staff could be to blame!
Strategic focus is not always the problem if sales in the after-sales area fall short of expectations. Spare parts are usually already running well because this demand is largely triggered by the customer themselves. However, maintenance contracts, training, consulting and smart services are often lacking for other reasons.
Product sales are preferred
In the short term, machines and systems in particular are the biggest sales levers and offer your employees the highest commissions under a traditional remuneration structure. Therefore, if you entrust your sales department with product and service sales at the same time, it is clear where the most effort is invested.
Services offer a lower but continuous income stream. Logically, however, this puts them at a disadvantage in a sales-based commission strategy. If you have adjusted your target matrix and commission tables accordingly in order to push service sales, sales often still don't pick up properly.
Why your sales staff often fail to sell services
If someone has worked in product sales for a long time, it is often difficult to adjust to selling services. This differs significantly from selling primary products.
"You have two options to counteract this effect. Firstly, you can train your employees for the service area. Secondly, it may make sense to form a second sales team that deals exclusively with after-sales. Here you could also offer empathically gifted service technicians a new career path. Services are sold to maintenance technicians and they are often more likely to trust a technician than a salesperson in a bespoke Italian suit." - Dr. Simon Tonat
The differences between product and service sales
1. services are not tangible
Products are physical and tangible. You can touch, see, feel and smell them. They may only be able to marvel at them in a brochure or video, but they are still tangible for the customer. Services are intangible. It is therefore a sales and marketing task to create tangible elements that connect the customer with the service.
Service salespeople must succeed in making services an emotional experience right from the sales stage. A flyer alone cannot achieve this. Service technicians can also help here, as they can better explain the services to the customer based on their own experience.
2. services do not satisfy an acute need
Products fulfill a specific need for the customer. For example, they need additional machines to expand their production capacity or they want to modernize their office and invest in IT and equipment. The sale of services, on the other hand, is based on building a relationship. Be it regular maintenance work in the plant park, workshops at the customer's premises to increase plant efficiency or the provision of hotline support.
All these services do not satisfy a current need of the customer, but are aimed at a longer-term relationship in the course of which the total cost of ownership for the customer is to be optimized. For this reason, services often require more explanation, as the benefits must first be communicated to the customer.
3. services are more comparable
Products have a wide range of customization options. In the case of a milling machine, for example, every supplier of this type of machine has several basic versions in its range, which differ in size, speed and productivity. Each version then quickly has an additional 50 to 100 options in the price list that can be configured as required. There are plenty of opportunities here to dive very deep, lull the customer into a false sense of security and make it clear that you are the only company that can supply this exact machine.
It's different for services. Hotline support is hotline support and maintenance is maintenance. Of course, you can make granular adjustments and, for example, have longer availability than a competitor. But the offer is essentially the same. You must therefore be very familiar with the benefits of the services in order to emphasize their added value in contrast to the competition. Under these circumstances, it is possible to avoid a purely price-based discussion.
4. service quality is difficult to measure
It is much more difficult for the customer to objectively assess whether a service was of high quality. A product has clear specifications according to which quality can be judged. Can 100 sheets be processed per hour or not? Is the oven able to dry all components within 15 minutes or not?
But when was training successful? What characterizes successful maintenance? These questions hover latently in the customer's subconscious and must be adequately addressed by the service salesperson. This skill is much less crucial when selling primary products, as you are talking about hard facts.
5. services cannot be exchanged
If a customer is not satisfied with a product and it does not meet the agreed specifications, the customer can exchange it or, in the second instance, return it. Admittedly, this happens less often in the machinery and equipment business than when buying a computer, but it does happen. A service cannot be returned. Purchase is identical to consumption.
For some services, there is indeed a Money-back guaranteebut the design of this as a confidence-building measure is not trivial. And even then, the customer's latent fear remains that the agreed quality will not be met. As a result, the development of a relationship of trust in service sales must be much more pronounced than in the sale of primary products.
For me, all 5 reasons mentioned are decisive for the fact that in many companies sales performance in the After-Sales falls short of expectations. What is your situation? Do you have the right people in your team to successfully expand your after-sales area?
