If you want to be successful in sales, you have to know your customers. This is no different in service. However, a separate customer segmentation for the service area plays an important role, although this does not always take place sufficiently in practice.
First of all, it is an advantage to know your installed base. This is where many problems in companies start. Some have good excuses for this, but many also have less good ones. Let's start with an example of a good excuse!
Know the installed base
It is relatively difficult to get a comprehensive picture of the machine population in my company's field if sales are mainly made to intermediaries. Here you have to think about how to obtain customer data in order to support service sales.
But even in this case there are possibilities. For example, you could create incentives for customers to register their products with you and possibly receive benefits for doing so. For example, you could offer an extended warranty. Or you could offer a corresponding app as a Value Added Service that offers the customer a benefit. Of course, this involves some effort and creativity. But this extra effort is worth it if you can increase your service sales as a result.
If, on the other hand, you mainly sell to end customers, you already have the data. In this case, it's harder to argue why you haven't yet familiarized yourself and have a comprehensive picture of your customers. Because the advantages cannot be denied. Getting to grips with this and developing a dedicated customer segmentation for the service offers the opportunity to take advantage of these benefits.
Why is standard segmentation not enough?
"We already have customer segmentation in product sales. Why do we also need one for service?" That's what many people think. We have often discussed in the ServiceLobby that product sales and service sales are two poles that should actually work together. In practice, however, this cooperation often stumbles.
After all, we simply have different focuses here. You can see this from the fact that the moment a customer becomes interesting for us in Service, Product Sales loses interest in them for the time being. Namely, directly after the purchase of the product.
The differences in the sale of services and products
The distribution of products and services differs on many levels. Firstly, this is due to the different requirements. Machine requirements are not identical to service requirements. A customer who buys all products from you does not necessarily have to purchase all associated services from you. They may have their own maintenance department or purchase services from third-party providers.
The customers also differ. Machines are usually sold to managing directors or workshop managers. Services, on the other hand, are sold to the head of maintenance or the production manager on the customer side. This alone results in differences.
Take advantage of the opportunities!
The above points show that the sales potential in the product business is not identical to the sales potential in the service business. You therefore need more precise information about who your service customers are so that the existing potential can be exploited as far as possible.
Therefore, first get a good overview of the installed base and then create your own service-specific map of the customer landscape. You can use this map to optimize your sales efforts and make effective and comprehensive use of sales opportunities.
You can also find useful procedures for making customer segmentation in service informative in our Service sales course at the ServiceLobby Academy.
