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Research Triangle Business Advisors

July 2013 Newsletter

Selling is not easy, whether you’re selling a product or a service. The obvious action to take if you are having a sales problem is to get some sales training. The problem with that for companies that sell a service is that the majority of sales training programs only teach how to sell products. So, this month I thought we would take a look at some actions you can take “Making Your Service Easier to Sell.”

Bob De Contreras

919-280-1307

Bob@rt-ba.com

www.rt-ba.com

Making Your Service Easier To Sell

It’s not about how easy your service is to sell. It’s about how easy your service is to buy.

The easier you make it for customers to buy your services, the faster you'll close new contracts.

Your prospect carries a high degree of risk and worry when buying. You need to develop trust.

They really don’t know what they’ll get from you until after they spend their money and actually experience the service.
During the sales process, all their buying is a promise that you’ll do something for them.
Your prospects need to buy something tangible to help them justify their purchase decision so they can avoid buyer’s remorse.

But, services are intangible—you can’t see them, touch them, take them out of the box or demonstrate them. Yet this is exactly what you need to do to make them easier for your customers to buy them.

The answer is to "productize" your service. Make it tangible. Think like a product manager. There are four different techniques you can use to package your service to act more like a product:

- Turn your service into a product.

- Package your different service levels.

- Combine your services and create a new offering.

- Package your process.

1. Turn your service into a product. This allows you to reach a larger audience than you could by delivering your services directly, and “prove” your expertise in the process.

Frequently this is called "Service in a Box” or "[Product Name] Toolkit." This consists of: tip sheets, templates, worksheets and supporting educational pieces that share your expertise at a fraction of the cost of having you provide tailored consulting.
Examples might include "Writing a Business Plan," "Creating a PR Program" and "Developing a Marketing Plan."

2. Package into different service levels. If you present all your services a la carte at varying price points, you run the risk of confusing your customers.

By creating packages that are easy to buy and that cater to your customers' varying needs and budgets, you can sell more services and keep your customers engaged in the process of doing business with you.

For instance, let's say you sell cars and offer pre-paid maintenance plans. Then you might create:

High-end package that includes: picking up the car for service, providing a loaner car for the day, changing the oil, safety check, washing the car and cleaning the interior, checking hoses, pumps and other moving parts.
Lower-end package that includes: a reminder phone call for service, an oil change, safety check.
Each of these packages caters to a different segment of your market but gives your clients a choice. When you package service levels, you typically would want to create three product offerings. Often, you'll see these presented as gold, silver and bronze levels.
To get started packaging your services: Looking at what your competition is offering, documenting the value you deliver to a client, talking to customers to assess their needs, expectations and priorities, and creating logical groups of offerings.
Two important points to consider when it comes to creating service packages: these are not options in the quality of service you offer, nor are they just price adjustments to the same service. These levels are differences in the actual deliverables and the total value.
Additional examples of service packages include customer support services for software or hardware products and consulting services for a large business vs. a small one.

3. Combine services to create a new offering. When buyers begin to see little difference between you and your competitors and start to focus on price, reposition your service by creating a new, more valuable service offering.

This approach means you'll take several services that you and your alliance partners offer and combine them into one offering that's more robust. For instance, as a marketing consultant, you could join forces with a copywriter, a graphic designer and a website developer to create a "Business Startup Success" package that provides marketing, branding and website assistance.
Before you create a new offering, start by listening to what your customers are asking for and paying closer attention to their buying patterns.
A business consultant, for example, could create a complete "Business Assessment" package that includes expert offerings from HR, sales, accounting and technology consultants.

4. Package a process. When it seems impossible to package what you deliver, differentiate your company and increase your perceived value by packaging how you deliver. Start by naming the process, then document each of the steps, create a detailed project plan, identify decision points, formalize your deliverables from each step, and put it all together in a binder or on a CD.

For instance, if you run a web design firm, you'll want to document your end-to-end design capabilities and your development process. And if you run a networking or software company, you'll want to package the implementation and rollout process.
This approach shows prospective customers you know what you're doing and you follow a logical approach, and it shows where they're involved. It also increases the perception that you're established, professional and capable.

What all these techniques have in common is the opportunity for you to present all the value you deliver. Often, we make assumptions that our customers understand everything we do for them. But this just isn't the case: you need to pull out every piece of value you provide over the course of a project and present that to the client in order for them to completely understand what a terrific job you're doing for them.

Then, not only will you have clearly differentiated your company from your competition, you'll have provided all the information the prospect needs to make it easy for them to buy from you. So start thinking like a product manager and watch your sales efforts decrease as your profits soar.