Category: Digital Wrap
Are your services significant?
Significant objects are worth more than regular objects. At least that is the conclusion arrived upon by the significant objects project and its team of researchers. Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker, a writer and a journalist respectively, set out to prove that stories can increase the value of objects. While it is tempting to view the goal of the exercise as justifying the existence of the writing class, the results of the experiment are unequivocal. Humans value stories, and they become invested in the life objects that reinforce the stories they enjoy.
Joshua and Rob purchased one hundred pieces of stuff from garage sales, thrift stores, and related trinket outlets for a grand sum of $129. They then enlisted professional writers to conjure stories related to each piece of stuff to accompany the auction of said stuff on eBay. The auction value of the storied stuff as measured by sales price on eBay was $3,612 – a return of 2,700%. Pretty good margin, huh?
So what is the return on your services? How much are you able to charge above what it costs you to deliver? Somewhere between 30% and 50%? Maybe your services would be more significant, and therefore more valuable if you delivered your services with the story describing what happened. I don’t mean an invoice. The story is what you saw, what you did, why you did it, and what likely trouble the customer avoided because of you. It is also the photo essay of images that reinforce your story. And I am not suggesting you type it all out. Record it as a video or audio memo. It will take all of 2 to 4 minutes extra, and it could be worth a lot over the course of the relationship with the customer.
Humans learn from images, story, rhythm, and rhyme. It is programmed into us since the days of the cavemen and the campfires. Since you are not going to insist the technicians become poets or rappers, you should at least insist that they relay their good work to the customer in the form of images and stories. When you teach the customer something about their facility, it reinforces the good decision they made in contracting with you. Over time, the accumulated review of your work will imprint your brand in a manner that is not easily supplanted by the “one truck Chuck” competitor that is always willing to go lower on the invoice. You will be able to raise prices because your services have become significant through the power of story.
We have seen this phenomenon time and again at ServiceTrade as our customers are surprised and delighted by how easy it is to get customers to approve online quotes when the photos demonstrating the reason for repair are literally viewed inline with the quote. They are likewise surprised at how much customers value the Service Link feature that presents the “story” of the services delivered online with a gallery of photos, video, and audio for review. They shouldn’t be. Humans sharing photos and stories is the basic power behind the growth of Facebook into a company valued at $500 billion in a little over 13 years. Maybe some of that Facebook photo and story magic will work for your brand. Can you think of a better way to make your services more significant?
Amazon Prime Lessons for Service Contractors
Everyone knows Amazon has been on a tear lately. Here is their stock performance over the last 5 years as compared to the broader S&P 500. Wow! A big part of that success has been the Prime subscription program.
Amazon customers who subscribe to Prime to receive the following benefits:
- Priority shipping. It varies by area and items from FREE 2-day shipping to FREE 2-hour shipping.
- Prime videos, music, and books. Certain titles are available to stream or borrow for FREE.
- Photo storage. Amazon will store your photos so you don’t have to worry about losing them on a device.
And there is a long laundry list of other Prime benefits that you can review here. Most folks probably only care about one or two of the benefits, but which parts of the bundle are valuable to which customers probably varies considerably. So Amazon just includes a bunch of stuff to cast the widest net into the market. They are committed to the costs of most of these things anyway, so why not maximize the revenues across their most attractive customers while getting the glow of a great customer service reputation? It also leads folks to spend more time and money with Amazon products.
So, what are you doing in your service contracting business to get more by doing more for your best customers? Do you have a Prime program? Is there a tier of service that includes the basic preventative maintenance program PLUS a bunch of extras that get them to pay upfront?
Here are some suggestions for how to form a program that pays you similarly to how Amazon is paid.
- Give it a name. Sales people cannot talk about your program and customers cannot reference it if it doesn’t have a name. Amazon chose “Prime,” whose root is from the Latin word prim or primo, meaning first, as in first in line. This is a good name because it conveys some meaning while also being easy to remember. You should do likewise. Obvious choices are names like “Premium” or “Platinum” or “Gold,” which are unimaginative, but at least connote value easily. Ideally, you can name your program in a way that has both meaning and rhythm and rhyme so it is easy to say and easy to remember.
- Charge a subscription fee. You should collect a monthly or quarterly or annual fee in exchange for the program. Angle for annual for the obvious reasons, but offer other options that might appeal to different customers. Try to price it where the average customer would happily pay for the benefits and you would make a decent margin on average. Some customers will be more profitable than others, but maximizing profit is not the angle for the program fees. Locking the customer into your services as the preferred vendor is the goal.
- Offer expedited service response. Everyone likes the idea that they will get priority (hence the “Prime” name) service relative to others. If you are committed to great service, go ahead and make the promise to your best customers that you will respond with skilled technicians to any problem within 1 or 2 hours. Maybe there is also a promise to return a call or web inquiry within 15 minutes. You are probably committed to it anyway, so why not get credit for it?
- Include basic maintenance services. If there is a PM protocol for the equipment that will be under your care, and you are committed to delivering the work, go ahead and build it into the program. It makes it easier to schedule the maintenance when it is included (you don’t have to ask or wonder if they will pay), and you will get opportunities to upsell based upon the maintenance reviews.
- Offer a lower rate on all planned services. It is good for both you and the customer for all services to be planned instead of emergencies due to failures. When you quote repairs and upgrades that can be scheduled instead of emergency, the rates will be cheaper. The more customers you get into proactive mode instead of reactive emergency mode, the more efficient you can be with your scarce technician resources.
- Offer an online account. Give your customers a reason to come to your website. Show them online details of their plan, history, equipment, quotes, etc. It lowers your cost and makes your company stickier and more memorable.
- Offer a performance guarantee. After you get their equipment into good order AND you have a regular maintenance routine or remote monitoring to expose any risk, offer emergency service response at the subscriber program rates. It shows your confidence in your plan, and it incentivizes the customer to approve your quotes for planned repairs so that the equipment stays in the program. Any equipment exhibiting failure symptoms that are noted and quoted by you comes off the plan if the quote for planned repair is rejected or ignored.
When customers feel that you have been thoughtful in meeting their needs with a premium customer service program, they will happily pay a program fee to claim their membership. You can use the steady cash flow and predictable schedules to hire and grow and expand the program. Then you can put the Amazon python squeeze on all of your competitors and laugh as they wiggle and squirm in the grip of your escalating capability and brand value.
Service Repair Funnel
As a commercial/industrial service contractor, what is your ratio of repair to recurring service revenue? 1 to 1? 2 to 1? 5 to 1? If you don’t know, you could be missing out on a gold mine of high-margin work. If you do, you probably know that there’s room for improvement. And, when skilled labor is so hard to find, you know that you’ve got to drive as much repair revenue as possible to maximize the revenue potential of each tech.
So, what’s holding you back? Funnel friction. In other words, how easy it is to move from the top to the bottom of the repair funnel. Now, before we talk about the friction, let’s define where the funnel begins and ends. Too often, service contractors think that all the magic happens once the deficiency or repair report gets back to the office. As I wrote in another blog post, it actually starts WAY before you ever find a problem to quote. To keep this post simple, we’ll be talking about a funnel that starts with reporting problems in the field and ending with customer approval:
Now, ask yourself: “How much friction is in each task?” Or, simply put: “How easy is each step?” The easier it is, the more money you’ll make.
Report problems from the field
How easy is it for your techs to send the office all of the information necessary to generate a quote? How is that information communicated? Phone calls, paperwork, and email attachments? Does that data have to be manually entered into your database that manages repair sales?
…Do you have a database to manage repair sales? ServiceTrade does this, and if you’re not using ServiceTrade, a good CRM is your next best bet.
It should be as simple as taking a couple quick pictures, videos, and audio notes that automatically get added to a database for your office staff to start working from. The easier it is, the more reports your techs will create.
Create quotes
How easy is it to take a report from the field and create a quote that’s ready for the customer? Do you have to read chicken-scratch handwriting on reports, call the tech for more details, and retype everything into a Word document?
It should be as simple as clicking a couple buttons to turn a digital report from the field into a quote ready for the customer. The easier it is, the more quotes your company will create.
Follow up on quotes
Does your team manage this whole process out of their email inbox/outbox? Is it obvious which quotes need a follow-up? Is that chain of communication effectively managed and easily shared across the team?
It should be as simple as viewing a list of quotes that are due for a follow-up, no matter which of your team members created and sent the quote. The easier it is, the more follow-ups your company will perform.
Approve quotes
Once your customer receives your quote, how easy it for them to say “yes?” Do they have convenient access to the pictures, videos, and audio notes that will help them make the best decision quickly? After they decide, do they have to print, sign, and fax the quote?
It should be as simple as viewing an interactive quote online with rich media collected in the field that can be approved with the click of a button. The easier it is, the more quotes your customers will approve.
The easier all of these steps are, the more repair revenue you will drive and the more you will get out of each of your techs. Spend an hour assessing your processes. You’ll probably be surprised what you find.
Another blog post you might be interested in: 6 key metrics that that boost repair revenue
Give the people what they really want
If you asked people in the 1890s about personal transportation, they’d say “Give me a cheaper, faster horse.” Instead, they got cars and they happily spent more. If you asked people of the 1990s about entertainment, they’d say “Give me more selection and cheaper rentals at Blockbuster.” Instead, they got Netflix and they happily spent more. If you asked people about retail in the 2000s, they’d say “Give me more selection and cheaper options at big-box stores.” Instead, they got Amazon Prime and happily spent more. If you asked folks about their pizza in the early part of this decade, they’d say “Give me better, cheaper pizza.” Instead, they got the Domino’s mobile app and they happily spent more. If you’re scratching your head about the last one, check out Domino’s stock growth since the introduction of their mobile app in 2011:
Domino’s stock reached up to 644% growth since they introduced their mobile app
If you’ve been reading my blog posts, you know that Domino’s is using their customer mobile app to dominate the pizza wars. Every time I write about them, I have to pull a new stock graph to show just how much they’ve grown. Their success boils down to one word:
Convenience
That’s all customers really want. They’ll bark about price and quality right up until someone innovates and makes their life easier. At that point, they’ll happily fork over more money. When cars were introduced, they were fragile and cost far more than a horse, but they didn’t have to be maintained on a daily basis. When Netflix hit the scene, it had a small selection, subscription services were unheard of, and it seemed to cost more than the occasional Blockbuster rental. But, Netflix didn’t require multiple trips to Blockbuster to watch a single movie. Amazon has shipping delays and costs more than big-box stores, but customers don’t even have to leave the comfort of their own home.
In this era, you don’t have to be a technology company like Netflix, Amazon, and Uber to be a game changer. Domino’s shows that you just have to think like one. Use scalable technology to give your customer a convenient experience and they’ll happily give you more money. It’s that simple.
What does this mean for B2B service contractors? Make customers’ lives easy with technology. Give them better information so they can make better decisions by providing convenient online:
- Visibility throughout the service process
- Access to detailed historical records
- Quotes for issues that need repair
This may not seem like much, but neither does an app that makes it a little easier to buy pizza and track deliveries.
Whole Foods Whole World
I bet the grocers that had a bad day when Walmart got into groceries about fifteen years ago are having a really bad week now that Amazon has announced their intention to buy Whole Foods. The innovations Amazon is going to bring to grocery buying go well beyond low price and internal operational tweaks. Amazon is going to use technology to transform the grocery buying experience, and the old competitors focused on their tired, old, internal metrics will be toast.
Marc Andreesen, a famous internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist, once said: “Software is eating the world.” You can read his editorial in the Wall Street Journal here. It’s true. Customer service innovations driven by software are transforming every industry. Netflix to Blockbuster. Uber to taxis. Amazon to booksellers, hosting companies, and now grocers. When will it be your turn? Which side of the statement will your company be? The eater? or the eaten?
Do you suppose the first innovation Amazon is going focus upon is how Whole Foods does accounting? Is that where they are going to put their innovation muscle? I ask the question because it seems that accounting remains the first priority of service contractors when they think about how to apply technology to their business. But it sounds really silly in the context of the Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods, doesn’t it? As I have said before, your perfect accounting process is perfectly irrelevant to your customer. You should have a good one, but it will not save you from an innovative, customer-focused competitor.
I am not going out on a limb when I say that Amazon understands that accounting is irrelevant, and their focus with Whole Foods will be transforming how customers buy groceries. They will eliminate aggravation and uncertainty for the customer through technology. I bet there will be an awesome mobile app for pricing your groceries in the aisle and eliminating the checkout line. I bet you will use that app to find the groceries you seek without wandering up and down the aisles. I bet you will get interesting recipe ideas based on the ingredients you buy often. I bet your buying preferences will lead to deliveries to your house via drone for the items you buy on a regular basis. I bet the best customers with the most money to spend on groceries will gravitate to Amazon and their innovations. I bet I cannot even imagine the things they will do to make grocery shopping more convenient, and none of it will relate to how they do accounting.
So when will it be your turn? Will you be the eater, or the eaten? Are you considering how to upgrade your customer’s buying experience with your services? Or are you piddling around with how to extend your accounting to wring a small bit of extra margin from your internal processes? Are you building an innovative and growing brand that attracts customers to you? With an experience that they cannot easily trade for the low price guy? Think about it. Who do you want to be in your market? Amazon, Uber, Netflix? Or the other guy?
Fill the Stadium for Your Customer Service Features
So now what?
You’ve completed a big project to add new capabilities or value for your customers – something like implementing ServiceTrade or adding the Service Portal to your website. How do you get the word out so your customers start using and appreciating it?
If you have asked those questions, you aren’t alone. I’ve heard them half a dozen times so far this year. While you’re basking in a successful implementation, it doesn’t take long to realize that implementation was just the beginning. So what’s next? Driving adoption is the next project – and you’ll want to jump on it fast.
Feed Adoption with Customer Marketing
Every time we talk about marketing with service contractors, I feel like the response is something like “I got 99 problems and marketing is #99.” But marketing communications will help your customers understand and use your great customer service features.
Billy said this in chapter 7 of The Digital Wrap: “The strongest benefit of the digital wrap approach to marketing is that your marketing and sales impressions are actually valuable to the customer instead of being an aggravation or interruption.” He was writing about the marketing impressions that should be built into your service cycle, but it’s a pretty good rule for every marketing impression.
Marketing outreach is a good way to educate your customers about what you’re offering and why it’s good for them. You don’t want to send your first Service Link (online after-service report) and get a call from the customer asking, “What is this and why did I get it?” But your marketing must be seen as helpful, not annoying. Here’s how.
Invite Your Customers to Play Ball
Since a few people have asked for our advice for bringing awareness to their new customer service features, we have assembled examples, templates, and first-draft copy that you can use. Some of the materials available in our marketing resource center are:
- Example websites from our customers
- Bannerstand for trade shows or conferences that you can borrow
- Powerpoint slides
- Example email, invoice insert letter, and handout or postcard
- Screenshots of customer service features, and more.
Take a look at those marketing resources and use them as a starting point for your own programs. You can run a marketing communications program without dedicating a ton of time or financial resources – doing a little is more effective than doing nothing at all.
Bring Them on Home
With a little bit of thoughtful outreach and follow up, you can:
- Get your customers to adopt all your customer service features.
- Help your customers understand how the program they bought from you continues to be good for them.
- Keep the stream of communication open and ongoing.
Your account managers could do this work 1-to-1, but marketing can do the same 1-to-many. Make marketing communications do the heavy lifting, and have account managers follow up with their accounts.
There was a quote in the movie A Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” Why that may be true for lost baseball legends on a farm in Iowa, it is most decidedly not true for service contractors who want customers to take advantage of their new, modern, online customer experience. Like with modern baseball, you’ve got to do some work to get butts in the seats.
Read Chapter 7 of the Digital Wrap for free! You’ll gain an understanding of how many valuable marketing impressions you can earn with your customers (and sometimes with prospects) during your service cycle.
5 mistakes most commercial service contractors make
Dear commercial service contractors,
Your cousins, residential service providers, have it figured out. What are you doing? Why are you still acting like a company from the 90s? Why aren’t you taking a page from their book and modernizing your customer service and marketing? I get it, they play by a different set of rules, but there are 5 statements that I hear from most commercial companies that drive me crazy:
1.) “I don’t need to update my website.”
It’s 2017. If you don’t think that customers and prospects are judging you by the quality of your website, you’re dead wrong. Even if you initiate business through word of mouth and outside sales, prospective customers are going to visit your website and compare it to the competition. How can they trust the quality of your workmanship if your website looks like something from the 90s, it’s constantly “under construction,” or can’t be accessed on their smartphone?
Your current customers didn’t decide to buy from you because of your website, but your future customers will.
2.) “Online reviews are for residential companies.”
About 90% of consumers consider reviews when making an online purchase. Your customers shop online in their personal lives and they are beginning to expect the same experience in their professional lives. It’s not hard to get reviews. All you have to do is make sure your Google My Business page is set up, then ask your happy customers to leave a review. To start, shoot for around 10 or more reviews. That’s it.
The next generation of decision makers will care about your online reputation.
3.) “My customers prefer paper and faxes.”
Is that what your customers really think? Or, is that what you and your employees think? The fax machine is a dying technology and nobody really wants to deal with paper. Our customers that have gone paperless (and faxless) unanimously agree that the majority of their customers prefer it that way. It’s not difficult to give data to your customers electronically and in a format that they can consume on their smartphones
Don’t assume that because you prefer paper and faxes that your customers do too.
4.) “We’ve been successful for 20+ years, we don’t need to change.”
Threats to and opportunities for your business are changing quickly with the evolving technology landscape. It’s easier than ever for all types of new competitors to steal your customers thanks to new customer service technologies. Take a look at what Uber did to the taxi industry, Netflix did to Blockbuster, Amazon is doing to Walmart, and Domino’s is doing to Papa Johns.
In this era of customer service innovation, if you ain’t first, you’ll be last.
5.) “Software is made for accounting, not customer service.”
Insert double facepalm here. Yes, accounting software is critical to understanding the finances of your business. However, modern software can enable a level of customer service that will set you apart from the competition. Use a best-in-breed software philosophy instead of software communism. Buy the best customer service software and a great accounting system. Then, integrate them.
Remember, your perfect accounting process is perfectly irrelevant to your customers.
These statements aren’t uncommon, so don’t feel bad if you’ve ever said any of them. Just know that if I ever hear you utter these words, I’ll probably sag my shoulders, sigh, and emulate my parents by telling you “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.” Learn from your cousins, the residential service contractors, and modernize your company.
Sincerely,
– Shawn
Want to be the winner in your market? Be the first to innovate.
These words of wisdom were imparted by Reese Bobby to his son Ricky Bobby in the movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (clip and clip). Winners get more than their fair share, and a loser is just a loser. No one cares about second place. In our fast-moving world, the winners often take all of the profit, and the losers are just losers.
Ten years ago last week, Blackberry was the world’s number one smartphone. It had a keyboard that was awesome. Apple introduced the iPhone with its innovative user interface, and ten years later Apple is the most valuable company in the world. Apple takes over 100% of the profits in the smartphone market, and Blackberry does not even make smartphones any longer. If you ain’t first, yer last! The winner takes it all, and a loser is just a loser.
Ten years ago, Blockbuster was number one in the video rental market. Today, Netflix is number one with a market value of over $57 billion. They introduced an innovative user interface for renting movies over the Internet, and Blockbuster went out of business. If you ain’t first, yer last! The winner takes it all, and a loser is just a loser.
Ten years ago, taxi companies were protected, regulated operators in the local markets they served. They proudly paid huge sums of money for their operating medallions. Today, Uber is an enterprise worth over $80 billion – more than all of the taxi companies in the world combined. They introduced an innovative user interface for hailing a car and paying for the ride, and the taxi companies have been decimated in their local, protected markets. If you ain’t first, yer last! The winner takes it all, and a loser is just a loser.
How good is your user interface to the customer? Is it still phone calls and triplicate forms? Is it ad-hoc emails with files attached? No organization or intelligence, just a dump of PDF files? What happens to your business if you are not the first in your market to introduce an innovative interface for customers to receive your services? Are you going to be first or last when the change comes to your market? Will you be the winner that takes a bigger share? Or a loser who is just a loser?
Maybe it is time to start thinking about technology as a way to please your customers instead of simply a way to seek operating cost leverage. The lesson of Apple, Netflix, and Uber is also the lesson of Blackberry, Blockbuster, and the taxi companies. It does not matter how long you have been around or how good your internal operations may be. An innovator in your market can turn your business into a loser. So, are you going to be first in your market to innovate with a better customer interface? Or will you just become one of the losers when someone else innovates first?
This blog post is part of our Business Lessons From Rednecks collection. Also see Don’t get gigged by software.
Read ideas about how to be first in Billy’s book The Digital Wrap: Get out of the Truck and Go Online to Own Your Customers.
Best of 2016
As 2017 kicks 2016 to the curb, take a minute to revisit our most-loved blog posts of the year.
Whether they’re new to you, or you need a review, check out these blog posts for inspiration to start the new year.
The Metal Benders Will Steal Your Customers
If you ask equipment manufacturers (metal benders), they will claim that your customers are technically their customers. What’s changing now is that they want to have their customers pay them for maintenance and repair services instead of you.
I am, of course, speaking about how manufacturers are increasingly embracing the service business as the next leg of profit to be mined in the market. The days of distribution channel loyalty are gone. Prepare to do battle with the well capitalized companies that you used to call “partners.” Where is the evidence that the drums of a channel war are beating? Consider these two recent news stories:
GE Buys ServiceMax for $915M
GE just spent almost a billion dollars to buy a software company that specializes in technology for service delivery. The price tag for that purchase was an estimated 15-times ServiceMax’s current revenue. GE REALLY WANTED THIS TECHNOLOGY to pay that kind of price. Note that ServiceMax is built on top of Salesforce’s CRM platform, NOT AN ACCOUNTING APPLICATION. GE’s aggressive activity in the market says that customer service and sales are the new battlegrounds for manufacturer competitiveness. They want to control the entire customer experience from initial consideration of their equipment through the maintenance and repair cycle and then finally the upgrade and replacement at end of life. ServiceMax helps them deliver on this promise with great efficiency and customer visibility.
Boeing Hires GE Exec to Focus on Service
GE was in the news again because Boeing has hired a GE exec from the GE Aircraft Engine business to run the Boeing Commercial Airplane Group (CAG). Kevin McAllister was selected as the new CEO of Boeing CAG because he specializes in monetizing “after the sale” services for maintenance and repair. At GE, they sold a program to the airlines that delivered jet engine maintenance and repair for a fixed fee based upon the number of hours on the engines. That program was just what the airline operators wanted – a no hassle, no risk, fixed cost plan sold by an expert in jet engine technology. Now, Kevin is heading to Boeing to concentrate on the same type of program for commercial aircraft.
So why are the manufacturers so interested in service these days? Because lifetime value of the customer is everything, and service is easier than ever to deliver because of technology. Historically, service was hard because it was unpredictable, and it was not possible to be everywhere the customer needed you to be at one time. Now, with advanced instrumentation and the Internet, the manufacturers can “see” what is happening in order to better manage a service delivery plan. Also, customers have come to understand that the company responsible for service needs to be the one with all of the data required to do the service right, and it really doesn’t matter who employs the technician that shows up to turn the wrenches so long as the owners of the data give him good instructions. Manufacturers can build an enduring ownership bond with the customer throughout the product lifecycle to earn a premium on their stock value. Check out chapter 5 in my book, The Digital Wrap, about how Tesla has become the envy of the manufacturing world because of this dynamic.
So what are you going to do when the metal benders come after your customers? Are you just going to hand over the relationship and the data so that you can become the labor bureau and the truck depot for their profit machine? Or are you going to seek more data and more technology so that you can become the trusted advisor to the customer? The advisor that informs them of the failure modes of each type of equipment and teaches them how to negotiate with the manufacturers at arm’s length to get the best equipment deal? The advisor that implements the best customer service technology and sells the best program for hassle-free and risk-free maintenance and repairs?
The great news about the metal benders is that they are still metal benders, and they would struggle to spell customer service if you gave it to them in an anagram. It will take some time for software applications and technology to overcome their metal bender cultural habits. The bad news is that they have LOTS of capital, and while they are “figuring it out,” it may still cost you lots of pain and profits if you don’t have a better program.
Here are my tips for preparing to win the battle for customer loyalty:
- Focus on technology for customer service and sales, NOT OPTIMIZATION OF YOUR ACCOUNTING FUNCTION! Your perfect back office process is perfectly irrelevant to a customer looking to eliminate risk and hassles. Stop looking to the accounting application providers to solve your customer service and sales challenges.
- Systematically collect customer connections. Every interaction with a customer should result in an email address and a mobile phone number. These can be used to connect the customer with the information you generate to demonstrate your value.
- Innovate in programs for service management. These innovations can be data collection and mining for predictive service, warranties you sell to those that enter your premium maintenance tier, system monitoring services, fixed price payment plans, or whatever application of technology and business process to limit risk and hassle for both you and the equipment owner.
- Diversify your expertise across as many manufacturers and brands as you can credibly support. You want to be in the position of the trusted advisor to the customer, and knowledge is power in this position. You also want to have credible data and experiences to back up your representations to the customer.
- Stop concerning yourself with parts margin and instead focus on total margin per applied labor hour. Parts are not going to be in short supply, but skilled labor will be precious. Lower your inventory carrying costs by setting up fast response partnerships and technology connections to the best parts suppliers. Focus on speed and proactive service with the customer, not parts margin.
- Begin experimenting with non-proprietary, independent monitoring and controls solutions that you can apply across equipment brands. Use these to build data that leads to credible recommendations and solutions for the customer.
This cultural shift to an information-based service approach with lots of online connections to your customers and their equipment will place you in a position to be the valuable brand that the customer trusts with their important equipment purchases and maintenance programs. The manufacturers are guaranteed to show up with proprietary solutions because of their metal bender culture. If you are prepared, you can laugh all the way to the bank as they throw money at a problem that you have already solved.
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