Values and practices of a growing company - SERVICE EXPRESS, INC.
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values and practices of a growing company
SERVICE EXPRESS, INC.
Copyright © 2009 Service Express, Inc. All rights reserved.Chapter
Three
01:10
Sales Process
At Service Express, we believe that excellent customer service is
the key to every interaction with our customers, and selling our
service to them is no exception. Our goal for every new account
is to uncover the prospect’s needs so we can provide customized
solutions: what we’ve learned is that what works great for one
company might not meet another company’s needs at all. Once
we understand what our prospect really needs, we analyze
those needs and develop a service plan tailored to their unique
circumstances.
Identifying Potential Customers
Our sales process starts with identifying leads and prospects. We
purchase leads, get referrals, and look for companies we think
might be prospects as we drive through our territories. Based on
our current account demographics, companies whose needs fit best
with our service typically have 100 or more employees. Some of
our vertical markets include manufacturing, hospitals, colleges and
universities, and governments. These businesses and institutions
typically have the types of mid-to-high end servers and mainframes
that we focus on.
23Chapter Three — Sales Process
Prospecting
We do our prospecting and set our meetings by phone. If we don’t
have a contact name, we ask to speak to the IT Director or whoever
is in charge of contracting the hardware maintenance service. Our
account executives plan to be in the field two days a week. We tell
the prospective customer what day we’ll be in his area and ask for
a brief meeting. We say we want to introduce SEI and find out if his
company has a need for our services. We promise we’ll keep the
meeting brief because we can usually find out within 15 minutes if
there’s a potential fit.
Conducting a Needs Analysis
Our goal for the first meeting is to introduce SEI and find out
about our prospect’s needs quickly. If we are not a good fit for a
maintenance agreement, we thank the contact for meeting with us
and explain our time and materials program. If our services are a
potential fit for the company, our account executive tries to find out
if the prospect has any pain or needs that SEI can address. We then
begin to collect information to build a proposal.
To gain an understanding of our prospect’s needs, we cover the
following subjects in the meeting:
• We briefly introduce who we are and what we do.
• We share a couple of stories about how we’ve helped others
in the same type of business or with the same hardware.
• We determine if we service the types of equipment the
prospect has.
• We ask open ended questions so the prospect can tell us
about his situation.
• We listen for the services we provide that are not in the
prospect’s current contract and for services he’s currently
getting that he likes.
• We ask for a list of the hardware on their current contract, so
we can provide an apples-to-apples comparison.
24Chapter Three — Sales Process
• We gather details about the customer’s purchasing process
and learn who signs the agreements.
• We schedule a proposal meeting.
We always do a Needs Analysis for potential customers. To
achieve our Core Objective of providing Excellent Customer Service,
we build a maintenance program around each customer’s specific
needs. On the rare occasion when a potential customer asks that
we skip the Needs Analysis and email an estimate, we politely
refuse, explaining that without a Needs Analysis, we wouldn’t be
able to create a customized service plan. We achieve our 98%
customer retention rate providing customized service, and we won’t
jeopardize our success with a generic offering.
You Can Quote Me on That
An account executive was trying to get a meeting with a major prospect, but
as a condition of meeting, the prospect wanted to see a price quote first. The
account executive came to his sales manager and me to discuss sending a quote.
We both agreed that was the wrong thing to do—a service company must know its
customers’ needs to build great service plans. The prospect declined the meeting,
but within a year, serious service issues motivated him to call us back. Now that
prospect is one of our major accounts and a great reference for us.
If the systems administrators are concerned about moving their
company contract from an OEM (original equipment manufacturer)
to a third party service provider or have questions of a more
technical nature, the account executive can arrange for an SEI
service engineer to meet with them and discuss their concerns.
25Chapter Three — Sales Process
The 100% Solution
Potential customers sometimes think they’re stuck with a problem because
they don’t know we have a solution. SEI account executives look for these
opportunities. One potential customer told us the manufacturer was having
problems getting parts for their high-end system. If the manufacture couldn’t get
parts in a timely fashion, they didn’t think we could either. Our solution was to
buy a complete spare system for them, giving us 100% parts coverage in our local
warehouse.
Proposal Meeting
Though our prices are competitive, we don’t believe we’ve achieved
our 98% customer retention rate solely by saving people money; we
think we do it by making their jobs easier and giving them a high
level of service. We want our customers to be able to focus on their
businesses and leave the hardware maintenance to us.
At the proposal meeting, we continue to emphasize customer
service by focusing on the prospect’s needs. Our account executive
first talks through the needs he uncovered. He does this to confirm
that he and the potential customer have the same understanding
of the customer’s situation. He explains how our proposal will meet
his needs, and he covers services we provide above and beyond
these needs.
The Proposal Meeting
»» Review the company’s needs, showing how our service meets and exceeds
those needs
»» Agree that the proposal meets the company’s needs
»» Present the price
»» Provide references from current customers
»» Schedule a closing meeting
26Chapter Three — Sales Process
After we present the proposal, our account executive and the
prospect might discuss additional needs and change the proposal
to make it fit the prospect’s needs even better. Once we’ve agreed
on how we will meet those needs, we schedule a closing meeting.
If we find our prospect is reluctant to schedule a closing meeting,
we know that we’ve missed something along the way. We review
the proposal to determine if there are changes we could make. Our
goal is to create a win-win situation for our prospect and for us.
We try to find out if the prospect agrees that we can provide the
service we promise. We confirm that we offer better service than
they’re getting from their current provider and that our price meets
their needs. We want to provide great service to our customers at a
competitive price.
We strongly encourage prospects to call the references we provide.
Customers who serve as references explain to potential customers
that our service truly exceeds the standards we promise in our
proposal.
Closing Meeting
At the closing meeting, the prospect signs the agreement; then we
confirm that we have the correct billing information and payment
terms, and we review placing a service call with the new customer.
Closing Meeting Details
»» Explain our courtesy call practice and find out how often our contact
prefers to be called
»» Ask how the customer prefers to be contacted (phone/email)
»» Ask if there is anyone else we should be contacting
»» Determine who to contact for the site audit
»» Provide the phone number for placing a service call
»» Confirm billing contact and billing frequency preferences
»» Explain the welcome call
27Chapter Three — Sales Process
Welcome Call
Shortly after the agreement is signed, the local branch service
manager calls to introduce himself and to let the customer know
who their primary service engineer will be. The primary service
engineer then calls the customer to schedule a site audit.
Site Audit
As our first service for a new customer, an SEI engineer performs
a site audit, which is a review of the hardware on the agreement.
Unless the agreement lead time is very short, our goal is to do the
site audit before the agreement begins. The site audit benefits both
the customer and SEI in the following ways:
• It provides the customer with an accurate and up-to-date
hardware list. Often we find that whoever was maintaining
the hardware before us didn’t keep the contract up-to-date.
• It gives us a head start on great service. We use the
hardware list to determine what parts to stock locally. Having
quick access to the correct parts means faster service for our
customers.
• It gives our engineer the opportunity to begin learning
about the customer’s preferences. At the audit, the customer
contact and the engineer who will be servicing the account
meet and work together in a non-pressured situation.
We find that doing a site audit and stocking parts locally sets us up
to wow our customers on their first service call.
Courtesy Calls
After our account executive signs an agreement with a customer, he
sets the expectation that he will contact the customer every 30 to
90 days. Customers appreciate that their account executive contacts
them regularly to see if they have any needs. A change in hardware
may cause a customer to need to update their agreement.
Account executives make courtesy calls primarily to ask about our
service. Since a customer might not think a minor inconvenience is
a big deal, we train our account executives to listen for and act on
28Chapter Three — Sales Process
even small expressions of dissatisfaction. We can fix any problem,
but only if we know it needs to be fixed!
No Small Issues
An account executive making a courtesy call asked a customer how we were
doing, and the customer said we were doing a great job. He had recently placed
a service call, and we had shown up promptly, part in hand, and had the
equipment up and running quickly. The customer then mentioned that he’d had
a problem with our billing but he thought he had it straightened out. Although
it was not a big deal to the customer, the account executive opened a “concern”
about the billing issue, and followed up with the billing team to make sure we had
fixed the problem permanently. He didn’t want a small one-time issue to turn into
a recurring problem for the customer.
We know that in service not everything goes exactly according
to plan. We encourage customers to call their account executives
whenever they have an issue.
A customer’s primary contact at SEI is his account executive, but
that doesn’t mean the account executive resolves all the issues.
If an account executive takes a call that requires follow-up, he
opens a “concern” and customer service takes over from there to
resolve it. (Read more about our “concern” process.) Our account
executives focus on customers and potential customers while
our customer service department and branch service managers
resolve any service issues. When the problem is fixed, the account
executive follows up with the customer to explain the resolution.
The Account Executive’s Secret Weapon
Our 20% annual sales growth over the last ten years is a result of
everybody at SEI working together to service our customers. Sales
starts off the customer service effort by uncovering customers’
needs and putting together customized proposals to meet needs.
We continue serving customers in various ways throughout
29Chapter Three — Sales Process
our process: tech support answers technical questions, service
managers make welcome calls, engineers perform site audits,
billing produces accurate invoices, account executives make
courtesy calls—all these actions come together to create excellent
customer service, and excellent customer service brings more
revenue growth.
Feedback from our sales team indicates that they love working for
a company that has such dedication to customer service. When our
salespeople present a proposal to a prospect, they can share stories
that illustrate how we can meet the prospect’s needs, and they can
do it with 100% confidence that our service team will fulfill their
expectations. Excellent customer service is the account executive’s
secret weapon.
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