Project-Based
Sometimes service offerings become misaligned to new customer needs, and perhaps customers are complaining about the lack of certain services or perceived high prices. Sales teams are rarely trained to sell services and are perhaps struggling to translate the value of the service offerings to the customer. ServiceWise Solutions is here to help instrument manufacturers ensure that customer needs are at the forefront, but also services are profitable, and sales teams are ready to sell Service.
Services
Portfolio Refresh
Portfolio Harmonization - This is a common problem for companies with a large portfolio of products. It is quite common for different teams in a company to create wildly different service offerings. Utilizing standardized service offerings naming convention and entitlements terminology is still ideal even when customer needs or resource constraints require a change in the service offerings.
We work with internal teams and validate with customers the naming convention of your offerings, how to describe entitlements, and how to organize it in a service offerings table. Harmonized offerings are much easier for customers to understand the value, as well as to increase the efficiency of sales teams. In most cases, the harmonization also simplifies the setup in the ERP and CRM systems.
Portfolio Improvement(s) - Service plans evolve, and the ones developed when the product was launched perhaps no longer match customer needs. We work with Service teams on the existing capabilities or new ones can be developed to enhance the value of the service offerings. We validate the value of new features with customers along with their willingness to pay for those service features. And we develop the marketing materials that will help the commercial team to communicate the value to customers. Portfolio Improvements will improve customer loyalty, drive contract capture and increase profitability.
Service Pricing
Service Plans Pricing & Discounting - This is where companies focused on capital equipment struggle the most. The first challenge is identifying the right pricing methodology for services, then how to control the commercial team from giving away services for free or at a deep discount.
We approach service plan pricing by first assessing which methodology would best fit. Regardless of the pricing methodology, we will ensure that customers are willing to pay and that the service plans are profitable. We have also devised an easy-to-apply earned discount structure to ensure profitability and significantly reduce the discount approval process.
Spare and Consumable Parts Pricing - The typical pricing exercise for spare and consumable parts consists of a simple percent increase that applies to ALL parts. This pricing methodology will result in some parts being overpriced while others under-priced. This pricing misalignment creates an incentive for customers and competitors to seek alternative vendors.
We have developed a parts pricing methodology that ensures parts pricing is optimized and eliminates customers' urge to shop around while increasing profitability.
Service Sales Training
Perhaps the company has developed great customer-driven service offerings with clear value propositions, which are priced appropriately. The company may have created great marketing materials to communicate the value, but service sales are still sluggish. This often happens due to a lack of service sales training to prepare the sales teams to sell Service.
The hard truth is that typical sales training does little to nothing to prepare commercial teams to sell service. The ins and outs of selling the intangible, along with how to position service contracts versus Time and Materials (T&M) service or even how to deal with service objections, are hardly ever mentioned in sales training. Most sales executives have never been trained to translate the financial benefit of a service plan or how to negotiate without discounts and giveaways.
We have trained commercial teams from start-ups to some of the most successful Fortune 500 global corporations. Our training methodology includes assessing the sales teams' existing knowledge, then measuring what they retained from the training and implementing ways to close the knowledge gap when needed post-training. We also provide advice on how to use systems to enhance the sales team's efficiency and how to tweak incentive plans to drive the correct behavior.