Most successful dealers have modified their sales compensation schedule to reward solution sales. But even with the change of compensation plans, dealers are struggling with re-training traditional hardware-focused sales reps and hiring new solution sales specialists.
While sales managers are skirmishing to build a viable long term sales staff, senior management may be ignoring their most powerful sleuth selling machine that is already employed by their company. In addition to hiring new sales reps, you should enable, encourage and educate your current force of field service employees to help with the selling process. Your field service employees already have a working relationship with your clients and understand your business. All that is necessary is some directed education, creative mentoring and a newly structured lead program to turn these service professionals into lead generators for your solution sales.
How many dealerships have actively changed their service lead generation programs to focus on incentivizing the very employees who listen to the needs of their clients? Many of the clients’ pain points can be cured through the use of solutions based software that your company is currently offering.
Smaller dealerships often represent half a dozen different software packages. Larger businesses may sell and support twenty or more software products as well as taking on any software offering that a customer mentions they are interested in buying. The integration team or a single IT tech may be the only people that currently understand the general scope of all the products being offered.
Does your entire field service staff, in-house dispatchers and help desk personnel understand exactly what software products your company represents can accomplish for your clients? If your answer is “No” or “I’m not sure” you are wasting your most valuable sleuth sales force– also known as your service department employees.
When visiting with dealers, or talking with service personnel at seminars and industry events, I often ask, “What software are you currently offering your clients?” Unless I am talking to an integration specialist, I am often told they use the OEM’s product or a familiar MPS offering. When I ask for more specific information on what other software products they sell and support, the answers I receive are very general and reveal a very simplified knowledge of the products.
If you want your field techs and entire staff of employees to help sell your products, increasing software product education will improve the quality and quantity of the leads your extended staff will be able to turn in on a regular basis. So how does the progressive dealer train their infantry of field techs (hardware sales people, support and administrative staff) to have a working knowledge of your company’s oft-changing software offerings?
An easy way to begin the staff educational process is to use 5 minutes of each service meeting to introduce and review a software package that your dealership sells and supports. My goal is to have a service tech or field supervisor actually do the presentation to the group. In the beginning, you can have your integration or software sales staff present the information.
The entire service staff is told in advance that in future service meetings, individual techs will be called upon to provide the name of a software package your dealership offers and a 30 second explanation of what type of customer (or vertical market) may use this type of software and what it can help the customer accomplish.
I allow my techs to use a written ‘cheat sheet’ or customized app or link on their iPhone or iPad to access the information. My goal is that each service employee is able to have immediate access to the dealership’s software information when they are in the clients’ office.
I am a firm believer in audience participation. Having each tech know that they will be randomly called upon to present 30 seconds of information before the group of their peers makes them a little more attentive. Additionally, each tech that does a mini-presentation also receives a protein bar or some other healthy snack immediately at the end of the presentation. An approval of their peers and a physical object in their hand help encourage the techs to listen to the 5 minute presentations and to be prepared if they are selected to do the 30 second refresher in the future.
Sometimes I will have one tech present the basic software information without announcing the name of the software. The tech only reveals the vertical market being served, what the software can accomplish or improve, and which of our customers are currently using the product. The first tech who can correctly shout out the correct name of the software receives a prize (usually a snack bar) as well as the praise of the other techs.
Once you get the techs comfortable introducing, explaining and continually mentioning software offerings at your company meetings, you can continually add new software offerings as well as keeping all your long term software packages in the mix. During some service meetings I will only have a shout out of 4-5 different mini software-identification quizzes. It keeps the techs thinking. My more competitive techs will do a quick review of software product names and their functions before walking into the service meetings.
The bottom line is our service techs are able to generate a steady stream of leads for software sales. By understanding what the software can do, techs are better able to identify who may benefit from using one of your software products. Our dealership set up a new leads bonus program that directly rewards the number of licenses that are sold from tech generated software leads. This provides an additional incentive to become aware of the potential of larger sales opportunities.
The power of being knowledgeable and familiar with all of the products and services your dealership offers will increase the comfort level of your techs being able to listen to the needs of your clients and identify their company’s ability to provide a viable solution. Setting up ongoing, structured education and mentoring of your service staff will enable them to consistently turn in appropriate and profitable sales leads.
