March 12, 2014
Anneli Thomson, Managing Director
A recent article in Mechanical, a magazine for the heating and air conditioning trade, told this story:
A technician on the roof fixing a chiller was chatting to the building owner as he worked.
‘You know’, said the owner, ’you’ve fixed this machine so often lately I could have replaced it with the money I spent. Maybe I should get a price from your company on a new one.’
The technician agreed, but did not ask more questions. Nor did he give the sales department a ‘heads up’ when he got back to the office. No one followed up or called the customer. The customer took this silence as a lack of interest and called the competition. They got the replacement job, and sold the owner a maintenance contract on the new equipment. Not only did the original company lose a sale, they lost a customer!
We don’t expect our technicians to sell, but shouldn’t they at least have ‘sales antennae’ – an ability to recognise a business opportunity when they see one and pass it on to the sales department? How many sales are we missing because our frontline people have the belief: ‘that’s not my job.’
Often, losing a customer is an invisible process. It’s not what we do, it’s what we don’t do.
Have you given your customer care team the tools to recognise a business opportunity?
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