Service Employees Definitely Can Sell

What’s you game… HVAC service tech, Pest Control/Termite specialist, Lube Store technician, or Lawn Care applicator? Common sense says service folks like these, and all manner of technicians in dozens of similar professions, should be the world’s best sales people simply because they are trusted by the customers they serve.

They show up and fix stuff, treat stuff, install stuff, kill stuff, drain and fill stuff, and then collect a reasonable fee and disappear. They don’t hang around long or run their mouth much, so they don’t hold people hostage or give them sales pitches.

But there’s a hitch; if you want your technicians to be good salespeople they must be willing to sell, and unfortunately most service folks do not. Oh sure, there are a few techs sprinkled around every company that sell effectively, but for the most part they would rather be water boarded than made to try to sell anything.

Customers of these techs may have already been thinking of getting their ductwork cleaned, or adding mosquito service to their pest control, or getting the fuel system cleaned in the Tahoe, but they would never think about calling one of these vendors to ask for a salesperson to come over and talk about it. Even when techs are given a heads up about customers who are interested in adding on products or services, the lions share still won’t even think about bringing it up to them. Why is that? Oh, there’s probably a handful of reasons but today I just want to focus on the two big ones.

1- The first reason service employees don’t sell is not really understanding what selling is and isn’t.

2- The second reason is because they look in the mirror and can’t believe they possess the right stuff to actually sell something, so they just don’t even try.

First reason first. To most service employees, and many in the general population, sales is the bottom of the barrel of occupations. You’ve heard it, and maybe said it yourself; selling is on par with tricky, pushy, manipulative, dishonest, fly-by-night, seat-of-the-pants, and fear-mongering to just mention a few of the adjectives people use. But of course this is the bad side of selling.

But there is another side to selling, the good side. Good selling is just like good service. Technicians do this every day by being helpful, honest, informative and authentic. They make people happy, they listen, make recommendations, and solve customers’ problems. Sound familiar? So under what circumstances will a service tech be willing to sell?

Why not start with convincing techs how similar their job as a service specialist is to the definition of selling? Based on a common definition, selling is “helping people find what they need to solve their problems so they can be happy.” NEWSFLASH…Service technicians already do that every day. That said, giving a customer a choice of a new product or service would certainly provide them more of what they want than just fixing the old stuff. Having the choice, but not being pushed seems like something any good tech would want to do for their customers.

When customers don’t know much about how things work, they need somebody to provide information and answer questions; and helping in decision-making can certainly be labelled as sales…the good side of sales, right?

But the DNA of the typical HVAC service tech, when called out on an old piece of heating equipment, is likely to see it and say, I can fix this (even though the system is 22 years old and the repair would be $1,200). Or the pest tech who gets called out for mice AGAIN, is likely to tell himself he can fix this with a few more glue boards (rather than explaining how a permanent fix would consist of an exclusion job at every entry point, along with door sweeps at the front and rear of the structure). I think you see where this is going. By simply explaining what really needs to be done many customers may be ready, willing and able to take the tech’s advice and solve the problem by buying something new in order to achieve real peace of mind.

The second reason service techs don’t sell is the false belief that they don’t have what it takes to sell. They think they are good with their hands but not good with their mouths, or with people. They can’t talk people into things, and aren’t all that quick with answers to questions and objections.

But wait a minute, techs have plenty of people skills. They interact with co-workers, customers, families and friends all the time. And no, it doesn’t go perfectly, but they muddle through and get the job done. They give their opinions, answer questions, work through concerns, and stumble forward and stay confused until they figure out how to accomplish the things that need to get done. If they would think about it, these are the basic steps in any selling process.

So the next time your techs roll their eyes when the topic of selling surfaces at your shop, remind them not to think of the bad side of sales, but rather remember the good traits they already exhibit and all the  problems they solve, as they help people get what they want. Remind them that ‘telling is selling;’ it’s just as simple as that! I’ll finish by relating a true story that I was a part of.

At the beginning of 2006 I (Doug) began a five-year gig as the sales coach for one multi-state division of a large environmental services company. One of my assignments was to improve technician sales. Of course we conducted regular sales training each month, but more importantly we reinforced the understanding of the two concepts discussed in this post. Here is a recap of our accomplishments, from the inception of the project in January 2006 to where we were four years down the road, at the end of 2009, which was also the depths of the Great Recession.

The year prior to my joining this team (2005), the 425 technicians sold $2.1 million, averaging $412 per tech per month. At the conclusion of 2009 the tech team sold $5.1 million, averaging $831 per tech per month. Four year improvement in sales was $3.0 million or 143%, and per tech sales of $831 per tech per month, was a whopping 60% increase! That’s major improvement; not specifically because of my involvement but because this group of accomplished service technicians came to an understanding of what sales really is and that they could actually do it! I primarily worked hard at continually trying to catch them doing something right!

———–Change the Scoreboard————–

If your sales results are falling short of what is expected of you, why not make a change? Start with subscribing to Doug’s FREE weekly Selling Point newsletter. You will receive prospecting, selling, closing, and customer service ideas that will help your performance improve. What have you got to lose?

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