The ABC's of Selling Services

It's pretty tough to sell product on the net these days. Bigger companies have cut and consumed their pieces of the net profit pie, and it's difficult to make inroads in a crowded market. If customers want the product you're selling, it's likely that a bigger company is also selling it-for less money. The real profit potential for the net lies in business to business marketing. Businesses need services. If you sell them the right way, you can make a profit whether the customers' businesses succeed or not. Business to business marketing is something ENTEX knows well. ENTEX plans, builds, designs and maintains distributed IT infrastructures for Fortune 1000 companies. It's a complex job, but the basic principles and strategies that underlie the ENTEX success can guide your business to selling services too. ENTEX CEO John McKenna explains how it's done.

Assess

Before even thinking of proposing a business solution, ENTEX first spends the appropriate time assessing the client company's needs. "The most important thing in the service business is understanding the fact that you're generally selling something intangible," says McKenna. "When a customer buys a hard product, they get to see it, touch it, feel it, and decide for themselves. When we're providing a complex solution for a customer, we make sure to go through these six phases so that there's no disconnect or misunderstanding between what our customer means and what we mean in terms of providing the solution." It's a mistake to skip the assessment stage. You can't offer a good design without first thinking of what it will incorporate. "When another supplier has done that too fast, we tease them and say, "It's like a second surgery. It's always more expensive." You want to get it done right the first time. You want the doctor to do the right diagnostics before designing the operation," McKenna says.

Design

Next, your job is to design a solution for the business-one that solves the problems you uncovered in the assessment. We can't guide you through THAT-or you'd have to give us a cut of the profits-but whatever you design should be fully explained to customers. "A statement of work is no different from what a contractor might give you when they do an addition to your house," McKenna explains. "The statement of work spells out exactly what will be provided in the work you're doing for them." You want your customer to know exactly what the solution is going to look like. And both your company and the customer must sign off on the design statement. That way everybody's on the same page.

Develop and Implement

"Probably the most important piece of the statement of work is a detailed project plan that specifies when each piece will occur, what is the ENTEX responsibility and what is the customer's responsibility," says McKenna. "There is a project plan with time frames and dates. It's also the place where we highlight complex tasks, because in the services business there's always some dependence on the client. Let's say we're doing an outsourcing engagement for a large customer and we're going to be doing password resets over the net. We need to have access to their password files. They have to have that ready for us at a certain time," McKenna says. "It's the next step, where you've agreed on the statement of work and now you're sitting there shaking hands and saying, 'Yes, and your job is to have this information to us in this format at this point in time.'" Next you'll have to implement the solution, but you're not done yet!

Review and Maintain

Many companies feel they're done after the implementation phase, but McKenna says that's shortsighted. "We have a concept at ENTEX that you have to have continuous improvement. The world changes so fast, technology changes so fast, customer needs change so fast that if we are planning or hoping for a static environment at all, it’ll be a disaster for our customers," McKenna says. Businesses need to watch over their solutions, both after they are implemented and beyond. Without that level of service, companies won't be back for a second helping. Those are the steps that take your company from zero to sixty with your customers. We gave you the framework. Now go convince those customers to buy the whole building!