Selling the Invisible Keys to Services Profitability

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Selling the Invisible Keys to Services
Profitability

• Timothy R. Salaver

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Selling the Invisible

• Youre now an APICS chapter officer volunteer and
  responsible for marketing your program and
  education offerings to your customers

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Selling the Invisible

• Your full-time job is in manufacturing a product
  in which marketing creates advertisements showing
  the product in slick print ads and television
  commercials

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Selling the Invisible

• In your daily life, you are bombarded with
  product marketing

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Selling the Invisible

• on your TV from the car sales pitch to the new
  and improved laundry detergent

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Selling the Invisible

• easy to see

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Selling the Invisible

• at your local mall in the anchor stores with
  their expensive perfumes and new and improved
  soaps

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Selling the Invisible

• easy to smell

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Selling the Invisible

• in your local fast food restaurant with their
  two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-
  pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun meal,
  super-valued with a drink and enough french fries
  to feed a small army

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Selling the Invisible

• easy to taste

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Selling the Invisible

• in the fruits and vegetable section of your
  grocery store where you paw, squeeze, poke and
  prod the peaches, plums, lettuce, and corn to
  find the items that meet your discerning
  requirements

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Selling the Invisible

• easy to feel

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Keys to Services Profitability

• There are three keys to Selling Services
• Expectations Key
• Culture Key
• Approaches Key
• Within each of these keys you have the ability to
  unlock the doors for a more robust, viable,
  relevant, and extraordinary chapter experience

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Expectations Key
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Expectations

• Managing expectations requires understanding the
  nature of selling services
• Most members of APICS are widget producers and
  consumers
• Change your perspective to the services market

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Expectations

• What services do you purchase in the following
  industries?
• Healthcare
• Beauty
• Education
• Hospitality
• Entertainment

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Expectations

• Now compare that to the following consumer
  products industries
• Automobile
• Food and Beverage
• Retail
• Publishing

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Selling Invisible Services

• You can experience consumer products with your
  five senses but how do you sell a plant tour?
• Where is the production schedule?
• How do you route this event?
• How do you define the distribution method?
• You cant provide a free sample!

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Selling Invisible Services

• Transform into a sales-oriented education
  services business model
• Change perspective from producing widgets to
  selling the invisible

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Can't See or Feel the Product

• How do you visualize membership in APICS?
• What is the message of the I am APICS campaign?

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Can't See or Feel the Product

• How do we sell our
• Programs
• Education
• Plant Tours
• Dinner Meetings
• Membership

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CPIM's BoK Doesn't Apply

• Services selling is values-based selling
• Importance or need of service is based completely
  on the customers perception of the value they
  receive from that service
• Services marketing is based on the customer
  buying into an experience
• How does services selling create profitability
  for the chapter?

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No Celebrity Spokespeople

• No one in your organization has a well-known face
  or a memorable sound bite

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No Immediate Self-Gratification

• Tap into the indirectness of our service with the
  directness of other services
• Result has to be immediate
• How do you know when youve received bad service?
• Who sets the service expectation?

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Golden Gate Chapter

• Our Board of Directors are moving in a new
  direction

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Customers Set Expectations

• Question every aspect of offerings
• Not just better services but different services
• Let the customer set the standard for services

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Manufacturing Industry _at_Glance

• 48 of 50 states are declining in manufacturing
  jobs
• California lost 250,000 manufacturing jobs
• Nevada increased its jobs by 300,000

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Manufacturing Industry _at_Glance
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Manufacturing Industry _at_Glance

• About 63 of workers in the goods-producing
  sectors are manufacturing employees, yet
  manufacturing establishments account for less
  than 30 of goods-producing establishments
• In the economy as a whole, manufacturing
  represents about 11.3 of all employment, yet
  less than 5 of all establishments

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Manufacturing Industry _at_Glance

• Current Employment Statistics estimates show
  annual average employment in manufacturing above
  17 million between 1994 and 2000, before
  declining sharply
• During 2004, manufacturing employment averaged
  14,329,000

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Manufacturing Industry _at_Glance
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Golden Gate Chapter

• Focus energies on producing more courses
• Revenue Results
• Plant Tours 150.00 in 2 years
• Fundamentals Courses 50,000.00 in 1 year

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Customers Set Expectations

• Customers decide what services we should provide
• Why?
• Because they are the ones buying!

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Customers Set Expectations

• How does customer value his or her time?
• Replace customers time with your service
• Get them to give you their money!

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Culture Key
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Culture

• Selling services is different than selling
  widgets, but have similar developments
• No production schedule or physical inventory, but
  time and resource assets
• Do need project or time schedule and resource
  capabilities
• Identify people and organizational skills
  necessary to meet customers needs

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Transform Your Service

• The first step in service marketing is service
• Assume your service is bad
• What could it hurt?!
• What youre selling requires that you take
  something away from your customer which is a
  constrained commodity
• TIME

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Transform Your Service

• We dont know everything we need to know about
  selling our products
• Managing a chapter to the level which reaps
  profitability is like running a business

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Marketing

• Marketing isn't one department
• It is everyone's job
• Including your customer
• In Japan, many corporations do not have marketing
  departments
• The general feeling is that everyone is a
  representative of the company and should be able
  to market its products

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Marketing

• Marketing services is everyones responsibility,
  including your customers
• If your customer has an excellent experience who
  will they tell?
• If your customer has a bad experience who will
  they tell?
• We are selling the invisible an experience that
  is definable by the individual customer, not the
  market!

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Become Relationship-Driven

• Service marketing is a popularity contest
• We are selling relationships
• Why does someone become a member of APICS?
• Fulfilling the Belongingness Need
• Services marketing is relationship driven

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Pay Incentives to Volunteers

• How does paying or rewarding volunteers increase
  profitability?
• Golden Gate Chapter membership is increasing and
  so is our profitability
• A volunteer organization is not just about
  finding people that work for free
• Our perception of who we are needs to change

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Pay Incentives to Volunteers

• Reward your volunteers with reimbursement of
  expenses and conference incentives
• Pay for quality services from all sources

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Customer Service

• Define "Remarkable" Customer Service
• What is the benchmark for great customer service?
• Bad Service operationally focused not customer
  focused
• The difference for all customers is their loyalty
  to the service provider

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Approaches Key
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Approaches

• Creating profitability is determined in the
  approaches needed to address your customer needs
• Know your customer
• Develop long term relationships
• Continuity in services offerings
• Establish long term strategies
• Customer acquisition and retention

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Value-Based, W.I.I.F.M. Selling

• W.I.I.F.M. Whats In It For Me
• This service helps me
• Accomplish my goals
• Enhance my resume
• Make me more marketable for a job
• Generate a new social network
• W.I.I.F.M.s motivate people

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Value-Based, W.I.I.F.M. Selling

• What they want is what you offer
• Services selling creates customer loyalty
• Sale includes appeals to the sharing of values
• W.I.I.F.M. becomes W.I.I.F.U. Whats In It For
  Us

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Maslows Hierarchy of Needs
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Appeal to Higher Level Needs

• Belongingness and Love
• Esteem
• Cognitive
• Self-Actualization
• Transcendence
• How do your services meet your customers needs?

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Identify with Customers

• Identify with customers at their level
• Services marketing is about tapping into the
  personal needs of the customer
• Listen to the customer!

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Identify with Customers

• Understand what your customers do
• How they do it
• When they do it
• Where they do it
• Who they do it with
• Why they have chosen to do what they do

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Identify with Customers

• Create the possible service
• Dont just create what the market needs or wants
• Create what the customer would love

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Identify with Customers

• Our success is built on
• Engaging and dynamic instructors
• Easy to use registration services
• Leaders and managers that understand and want the
  best for their fellow members and prospective
  customers
• Our current customers may be future board members
  and instructors!

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Become a Rainmaker

• In the book, How To Become A Rainmaker The
  Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and
  Clients, author Jeffrey J. Fox emphasizes these
  points
• Cherish customers at all times
• Treat customers as you would your best friend

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Become a Rainmaker

• Listen to customers and decipher their needs
• Make/Give customers what they need
• Teach customers to want what they need
• Make your product the way customers want it

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Become a Rainmaker

• Get your product to your customers when they want
  it
• Give your customers a little extra, more than
  they expect
• Thank each customer sincerely and often

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Create Customer Experiences

• Create experiences customers will LOVE
• Get your services in order
• Create a customer experience not available
  anyplace else
• Not just better but different

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Create Customer Experiences

• How do you know?
• Ask your customer!
• In order to improve your service you have to ask

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Create Customer Experiences

• Do it by phone!
• Response rate for a written survey is 3 - 5
• Response rate for an oral survey is 100

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Golden Gate Chapter

• Called every member and company coordinator not
  once, but twice in a 4 month period
• Asked how we can be better at meeting our
  customer members needs
• Our service is sold to individuals so we talked
  to individuals

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Golden Gate Chapter

• We know that what we offer will improve the work
  and business quality of our customers products
• We are confident and knowledgeable about our
  products, our instructors, our body of knowledge
• We know in any situation we are helping our
  customers

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Golden Gate Chapter

• Simply
• EVERYONE NEEDS OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT TRAINING

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Golden Gate Chapter

• APICS is a social network
• Our benefit is completely personal

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Focus on Needs of Community

• Who is your community?
• Focus on your customers as your community

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Relationship Management

• 10 tips by F. John Reh intended to help you focus
  on the key issues that are important to your
  success in Customer Relationship Management

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Relationship Management

• Keeping existing customers is cheaper than
  finding new ones
• Actively listen
• Doctor your customers
• It's the customer, stupid
• Follow through on sales promises

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Relationship Management

• Delight the customer
• Keep your focus external
• Under-promise and over-deliver
• Your first obligation is to the customer

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Relationship Management

• Quality customer service is based on three
  essentials
• Respect
• Value
• A Human Approach

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Right Clients Right Time

• Identify what APICS is not because that will help
  you focus on what it is
• Focus, focus, focus
• Sell what your customers wantONLY!
• Our customers can only be effective and afford
  one membership in one organization

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Right Clients Right Time

• Understand your limitations!
• Who can you sell to?
• Do not waste your time trying to do something
  that will not meet expectations
• Focus on selling your services to the right
  customer at the right time

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Do What You Love

• Do what you love and the money will follow
• When volunteers no longer love what they do let
  them go
• APICS is a volunteer organization
• Your volunteers should be passionate about their
  roles

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Contact Tim Salaver APICS Golden Gate Chapter
President president_at_apicsggc.org 702-286-7464