Is Your Service Team Keeping the Promises Made By Your Sales Team?

This seems like a challenging question on the face of it. 

The underlying questions are:

Can your Service Team keep the promises made?

     - Is the Team properly staffed?
     - Is the Team properly trained?
     - Are there subject-matter experts available?

Is your Sales Team over-promising?

     - Has the product been properly defined?
     - Has the Service Team had input?

Too many times in the IT Service arena we happen upon a great product or service that we'd like to offer right away. These tantalizing tidbits are purported to be highly profitable and appear easy to sell and service. We know the old saying, "If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't."

This is where we can take a step back. It can be! 

When we take on a new product or service we need to simply make a few definitions; We need to define what the product does or what need it satisfies. We should define how it fits into our current solution set. We need to train our Service Team to support the product. Finally, we want to provide the Sales Team with these definitions. Arm them, so to speak. We may even want to go so far as to try the product in our own environment. (There's no greater selling point than having eaten your own dog food!)

If we define and prepare, it allows all of us to stay on the same page and to tell the same story to our client. It allows the Service and Sales Teams to work more harmoniously.

What's the point?

The point is simple. If your Sales Team sells stuff your Service Team can't service, you may make a ton up front, but it's a losing proposition in the long term. When the client calls for service and is unable to be serviced as expected, trust is broken. Rifts quickly form between the Service and Sales team. Service loses trust in sales and stops turning over internal leads. Sales distrusts service due to the perception of lack of service. Ultimately, all this loss of trust costs hours. Time is money....

In the mean time, we've completely blown our credibility with our client. 

We can turn the entire experience positive for not only our clients, but for our internal customers. We merely have to create some definition and use those definitions to properly set expectations both to our internal and our external customers.

Manage expectations.

Rich Williams
Autotask Certified Consulting Partner
Technical Services Manager
Business Analyst