For Matt Ballard, COO of Snowball Industries, upselling or offering add-on services isn’t about leaving money on the table — but something more valuable.
“The goal shouldn’t be to not leave money on the table — I hate that expression,” he says. “The goal should be (that) we provide products and services customers want and need regardless of what the additional price may be.”
Ballard spoke on the importance of selling for a superior customer experience during his presentation at ServiceTitan’s Pantheon event recently held in Los Angeles.
According to Ballard, the biggest stumbling block when it comes to add-on services is having technicians who are uncomfortable upselling customers.
“Unfortunately, the word ‘sell’ has become a four-letter word to lots of our technicians,” he says.
Ballard says sometimes, this is caused by pressure or unrealistic expectations set on them. Instead, management should be prioritizing education and professionalism.
“We’ve conditioned technicians that they’re supposed to sell, but we just need them to be experts at their trade,” he says. “If you really think about it, we don’t need them to sell, we need them to be experts at diagnosing problems and present solutions to customers.”
A simple way to promote this is a top-down approach, which starts every time a prospective client calls — and that means getting customer service representatives on board.
“The add-on selling process actually begins with a phone call with a CSR,” he says. “Train CSRs to refer to technicians as professionals. A CSR’s job is to set the stage for the technician to enter the home with a professional status.”
Once those technicians have been introduced as professionals, the opportunity to upsell becomes easier.
“You have to help them understand their job is to educate the customers and help them make the best decision for them and their families,” Ballard says, noting that ultimately, it’s the customers themselves that decide what the customer wants and what they need.
“I’m a firm believer in there’s no such thing as a stupid consumer,” Ballard says. “I’d like to refer to them as uneducated consumers. Every customer needs to feel their decision is logical and that they’re making the right decision.
“If you can fulfill their logical and emotional needs — the end result is fantastic,” he adds.
Along with educating technicians on the add-on offerings and their benefits it’s essential to ensure they trulybelieve in it.
“Technicians have to believe in what you’re asking them to sell,” he says. “If they don’t believe they will not talk about it.
“Get it into their own home,” Ballard suggests. “There won’t be a better investment. The second they believe they’ll talk about it with every single customer.”
Ballard says if an add-on service can answer three valuable questions technicians should discuss it with customers. Those questions are: Will this help them save money? Will it improve their quality of life? And will it give the customer more peace of mind?
But ultimately, even if the answer to all those questions is yes, some customers may still not be interested, and Ballard says that’s O.K.
“No is a perfectly acceptable answer, and we have to be comfortable with that,” he says. “We cannot try to force the results.”
Ballard says it’s all about approaching the right customer with the right opportunity.
“I don’t coach technicians to try and hit homeruns with every single customer every time,” he says. “That’s a good way to burn customers out.”
