It is intuitive to understand that you will need sales engineers to support your sales team as they bring new prospects through the door – who else is going to answer the technical questions the client asks or give the demo of your cool NOC monitoring software. What is less intuitive is the fact that your support team will play an active role in the sales of services and products to your existing client base over time but they should not be compensated or motivated based on this role.
But wait a minute we are all in this managed service thing to make money! – Well yes, and I would be the first to argue that you should create profitable services and products or you should get into another business. The problem is that I see a lot of organizations that set their client management structures up in such a way that the group directly responsible for making sure the client is getting the most out of their service is also directly compensated and incentivized for selling specific products or solutions. Your reaction to this run on sentence is probably – Well yeah, that is how the industry has been doing it for years! Well, you are right but I would argue that to truly act in the best interest of your clients your team must be compensated on client satisfaction and retention over the long haul rather than the quick hit 30k project or product.
We have empowered our team to gain first position with clients by creating a system that lets them say things like “listen Mr. client, I have no vested interest in which solution, vendor, product, service, etc, you move forward with I am only recommending what I truly feel is best for your business based on the goals and initiatives we have been talking about”.
Now that is powerful thing to be able to say to a client and a sure fire way to earn a seat at their executive table.
JC
