Why your Service Department should not be led by Sales Managers
When it comes to the last couple of days in a month and we are still way off the sales target, the focus often shifts from effective services to the “easy” sale, discounts, high value item focus, special deals, and the list goes on… Now if you operate a product specific business in a sales organization it is great and the aftermath on damages done to the sales department is not that bad. After all, you made the sale and you crept closer to your monthly-, and ultimately your annual- target, right?
You only used the Technician for two sales deliveries, it can surely not be that bad, or can it?
Do we know what this is doing to the service department in your business? The shot out of the hip answer will be “yes of course”, or “sure we do but we can fix it later”. The reality is that we never get to fix it as it gets repeated month after month.
Over the years this culture of the last-minute push to put the figures on the table has prevented services from being given its due as a key revenue generator in most businesses. Some organizations might see the service department as a loss leader in their business as part of their strategy to keep customers engaged through various service offerings and that is okay, but the service department should know this and be managed accordingly.
There is no use in operating your service department as a loss leader, but you grind them on the under recoveries every month. What is the point of driving demand services to generate a profit if you have no intention of growing your service department?
This is normally the result when sales managers are running service departments. Don’t understand me wrong, I support sales and the management thereof, but we live off a totally different set of KPI’s. The service technician is concerned about his recovery or productive hours while the sales manager only sees the revenue and margin related to that sale. You are probably not aware that you made a loss somewhere in the business due to your decision for the technician to deliver a sales order and loss is not visible in the sales department, it lies within the service department.
Sernovation will partner with your business to ensure that you understand the real numbers of your service department…
info@sernovation.com for further enquiries