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Close more sales, of course!


Avid Andy sits comfortably with fingers on his temples struggling to determine ways in which connected systems, combined with varied levels of AI, can make his service company money.  Seems the harder he concentrates on the topic, the more he churns out insipid, shallow ideas.  If his clients, and even Reluctant Ruth, believe that IoT is the future, why is it so damn hard to put numbers to these investments?  Influential Irene is quick to point out a few considerations, unfortunately they are all related to adding cost to PM's; a proposition which could negatively impact the lifeblood of the organization (annuity stream) and would likely be a push, or even a loss, to existing contracts.  Assuming that we could flip the majority of our contracts to full-risk, combined with relevant and actionable information from assets in the field, we may be able to reduce cost for the client and increase our margins.  Even Overwhelmed Oscar seemed to be in agreement with this strategy.  Yet, something was still gnawing at Andy, it isn't enough and could take years to hit positive cash flow.



Instead, how about if we look at it differently, switch from an operations view to a sales view, suggested Irene.  Suddenly, Oscar begins to recall his days in the field and starts to ramble on about a "credibility spectrum", at one side you have a fresh eyed salesperson and the other a revered technician.  While both are good honest people, the client is likely to believe the technician when fielding recommendations for new or modified equipment.  A relaxed wave of confidence flows over Oscar, not often seen, as he continues and suggests machine learning (ML), just a jump up on the AI evolution scale, ML could be positioned in the middle of the credibility spectrum between sales and the technician.  You can feel the energy in the room build as both Irene, and Ruth, as if choreographed jump up and yell "close more sales, of course!".   Recommendations with elevated credibility equate to higher close rates.  Andy ponders the impact as he calculates… if my close rate increased by x % with $yyy in service, retrofit and project work, that would mean $zzz in additional revenue.  Suddenly the operational expenses of IoT based connected solutions becomes a cost of sales, could this be the answer I have been searching for?



The simple answer is, it is anyone's best guess.  We just don't have enough experience or information to see exactly how to monetize these investments; however, you know what they say:  'Practice makes Perfect".  Let's remember "IoT without monetization is simply monitoring".



Thank you,  Jim (Mesa), Brian (VSS) and Steve (CANDI), for the conversations which motivated this post.



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Next post:  perceiving the service professional

Thoughts?  feel free to leave replies or direct message

See all of the "last mile worker" posts here:  http://lastmileworker.com

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