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Ruining your best field workers


It used to just chap my ass when I was in the field as a technician and somebody would call me a salesperson. Hey, I was there to ride in on the white horse and save the day from call to call, the reason many service technicians get out of bed in the morning. The reference to being a salesperson was difficult as many times the salesperson would offer X and we had to deliver Y. However, when the dust settles whether you are in sales or operations, the field or the office, we should all be focused on one common thing and that is providing solutions to our clients.



In many industries, a key component of sales is trust and relationships. Most service technicians, at least those that have been to a site more than once, have those qualities in spades. So, it stands to reason that if a field service person is trusted that the natural place for them to land would be in sales. As a matter of fact, they would probably outsell any sales person because of their knowledge of the operating system. Well, not so true. Sure, there are those times that field people transition from a technical role to a pure sales role, and those that make the transition are very successful. The skill sets and the emotional quotient of these two roles are vastly different. If a technician is successful selling as a technician it is likely to do with their knowledge and credibility; however, they are essentially order takers. If a salesperson is successful it likely has to do with the deliberate effort they have exerted to build trust with the client.



The best transitions for workers to sales positions are those which have allowed the transition to occur over a period of time. Add a quota to the service person and allow them to experience proactive sales as opposed to reactive order taking.  Proceed with caution, when it comes to people things are rarely logical.



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Next post:  vetting sub-contractors

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