Field Service Tech

Field Service Tech

Gail Norris, Siemens: Maximizing Field Technician Potential, from Field Service East 2013

Video transcript:

So, techs selling service. What does that mean? Go through a little bit in regards to the challenge of getting them to be able to do that. If you want them to do that, I think several people have said that’s not something we want them to do. That it is a decision process you need to go through as an organization. The theory and the philosophy, we heard it from Tim this morning, psychology has a lot to play in regards to what these guys can and will do. So you need to understand that. You need to understand that a little bit with the individuals that you’ve got involved in it.

Attributes. I view on these attributes more than skill sets. So we’ll go through a little bit of that. There are still some skills that they do need to be trained on and we focus on that but that’s more of a technical learning environment versus what we call here the attributes which may go back into your talent acquisition strategy.

Give you an overview of the LOTS model. I’m a great weaver in stealing shamelessly. I give credit but I will steal from anybody if that’s a great idea. It’s a good model that is used primarily in sales training but it’s very relevant when we start talking about what makes a tech a good potential sales person.

And then the keys and some conclusions.

So I like this coz I spent 13 years in procurement. I think I dealt with maybe 250 to 300 so sales people. Out of that, there’s maybe four that I trusted and would buy from again. So sincerity has a lot to do with how you sell something and I think that’s the key when we talk about techs. That sincerity factor is really what makes them so successful or potentially successful. I also want to give kudos to all of our service techs because every picture you see and hear is one of our service techs and I’ve never seen such a photogenic group.

You’re going to see the term trusted advisor. We use it as well and we really do consider that service tech to be the trusted advisor to the client they’re working with. No matter what the industrial plant they walk into, the folks in that plant trust that service tech to tell them what is wrong, to fix it, get them back up to speed and get them productive as soon as possible. That trusted advisor role can’t be gained without a lot of time and effort and a lot of sincerity, a lot of trust, a lot of really walking the talk and doing what they say they’re going to do. But sometimes that’s not enough. A lot of people say why can’t my tech sell? What’s stopping them? Sometimes it’s just not something that they’re comfortable doing. So you’ve got, you’ve got to go back to that psychology and really take a look at it and look at their attributes. If there are good, solid, deep technical skills but they don’t have the right attributes, he may be better off just letting them continue as a service tech. Let them continue to satisfy the customer and deliver that service and really execute on what needs to be done.

Okay, the guy on the right is not one of our employees or the guy on the left, I’m sorry. But to some of the stereotypes and I apologize for any of the sales guys still in the room. This is stereotypes that are publicized fairly religiously. Sales guys can be a little tricky sometimes depending upon how you hear they are to sell or how incentivized they are to sell whatever they’re selling. Well the pushy used car salesman. You really need this car that won’t run and doesn’t have any wheels, can be manipulative to get you into that sales environment and into that need-want desire for whatever they’re selling. I don’t like to say it but there’s a few that I have met that are just flat out dishonest.

Service techs on the other hand. Their goal is to be helpful to the customer. They’re there to fix the customer’s problems. They’re, in general, honest about what they can and cannot do and if they don’t know a drive from a PLC, they’re going to tell them I can’t do the automation. I can’t fix your program on this but I know somebody who can and they’ll call them in. They’re informative. They know the products they’re working on and they can tell the different lives or new generations that are coming out and can inform the customer on what some of that ROI may be, whether you’re talking about replacing your HVAC in your home or doing a new driver, a new motor out in the plant. There’s a lot of similarities that go on there and that ROI and really looking at what you’re going to pay for service over a short period of time for that HVAC if you leave it in your home versus putting in a new unit that is much more energy efficient, reduces your repair cost etc., etc. All those things need to be taken into account and in general, your service tech is your best solution for those answers.

So at the end of the day, when we look at the attributes, the psychology behind it, there is a book out called Quiet which I’m in the middle of right now that has a fairly good continuum in regards to what that extraversion and introversion looks like and there is a piece that’s calm extravert which are the ones you kind of like to have around at the party. They’re fun to be around but they’re not overbearing and totally destroying you versus the impulsive got to be in it, got to be doing that, next thing really energetic that kind of sometimes wears you out. On the introverted side, you’ve got your reserved introverts who again, not a calm extravert. They don’t necessarily want to be in that party but they can function in a party atmosphere. They are not going to fly out the door as soon as they walk in and see 20 people in a room versus your anxious introverts who actually shut down when they get too many people around them. Having gone through the migration from anxious to somewhat reserved, we’re working on actually enjoying parties but we’re getting there.

So those are the things you want to look for in your service techs and sales folks and you want to kind of stay away from those other attributes. It’s a very, not a good trusting relationship that is being built when you’ve got that sales person that’s really overbearing with the customer. Most procurement people are introverts I’ll say that having been there for so long. So when you get an extraverted sales guy pushing on an introverted purchasing guy, it’s not normally a good dynamic.

Sales attributes are the drivers that make a salesman successful. Whether it be a service tech or a sales guy, these drivers are equally impactful. The desire to do something good for the customer, the commitment to seeing through whatever they’re working on, making sure that they’ve got the ability to overcome a setback. So if something is not working quite right, that service tech continuing to work until the customer’s problems are solved. Some of the things that may detract from that is that need for approval, the need for the pat on the back. You’re not going to see that as much maybe from an introvert as you will from an extravert which again makes that service tech a little more trustworthy in regards to offering solutions to the customer.

Difficulty talking about money. That may be on both sides and in general when we say selling, there’s a whole continuum around selling, offering solutions, telling them what you would recommend and then referring them to somebody who can actually close the monetary side and deliver the financials or the proposal to the them is not a bad thing to do for a service tech and that would not be going all the way in regards to selling, the handshake, the money changing hands, etc.

Again, the tech strengths. They understand the technical problems. They have the breadth and depth, the technical knowledge to solve almost any problem the customer has. They take ownership. They have a lot of pride in being able to solve that customer’s problems. They can also, as somebody said earlier, identify improvement opportunities. What are the opportunities that that customer has for either investing in more service, more products from the company or doing something differently in regards to their process in the plant? This is all something that only a technician can do. In general, a sales guy, I’ve met a couple of them that have the ability that came from a technical background. But most of them don’t have that depth and breadth of technical background that the customer is really looking for to give them a good answer.

Some of the things that you will need to train your technicians on to make them effective in this role—Portfolio. In general, your technicians are extremely deep experts in a certain sliver of your portfolio. So the more you can broaden their knowledge in regards to what the portfolio contains and how those things interweave and interact with each other, how they can make the customers process better, the more understanding they have of the customer’s process, we deal in about 10 verticals. Each one of those verticals applies our technology differently so having the mindsets that understand what a papermill works like versus a metals mill versus an automotive plant can really help build the customer’s trust in that technician as well as allow them to more easily see those opportunities.

Another thing that we strongly recommend is that the technician participates in the customer feedback. We do a transactional survey after each service call and we get feedback from the customer. We compile those. It also has an MPS question in, not the one that our friend from GE was talking about but the other one and we do share those with our technicians. So they look at it by region as to what their MPS score is. They also look at the customer comments to see where they can improve their service for delivery to the customer. Most organizations that I’ve seen generally share that more with the sales folks than they do with the service folks. We believe in sharing it both ways so that there is no surprise for the sales guy when he walks in there but also so that service guys know what they did right and what they did wrong.

Relationship building, I believe, was brought up in the last two presentations from Len and from Jim.

Making sure that they maintain that trust with that customer. One of the things we try and train our service techs to do, if you drive the same way everyday or a different route, whatever, if your passing a customer that you’re in and out of every couple of months, every couple of weeks, just take the opportunity to drop in with a box of donuts and say, hey, how is it going? If something’s wrong, they’re going to tell you about it and if they tell you about it, that’s an opportunity. So he’s not selling but he’s there for the customer. He’s appearing as a friend to the customer and somebody that the customer can count on. So just making sure that that relationship is easy for them and it’s natural for them. The other thing we ask them to do, we used to have guys that would go into the plant in the back door. The only person that ever saw them was the security guard, they fixed the part, they’d get out of there. The customer never even knew they were in the plant. We’ve asked them to please contact the manager that asked for the service. When you get to the plant, let them know you’re there. Tell them what you’re going to do. When you’re done doing it, tell them you did it and this is ramifications of whatever you did and then if you observe anything else that needs fixing or is a potential issue, tell them about it. It’s not selling. It’s just letting them be aware that you’re aware of the surroundings and you’re concerned about them as a customer and this may be an opportunity for them to improve their production as well.

And finally problem solving. I deal with the leadership development program at Seimens and one of the things that we find out with the millennials which are the Gen Y, anybody who is not familiar with milleneals term; the kids coming out of school today don’t have a lot of problem solving skills. So that’s one of the things that we’re really focused on is how to teach them problem solving skills as we’re kind of migrating our workforce from boomers to millennials over the course of the next 10 years. That is critical for our service techs to have and we need to make sure that the new kids on the block learn those skills as well.

Part of it is through experience if you will. Part of it is through some training development that we do very similar to what you’re doing on your SMS and SLT. We do a lot of workshops where there’s challenge or business cases that they have to solve for and we have more experienced folks facilitating them through that problem solving. That’s on the leadership development side.

On the tech side, we’re actually running an apprentice program that we started last summer where we’re taking the kids through. I’m sorry I’m getting old enough I can call them all kids plus I’ve got three of my own and we take them through this six-month program that does formal training as well as in field training and only give them contacts in our tech support group that they can go back to and resolve problems that they don’t understand how to fix. And in general, we see more problem solving skills in the technician side than we do in the college side. So the kids coming through the business schools, they got some work to do.

Very similar to what you guys did, we have a profile. The only thing is we have a mega profile that goes for about 1300 different capabilities and competencies. Each one of our positions are assigned certain ones of those competencies, a manager and the employee assess against those and then they reconcile them and then we develop a learning path for them which is very similar to your radar chart shows them where they should be, where they are and then we close that gap over a period of time to drive their performance to a higher level.

Lots, this is good for everybody, I think. Most of our sales guys start over here to speak and then they might, at some point, get over here to thinking about what they’re speaking about. Listening is sometimes a challenge. What we find with the technicians is this is instinctual. They listen to what the customer’s problems are. They observe the equipment and the customer and what they’re doing with it. They think about what the possible solutions for the problems are and then they talk about it. So that’s an instinctual approach but that same approach can be used for almost any of your sales folks. You can teach them to walk through this process, think before you speak, mom always said. It’s a good golden rule and it’s got an acronym so it’s easy for everybody to remember. I came out of aviation for 13 years so acronyms are my bywords.

Tech selling basically relies on two things – fluency and efficiency. The fluency part, most of your sales guys have accuracy and speed. What they don’t have is that breadth and depth of technical knowledge that we talked about earlier. The techs have this. They also know what to do. They can do it and they will do it. So when you combine those two things, you get a heck of a lot of efficiency and effectiveness in regards to your sales execution. If you partner the sales guys and the technicians as somebody was saying this morning, you can get an even better approach. Often you can’t afford that just because of the time and the people cost involved but these are the essence of tech selling.

So for us, what we like to do is have the techs provide that information, answer any questions the customer may have, help in the decision making process but they don’t close the deal. They then connect them to inside sales or their sales guy to actually do it. The things that the techs can do for you in regards to bringing more business are phenomenal. I think it was at one of the presentations this morning. I don’t know whether it was Tims or somebody else’s that said if you can retain just 5% of your current, you can grow your business exponentially. That is absolutely true. These guys are the key to it. If you can get them to help grow that business just 5% or 10% each year from what they’re currently doing, your customer retention, your customer loyalty are going to be astronomical and your steady run rate business will continue to grow. Let your sales guys focus on those white elephants and the big deals. These guys will bring in the ongoing business for you. We also do a share the lead program with our techs so that if they bring in a lead, they do get compensated for it. It is not a sales IC but there is a compensation model there for them and I always go back to that talent acquisition strategy. Make sure that your acquisition strategy when you’re interviewing technicians is not just looking at the technical skills. You have to look at the whole person as to how they fit in the organization; how they can communicate with the customer and make sure that they’ve got those attributes that you need to drive the whole business forward. If you’re not doing that as an assessment process or some other kind of holistic process, in general, what you get is a technician that looks just like the technician manager and knows the same things as he does as well and it’s a comfort factor – the hiring in your image thing is not a good thing.

At the end of the day, whatever you do, don’t take your existing technicians and try and force them into this role. If they are not comfortable selling, they don’t want to sell, let them just execute and be the guy in the corner that always has the answers if you ask him but unless you ask him, he’s not going to tell.

Questions? Thank you very much.

Field Service Tech

Gail Norris, Siemens: Maximizing Field Technician Potential, from Field Service East 2013

Video transcript:

So, techs selling service. What does that mean? Go through a little bit in regards to the challenge of getting them to be able to do that. If you want them to do that, I think several people have said that’s not something we want them to do. That it is a decision process you need to go through as an organization. The theory and the philosophy, we heard it from Tim this morning, psychology has a lot to play in regards to what these guys can and will do. So you need to understand that. You need to understand that a little bit with the individuals that you’ve got involved in it.

Attributes. I view on these attributes more than skill sets. So we’ll go through a little bit of that. There are still some skills that they do need to be trained on and we focus on that but that’s more of a technical learning environment versus what we call here the attributes which may go back into your talent acquisition strategy.

Give you an overview of the LOTS model. I’m a great weaver in stealing shamelessly. I give credit but I will steal from anybody if that’s a great idea. It’s a good model that is used primarily in sales training but it’s very relevant when we start talking about what makes a tech a good potential sales person.

And then the keys and some conclusions.

So I like this coz I spent 13 years in procurement. I think I dealt with maybe 250 to 300 so sales people. Out of that, there’s maybe four that I trusted and would buy from again. So sincerity has a lot to do with how you sell something and I think that’s the key when we talk about techs. That sincerity factor is really what makes them so successful or potentially successful. I also want to give kudos to all of our service techs because every picture you see and hear is one of our service techs and I’ve never seen such a photogenic group.

You’re going to see the term trusted advisor. We use it as well and we really do consider that service tech to be the trusted advisor to the client they’re working with. No matter what the industrial plant they walk into, the folks in that plant trust that service tech to tell them what is wrong, to fix it, get them back up to speed and get them productive as soon as possible. That trusted advisor role can’t be gained without a lot of time and effort and a lot of sincerity, a lot of trust, a lot of really walking the talk and doing what they say they’re going to do. But sometimes that’s not enough. A lot of people say why can’t my tech sell? What’s stopping them? Sometimes it’s just not something that they’re comfortable doing. So you’ve got, you’ve got to go back to that psychology and really take a look at it and look at their attributes. If there are good, solid, deep technical skills but they don’t have the right attributes, he may be better off just letting them continue as a service tech. Let them continue to satisfy the customer and deliver that service and really execute on what needs to be done.

Okay, the guy on the right is not one of our employees or the guy on the left, I’m sorry. But to some of the stereotypes and I apologize for any of the sales guys still in the room. This is stereotypes that are publicized fairly religiously. Sales guys can be a little tricky sometimes depending upon how you hear they are to sell or how incentivized they are to sell whatever they’re selling. Well the pushy used car salesman. You really need this car that won’t run and doesn’t have any wheels, can be manipulative to get you into that sales environment and into that need-want desire for whatever they’re selling. I don’t like to say it but there’s a few that I have met that are just flat out dishonest.

Service techs on the other hand. Their goal is to be helpful to the customer. They’re there to fix the customer’s problems. They’re, in general, honest about what they can and cannot do and if they don’t know a drive from a PLC, they’re going to tell them I can’t do the automation. I can’t fix your program on this but I know somebody who can and they’ll call them in. They’re informative. They know the products they’re working on and they can tell the different lives or new generations that are coming out and can inform the customer on what some of that ROI may be, whether you’re talking about replacing your HVAC in your home or doing a new driver, a new motor out in the plant. There’s a lot of similarities that go on there and that ROI and really looking at what you’re going to pay for service over a short period of time for that HVAC if you leave it in your home versus putting in a new unit that is much more energy efficient, reduces your repair cost etc., etc. All those things need to be taken into account and in general, your service tech is your best solution for those answers.

So at the end of the day, when we look at the attributes, the psychology behind it, there is a book out called Quiet which I’m in the middle of right now that has a fairly good continuum in regards to what that extraversion and introversion looks like and there is a piece that’s calm extravert which are the ones you kind of like to have around at the party. They’re fun to be around but they’re not overbearing and totally destroying you versus the impulsive got to be in it, got to be doing that, next thing really energetic that kind of sometimes wears you out. On the introverted side, you’ve got your reserved introverts who again, not a calm extravert. They don’t necessarily want to be in that party but they can function in a party atmosphere. They are not going to fly out the door as soon as they walk in and see 20 people in a room versus your anxious introverts who actually shut down when they get too many people around them. Having gone through the migration from anxious to somewhat reserved, we’re working on actually enjoying parties but we’re getting there.

So those are the things you want to look for in your service techs and sales folks and you want to kind of stay away from those other attributes. It’s a very, not a good trusting relationship that is being built when you’ve got that sales person that’s really overbearing with the customer. Most procurement people are introverts I’ll say that having been there for so long. So when you get an extraverted sales guy pushing on an introverted purchasing guy, it’s not normally a good dynamic.

Sales attributes are the drivers that make a salesman successful. Whether it be a service tech or a sales guy, these drivers are equally impactful. The desire to do something good for the customer, the commitment to seeing through whatever they’re working on, making sure that they’ve got the ability to overcome a setback. So if something is not working quite right, that service tech continuing to work until the customer’s problems are solved. Some of the things that may detract from that is that need for approval, the need for the pat on the back. You’re not going to see that as much maybe from an introvert as you will from an extravert which again makes that service tech a little more trustworthy in regards to offering solutions to the customer.

Difficulty talking about money. That may be on both sides and in general when we say selling, there’s a whole continuum around selling, offering solutions, telling them what you would recommend and then referring them to somebody who can actually close the monetary side and deliver the financials or the proposal to the them is not a bad thing to do for a service tech and that would not be going all the way in regards to selling, the handshake, the money changing hands, etc.

Again, the tech strengths. They understand the technical problems. They have the breadth and depth, the technical knowledge to solve almost any problem the customer has. They take ownership. They have a lot of pride in being able to solve that customer’s problems. They can also, as somebody said earlier, identify improvement opportunities. What are the opportunities that that customer has for either investing in more service, more products from the company or doing something differently in regards to their process in the plant? This is all something that only a technician can do. In general, a sales guy, I’ve met a couple of them that have the ability that came from a technical background. But most of them don’t have that depth and breadth of technical background that the customer is really looking for to give them a good answer.

Some of the things that you will need to train your technicians on to make them effective in this role—Portfolio. In general, your technicians are extremely deep experts in a certain sliver of your portfolio. So the more you can broaden their knowledge in regards to what the portfolio contains and how those things interweave and interact with each other, how they can make the customers process better, the more understanding they have of the customer’s process, we deal in about 10 verticals. Each one of those verticals applies our technology differently so having the mindsets that understand what a papermill works like versus a metals mill versus an automotive plant can really help build the customer’s trust in that technician as well as allow them to more easily see those opportunities.

Another thing that we strongly recommend is that the technician participates in the customer feedback. We do a transactional survey after each service call and we get feedback from the customer. We compile those. It also has an MPS question in, not the one that our friend from GE was talking about but the other one and we do share those with our technicians. So they look at it by region as to what their MPS score is. They also look at the customer comments to see where they can improve their service for delivery to the customer. Most organizations that I’ve seen generally share that more with the sales folks than they do with the service folks. We believe in sharing it both ways so that there is no surprise for the sales guy when he walks in there but also so that service guys know what they did right and what they did wrong.

Relationship building, I believe, was brought up in the last two presentations from Len and from Jim.

Making sure that they maintain that trust with that customer. One of the things we try and train our service techs to do, if you drive the same way everyday or a different route, whatever, if your passing a customer that you’re in and out of every couple of months, every couple of weeks, just take the opportunity to drop in with a box of donuts and say, hey, how is it going? If something’s wrong, they’re going to tell you about it and if they tell you about it, that’s an opportunity. So he’s not selling but he’s there for the customer. He’s appearing as a friend to the customer and somebody that the customer can count on. So just making sure that that relationship is easy for them and it’s natural for them. The other thing we ask them to do, we used to have guys that would go into the plant in the back door. The only person that ever saw them was the security guard, they fixed the part, they’d get out of there. The customer never even knew they were in the plant. We’ve asked them to please contact the manager that asked for the service. When you get to the plant, let them know you’re there. Tell them what you’re going to do. When you’re done doing it, tell them you did it and this is ramifications of whatever you did and then if you observe anything else that needs fixing or is a potential issue, tell them about it. It’s not selling. It’s just letting them be aware that you’re aware of the surroundings and you’re concerned about them as a customer and this may be an opportunity for them to improve their production as well.

And finally problem solving. I deal with the leadership development program at Seimens and one of the things that we find out with the millennials which are the Gen Y, anybody who is not familiar with milleneals term; the kids coming out of school today don’t have a lot of problem solving skills. So that’s one of the things that we’re really focused on is how to teach them problem solving skills as we’re kind of migrating our workforce from boomers to millennials over the course of the next 10 years. That is critical for our service techs to have and we need to make sure that the new kids on the block learn those skills as well.

Part of it is through experience if you will. Part of it is through some training development that we do very similar to what you’re doing on your SMS and SLT. We do a lot of workshops where there’s challenge or business cases that they have to solve for and we have more experienced folks facilitating them through that problem solving. That’s on the leadership development side.

On the tech side, we’re actually running an apprentice program that we started last summer where we’re taking the kids through. I’m sorry I’m getting old enough I can call them all kids plus I’ve got three of my own and we take them through this six-month program that does formal training as well as in field training and only give them contacts in our tech support group that they can go back to and resolve problems that they don’t understand how to fix. And in general, we see more problem solving skills in the technician side than we do in the college side. So the kids coming through the business schools, they got some work to do.

Very similar to what you guys did, we have a profile. The only thing is we have a mega profile that goes for about 1300 different capabilities and competencies. Each one of our positions are assigned certain ones of those competencies, a manager and the employee assess against those and then they reconcile them and then we develop a learning path for them which is very similar to your radar chart shows them where they should be, where they are and then we close that gap over a period of time to drive their performance to a higher level.

Lots, this is good for everybody, I think. Most of our sales guys start over here to speak and then they might, at some point, get over here to thinking about what they’re speaking about. Listening is sometimes a challenge. What we find with the technicians is this is instinctual. They listen to what the customer’s problems are. They observe the equipment and the customer and what they’re doing with it. They think about what the possible solutions for the problems are and then they talk about it. So that’s an instinctual approach but that same approach can be used for almost any of your sales folks. You can teach them to walk through this process, think before you speak, mom always said. It’s a good golden rule and it’s got an acronym so it’s easy for everybody to remember. I came out of aviation for 13 years so acronyms are my bywords.

Tech selling basically relies on two things – fluency and efficiency. The fluency part, most of your sales guys have accuracy and speed. What they don’t have is that breadth and depth of technical knowledge that we talked about earlier. The techs have this. They also know what to do. They can do it and they will do it. So when you combine those two things, you get a heck of a lot of efficiency and effectiveness in regards to your sales execution. If you partner the sales guys and the technicians as somebody was saying this morning, you can get an even better approach. Often you can’t afford that just because of the time and the people cost involved but these are the essence of tech selling.

So for us, what we like to do is have the techs provide that information, answer any questions the customer may have, help in the decision making process but they don’t close the deal. They then connect them to inside sales or their sales guy to actually do it. The things that the techs can do for you in regards to bringing more business are phenomenal. I think it was at one of the presentations this morning. I don’t know whether it was Tims or somebody else’s that said if you can retain just 5% of your current, you can grow your business exponentially. That is absolutely true. These guys are the key to it. If you can get them to help grow that business just 5% or 10% each year from what they’re currently doing, your customer retention, your customer loyalty are going to be astronomical and your steady run rate business will continue to grow. Let your sales guys focus on those white elephants and the big deals. These guys will bring in the ongoing business for you. We also do a share the lead program with our techs so that if they bring in a lead, they do get compensated for it. It is not a sales IC but there is a compensation model there for them and I always go back to that talent acquisition strategy. Make sure that your acquisition strategy when you’re interviewing technicians is not just looking at the technical skills. You have to look at the whole person as to how they fit in the organization; how they can communicate with the customer and make sure that they’ve got those attributes that you need to drive the whole business forward. If you’re not doing that as an assessment process or some other kind of holistic process, in general, what you get is a technician that looks just like the technician manager and knows the same things as he does as well and it’s a comfort factor – the hiring in your image thing is not a good thing.

At the end of the day, whatever you do, don’t take your existing technicians and try and force them into this role. If they are not comfortable selling, they don’t want to sell, let them just execute and be the guy in the corner that always has the answers if you ask him but unless you ask him, he’s not going to tell.

Questions? Thank you very much.