Treat me well: Why post sale is the core to your business offering
By Lawrence Breen
As a business that works with a lot of technology, I’ve been through a fair few sales cycles. Admittedly, we sell tech so I’ve been also involved on both sides of the coin. Great technology is so important to business and that isn’t changing anytime soon. Being passionate about it puts me in the position of always reviewing how our partners and suppliers are delivering for our business, just as our clients would review Inland Digital.
One area that cannot be highlighted enough is post sale support. It still amazes me how many companies get this wrong, given the impact it has on their clients…and the company’s ability to keep them as a client!
It matters what happens post sale
Read any review site and you can see the value of good and the impact of bad post sale support. Once the sale is done, many businesses fall into the trap of looking at the next sale. I’ve experienced that as a client before and, when expectations aren’t met, it leaves the worst impression imaginable.
There is plenty of research and statistics available to back up this position. It’s a no-brainer really from my perspective to ensure that your business invests as much time and resources, or even more, into service and support of clients as it does in winning them.
This was recently brought home to me in dealing with a new purchase for our business. During the purchase, the experience, skill set, and long-term commitment of the support team in ensuring that my technology operates as it should was constantly highlighted to me.
It highlights the value of a tried and tested, positively reviewed service offering. Let’s be frank: You’re not going to buy “Rolls Royce” technology only for it to be serviced by a mechanic with no experience and a careless attitude!
Focusing on service will make a difference
We run a large service business at Inland Digital. It’s one of our largest divisions and is crucial to our success. It’s something we’ve always invested heavily in, on both the print and workflow technology sides of our business, and it has paid for itself tenfold. We were recently awarded Service Provider of the Year by one of our technology partners, Canon Australia, and it’s something we’re very proud of.
Our level of post sale service is core to our offering. In tech, you need to ensure that your hardware and software are giving clients the right experience and the level of service they require. Not just in areas like uptime, but also in ensuring that as your clients business grows, your technology grows with it. That’s not just a sales function: Your service team are ideally placed to see the usage trends of your clients. At Inland Digital for example, our sales and service teams have an incredibly close working relationship, which means we can manage our clients holistically, right from the first sale through to ongoing service delivery.
Scream it from the rooftops
Which brings me back to my point around the value of service: Why do some companies fail to highlight their post sale capabilities? Or if they do highlight it, mislead you in terms of expectations.
Clear communication is important to any relationship, and in business it’s critical that you get it right from the beginning. We take the approach of highlighting our service business and setting clear expectations of how our clients will be treated. Not just on regulation service, but also when things happen that are unexpected. We’ve highlighted those situations in a number of client stories across our website.
So when promoting your business, don’t be afraid to speak up about your service capability, and how it has helped your clients in their business. Just as I found recently, it helped me make the right decisions in buying my next piece of tech.
Transforming business is more than just a tagline for us; it’s core to what we do every day. Keen to discuss how you can get better post sale service? Email me at lbreen@inlanddigital.com.au and we can arrange a time to discuss what’s happening in your business.