Unlesson Seven: "I work in Service and Support"

“I work in support and services, and I do not need to be a sales person.”

In most complex sales situations, the initial sale represents a fraction of the overall investment over the lifecycle of the relationship. If we take the example of software. ERP licences typically cost a million or so Euros, according to the size of the customer, the scope of the implementation, etc. In software, licences are not the end of the story, then there is the maintenance fee, that is generally 15-20% of the original price, per year. So there is a big revenue stream from the mere existence of the licence. In addition, the project is not about the software, but about the implemented system being used by the organisation and the people in it. This means hardware and infrastructure, and it means most especially implementation effort. As a very rough rule of thumb, and ERP implementation will cost 1:1:4. That means for every dollar of licence there is a dollar of hardware and infrastructure, and four times that in implementation effort. (This takes internal costs as well as external costs into consideration. Your mileage may vary.)

Taking another example, earth moving machinery. This is a complex machine that has a lifecycle, and an estimated number of working hours over a life time, depending on the conditions, type and intensity of usage. The maintenance costs and running costs over the lifetime of the machine may exceed the acquisition costs by some considerable margin.

Thus, the people who work in support are going to be major guardians of the revenues of the organisation. Additionally, the cost of doing business with an existing customer can be a fraction of the cost of doing new business. Where there is an existing relationship, and a need to service and support an existing complex relationship, this is where the most profitable revenue can be gained. The other main benefit is the ability to extend the footprint of the product or services in the organisation. If you have an ERP system, taking another function or module from the same organisation is logical, and easy to justify. If you have one brand of machinery, you will stick with it for operational and cost reasons. (Nearly all low cost airlines have a single aircraft type, let alone supplier. Usually this is the Boeing 737, although Airbus has managed to make some inroads of late.) Not all support people need to have revenue targets or even to be sales trained, but they should have some awareness of the importance of their job.