“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.
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