From Service to Sales: How Field Service Can Drive Revenue Growth

Field service can help drive revenue growth by selling to your existing customers, also called upselling or cross-selling. Most likely, your mobile team is already doing this without much guidance or forethought. We’ve found that 65% of mobile workers are successfully selling to existing customers.

But the question is, how can you reach this audience at the right time, with the right message, in a way that doesn’t make them feel like they’re being sold to during a service visit?

Here are four tips to help set you up for success:

• Get buy-in from leadership for upselling/cross-selling in the field
• Invest in the best field service management software to make sales fast and easy for your mobile team to do [AI is key]
• Train your field service employees and contractors on sales tactics 
• Offer incentives to motivate your team

Ready to get started? Let’s dig into each of these best practices for upselling and cross-selling in field service.

Make the business case for upselling and cross-selling

I’ve spent 15 years of my career in sales and sales leadership roles for software and hardware companies. Most business leaders I speak with are always looking to increase their share of wallet on customer spend for similar products. They also know that customer trust can lead to more sales.

This makes the business case to use field service technicians as sellers easy to stand up with your leadership team. After all, your mobile team is in the field every day building trust with customers by solving problems for them. Paired together, monetizing every field service visit while leaning into that customer trust sets the stage for revenue growth.

However, it’s not as simple as asking your field service team to sell at appointments. While your mobile workers are uniquely positioned to sell, they may not be comfortable selling, prepared to sell, or even interested in selling. 

Even with your leadership buy-in, there’s a lot that goes into making this transition. Let’s look at how field service management with AI, training, and incentives can set your team up for success.  

Use AI-first mobile field service management

Your field service team needs mobile-ready field service management powered by AI to make upselling easy and fast. Here are a few examples of how having the best field service management in place can help your mobile workers sell successfully.

• With AI-generated summaries, you can brief your mobile workers on past service interactions, asset history, offers, and communications before they even arrive at a job site. These details can help your team prepare a consultative sales approach that’s personally tailored to the customer’s specific needs and preferences.
• AI can make recommendations for upgrades, replacements, or maintenance from new customer data collected on site. For easy upsells like a new battery or service level agreement (SLA), your team can instantly provide next steps. But for more involved sales, like customized equipment, let your mobile workers know it’s okay to pass the lead to Sales. AI can create a list of questions or a checklist for them to quickly capture key details for a seamless hand off.
• Mobile quoting lets your technicians provide pricing right in the field for a future project. Creating customized documents with a line item breakdown, images, and a signature capture makes it easy for your customers to commit on the spot.
• Payment capabilities within the field service management mobile app lets your field service workers collect immediately for the additional sales they make. They’ll receive credit right away and earn their incentives faster.
• At the end of each appointment, have your mobile workers ask your customers to fill out a digital customer satisfaction survey from their field service management mobile app. AI can analyze the post-service feedback to identify potential upselling opportunities. For example, if a restaurant chain customer says they have issues maintaining their freezers, your field service technician can suggest an SLA.

Offer upselling training and support

In addition to having the right field service management enablement, give your technicians  the right training to identify customer cues and engage in upselling/cross-selling.

Remember: your field service technicians are not salespeople, nor should you assume they will enjoy selling. The two roles require different skill sets, but each plays an important part for revenue growth. 

Train your mobile workers on sales techniques and how to look for customer cues. This can include easy upsells, such as extending a warranty or SLA, and more involved upsells like upgrading an outdated piece of equipment. Use knowledge base articles on how to sell and Trailhead, Salesforce’s free self-paced learning platform, to help your field service technicians get up to speed. 

Your field service technicians should feel comfortable with basic pre-selling best practices. One of the most critical skills is how to set customer expectations for contact from your team. If a customer asks a question that Sales is best suited to answer, the field service technician should give a specific timeframe and channel in which they will be contacted. 

Uncovering an opportunity and creating a lead in the CRM goes directly to Sales for follow up. This helps to create a valuable partnership between Service and Sales. The seller can progress the opportunity, and the field service technician doesn’t feel like they’re doing a seller’s job. It’s a win-win for Service and Sales.

Provide career and monetary incentives

When you expand the scope of any team member’s role and expectations, it’s vital to introduce consistent incentives to ramp up participation and recognize outstanding work. Deliver these rewards monthly, quarterly, annually, or on an ad-hoc basis to recognize exemplary achievements. 

Include sales expectations as part of your employment contracts. Clearly explain how field service technicians can earn incentives by generating leads that convert to sales. A few incentive options include:

• Bonuses for a number of on-the-spot sales or closed leads
• Paid training for career growth
• Extra paid time off (PTO)

Pair these personal incentives with public recognition, such as a team leaderboard. At a minimum, a simple thank you and acknowledgement in a team meeting can go a long way to reinforce the results you’re looking for. 

Encourage your entire team by sharing growth metrics and KPIs that showcase the impact that field service has had on your company’s revenue growth. This transparency and measurement will make the team’s work feel more tangible and, importantly, it can help justify increased investment in your team’s training and incentive programs.

Set up your field service team to upsell/cross-sell for revenue growth

Your customers should always feel like they’re having a consistent experience — no matter who they’re interacting with. With the right field service management, training, and incentives in place, your mobile team is primed to become your organization’s new just-in-time sales team and drive revenue growth. Remember: by investing in your field service team, you’re investing in your company’s future.

Tiffani Bova contributed to this blog article.