How many salespeople do you know that would go to immense lengths to get an in-person meeting with a prospect or customer? I know quite a few. In fact, I’m sitting next to some right now.

Now tell me, who in your company actually gets to see customers face-to-face on a regular basis? Yes, you guessed it, field service techs.

Just because they fix things, doesn’t mean they can’t sell things — especially when they are incentivized the right way. In fact, being so knowledgeable about the products they are servicing means they should be able to sell them in a very intelligent and genuine way, right?

A service call often goes through several channels before a field tech is called upon. If a field tech goes on-site though, the problem gets solved some way or another. It’s what we call “the last mile of service” — the last, and arguably most important, channel that ensures the problem is fixed and the customer is happy.

Now let’s think about this interaction as “the first mile of sales.” It’s an opportunity to identify upsell, cross-sell and warranty renewal opportunities on-site. And with a little training, a technician can sell the customerĀ on new products and services that they could benefit from. Oh yeah, and that customer is often in a pretty good mood because their problem just got solved. Need the big dogs from sales to close the deal? As long as the service organization is connected to your salespeople, you’ll be running a well oiled service-t0-sales machine.

Work orders close. New opportunities open. Can’t ask for much better than that.

Want to learn more about how to market and sell your services strategically? Join our VP of Marketing, Stacey Epstein, and customer, Kyle Hurlbut of LitePoint, on a webinar February 15th to get some tips from the pros. Click here for more info and registration!