There are lots of different ways for a company to turn a profit. Many do so by selling items for a percentage more than what they cost to produce. But other businesses don’t sell items at all. They make their money by providing their clients with services, some of which are paid for on a monthly or yearly basis.
These businesses provide something called an ongoing service. Maybe your company does the same. If so, you’ll want to keep reading. We’ve put together a quick overview of the concept of ongoing services as well as some valuable tips for the sales consultants whose job it is to sell them.
What Are Ongoing Services?
Let’s begin by making sure we’re all starting on the same page. An ongoing service is any service that a business provides to its clients on an ongoing basis in exchange for regular payments. These payments can take place at any interval but are commonly made monthly, quarterly, or annually.
For example, someone might want to hire a financial company to manage their money. In exchange for doing that, the company could charge the individual a predetermined fee at a set interval.
Insurance can also be thought of as an ongoing service. Insurance companies provide consumers with protection for their assets in exchange for a monthly premium.
How Do Ongoing Services Help Consultants Reach Their Sales Goals?
Ongoing services are often much better for sales consultants than one-time sales. The reasoning behind this is pretty straightforward. If you sign up a customer for an ongoing subscription, then you’re making money on that client on a regular basis instead of one time only.
Over time, the total value of a recurring customer is often much higher than a one-time buyer. This is because clients that purchase an ongoing service don’t need to be marketed to. They already understand and use your service. So you’ll likely be the first person they turn to if they need something new.
Additionally, existing customers can serve as an extension of your marketing outreach. Ongoing services make it much easier to create a loyal customer base. And repeat buyers refer 50% more people than one-time buyers do. Stats like these indicate the many ways that selling ongoing services help sales consultants reach their goals.
7 Tips For Sales Consultants Who Sell Ongoing Services
Now that we understand what ongoing services are exactly, let’s figure out how a sales consultant might do better while selling them. Here are 7 tips that you can use to reach your sales goals for an ongoing service.
Start with a keen understanding of your prospects
Above all else, you need to understand your prospects at a high level before you attempt to sell them an ongoing service. It will be impossible to highlight the right features of your service if you don’t know which features matter to the leads you’re speaking with.
Website analytics tools can help a lot with this. They’ll let you know how the prospect is interacting with your website so you can see which of your features matter most to them. Once you know precisely what your prospects value, you’ll be able to create a personalized pitch that truly addresses their unique concerns.
Focus on selling the outcomes that your service enables
Your ongoing services may have all of the features in the world, but they shouldn’t be the only thing that you talk about during your presentations — not if you want to reach your sales goals, anyway.
Let’s back up. You should spend some time covering the best parts of your service. But you need to be constantly contextualizing those features in terms of the real-world value they provide the prospect.
For example, maybe you do online marketing and you have a tool that will help a prospect get more out of their limited marketing dollars. When discussing that tool, you would want to tell the prospect about the specific outcomes that it enables, not just about all of the great features it has.
This works best if you use real data and figures. When you do so, the prospect can quickly envision the exact cost savings or improvements that they’ll get from your service in terms that make sense to them.
Leverage the idea of social proof to your benefit
Social proof is the idea that people are more likely to take an action if they think everybody is taking that same action also. It’s commonly used in the marketing sector but sales consultants can take advantage of the idea as well.
This is pretty simple in practice. You would just want to show new prospects that other companies or consumers are also using your ongoing service. Doing this is a quick way to boost your service’s legitimacy in the eyes of the lead.
Differentiate your brand from the competition
This is a pretty common idea, but it’s important nonetheless. The most effective sales consultants find ways to make the service they’re selling stand out from the competition.
The best way for you to achieve this will vary based on the nature of your service. For example, you might want to stress:
- Extra features that you provide
- Higher-quality features
- Better customer service
- Bonus use-cases
- Ease of use
Position yourself as the go-to provider for a particular niche
Your company might provide ongoing services that are relevant for companies across many industries. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should spend an equal amount of time competing for business in all of those sectors.
Instead, a sales consultant may find more value in specializing in servicing the needs of a particular niche. By doing this, you can position yourself as the person to speak to about a specific use case covered by your ongoing service. It could help you stand out more than if you were spreading your attention across many different areas.
Ask the right questions
Part of developing a keen understanding of your prospects is asking the right questions. Even the best analytics tools won’t be able to tell you everything about a new lead. To generate the insight you need to close the sale, it’s often necessary to ask targeted questions.
But what are the “right questions”? They’ll vary from situation to situation. Sales consultants need to use some instinct here to figure out what they need to know about each prospect in order to pitch their service in the best way possible.
That being said, a recent study found that the ideal number of questions to ask during the sales process is between 11 and 14. Some good examples of the types of questions that you should be asking include:
- What prompted you to reach out to us?
- What metrics do you use to evaluate your success?
- What challenges are you trying to solve?
- What’s your timeline for getting started?
- What’s your budget for addressing this issue?
- Is there anything else that we didn’t cover?
Don’t neglect the follow up
It isn’t realistic to expect every prospect you speak with to buy from you at the end of your initial phone consultation together. Rather, there will always be a percentage of leads that want to take their time and consider their options before making a purchasing decision.
If you don’t get a yes right away, it’s essential that you don’t give up. Make sure that you keep in touch with your prospects.
The average sales consultant reportedly gives up after making just two contact attempts. That’s despite the fact that roughly 80% of sales only occur after at least five contact attempts have been made. So make sure that you don’t give up too soon, or you might end up missing out on an opportunity to reach your sales goals.
Use LeadLander To Personalize Your Presentations
There’s a lot that goes into converting a sale. But perhaps nothing is more important than your presentation. If you can nail that, then there’s a very good chance you’ll turn the prospect you’re pitching into a paying customer.
Personalization is key to getting as much out of your presentations as possible. But in order to do that successfully, you need to have a keen understanding of who your customer is and what aspects of your service appeals to them the most.
LeadLander can provide the data that you need to nail your presentations. Our platform provides in-depth insights into how your prospects have been interacting with your website. You can use LeadLander to figure out the specific benefits you should highlight when interacting with a particular prospect. It could do wonders for your pitching process.
We’ll let you try LeadLander for 14-days for free. You can visit our website today to sign up for a free trial without having to input any credit card information.