Few books on economics or sales theory make much distinction between selling products and selling services. Since the two forms of selling are clumped into the broad category of sales, a pervasive belief develops among sales people and service providers that the words “products” and “services” can used interchangeably when talking about sales, conducting sales training, or selling at a job.
However, if you’re a lawyer, accountant, doctor, dentist, or business consultant, you’re not selling people on a product, you’re selling a service, and what it takes to keep a customer satisfied in a service is far different from what it takes to offer them a product.
Doctors and Lawyers Aren’t Like Bakers or Candlestick Makers
A doctor can’t offer to guarantee to give patients their money back if he or she fails to restore their health. After all, if a patient fails to recover, there are many possible reasons for it like the differences in how people react to drugs, a poor immune system or the patient’s resistance to exactly following their doctor’s orders.
Similarly, a lawyer can’t offer to take his case back if his client doesn’t get acquitted for a crime but goes to jail. Again, there are many intangible, elusive factors that determine the final outcome, many of which are outside the service provider’s control.
Yet despite the fact that the difference between services and products are obviously dissimilar, most businesses treat services like a variation of a product. Consequently, they use the same performance metrics for evaluating success like dollars and cents, facts and figures, charts and statistics.
Some Crucial Distinctions
Service providers do their business a disservice when they act like salespeople. Instead, they have to act like concerned friends and expert advisors. Since there is no tangible product involved in the transaction, a client, patient, or customer can only gauge the value of the service they received by how effectively their problem was resolved. Yet, even this is not quite true since results are not the only thing that matter. Perceived value received also has to be considered. The provider has to be sincerely interested in offering help. His or her depths of beliefs and passion for their careers can count for more than expert knowledge. Often, the logic behind customer satisfaction blends the end result, the quality of the service, and the personality of the provider.
The Personal Factor
When people buy a product, the sales person’s behavior is not always essential for a sale. People buy online without speaking to anyone. They also buy groceries even if the cashier looks bored. The importance of feeling good about the transaction is not their only buying criteria.
However, in a service business, it’s a different scenario. Now, the provider’s personality plays a huge role in the transaction.
A service provider who has a dour predisposition will attract far fewer clients than someone who has a bright outlook on life and expresses enthusiasm, thoughtfulness, and compassion.
For a provider to be successful, they have know what they are doing, love doing it, and believe in its value. This winning attitude is often more than enough for clients, patients, or customers to be totally sold on their services and to refer their family and friends, too.
Troubleshooting a Service Business
If a service business has a low volume of sales, the provider could be using the sales techniques that are designed for product selling and not services.
Doctors and dentists are perfect examples of service providers who sell something intangible. Their patients are not just buying “good health,” they are actually looking for someone to make them feel better emotionally, too.
In a blog post entitled “Top Secrets for Survey Success,” the software development company Solution Reach encourages doctors and dentists to follow three rules to improve retention rates: “1. Benchmark the success of your practice. 2. Learn what your strengths are. 3. Learn what your weaknesses are, such as post-appointment surveys to identify over-scheduling, lengthy wait times, limited staff, complaints about the tone/method of your communication, [and] feedback about the feel of your office environment/staff.”
Essentially, what this post is saying is that medical competency is not enough. Patients are actually looking for a good natured doctor, a caring nursing staff, and feeling good about how they are generally treated at a clinic.
Soft Skills And Intangibles
There is often an assumption that businesses that sell products and those that provide services are fairly similar. Yes, they do have a few things in common, but so do apples and oranges, which are both small, round, and edible fruits. Since products and services are distinctly different, a business that sells services has to sell them in a different way than a business that sells products. Unfortunately many service businesses do not take into account the many soft skills and intangible elements necessary for the success of their business.
