Service Offerings : Revenue Generation Engines

Services Marketing is about Business Impact, Revenues and Profitability. Now, isn't that the job of the CEO, you may ask?

Services Marketing is about (a) Creation of Service Offerings, (b) Enabling channels to take the Offerings out to the market (c) reaching the end prospect and letting them know of the benefits of the offering to generate demand and (d) once demand is created, the opportunities are qualified and managed to close deals and to book revenue.

Let us understand the need to create Service Offerings. Service Offerings are clear descriptions of how a service will be delivered for the prospective client, the value it brings to the table and how the price for the same. Service Offerings are about a Company choosing its battleground, deciding to chase what it can win.

Too often, BPO Service Providers chase business coming its way rather than chase the business it wants to win. Every year, between 70 to 100 deals are signed with international companies for delivery out of India. A vast majority of these deals are struck through RFP Responses. Since the client has clearly defined its buying process and therefore can compare all on the nearly the same platform, there is little or no room to offer greater value to the prospect. It becomes a price war and win rate in RFP scenarios is typically as low as 5%.

What if the Service Provider were to choose to step away from the RFP race and then chase business that it can win? What if it were to create a clear image of how it can deliver services for a prospect client? What is the Service Provider were to create a business case for how the services will be delivered and how much impact it would have on the balance sheet of the client? This is what Service Offerings can do for a Service Provider. In short, they are revenue generation engines. A select few service providers are doing this around the world. Their profits are remarkable higher than their peers.

So how does a Service Offering look like? Service Offerings have two components - broadly called the Sales Kit and the Delivery Kit. The Sales Kit is used at various stages of the sales cycle - typically referred to as the Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action cycle - AIDA Cycle. The Service Offering Sales Kit typically consists of:

1. Snapshot of Business Value delivered and Operational Value Delivered to an existing client


2. Process Capability Value Chain - describing capability that exists within the value chain


3. Detail of How the Value was delivered for the existing client


4. Overview of the Hire - Train - Manage framework describing how value will be delivered.


5. Questionnaire to assess the solution required for the client including the team size.


6. Best Transactions (Voice Calls or Screen Shots of work being performed )


7. Typical Band Mix of Operations Team, Support Span, Management Span.


8. Business Case Builder which proves that the Service Provider has the lowest TCO. TCO = Total Cost of Outsourcing.


9. Existing Client References.


10. Profiles and Experiences of the Management Team that is relevant for the prospect.


11. Answers to probable RFP questions in the form of a quick reference repository.


12. Prices developed for FTE/Hour, Price/Transaction, Risk Reward model etc.

Services Selling is always done through face to face sessions or in modern circumstances over the telephone. Therefore a majority of the above would need to be in form of presentations - giving the menu but not the recipe. The presenter then conjures up the magic with his/her skills giving the prospect a vivid description of why the prospect should choose the service provider.

The Best in Class Service Providers focus on differentiation. To my mind, the difference between sales success and failure is in the homework - the Differentiated Sales Kit. You need an experienced and innovative services marketing team to be able to develop the Differentiated Sales Kit. Revenue, Time to Revenue and Profitability hinges on enabling your sales team with these warheads.

Rainmakers are probably a myth in the BPO Sales world - people who can sell anything to their trusted relationships. Revenue Generation Engines such as Service Offerings and Differentiated Sales Kits are a much better bet than Rainmakers.

Cheers

Paul Simon Arakkal