Jumping through Hoops for IT Services
When you come to the end of a fiscal year, anyone who is in a business knows that a new Olympic sport starts known as the customer induced jumping through hoops.
The base of this sport is where the customer and the prospects put your employees through the entire process again and again before they either make a purchase or agree to the impending renewal of the service. Your customers usually use this proverbial carrot to make the business development and other employees jump through their hoops.
It does not matter how well you have come prepared or how much homework you have done, or the number of extra benefits you include in the service at no charge the customers will remain the same.
Most often even your ITSM software or the ITSM service management requires you to jump through hoops as it is what controls all of the data and the security you will need to ensure that your company or business runs smoothly.
What is all the hoop jumping about?
When it comes to customers for IT services, there may be a few that require you to prove your worth by making you jump through hoops. Hopefully, you don’t have a whole book full of these customers, but even if you have done your homework and ensured that all of your data is correct, you will find that there is at least one person who would do this. Due to this most seasoned business development executives are able to keep aside some time to deal with these kinds of customers or service providers.
How ready are you to jump through the hoops?
There are different kinds of hoop jumping that you will come across in your term of office. This can be different for customers and different for ITSM, but at the end of the day, the type of hoop is usually the same.
Because I said so Hoop: This is when your current customer waits right up to the end to decide if they want to renew their service. This is usually because of the fact that they are sure you know that they will renew the service. However, they continue to do so even though you do your best to provide them with a service that is far better than anything else that they may find in the industry. You in turn usually let them do this as the size of their contract is he and they have been using your services for a long time.
Something is better than nothing hoop: this is when your prospect may look like they are ready to sign the contract but can’t make up their mind. You are in a fix as you cannot really tell the customer that you are reaching a deadline or you would look like a sales hungry commissions driven person. However, if they do not sign the contract by the deadline, you will be sacrificing the business development strategy of that year. What do you do in this case? Do not make any compromises in the service and take the high road you can also give them a smaller portion of the end solution with hopes of making a sale at the year-end.
You never had me from hello sale: this person is usually someone who is right at the precipice of signing a contract, but at the end moment he comes up with the question of why he or she needs to use your services as opposed to the ones your opposition is giving them. They may tell you that your competition is offering them a free trial or that they are also adding in Christmas bonuses if the cards were played right. At times like this, all you can really do is show the prospect how your service is better than the competitions. Show them that at the end of the day investing in you would be a better plan than getting a trail of your competitions service for free. For this, you will need to take the time and spend a little energy to collect important comparative data. Sometimes it is better if you just walk away from the entire deal rather than jump the hoop as this kind of customer may not even sign the agreement with you.
What have you done for me lately kind of hoop: in this kind the corporate hierarchy that sits above you is probably on your case about the numbers. Although you may have been burning and churning your way through customers and calling any and every prospect out there you are still not able to provide them with an adequate number of sales. This usually points back to the sales process that you have in place and the tools and software that you are given access to carry out your job. Just making a sale to anyone is not usually a good idea as it causes a downfall in the business as a lot of deals go down the wire at the end. Use a good sales strategy to the only target those customers that you are sure to need your service or product and ignore those that do not seem to need it that much. ‘