My services research confirms the critical importance of understanding and addressing the product company culture. I asked this question, which produced the following data:
What was (or is) the single most significant challenge your organization faced (or is facing) in building and selling services?
58% Culture Change
8% Acquiring Capabilities
7% Selling
6% Marketing
5% Senior Management Commitment
4% Obtaining Funding
4% Intra-Service Conflict
2% Project Management
1%
As you see, culture change dwarfs all the other obstacles that must be dealt with for a product company to be successful in building and selling services.
Seriously selling services requires a serious change in thinking about the business. Services now must be viewed as an equal offering of the organization, a true value-adder, the potential differentiator in the marketplace, and an important contributor to profitable revenue. Executives now must view products as customers have for a long time—as commodities that take a secondary role in a total solutions package. Services management and services employees must now vie for the respect that they may not have held before. This is not an easy transition to make, as it flies directly in the face of the tried and true.
Furthermore, certain departments are more threatened than others, as different internal groups, possibly product marketing or engineering, for example, feel that making services more important makes them less important. Transitioning to a more services-friendly, services-are-good-for-our-business mindset confronts internal tradition, established ways of thinking, and embedded power that will work together to try and squelch the selling of services.
Often it is true that the very things that made you successful yesterday are the same things that hinder your success today. Bringing about this services business mind shift is a leadership challenge of the highest order.
GIST: Set the compass heading to north, then stay the course, constantly bringing back the needle in the face of high seas, stiff winds, and changing currents.
Tags: differentiation, selling services
