Last week, we broke down the measurable uptime and cost reduction benefit the customer sees with a Predictive Maintenance model delivered by real-time HVAC monitoring.
This week, we’ll discuss how contractor sales teams transitioning to Predictive Maintenance (PdM) will flourish through clear differentiation.
When it comes to mechanical service, what do customers really want?
In a phrase, “Peace of Mind”.
They want to partner with a company that can deliver on that promise:
- They want their occupants/tenants to be comfortable
- They want to eliminate disruptions caused by random equipment failures
- They’d like to maximize the life expectancy of their capital equipment
- They’d like to control (and even reduce) their cost of operations
As I have posted previously, if you can deliver on these promises and document your level of “activity” and results, you will have an insurmountable advantage.
Bridging the gap: How to meet these customer expectations?
As mentioned in previous blogs, the industry seems to have spiraled into a price war that has led to descoping and corner cutting that generally delivers what the customer is paying for, not necessarily what they really want.
So delivering a higher level of service that meets their growing expectations will involve increasing the scope which, in today’s Traditional Maintenance world, will require more labor and cost.
Even with today’s 4 scheduled PM visits per year, there may not be enough labor budgeted to fully maintain facilities’ units. And if you are working on mission critical facilities the only way to get more machine visibility is more truck rolls which, again, drives up labor budget.
So we end up with a mismatch of high expectations and service teams that are operating on limited labor budgets. Not a great outcome for either party.
This explains the underlying tension between building operators and many of their service providers.
We will bridge that gap with technology.
By automating system processes, we can get:
- More yearly system, machine and component inspections (hundreds of thousands more)
- More machine intelligence that prevents failures
- Reduced truck rolls
All while delivering higher levels of service at a price our customers can afford.
Like building a hotel on Park Place
Using the benefits of Predictive Maintenance to measurably meet your customers’ needs is like building a hotel on Park Place in Monopoly.
By effectively confirming that your customers’ service expectations are reasonable and can be met, you are changing their buying criteria and raising the bar vis a vis your competitors.
As you build out a real-time HVAC monitoring solution and deliver measurable results to each of your clients, you simultaneously:
- Transition to multi-year agreements that build long-term customers
- Create new channels of communication with key decision makers using data and reporting to help visualize the effort and impact of your services
- Transition to a trusted partner role in mechanical asset planning using building and machine data to prioritize system replacements
- Create a local network of advocates that sales teams can leverage to make your services a much easier sell to other accounts
Mechanical service is just like real estate. It’s a local market where buyers are influenced by their peer’s experiences.
Cultivating local clients that extol (brag about) the virtues of transitioning to a Predictive Service model builds the foundation for sustainable service growth. That’s a lot of hotels on Park Place….
Whether it’s at BOMA or IFMA meetings, FMs chat each other up about innovative new approaches they’re taking to solve their most pressing problems.
IoT and AI happen to be THE hot topics right now, so your timing is spot on.
Deploy Predictive Maintenance Without Rocking The Boat
nClarity’s mission is to bring a truly differentiated service model to sales teams that gives them an unfair advantage over their competitors
Next week, we’ll start diving deep into the “how” of selling predictive maintenance, so stay tuned for that.
nClarity is designed to be implemented building by building with a small team, so you can introduce it into your Service Operations in a staged implementation that builds confidence and optimizes how it will be rolled out.
At a high level, the process looks like this:
- Working with your Operations team, embed IoT monitoring in your accounts one at a time (starting with “friendlies” that have great community profiles)
- Identify low-hanging fruit to drive measurable client benefits (uptime, energy savings, etc)
- Build out a reference base in your market launching advocates will validate the impact of the new model on their building operations.
The contractors that start deploying The Emerging PM model now (Predictive Maintenance delivered by real-time IoT-Based HVAC monitoring) will become the local industry leaders of tomorrow.
Go put some hotels on Park Place, one opportunity at a time!
If you’re interested in learning more about how to sell Predictive Maintenance (PdM) with IoT real-time HVAC monitoring, you can schedule a call with our team here.
