Or can field service engineers feed good leads to medical instrument sales teams and potentially reap a commission from those leads?
No, I am not joking, when I wrote the title. Are field service engineers meant to function as associate sales engineers? Do field service engineers help drive new sales?
Is the old adage still true?
“Sales sells the first instrument; service sells the rest”.
I think yes to most of the above questions.

Can Field Service Engineers feed good medical instrument sales leads?

Introduction

Time and time again excellent service is crucial to repeat sales, especially in the biomedical field. I have worked for companies that offered sales commissions to field service and it was awesome. I have also worked for companies that offer commissions on service contracts and billable conversions to contracts, but not new instrument sales.
How are they different?
What is best?
Should we keep service and sales separate or integrated?
I will try and explain to the best of my knowledge.

Field service engineers and commission on medical instrument sales

I recently had a suggestion from one of the members of our field advisory board at my company that asks why do field service engineers not get commission on new instrument sales?
At first, I poo-pooed it, thinking that it would never fly. Then one weekend I started thinking about it and asked myself:
“Why not ask management and sales?”
After all the worst they could do is to say no.
So, I first met one of our local field reps, and asked him why can’t service get a partial commission if they are crucial to a new instrument sale? He replied: “I don’t know.”
He mentioned something called SPIFF. This refers to a sales performance incentive fund formula, which is a reserve of money on a system sale which the company can use to offer incentives or pay commissions to individuals to help make the sale.
I then talked with another sales person, the same region, but different instruments. She also mentioned SPIFF and loved my idea. She said: “We should look into the this, as many times service engineers hand me leads that I would not normally have known about, and I then make the sale.”

The pros and cons

So, currently I am raising interest and have spoken to our VP of Sales, who listened and did not say NO. Apparently, my company had a programme years ago that did offer sales incentives to field service, but it just fell by the wayside.
Some interesting tips or points that I have discovered in trying to bring back sales commissions for field service are as follows.
Service should be more closely integrated with sales for many reasons.
Field service engineers are not meant to be in medical instrument sales.
We do not want our customers thinking that we are pushing new instruments on them, as we can do just fine in keeping their existing equipment running in very good condition.
Sales is sales and service is service, but can service make suggestions that the customer will appreciate? Yes.
Customers trust service engineers and we do not want to lose that trust. This is not to say that they do not trust sales.
We do not want our service engineers to be seen as salespeople, but if they are asked for equipment suggestions, then they should be honest and helpful.
Field Service Engineers should only offer suggestions for equipment models, never offer suggestions for configuration or options of those models. This is a sales function.
So, you see that there are concerns in trying to motivate your Service Engineers to help instrument sales, and management is reluctant to push anyone out of their comfort zone. But again, the customers trust Service Engineers, and we are not normally trying to sell new instruments. It’s a catch 22, but can it be managed effectively?

An example of medical instrument sales from field service

Case in point; I recently visited a customer in El Paso Texas. They were using older instruments, and I was fighting to keep them running and alive. I sent a message to my sales contact and within about 3-4 months, she had a new instrument at their loading dock. She said to me:
“Frank, I would not have known about this potential sale if you had not messaged me.”
So, this was a solid lead for her, from me, that paid off! One good example of how service can feed leads to sales and not cross the fine line between the two functions.

Conclusion

So, for now, our company is looking into this, and we are talking with medical instrument sales teams and service teams to see if we can bring back this sales commission programme in a controlled and very traceable way. One idea is to have the sales leads input into Salesforce which is the database that salespeople use for their normal work. (Service engineers use ServiceMax which is a front end to Salesforce.)

So, my message here is this; never underestimate the power and influence that service engineers have on sales. We are a huge force and visit customers much more frequently than even the busiest sales people. As an aside, they admit to this.
Secondly, is it a bad thing to further integrate sales and service? In this day and age of revenue woes and lacklustre sales performance due to economical and logistical woes alone, doesn’t it make sense to use every tool at your disposal to further increase revenue and your sales performance.
In closing, consider sales commissions for field service engineers when a sale simply could not have been made if a lead or hint, or downright “call this customer now” had not been handed to sales.

About the author of “Can new medical instrument sales be a function of Field Service?”

Frank Pemberton has over twenty years in medical equipment field service and management after fifteen years in the semiconductor industry. Frank is now a Field Service Engineer for BD Biosciences, part of Beckton Dickinson supporting cell analysers and cell sorters. He is based in San Antonio, Texas.

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