Selling Value is published and available for immediate shipment

I’m delighted to announce the publication of Selling Value, the complete guide to designing, marketing and selling support packages — in other words, a compilation of this blog, with over a dozen case studies to inspire you to augment and improve your current support portfolio. The book is written with a light-hearted tone and a format that makes it easy to zero in on just the topics you need.

You can buy it here.

Can support drive sales?

Let’s start with the obvious: satisfied customers tend to be repeat customers and also make referrals to others. Unhappy customers, on the other end, restrict their add-on purchases and try harder to extract discounts on mandatory purchases such as support renewals. They tell others of their woes and discourage them from buying. And it’s clear that support plays a big role in fostering customer satisfaction — so support drives sales, right? That may be well true, but the difficulty lies in proving it.

Here are some ideas to measure support’s influence on sales:

• contrast (very) satisfied support customers with (very) unsatisfied support customers when it comes to add-on purchases
• compare discount percentages between satisfied and unsatisfied customers (balance that with deal size)
• compare referrals by satisfied customers with referrals by unsatisfied customers (it’s tough to measure anti-referrals, unfortunately)

Other ideas? Please comment on this post.

Want to brag about your support portfolio?

I am looking for a few brave soulsto be featured in my upcoming book about support marketing. The idea is to highlight various support portfolios, SLAs, price structures, support contracts, and pieces of support collaterals to inspire best practices. I’d love to publish your name and company name along with the materials but we can do some disguising as needed, so don’t be shy! If you are interested please post a comment or email me privately at flt@ftworks.com.  

You will get a complimentary copy of the book if you’re featured in it, plus advice on how to further improve your offerings. This is your chance!