Welcome to edition 2 of the CONNECT newsletter, a bi-weekly note with the most interesting lessons & observations, fueled by research and conversations in the machine building industry.
Hi there,
I’m happy to be back in your inbox this week!
The big question for this edition: why do your customers buy your machines? The answer may come as a surprise: it’s SERVICE QUALITY. 😅
Deloitte’s researchshows that service quality already influences a staggering 50% of the decision to buy a machine. More than machine quality and price.
This data makes sense because customers often lack the expertise to manage complex machines. Instead they rely on machine builders for after-sales services.
This offers machine builders two key opportunities:
1. Short term: sell more machines
Providing top-notch service can lead to stronger relationships with customers & selling more machines.
2. Long term: new revenue stream
Service profit margins are higher than new machine sales. Service revenue is also more resilient to economic downturns, ensuring a stable income stream.
The 'build, sell, and forget' model is outdated. Customers seek lasting relationships and readily available support. The future machine builder is a service provider.
But while the vision of digital service and new revenue streams hold immense promise, the reality for many machine builders often falls short of this ideal.
A significant number of them face challenges in:
Staying connected to their machines in the field;
Identifying concrete opportunities to create value from their machine data;
Making their customer pay for their (digital) services.
Do you recognize these challenges? I would love to get your take on this. Just hit the reply button and we can start the conversation.
In the edition 3 I’ll talk about the five common pitfalls we see, that are slowing down the widespread adoption of digital after-sales services in the machine building industry.
I hope you have a productive day.
- Steven
New private community
We are building a private community of service professionals and executives, working in the machine building industry, on LinkedIn.
The community focuses on the machine builders’ journey to become more service driven and learn from each other during this executing journey.
Join ourwaiting listto become a member of this community. More info on why and how to join can be found atixon.cloud/connect.