Do you have a service-based business and want to know you can smooth out the selling and delivery of your services?
What is the “One Truth”?
At its core, the concept of “One Truth” means there’s a single way of doing things, storing information, and accomplishing goals. No variations, no exceptions. When everyone aligns to this one way, the outcome is clarity, simplicity, and efficiency and setting a firm foundation for growth.
Establishing the “One Truth” for Service-Based Businesses
It’s crucial for service-based businesses to define their “One Truth” to ensure they’re not just winging it every time a new opportunity arises.
By following the tips in this article you can speed up your sales process, ensure better delivery and keep your staff and customers on the same page.
To set this in stone, here’s are some things you should get together:
Master List of Services
Every service-based company should have a list detailing all the services they offer. This list should include:
- Name of the service
- Description of the service
- Benefits of the service
- Category for the service (if applicable)
- Expectations
This may sound obvious, but many service-based companies I have dug into don’t have this information together for their staff or customers and so they end up making it up as they go. Doing this reduces confidence in prospects you are talking to and leads to extended sales cycles, losing potential sales that could be closed.
Proposal/Contract
Building contracts for all the services you offer is a key component in establishing and following a One Truth. Having an outline of what they are going to get means that as soon as they say they are ready to sign up/see a proposal you can get it out right away.
Here are some things to include in a proposal/contract:
- Service name and description
- What’s included in the service
- What’s not included (this often gets overlooked, but is essential for clarity)
- Timeline of expectations
- Clear Pricing Levels: Be transparent about your pricing. Offer clear breakdowns, including what each pricing tier entails and what it excludes.
Marketing and Sales Deck:
This is a sales tool for both sales staff as well as any staff who execute the services. Internally we call them Client Guides.
Generally we have done them as a PDF that can be shared with clients who aren’t ready to sign up but want more information, shared with clients that have multiple people involved in the buying decision or clients that do end up signing up so that you provide total clarity.
Some of things that can/should be included are an overview of the service, details of what’s included, details of the project for onboarding/getting going, and an ending slide that discusses additional services they can sign up for so that they have that in mind as well.
Website Page:
According to a recent study, 81% of consumers go online to find information and answer any questions about the product or service before making a purchase.
This means that people will come to your website before reaching out. What are they going to find? Are they going to see all your services listed out? If not, you can be missing opportunities to get more leads and sales.
It can be as simple as setting up a page on your website for each service, which gives a lot of the information you have already worked out above, but done in a format that makes it easy for people visiting the website to understand what problem you solve, how you solve it and why they should buy from you.
Objection Handlings
Handling objections is something that is easy to avoid or try to pretend don’t exist. One very powerful tool is to create a document that handles objections for various services. Having this prepared and being able to address them as soon as the client brings up the objections, or addressing very common objections in your sales pitch before the prospect even brings them up, allows you to control the sales process better. Whether it’s through a video, a PDF document, or a section on your website, tackle objections with confidence.
In Conclusion
Establishing a “One Truth” means being crystal clear about what you offer, its value, its pricing, and how you address concerns. Such clarity doesn’t just help potential customers; it aids your team in selling your services more effectively.
For those eager to dive deeper, there’s a lot more information related to One Truth and you can look out for it in future articles. For now, I hope this ones serves as a solid starting point for all service-based businesses out there.
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