How to Sell Engineering Services

Opinions from an engineer

Yeah, that’s right, I’m an engineer… at least I used to be. Though I’ve been told many times: “once an engineer, always an engineer”. I suppose at some level that’s true. I certainly mostly still think like an engineer, for better AND for worse 😊.

David LaVine, Founder, RocLogic Marketing (BSEE, MSECE)

Here are 8 of the most important things you need to do to sell engineering services:

  1. Keep the fluff away
  2. Start from where they are
  3. Build trust
  4. Engage people with a need
  5. Focus on LCV
  6. Be selective about your sales channels
  7. Be realistic about whether or not you’re a good fit
  8. Be narrower than you want to be

This will be harder than you want

You’re probably an engineer. And if you’re running an engineering services organization, you’re probably a pretty solid engineer at that. You should know right up front that this will be harder than you think it should be. Why? Three main reasons:

  1. Unlike engineering, which is super deterministic and causal, sales and marketing deals with correlation and partially-observable variables in the form of human behavior.
  2. Unlike the world of product sales, you’re selling things that don’t exist yet (i.e. your services).
  3. Just because you know you can help solve certain problems, doesn’t mean strangers will believe you can solve their problems.

The best thing you can do for your sanity and well-being is accept that reality, and then do your best to gather feedback and fail fast (reach out for details on that).

Keep the fluff away

There are certain things you should say, and certain things you shouldn’t, when trying to sell engineering services. You shouldn’t:

  1. Say anything that amounts to “trust me”. They won’t believe you.
  2. Blab on social media about being at booth 123 at trade show xyz. Most people won’t care.
  3. Use terms that are overused and/or have no backing in the engineering services world, like “robust” or “best-in-class” or “superior quality”.

Start from where they are

Most people trying to sell something move as quickly as possible to where they want the customer to be: using your services. Don’t do that. You want to start from where your customer’s head is at. You do this in three main steps:

  1. Learn as much as you can about them before you ever even talk to them.
  2. Create as many questions as you can think of to learn more.
  3. Stop thinking about what you want and truly listen to their answers and what they care about.

Build trust

Since you’re selling things that don’t exist, you need to build trust. Products have a more inherent trust built into them. There’s a tangible item. Whether it’s a piece of hardware or a SaaS platform, trust is more inherent than with custom solutions/services that you provide. There are 3 main ways to build trust:

  1. Be authentic
  2. Provide insight into topics your customers want answers to
  3. Provide proof points

Engage people with a need

Some people think you can just find people within your target market and convince them to buy your stuff. I’m not one of those people. If you were selling lipstick or popsicles, I’d say okay, but you’re selling services that require a need as a pre-requisite. You’re not going to fabricate the need. So, if there’s no need, don’t try to sell. It’s not that you can’t and shouldn’t engage good fit people that don’t have an immediate need, it’s just that you shouldn’t try to actively sell to those people. Focus on engaging those that do have a need.

Focus on LCV

LCV (Lifetime Customer Value) is so important for your survival. You’re not selling to millions of people. You’re selling to relatively small numbers of companies, and if you look deeper into those that account for the majority of your revenue over the years, that number is likely significantly smaller still. So, when you’re thinking about who to actively sell to in the future, you want LCV to be a significant part of the equation. You also want to include other factors like fit, competitive positioning, strategic value, and happiness quotient, but LCV will probably be the most heavily-weighted single factor in the equation.

Be selective about which sales channels you actively pursue

You’re not lacking options here. It’s the opposite problem. Too many options. For example, you’ve got:

It can be tempting to go after lots of shiny objects at once, especially when you don’t have significant traction in any one channel. But, you should resist that temptation. Why? Because you need to get good enough in a couple/few different channels in order to rise above the noise. If you’re below the noise floor for 9 channels, what good will that do you?

Be realistic about whether or not you’re a good fit

This applies both to potential customers and application focus areas. This is a tough one because it requires you to let go of ego and be confident and realistic about who you are (and aren’t), as a company. Just because someone shows up at your door, interested in considering you, doesn’t mean you should let them in. Even if the opportunity is super attractive at first blush.

Consider capturing your main criteria for fit, and rate each opportunity. Try to make the criteria as objective as possible, recognizing that it’s okay to allow for some amount of human judgment.

Be narrower than you want to be.

Just because you can solve a lot of problems, doesn’t mean you should be trying to actively sell services (at least not initially) for all of those problems. Selecting areas to focus on is one of the harder aspects of running an engineering services company. Chances are you started off taking on anything and everything that came your way, but as you grow and mature you need to start to specialize more. You need to decide on the ~two areas that are super important to you as a company and give anything else significantly lower priority. The trick is to select something narrow enough where you can be truly competitive yet broad enough so that you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. See Why you need a niche for more on this topic.

Next Steps

RocLogic does marketing for engineering companies. Reach out for a chat if you’d like to dig in deeper.

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