Amazing to see how real world vendors are extending their services to gain mindshare (lockin) with their customers.
1-You could sell a (complex) product and then leave the customer on his own. Like: you sell a great guitar.
2-You could add a lot of after sales support on top of that. Like: you provide musical training, equipment coaching etc.
3-And then you can present youself as the ideal party to help the customer optimise his business even more, apart from using your product/services. Like: you help the buyer manage his band, and write some of his hit records.
The last surfaced in various e-business proposals i was working on in the last few weeks. One product company sells via value-add retail shops, and provides the marketing materials AND the marketing strategy. Another one sells materials for car-repair, AND provides business benchmarking and workshop optimisation support.
The same way we (might) see IT providers start optimising their customers business, instead of just providing the IT resources and IT-products the customer is asking for. This may be why Capgemini has bought a consultancy company some years back. The vision is that Consultancy paves the way for selling IT projects. The above examples tell us that we can work the other way around: help a customer with his basic requests, and start winning mind and wallet share by upselling to business support from our Consultancy colleagues!!