Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 211

Unexpected Outcomes

In many of our keynotes and workshops we highlight “non-utility-cost financial benefits” and “non-financial benefits.”  These are positive outcomes that happen after an energy project is implemented.  Sometimes these effects are completely unexpected, changing a company in ways the sales professional and their customer couldn’t have anticipated.

I’ll relate an example from a few years ago.  A rep from the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) was selling a product that’s fairly simple: lighting with advanced controls.  There was no need to connect the bulbs to a larger system and the installation was easy.  Every light she sold could be automated on its own then left to carry out its task.

Aside from energy savings on her customers’ utility bills, there were several benefits that came into play.  When she shared them with me, they proved to be stunning examples of unexpected outcomes:

Some of this lighting was installed in a storage warehouse with motion-detecting sensors.  If there were no moving forklifts in certain aisles, they would remain dark.  After a while the warehouse noted that forklift operators could accomplish their jobs at higher speeds because they could get from point A to B without anticipating collisions with each other.  They knew they could make quicker turns or head quickly in a single direction because they were 100% sure there were no other forklifts or workers in the vicinity.
Eventually the floor managers realized that lights were almost never turning on in certain aisles because their stock items weren’t ordered as often as others.  They reconfigured the floor so more popular items could be shelved closer to the shipping area and less popular items shelved farther away.  This made forklift operators take shorter trips and get more done in a shorter amount of time.  As a result, their efficiency increased even more.
The same motion-detecting lighting had unintentional effects in open office environments.  Managers noticed that certain parts of their floor virtually always remained dark because people weren’t at their workstations.  It wasn’t a question of who was being efficient or who was out of the office.  It was simply a visual representation of who was at their desk and who was out during the day, which ultimately allowed the office to downsize the number of workstations they maintained for their workers.
In these office environments, there is an emphasis on saving space and keeping people close to one another in order to foster communication.  When the floor revealed “dark patches” where there was no activity, desks and workstations were moved around to consolidate space and band people together.

These are just a handful of examples where you could see quantifiable benefits that weren’t anticipated during the initial sales pitch.  It isn’t always about the kilowatt-hours your customer will save or where they’ll invest the resulting savings in their budget.  Sometimes the effects are both more immediate and more human.  It becomes less about technologies and more about the people using them.

What unexpected outcomes could your offerings and products deliver?  And do you make it a habit to circle back with your customers and query what unanticipated benefits they might have enjoyed in the wake of upgrades you installed?

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Find Your Presence

What would you do if you knew how much your mind is affected by your body and vice versa?  How would you use this knowledge?  What would you change?  How would it impact your daily life going forward?

I’ve used Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk during my teachings to illustrate the importance of body language.  “Power Poses” can make us feel more confident than we might otherwise be.  Yoga and deep breathing relax us.  These are what Cuddy calls “nudges” toward our own power and presence—namely pretending it comes naturally and exuding confidence.

These habits (and more) are explored in Cuddy’s Presence, my book recommendation for the week.  Her background as a social psychologist brings valuable insight to aligning your behavior to your authentic self.  By parsing your strengths, values and how and when you feel most natural, you can relax into who you are and express confidence.

Whether you need that peace of mind during a customer interaction, a networking event, in the boardroom or during a dinner party, this book will prove to be an asset in your professional and private life.

Here is the summary on Amazon:

“Have you ever left a nerve-racking challenge and immediately wished for a do over? Maybe after a job interview, a performance, or a difficult conversation? The very moments that require us to be genuine and commanding can instead cause us to feel phony and powerless. Too often we approach our lives’ biggest hurdles with dread, execute them with anxiety, and leave them with regret.

“By accessing our personal power, we can achieve ‘presence,’ the state in which we stop worrying about the impression we’re making on others and instead adjust the impression we’ve been making on ourselves. As Harvard professor Amy Cuddy’s revolutionary book reveals, we don’t need to embark on a grand spiritual quest or complete an inner transformation to harness the power of presence. Instead, we need to nudge ourselves, moment by moment, by tweaking our body language, behavior, and mind-set in our day-to-day lives.

“Amy Cuddy has galvanized tens of millions of viewers around the world with her TED talk about ‘power poses.’ Now she presents the enthralling science underlying these and many other fascinating body-mind effects, and teaches us how to use simple techniques to liberate ourselves from fear in high-pressure moments, perform at our best, and connect with and empower others to do the same.

“Brilliantly researched, impassioned, and accessible, Presence is filled with stories of individuals who learned how to flourish during the stressful moments that once terrified them. Every reader will learn how to approach their biggest challenges with confidence instead of dread, and to leave them with satisfaction instead of regret.”

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Weekly Recap, April 22, 2018

Monday: Read Hug Your Haters, by Jay Baer, for tactics on how to embrace complaints, put haters to work for you, and turn bad news into good outcomes.

Tuesday: Here are some unbelievable benefits concerning LED lighting in agriculture, particularly concerning its effects on farmers. 

Wednesday: Sometimes your elevator pitch needs to be taken back to square one.  

Thursday: Trim down your talking points when meeting face to face with a prospect. 

Friday: You’ve attended our sales training – now what?

Saturday: Check out “Why Business Acumen is Key to Sales Success (And How to Get It).”

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Business Acumen

If you’re a frequent reader of my blogs, you know that I talk about the importance of business acumen. Knowing what’s driving your prospects to make decisions, what they are looking for and how they are going to evaluate any financial investment you place in front of them is critical. On a very related note, time taken to identify non-utility-cost financial and non-financial benefits of embracing energy projects is time well-spent.

But which business acumen skills should you develop? And how do you build business acumen? According to a HubSpot Sales Blog titled “Why Business Acumen is Key to Sales Success (And How to Get It)”, there are five skills sales people should develop and four strategies to build business acumen. If you want to look at the full picture through the lens of business acumen to increase the profitability of your prospect’s business (and your own), I highly recommend reading the article.

 

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You’ve Attended Our Sales Training – Now What

You may find yourself in an environment where you are the lucky person to attend one of our sales trainings.  Maybe you attended it while working for a previous employer.  Maybe you attended it on your own time.  Either way, your co-workers might think you’re from Mars when you talk about using one-page proposals or other tools we provide through Selling Energy.

Here’s some advice.  The first thing you should do is enlist the director of sales or whoever is the head honcho at your company.  Make them realize that these tactics are the next wave.  Give them examples that will make them take notice.  Let’s say you take one of their typical long-winded, 40-page proposals and recast it as a one-page proposal with a technical appendix.  If they have any sense, they would take a moment to evaluate the improvement and appreciate its appeal.

The second thing you should do is encourage them to enroll themselves (and ideally all of your customer-facing professionals) in one of the trainings you’ve attended.  If there are training materials you received during the training that they are open to exploring, give them a guided tour.  We have many, including our Selling Energy App, Blog, Podcast, Videos, Online Trainings and our Wall Street Journal bestselling book, which is currently available in multiple formats.  In fact, the e-book version of our bestseller is free, which makes it an ideal instrument for getting others on your team to be singing from the same songbook with absolutely zero cost.

In short, there are plenty of ways to get someone familiar with how and why this stuff works.  Another thing you could do is arrange a 15-minute phone call between me and the higher-up who is interested.  Believe me, I’m willing to do it!

I might start one of those calls by asking, “How many of the proposals you’ve pitched in the past 12 months have been implemented?”  If the closing ratio is typical, it’s going to be low to moderate.  The next question would be, “How do you feel about writing a typical proposal 10 or 50 or 100 pages long?  How do you feel about writing 100 ten-page proposals, with only X% getting accepted?  What do you think would happen if your organization adopted the one-page format?”

Or I might begin one of those calls by asking how many people on their sales team have a compelling 15-second elevator pitch?  Or how many people know the difference between Simple Payback Period and Savings-to-Investment ratio, and why it’s important to migrate the conversation with your prospect from the former to the latter?

If your organization hopes to maximize the value of our training to increase its company-wide closing ratio, and reduce its weighted-average sales cycle, you should be sharing these winning strategies with your managers, and they should be sharing them with your entire team of sales professionals.

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Trim It Down

I talk a lot about being concise and focusing attention on the real value proposition, particularly in the context of written proposals. While it’s vital that your proposals are short, persuasive, and understandable, it’s equally important that you trim down your talking points when meeting with a prospect face to face.

Most salespeople like to talk, and this can be a real asset when building rapport with prospects; however, talking too much – particularly about things that are not going to move the conversation forward – can cloud your message and jeopardize your chances of demonstrating the true value of your product or service.

So how do you ensure that you’re not “talking past the sale?” Outline your key talking points and rank them based on importance. If the items at the end of your list are not really necessary, make a mental note to leave them out of the conversation. Additionally, when you’re actually conversing with your prospect, think about where you want to move the conversation and avoid anything that will sidetrack that goal. Be sure to also monitor your prospect’s body language and facial expressions as they can tell you a lot about what is going through your prospect’s mind as they’re listening to you.

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The Right to Sell

Sometimes an elevator pitch needs to be taken back to square one.  When my students work on them during our trainings, they often end up with something entirely different than what they started with.

Most of this is due with using the wrong criteria or having the wrong intentions.  The average elevator pitch is bogged down with buzzwords and technology or has a by-the-numbers expectation, like “I want to tell you all about my product line, now write me a check.”  A customer shrinks from this because it’s shortsighted and ridiculous.  Wouldn’t you?

I tell my students that an elevator pitch is a 15-second exercise in selling the right to command that person’s attention for the next five to ten minutes.  With that in mind, your pitch completely transforms.  Why should this person even listen to you?  What are you offering to them?  Few offerings in life can be sold in 15 seconds.  It takes more time.  How are you going to convince your prospect that you deserve that time?

That’s what an elevator pitch should be: “I deserve your attention and let me show you why.”  If your customer is drowning, offer them a life preserver.  If they need relief, offer it.  If they’re missing a piece of the puzzle, show them how to find it.

Believe me, anything else is going to come off as self-serving or something they’ve already heard.

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Strides in Agricultural Lighting

Every now and then you hear about amazing strides being made in the field.  Technology continues to change and adapt, but its unforeseen effects on end users are where the surprises happen.

According to one of our ninjas in Iowa, there have been unbelievable benefits concerning LED lighting in agriculture, particularly concerning its effects on farmers.

Recent findings have shown that if you program the wavelengths of LED light to change from red to blue in nanosecond intervals, they can accelerate growth in crops like radishes.  Some of the results chart growth up to 6x faster than normal.


Chickens are notorious for attacking each other, particularly when they see blood.  In the past, farmers would outfit them with blinders (aka “peepers”) or little red sunglasses to prevent them from injuring each other.  Now they simply have to change the lighting wavelengths to red.  The chickens are seeing their world “through rose colored glasses” (sans actual glasses) and become much more docile.  This prevents chickens from injuring or killing each other and protects eggs from getting broken during the scuffle.


Pigs can’t see the red spectrum.  This has been beneficial during night shifts at swine houses.  By switching the lighting wavelengths to red, workers can clean stalls, maintain equipment and transport sick or injured animals without waking the others.  As a result, productivity has increased and the animals are healthier because they are able to sleep through the night.


You may have heard me mention this benefit before, but LED lighting has caused a 6 – 8% increase in milk production for dairies.  Cows are more docile and can relax during their milking, which reaps other benefits.  In one case, it brought the payback of the lighting project from four years to three months.

Strides are being made ALL the time.  These are just examples in a single segment.  If you’re wondering what kind of non-utility-cost financial and non-financial benefits might be associated with energy projects in your target market, I recommend subscribing to our Segment Guides.

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You Don’t Have to Hate the Haters

When dealing with negative feedback, your first impulse may be to dismiss it or assume a customer is being difficult.  That isn’t necessarily the case.  According to this week’s book recommendation, 80% of businesses believe they provide excellent customer service, while only 8% of their customers agree.

Why such a disparity?  Part of it is how business leaders choose to deal with customer dissatisfaction and complaints (e.g., ignoring them).  Another element is how customer interactions have changed over the years and become less and less private.  Complaints were delivered by mail for decades.  Telephone call centers were at the forefront of customer service in the ‘70s.  By the ‘90s the Internet had come into play, providing email and discussion boards to air grievances.

Now it’s the 21st century.  Customers can post a bad review or take to social media to complain about your services within seconds.  When this happens the first question you should be asking yourself shouldn’t be, “What is their problem?” as much as “Why do they have a problem?”

Jay Baer Hug Your Haters will provide ways to navigate this era of complex communication, starting with some straightforward questions.  How do you choose to interact with your customers?  How quickly do you solve their problems?  Are your empathetic to their concerns?  How are your communication skills with customers?

In the end embracing your complaints is the quickest way to improving and optimizing your services.  It’s through negative feedback that you can learn the most about what your customers need and give them the best you’ve got.  Think of complaints as secret shortcuts to improvement, and the more you act on them the more quickly those complaints will fall away.

Here is the summary on Amazon:

“Eighty percent of companies say they deliver out­standing customer service, but only 8 percent of their customers agree. This book will help you close that gap by reconfiguring your customer service to deliver knockout experiences.

“The near-universal adoption of smartphones and social media has fundamentally altered the science of complaints. Critics (“haters”) can now express their displeasure faster and more pub­licly than ever. These trends have resulted in an overall increase in complaints and a belief by many businesses that they have to “pick their spots” when choosing to answer criticisms.

“Bestselling author Jay Baer shows why that approach is a major mistake. Based on an exten­sive proprietary study of how, where, and why we complain, Hug Your Haters proves that there are two types of complainers, each with very differ­ent motivations:

“Offstage haters. These people simply want solutions to their problems. They complain via legacy channels where the likelihood of a response is highest—phone, e-mail, and com­pany websites. Offstage haters don’t care if any­one else finds out, as long as they get answers.

“Onstage haters. These people are often disap­pointed by a substandard interaction via tradi­tional channels, so they turn to indirect venues, such as social media, online review sites, and discussion boards. Onstage haters want more than solutions—they want an audience to share their righteous indignation.

“Hug Your Haters shows exactly how to deal with both groups, drawing on meticulously researched case studies from businesses of all types and sizes from around the world. It includes specific play­books and formulas as well as a fold-out poster of “the Hatrix,” which summarizes the best strate­gies for different situations. The book is also filled with poignant and hilarious examples of haters gone wild, and companies gone crazy, as well as inspirational stories of companies responding with speed, compassion, and humanity.

“Whether you work for a mom-and-pop store or a global brand, you will have haters—and you can’t afford to ignore them. Baer’s insights and tactics will teach you how to embrace complaints, put haters to work for you, and turn bad news into good outcomes.”

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Weekly Recap, April 15, 2018

 Monday: Read The Coaching Habit, by Michael Bungay Stanier, on what makes a coach actually good at his/her job.


Tuesday: How does your office stack up? Check out these recommendations to make your floor more flexible and efficient.


Wednesday: Here are several things to keep in mind when you are comparing two or more mutually exclusive choices.


Thursday: Here are some important tips on streamlining your prospects, particularly if you’re dealing with different segments and locations.


Friday: Keep up with your leads, as a precursor to the good service they’ll experience once they begin doing business with you.


Saturday: Check out several actionable ways to keep stress and anxiety from pervading your life.

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