Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 217

Using Gigwalk to Get Boots on the Ground

Sometimes your prospects need help with reviewing their needs, especially how extensive an energy efficiency project might be.  Of course, in most situations you can help them, but other times you’re going to need that help yourself.

In certain situations, I recommend using Gigwalk, a service that contacts over 300,000 freelancers to do your bidding.  I’ll give you a quick breakdown of how it works.

You have the option of signing up on Gigwalk to offer certain jobs.  Once you post one, an alert will be sent out to freelancers who have the Gigwalk app on their phone.  If you’re stuck in the office or out of state you can have them approach your prospect’s building, parking lot or businesses to take stock of efficiency issues, faulty equipment or do a lighting count.

All the freelancer needs are your instructions and a camera.  Let’s say you need more info on what a prospect’s lighting situation is.  Through Gigwalk you can find out how many of their lights are burned out or whether they’re metal halides or high-pressure sodium.  You can assign a specific time so you’ll find out if lights are left on during times the prospect is paying on-peak kilowatt-hour pricing.

Once you have this evidence it will give you a clearer picture of how you can meet your prospect’s needs.  It will also give you a shortcut to their pain points and what is affecting their finances.  When you can’t do it yourself, Gigwalk will help you get some boots on the ground and the data you need.  It’s definitely worth a try.

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Sitting in on the Meeting

Have you ever been in a situation where a prospect tells you that they need to talk to the rest of their committee before making any decisions? Committees are notorious for shooting down projects, so you should be ready to address the situation upfront.

Unless you’ve prepared your prospect to give a stellar presentation and to fight for the project on your mutual behalf, there will be nobody at the committee meeting to address questions, objections or misunderstandings. This puts your proposal at high risk of being rejected. Wouldn’t it be a lot better if you could be in the room during the meeting? After all, you’re the expert, and you’re best equipped to explain the benefits of your offering and field any questions or comments that may arise.

In my experience, people don’t want vendors to attend internal meetings because they are afraid they’ll monopolize the meeting and overhear confidential information. Here’s an example of a conversation you might have with your prospect to get them to agree to let you sit in on the meeting:

Prospect: “I’ve got to take this to the committee.”

You: “When does the committee meet?”

Prospect: “Every Thursday.”

You: “How long does the committee usually meet?”

Prospect: “About an hour.”

You: “How many topics are typically discussed at the meeting?”

Prospect: “About a half a dozen.”

You: “Okay, so if everyone gets to the meeting on time, you’ve got an hour to talk about six topics. That’s roughly 10 minutes a topic. Am I correct?”

Prospect: “Yes, that’s right.”

You: “What do you think the chances are of my attending that meeting?”

Prospect: “Well, unfortunately we don’t usually let vendors sit in on committee meetings.”

You: “Okay, let me ask you this: Do you think there’s anybody in the world that’s more capable of addressing questions on this project than I am? If you want to get your project approved [notice I say “your” instead of “my”], the best thing you can do is get me in that room. And I’ll make a deal with you: If you have 10 minutes for each topic, you get me in the room at whatever point in the agenda you want me. Invite me into the room just for that agenda item and I’ll leave immediately after talking about my agenda item. I will not exceed my allotted time and I will not be present during any confidential discussions. So I can sit in the lobby, you can bring me in on minute 20, and I will be out of there at minute 30, graciously thanking you and your colleagues for inviting me to the meeting. I’ll get out of your way and you guys can get back to business. I can assure you that in three or four minutes, I can make a compelling case to make sure you get your project approved, and in the next four to six minutes, I can answer any questions that come up in the wake of that little presentation. Honestly, if I were in the room, I think you’d have a greater chance of getting your project approved.”

If you put these types of parameters around your requested participation, you might actually get invited to that meeting, and you’ll have an excellent chance of emerging from that meeting with everyone else primed to say “yes” when the vote to approve the project is taken after you leave.

And by the way, even if your internal champion is unsuccessful getting you a seat in the room, he or she might still get permission to have you dial in (or be called) at some point during the meeting so that you’re able to give a concise overview and address any questions/comments in real time.

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How to Research Prospects, Part 2

Yesterday, I wrote about some online research techniques. If you want to get even more specific with your research, talk to people within the company. Jeffrey Gitomer mentions that one of the best ways to get information about a company is to talk to the sales department because sales people love to talk. Set up a casual meeting, buy them a beer, and get all sorts of inside information about how the company thinks its fortunes are going, who really wears the pants in the family, whether or not they’ve recently had a very successful or a failed launch of something else, what their priorities and goals are, and so forth.

You can also talk to the sales team about other people in the company. Very few people in large companies operate as solo players, and you have to understand how each person fits into the team and who else is going to be part of the decision-making process.

Once you know who the other players are, you can go home and use your research skills to find out more information about them. Look them up on Google and visit their social media profiles (particularly LinkedIn and Twitter). You can learn so much about people’s personalities and values and what they’re famous for inside and outside of the organization by looking at their social media pages. How do they self-style themselves? The persona they put out to the marketplace can give you insight into how you might approach them during your first meeting.

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How to Research Prospects, Part 1

Before you meet with a new prospect, the one thing you absolutely must do is background research. I’ve written several blogs on research techniques, and the topic is important enough (and vast enough) to warrant further discussion. Today and tomorrow, we’ll be exploring some methods of research to help you hit the ball out of the park during your first meeting.

One of the best places to start your research is with a simple Google search. Look up the company on Google and sift through the first few pages of results. If you click on the “News” tab, you’ll find their blog posts, press releases, news stories, etc. All of this information can be useful for building your knowledge of the company, and can also be used as fodder for discussion in your first meeting.

In your research, you may come across the company’s annual reports. I’d encourage you to be cautious about taking the annual report as an indication of what they’re thinking about top-of-mind today because the annual report is by definition a retrospective document. A lot of things change, and considering how long it takes to edit, publish, and circulate an annual report, the contents could be very much old news.

In addition to reading everything about the prospect’s company, you should also look up their competitors. Why? Because they may already be using your services or something close to your services and you could use that as a little bit of a competitive edge. You can add some excitement into the conversation by showing your prospect that they’ll be falling behind the competition if they don’t use your product or service.

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The Hard Thing About Hard Things

If you run a business or are involved in one, there will always be times when the going gets tough.  If you’re in charge, it can be a weight on your shoulders, and sometimes navigating your problems seems impossible.  What should you prioritize first?  How should you instruct and motivate your employees?  What if you have to resort to layoffs or restructuring your company?

If you find yourselves in this situation, you’re not alone.  Look no further than Ben Horowitz’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things.  Horowitz was a co-founder of LoudCloud in 1999, one of the first cloud service providers, but due to several misfortunes the business quickly hit the skids.  To say the least he had to learn quick, but he has plenty of advice for others who find themselves struggling:

Prioritizing the Three P’s in your office: “the people, the product and the profits – in that order”
Not attacking problems on your own and telling it like it is – be straightforward with your employees and encourage everyone to offer solutions
Running your company – hiring the right people, promoting good behavior and minimizing politics
Working on yourself and streamlining your vision
And if it comes to it: dealing with layoffs or firing employees

Of course, avoiding dire straits is ideal.  However, if you find yourself in an unlucky spot consider this book some hard-won advice and a survival guide you should have on your nightstand.

Here is the summary from Amazon:

“Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley’s most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular Ben’s Blog.

“While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, from cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.

“Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz’s personal and often humbling experiences.”

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Weekly Recap, February 18, 2018

Monday: Check out  Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World , by Adam Grant, for one of the best guides out there when you’ve come up with something that goes against the grain and how to be prepared for pushback.


Tuesday: Learn how it takes time, care and thorough research to write a successful one-page proposal.


Wednesday: Discover why it does not make sense to evaluate a prospect’s investment with something as simple as simple payback period.


Thursday: Explore ways to reframe efficiency so that it can be measured with yardsticks that your prospect is already using to measure his or her own success.


Friday: Learn how “circling back” to every one of your customers to see if there any benefits, something beyond the obvious utility savings, is one of the most important parts of the sales cycle.


Saturday: Read this article for the best ways to handle feeling overwhelmed.

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Feeling Overwhelmed?

I’m sure we’re all very familiar with the feeling of being overwhelmed. In many cases, this feeling is spurred by the sheer amount of work that we have on our plates. When we have a lot of work to do, it’s vital that we use our time as efficiently as possible. Unfortunately (and paradoxically), being overwhelmed inhibits our ability to be efficient and productive. If you follow this logic, it turns into a vicious cycle that ultimately leads to burnout (or even failure).

So what can we do to prevent ourselves from becoming overwhelmed in the first place? According to an article published on The Muse blog, the best way to handle feeling overwhelmed and overloaded is to either take action or take a break. Ambitious people have a tendency to say “Yes” to everything. It’s a great quality to have; however, there is a limit to how much any one individual can handle, and pushing that limit can have serious negative consequences. Know what your limit is and focus your efforts on the tasks that have the highest importance.

For more ideas about how to avoid becoming overwhelmed, read the full article here.

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Circling Back

One of the most important parts of the sales cycle remains overlooked.  It’s imperative that you “circle back” to every one of your customers and ask them how it went.

Start with the basics.  “Are you happy with the installation?” Then, “Did we deliver everything that we promised when you first approved the project?”

Lastly, “Is there any benefit you recognized that we didn’t talk about, something beyond the obvious utility savings that you’re getting in the wake of the installation?”

The answer to that third question is gold.  They might tell you something that you don’t know, and of course you could say, “I would love to share that with others who are considering working with us. Do you mind if I quote you on that?”

If you get this kind of information you can use it for every additional sales call you make.  Think about drawing concentric circles on a map, each one around a successful installation.  From there you can find others who haven’t received those newfound benefits and contact them.

By then you’ll already have the foundation for your pitch, but consider this new info as an extra arrow in your quiver.  It’s all thanks to circling back and finding different ways a customer’s needs can be met.

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Wine, Cheese, and LEDs

They say repetition is the mother of learning.  You’ve probably heard me say more than once that one of the most valuable traits of an efficiency sales professional is the ability to reframe efficiency so that it can be measured with yardsticks that the prospect is already using to measure his or her own success. Here’s a great example of someone doing exactly that:

One of our Efficiency Sales Professional Boot Camp graduates was trying to come up with a way to convince small retailers to invest in LED lighting retrofits. Before presenting the business owners with a compelling case about why the lighting retrofit would be a smart investment, she first asked herself, “What do these owners really care about?” She quickly realized, of course, that small retailers are very interested in increasing foot traffic.  After all, getting more customers to set foot in your store is the first step (pun intended) to boosting sales per square foot.

With this in mind, she came up with a creative campaign that would help her customers get more of their customers in their stores in the wake of the lighting upgrade. She targeted commercial areas that had concentrations of small retailers, walked into each of the stores and announced the following offer: “If you and nine of your neighbors on this street sign up for a full lighting retrofit, my boss and I will sponsor a ‘wine, cheese, and LEDs’ party.  We will even bring sidewalk sandwich boards and little easels with foam core posters on them proclaiming what a wonderful thing you and your neighbors did. We’ll celebrate the fact that you’re saving all this energy… and we’ll drive traffic into your stores. This event will not only make more potential customers aware of your establishments, but also let the world know that you are a socially conscious business.”

The campaign was dramatically successful. Most people in this industry would agree that small businesses represent a hard-to-reach audience, fraught with high transaction cost, language barriers, and the like.  However, the minute you start talking about what they care about (instead of chromaticity, color rendering, simple payback period, and so forth), the easier it will be to capture their attention and retain it long enough to motivate them to take action.

I encourage you to ask yourself this simple question before you make your next sales call: ”What does my prospect really care the most about?” The answer to that question will help you reframe your offerings so that they resonate with what your prospects are truly seeking.

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It’s Not That Simple

Simple Payback Period (SPP) is a metric that all too many prospects are tempted to use when deciding whether or not to fund an expense-reducing capital project. As many of you already know, I am not a big fan of SPP.  In most cases, it’s far too simple a tool to evaluate proposed projects accurately. Here’s an example where relying on SPP along would clearly steer you wrong:

Assume a landlord realizes that he’s paying too much for utilities in his master-metered, gross-leased building.  He’s considering investing $1.00 per square foot in an expense-reducing capital project that is projected to produce $0.25 per square foot in utility savings.  One would be tempted to say that the arrangement would be a four-year payback, right?  Well, maybe not. It would be a four-year payback based on utility cost savings alone.  However, what if the landlord planned to have the building appraised the very next year for refinance or sale?

Guess what? The extra $0.25 a square foot in utility savings would increase the landlord’s net operating income by that same amount.  Moreover, the bigger news would be that the appraiser could now justify adding an extra $2.50 per square foot to the property’s value.  Why?  Because $0.25 divided by an assumed cap rate of 10% increases the value of the building by $2.50 using the Direct Capitalization variety of the Income Approach to Appraisal. That bump in value equates to two and a half times the installation cost!

That said, the fact that the higher appraised value doesn’t happen in the first year would place it outside the realm of the simple payback period calculation, which only focuses on cash flows that occur in Year 1.

What if the landlord is laboring under the impression that the investment would have a four-year payback when in actuality, he would enjoy two and half times his money back as soon as one year’s set of books reflect the higher NOI and he has the building reappraised?  Focusing on the simple payback period and remaining blind to the most important part of the equation – the potential bump in appraised value – could lead a landlord to make the wrong decision.

So what’s the moral of the story? Take a look at the bigger picture before you present a financial analysis to your prospect. Show them why it doesn’t make sense to evaluate their investment with something as simple as simple payback period.

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