Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 230
October 8, 2017
Weekly Recap, October 8, 2017
Tuesday: Explore how to sell more to your existing customer base.
Wednesday: Learn how to be a storyteller, not a narrator, during presentations.
Thursday: Discover yardsticks that key decision-makers use to measure their success.
Friday: Going above and beyond to let your contact know the impression they made towards you is key to establishing stonger bonds.
Saturday: Check out this article in FastCompany that suggests setting aside time each week to review your to-do list and plan for the coming week.
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October 7, 2017
The Weekly Review
One of the best ways to stay productive and on top of your to-do list is to set aside some time for a thorough review of everything that needs to be done. When you have a long to-do list, it’s easy to scroll through and knock off any tasks that can be completed quickly; however, you risk forgetting about the bigger picture. What’s most time-sensitive? What needs to be started in advance in order to meet a future deadline? Are any of my clients or co-workers waiting for something from me? What long-term goal will never be reached if I don’t start taking action soon?
A great image to keep in mind while performing this exercise is how to maximize the contents of a mason jar when you have big rocks, small pebbles, sand and water to work with. The key, of course, is the order of inserting those elements, and the same concept applies to prioritizing the items on your to-do list. Always return to the big picture and ensure that you’re working on the activities that will actually get you closer to those big goals.
A recent article published on the FastCompany blog suggests setting aside time each week to review your to-do list and plan for the coming week. Starting your week off with a prioritized list and a clear picture of everything that needs to be done can save you a lot of time (and also prevent you from missing opportunities and important deadlines). This article has a lot of great suggestions and presents a compelling case for why we should all do a weekly review. Give it a read and see what you think.
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October 6, 2017
Expressing Gratitude Towards Your Contact
When it comes to the growth and sustainability of your enterprise, I recommend having a strong network of colleagues inside and outside your industry. Besides attending facilitated events such as meet-ups and conferences, going above and beyond to let your contact know the impression they made towards you is key to establishing stronger bonds. If you’re wondering what going above and beyond might look like, I encourage you to think about expressing gratitude towards your contact.
In an article published by the Harvard Business Review (HBR), being able to express gratitude towards others requires awareness and noticing. Often times, when we meet so many individuals at networking events, remembering and differentiating what each person said might be a little difficult. Keeping notes of what they care about will it make easier to show your gratitude later.
On a related note, I always recommend writing at least three things on the back of each business card you accept: where/when you met; something particularly interesting that was discussed (which often becomes great fodder for the opening line of your follow-up email); and, the best next step to take or recommend when you do follow-up. I always like to take an instant smartphone photo of each card, in case the card goes missing prior to being entered into our CRM system.
Eventually, you’ll return back to your little pocketbook and wonder how to share your gratitude. Of the 7 ways that HBR recommends, our favorites include: sending something fun with a thank you note; making an introduction; and offering to help… and delivering on your offer.
We recommend reading the remainder of the list here for more ideas.
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October 5, 2017
Yardsticks That Key Decision-Makers Use to Measure Their Success
Approaching your prospect with a strong value proposition is vital to your sales success. While many salespeople simply reuse the value proposition they’ve developed for each product or service (regardless of their prospect’s situation or role in the company), a sales professional customizes his or her value proposition based upon the person with whom he or she is speaking. Why is this an essential part of the sales process? Because each prospect measures his or her own success using a different yardstick, and therefore you need to come to the table with a value proposition that makes the most sense when viewed through each of their lenses.
Today, we’ll explore the yardsticks that some of the key decision-makers use to measure their success. For the sake of example in this hypothetical sales situation, suppose we are an HVAC sales professional selling “smart valves” (e.g., Belimo’s “Energy Valves”) that help the building utilize its chilled water more effectively:
The Chief Executive Officer: Your job is to sell smart valves. The chief executive’s job – at least as determined by the Board of Directors that hired him – is to manage the organization and to make the enterprise more valuable. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that when the CEO listens to this spiel on putting smart valves in his building, the first two questions he wants to have asked and answered are:
Would this installation make my organization easier to manage?
Would this make my enterprise more valuable?
The Chief Sustainability Officer: The CSO is not responsible for managing the organization; however, he or she is responsible for making sure that the company adopts any and all viable “green” practices. The first two questions that the Chief Sustainability Officer will likely want to have asked and answered are:
Would installing this technology entitle us to additional LEED® points?
Could this technology help us attain an ENERGY STAR® label?
The Chief Financial Officer: As you might imagine, the CFO is primarily concerned with maximizing the return – and minimizing the risk — of any purchase he or she makes. The first two questions that the CFO wants to have asked and answered are:
Would installing these smart valves be a viable alternative to purchasing another chiller to address increased cooling demand?
Could this product meet our cooling demand without putting us in “the red” financially?
The Chief Engineer: Unlike the previous three players, the chief engineer may actually have the technical knowledge to evaluate your smart valve solution from an engineering standpoint. In this situation, it is appropriate to delve into the technical details that you otherwise would leave for the “Technical Appendix” of your proposal (as mentioned in Wednesday’s blog). The first two questions that the chief engineer wants to have asked and answered are:
How much more visibility would these smart valves provide regarding the operation of our chillers/pumps/etc.?
Would this solution allow me to monitor the flow and the difference in temperature, and help maximize Delta T in my loop so I am making sure that I am not wasting energy pumping chilled water around the building without actually transferring heat from one location to another?
How you decide to address the questions and concerns of each of these players will determine your success at capturing and retaining their attention.
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October 4, 2017
Be a Storyteller, Not a Narrator
Many of you have probably heard of the “6 x 6 rule” of PowerPoint presentations. In case this is a new concept to you, the rule states that a PowerPoint slide should have no more than six bullet points, each one containing a maximum of six words.
If you know my philosophy on presentations, you’re probably asking yourself, “Why is Mark writing about this rule? Isn’t ’36 words per slide’ too much text for an effective presentation?” Here’s my answer for you: I’m writing about this rule because I don’t want you to follow it! A truly effective PowerPoint presentation contains little – perhaps even no – text.
If you create a sixty-minute presentation with sixty slides and you’re following the 6 x 6 rule, your presentation will contain more than 2,000 words. That’s more words than the average college term paper, and that’s at a good school
Do you really expect an audience to read the equivalent of an entire college term paper… over your shoulder… while you’re talking… during the course of a single hour-long presentation… that starts late… and is interrupted by questions? Now we know why PowerPoint calls them “bullets.” They kill audiences.
What do I recommend doing instead? Use a compelling and captivating image for each slide. If you’re going to include text, use only a few words per slide. If you feel you need to write a complete sentence, make sure you read the sentence aloud exactly as it appears on the slide. If you don’t feel that text is going to add anything to your presentation, simply forgo text altogether.
I read of a gentleman who is a leading TED Talk presenter. In one of his presentations, he used 52 slides, all of which were images without text. When they asked him, “Why don’t you have any words in your slides?” he simply replied, “I’m much more of a storyteller than a narrator.” Ultimately, no doubt, he got a standing ovation because people were so sick and tired of seeing bullets.
Try it yourself. Be a storyteller, not a narrator. You’ll be amazed. And so will your audience.
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October 3, 2017
Repeat Business: Sell More to Your Existing Customer Base
Finding new prospects is a time-consuming activity and often requires a great deal of research, cold calling, email campaigns, and so forth. If you’ve ever done repeat business with a past customer, you know how time-efficient (and financially rewarding) it can be. When is the last time you combed through your customer list to consider how you might continue to provide value for them?
I was interviewing a very successful efficiency sales professional in preparation for a two-day presentation that I gave to a group of mechanical contractors. This sales professional had recently decided to expand his business beyond service contracts and reactive service calls, and start focusing on proactive, owner-direct, non-bid efficiency-motivated retrofits. He shared with me that his change in focus had paid off handsomely. He said, “90 percent of our roughly $10 million in energy work last year came from existing customers.”
That statement underscored something I’ve been telling vendors and service providers for years. People say, “I want to morph this service business into an energy-efficiency retrofit company. I don’t know where to start. Where am I going to find new leads?” Are you kidding me? You have file cabinets (or cloud-based server folders!) filled with projects you’ve done since you first set up shop. You already know their situation. You know what the installed systems are. You know where the skeletons are buried in those buildings. You know which systems are legacy systems, no longer supported by their manufacturers. At least some of those installed systems have an obvious upgrade path that you could suggest.
The sales professional I mentioned earlier used that valuable information to his advantage. He said, “Well, these are the buildings that we’re servicing. We happen to know that some of these buildings are paying us more in maintenance annually than they would be paying in debt service to replace their existing systems with new ones. Let’s sell them some new equipment.”
Bottom line, take a careful look at your existing customers. You have the advantage of being the incumbent. You have the advantage of already having a relationship with them – you’re trustworthy, you’re always on time, you charge them fairly, and you’ve been doing business with them for years. Those factors effectively eliminate the trust-building phase of the relationship that you would have to go through with any new customer.
So, pay attention to your current stable of customers. There’s a lot of work that can be done without ever calling anyone new. And, by the way, every present customer for whom you design new solutions has plenty of other peers who will eventually become referrals for you if you play your cards right and inject new value into your existing relationship.
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October 2, 2017
How to Say It: B2B Selling
Selling in the business to business (B2B) setting requires its own set of skills. What works for selling a product to a single end-user does not always work in the context of a larger organization with multiple decision-makers.
This week’s book recommendation comes from an attendee of one of my Learning to S.E.E. (Sell Efficiency Effectively) workshops. He was trying to condense a complicated Demand Response sales pitch to concisely convey the value of his offering, and Geoffrey James’ book, How to Say It: Business to Business Selling, equipped him with the tools to accomplish that goal. If you’re looking for advice on a wide variety of B2B sales topics, this book provides some great tips and tricks.
One side note: Because Geoffrey James touches on so many topics in this book, each one is more of a high-level overview. If you’re looking for an in-depth exploration of any of the topics (listed below in the summary), send me an email and I can recommend a follow-on book or two.
Here’s a summary from Amazon Books:
“There are approximately 35 million business to business sales reps in the country selling everything from books and computers to furniture and flooring. They know as well as anyone that selling to other businesses is not the same as selling to consumers. Businesses have different budgets, needs, demands, and expectations from those of general consumers. That means an entirely different skill set is required of business to business sales reps.
“How to Say It: Business to Business Selling is the only book of its kind that caters exclusively to business to business sales professionals. Its short chapters provide tips and strategies tailored especially for the unique business to business selling process. You’ll learn how to:
Motivate Yourself to Sell
Craft an Elevator Pitch
Find Hot Sales Leads
Make a Cold Call
Use Voicemail to Sell
Give a Sales Presentation
Write a Sales Proposal
Give a Product Demo
Negotiate the Best Deal
Close a Sale
Create a Powerful Sales Process
Sell to Top Executives
Build Sales Partnerships
Get a Customer Referral
Accelerate Your Sales Cycle
“With How to Say It: Business to Business Selling you can sell business to business like a seasoned pro.”
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October 1, 2017
Weekly Recap, October 1, 2017
Tuesday: Maximize your networking time by knowing exactly who you want to target ahead of time.
Wednesday: Discover a strategy that will help other people find you at a networking event.
Thursday: Explore the best approach to persuading your prospect to adopt your offering.
Friday: Learn to sell efficiency to the hospitality industry more effectively.
Saturday: Check out this article from Business2Community for “5 Ways to Create a Culture of Productivity.”
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September 30, 2017
Tips for Building a Productive Culture
It’s the goal of every business owner or manager to create a company that is as productive as possible. While it’s always great to keep up with the latest productivity trends and incorporate them into your business’s productivity strategy, the best companies create a culture of productivity from the start.
So, what does a “culture of productivity” entail? It’s a combination of who you choose to hire, how you choose to run your business, and how you interact with your employees. An article published on the Business2Community blog suggests a number of strategies for creating this culture.
Is it ideal to implement these strategies when you first open up shop? Of course. However, these tips can still be applied to existing businesses to boost the productivity of team. If you’re an owner or manager, I highly recommend reading this article.
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September 29, 2017
Selling Efficiency to the Hospitality Industry
As someone who does more than 100 speaking engagements a year all over North America and Europe, I spend a lot of time on the road. Every time I pass a Motel 6, I am reminded of the tag line they adopted in the mid-Eighties – “We’ll leave the light on for you.” In fact, for the chain’s 50th anniversary in 2012, they began using the motto, “50 Years, the Light’s Still On.” For decades now, the hotel industry has been obsessed with perfecting hardware and software that keep the lights (and HVAC) turned off in unoccupied rooms. Nonetheless, those Motel 6 mottos remain indelibly etched in my mind.
The last time I checked, U.S. hotels were spending over $7.5 billion in energy every year. Think about how much could be saved if those costs could be reduced by even just 10%. The numbers are truly compelling.
One of the metrics that hospitality analysts focus on is the Average Daily Rate, or ADR. Years ago, the ENERGY STAR® program released data suggesting that if a hotel were to reduce its energy costs by 10%, it would be the equivalent of raising its ADR by $0.62 if it were a limited service hotel and $1.35 if it were a full-service hotel.
In this age of total rate transparency – with Hotels.com, Priceline.com, Kayak.com, and all of the other online options for comparing hotel ratings and pricing in a given area – the competition for overnight stays is fierce.
Now I ask you, if a CFO wants to increase his chain’s ADR to demonstrate enhanced profitability for his investors, would he be wise to raise his hotel rates across the board? Probably not, since given the aforementioned rate transparency, his chain would likely lose market share in the wake of that price increase.
On the other hand, what if that same CFO decided to benchmark his hotels, find out what improvements could be made, and pursue the ENERGY STAR label in as many properties as possible? The resulting decrease in energy costs might have the same economic impact as if he had raised his rates, but he wouldn’t be losing market share. In fact, his chain might actually gain market share because his hotel rooms would be deemed to be more comfortable, the online reviews would see an uptick, and more people would book. In addition, sustainability-minded travelers might select his chain over others in the wake of announcing a new sustainability agenda (and perhaps even a few newly minted ENERGY STAR labels).
So, what’s the moral here? It’s a win-win for hotels to pursue efficiency measures, and if you can convey this to your prospects in the hospitality industry, they should be more willing to embrace your efficiency solutions.
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