Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 242
June 11, 2017
Weekly Recap, June 11, 2017
Tuesday: Rebate and Incentive Tips, Part One.
Wednesday: Rebate and Incentive Tips, Part Two.
Thursday: Rebate and Incentive Tips, Part Three.
Friday: Explore how to uncover what’s at the top of your prospect’s list of priorities.
Saturday: Check out an article published in Inc. if you’re a leader in your organization and considering how you might create a team of empowered employees.
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June 10, 2017
How to Get a Self-Motivated Team
When we think about ways to improve productivity, we usually think of software programs, smartphone apps, time-management systems, to-do lists, ergonomics, and so forth. While these tools and life hacks have the potential to improve productivity greatly, we often overlook a key factor in our ability to perform at our highest potential: self-motivation.
A self-motivated employee is empowered with the desire to improve the success of his or her company. This empowerment makes the employee want to produce high-quality work. Since productivity is necessary to produce high-quality work in a timely fashion, the employee ends up working productively.
So how does one become self-motivated? According to an article published in Inc, the way in which a leader hires and manages his or her employees has a significant effect on those employees’ level of motivation. The article argues that an “engaged, empowered, enthusiastic” employee works harder and is easier to manage. If you are a leader in your organization, I highly recommend reading this short piece and considering how you might create a team of empowered employees.
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June 9, 2017
Understand Your Prospect’s Highest Priority
Let’s face it: energy efficiency is not always at the top of everyone’s list of priorities. You may find yourself in a situation where your prospect doesn’t think an efficiency upgrade is the best use of capital. What can you do in a case like this? Find out what does sit atop their list of priorities. You may not be able to help them fulfill their entire wish list. However, what if you reframed your efficiency offering and demonstrated that the value they would experience by approving your project would provide a path to achieving their most cherished goals?
A few years ago, I was giving a keynote presentation on the East Coast for about 500 energy controls specialists. Afterwards, someone in the audience approached me at the podium and shared a great story that exemplifies this kind of outside-the-box thinking.
He told me he had been trying to sell a school system on a major HVAC renovation project for many months. The district’s budget director candidly shared, “Listen, improving our HVAC system is not our highest priority right now. What we’re really focused on is our computerization initiative. We’ve already told our board that we’re going to have 1,600 iPads by this time next year, one for each child in grades five and above. We think the iPad project will really help us see better learning outcomes in our district. Bottom line, we need to focus our attention on getting those iPads before we even think about HVAC projects.”
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June 8, 2017
Rebate and Incentive Tips, Part Three
Now that we’ve covered a handful of tips and tricks for maximizing rebates and incentives, we’re going to explore some useful resources that can help us track down the most relevant rebates and incentives for our projects.
Energy Saver (from the U.S. DOE): This site gives you an index of rebates and incentives around the country. You can search by state, sector, and savings category.
DSIRE: Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency: This is a government-funded site and a useful compendium of data on incentives, rebates, tax benefits, and other useful information.
In addition to these major sites, I also recommend checking out your own state energy office’s website. Depending on where you are, you may find additional online resources to help you find funding for your projects.
Then, of course, you should also explore your own utility’s website. Many utilities have a very robust menu of rebate and incentive offerings to call upon. Some even feature low- or zero-interest on-bill financing. There’s certainly “free money” out there to help you fund your projects.
By the way, any time you have organizations that want to push rebate/incentive money out there, you’re doing them a favor by letting them know about your projects. They get credit for influencing efficiency in their territory. By using their dollars to encourage you to embrace a higher level of efficiency than you might have selected on your own, they acquire energy savings that are actually less expensive on a per-kW or per-kWh basis than if they were to invest in the physical assets to generate, transmit and distribute that energy. And, of course, you’re doing yourself a favor, too, because your project’s first cost is going to be less if you take advantage of these funding resources.
One final thought… Although I dedicated three blogs this week to the topic of rebates and incentives, I certainly don’t mean to imply that an efficiency enhancement doesn’t make sense unless you can get someone else to pay for part of the project! If you adopt the perspective of a true efficiency sales professional, you’re going to consider three distinct categories of benefits when justifying any project. Utility-cost-financial benefits include rebates/incentives in addition to lower utility bills. Non-utility-cost financial benefits include impacts such as the enhanced worker productivity that improved occupant comfort can support, which is a benefit that appears on the “Payroll” line item rather than the “Utilities” line item of your Profit and Loss Statement. Non-financial benefits include the pride of securing an ENERGY STAR® Label in the wake of decreasing your building’s energy use. In many cases, the second benefits bucket – properly quantified and monetized – will be much larger than the first bucket, which makes the whole topic of rebates and incentives a “nice to have” rather than a “necessity.”
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June 7, 2017
Rebate and Incentive Tips, Part Two
Verify accurate input by third parties: Several years ago, a national retailer needed to file hundreds of incentive applications in the context of a planned portfolio-wide lighting retrofit campaign. The utilities granting the incentives required plenty of project data, including the exact lighting equipment proposed, the resulting lighting power density, etc. Several of the lighting contractors didn’t understand the data request and submitted Title 24 compliance documentation rather than what was required for the utility to sign off on the incentive. Once the error was discovered, the client managed to retrieve the correct data and salvage the incentive. The moral of the story is clear: you have to take the time to clarify the data needed from third parties to qualify for an incentive, and you have to verify that the data they provided is, in fact, what you requested.
File as early as possible: There’s a tremendous amount of demand for rebate and incentive dollars in most territories. Filing as early as possible helps ensure that you’re in the waiting line and that they’re not going to be “sold out” before you get up to the counter to claim your “free money.”
Document changes: There are times when a utility or some other agency will make an exception for a good reason. For instance, they may tell you, “Okay, you didn’t meet this criterion of our incentive filing process; however, we’ll make a one-time exception because we know that your heart is in the right place and you’re using the right equipment.” If they do grant you some flexibility, you had better get it in writing.
I remember one particular instance where the utility did give a pass to one of our clients (before we started working for them). Unfortunately, this client didn’t get it in writing. As a result, when the staffer who had exercised leniency left the utility (before the incentive check was actually paid) the incentive evaporated. The client lost the entire incentive when the retiring utility exec’s replacement reevaluated the situation and rescinded the special treatment.
Connect purchases with incentive approvals: Rebates are often paid in arrears; incentives are applied for and approved in advance. When it comes to incentives, your mantra should be “apply before you buy.” Do not proceed with an equipment order before you are approved for the incentive, even if your knowledge of that incentive motivated the decision to purchase that equipment. In the case of incentives, the utility must know that you did not actually purchase the equipment before your incentive was approved.
Monitor the measurement and verification process: If a utility requires you to document the “before” and “after” cases to verify that you earned the performance-based incentives being requested, you need to provide proper documentation. What if the measurement and verification (M&V) contractor misunderstands which criteria must be measured? In other words, what if his M&V study fails to provide the utility with the evidence it needs to prove to its own regulators that you deserve the incentive dollars that you are requesting?
Align all interests: I’ve had several people tell me during my career of filing rebates, “We don’t need to hire a professional rebate administrator – we have two people in the back room doing that,” or, “We make our contractors handle all rebate/incentive filings as a condition of doing business with us.” There is no way that a contractor (who does not get any share of the rebate or incentive money) is going to be as motivated to maximize the rebate/incentive dollars you receive. The contractor is trying to minimize his paperwork, not maximize it. That contractor is trying to get the job done and move on to his next one. Moreover, unless you’re a professional rebate filer yourself, you’re not likely to know what a good job looks like. Bottom line, if you’re depending on a third party to file rebates or incentives for you, make sure that they have as big a stake in the game as you do to maximize that “free money” – for example, you want them to apply under the right program(s) and lobby for a more generous incentive calculation, if applicable. If they have no financial stake in the outcome, their lack of diligence may cost you dearly.
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June 6, 2017
Rebate and Incentive Tips, Part One
Utilizing rebates and incentives can be key in getting your efficiency projects approved. Over the course of the next three days, we’ll cover some tips and tricks of rebates and incentives.
Know who is eligible: Know which utility territories you fall under and which utilities are interested in influencing your decisions by offering either design assistance or a portion of the first cost. You may find that you’re eligible for more than one program, and that’s valuable information to have.
Compare programs to maximize money: Most utilities now are very fastidious. They make sure that you don’t double-dip and that you’re in the right program. For example, projects that qualify for a prescriptive program are typically ineligible for a custom incentive.
Invest in engineering upfront: Investing in engineering talent upfront makes a lot of sense. You may find that if you increased the efficiency of the maneuver that you were originally planning, you would qualify for additional rebates that would offset a large part of the incremental first cost. You might never have known about that increased level of efficiency had you not invested the energy consulting dollars to uncover the smarter way to accomplish the project.
Specify the proper configuration: It’s one thing to say, “We’re going to use LEDs.” It’s another thing to realize, “Okay, we used the right equipment; however, we put so much lighting equipment in the ceiling that we violated the maximum watts per square foot that this utility allows for its energy-efficient lighting incentive.” Remember, equipment configuration is as important as equipment selection.
Ensure your specs remain rebate-eligible: Years ago I created a rebate administration service that filed thousands of applications on behalf of our billion-square-foot portfolio of clients. I remember encountering a national retailer who had just suffered a significant financial loss because it had failed to ensure that everyone in the design/construction chain understood the consequences of last-minute substitutions on the rebate-eligible equipment it had specified for two of its new stores. In that case, the retail chain lost the deposit it had tendered to reserve the rebate, the rebate itself, and the higher life-cycle cost of the inefficient equipment over the projected 10-year life of those two new stores.
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June 5, 2017
How to Take Control of Your Sales Career
The word “sales” often has a stigma attached to it. For many people, it conjures up images of the stereotypical “pushy” used car salesperson. Customer-facing professionals who are not in traditional “sales” roles may be reluctant to identify as “sales professionals” as a result of this stigma. I firmly believe that all customer-facing professionals – regardless of their official job title – must understand the fundamentals of professional selling.
If you are in a customer-facing role and do not have a background in selling, I highly recommend reading The Accidental Salesperson: How to Take Control of Your Sales Career and Earn the Respect and Income You Deserve, by Chris Lytle. This book provides a high-level overview of the principles of effective selling, and is a practical guide for anyone interested in learning about how sales strategies can further their career.
Here’s a summary from Amazon Books:
“This text gives salespeople who did not plan on a sales career, a blueprint for dramatically improving their sales skills and results. It guides the reader through every aspect of the selling process and offers plenty of techniques to outpace others in the business of selling.”
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June 4, 2017
Weekly Recap, June 4, 2017
Monday: Check out the TED talk by Navi Radjou on the essence of frugal innovation.
Tuesday: Learn how to turn tedious work into meaningful work.
Wednesday: Explore how to get a lot more accomplished at a networking event.
Thursday: Explore some research methods to help you hit the ball out of the park during your first meeting.
Friday: Discover more research techniques to get insight into how you might approach a prospect during your first meeting.
Saturday: Read an article published in Entrepreneur Magazine that suggests five ways to keep stress levels low.
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June 3, 2017
5 Ways to Manage Stress
As efficiency sales professionals, we deal with stress on a regular basis. Sometimes the stress comes from setbacks or lost deals; other times it simply comes from having too much to do and too little time. Whatever the source of your stress may be, it’s important to have some coping mechanisms to help you stay motivated and productive.
An article published in Entrepreneur Magazine suggests five ways to keep your stress levels low. These ideas come from successful entrepreneurs, and each one is worth reading. If you struggle to cope with stress, I highly recommend checking out this article and trying some of these ideas yourself.
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June 2, 2017
Sales Research, Part Two
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 the 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 insight into how you might approach them during your first meeting.
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