Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 251

Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long

Ridding your mind of tasks, appointments, due dates, and so forth frees it up to do more important work. While the “brain dump” is a great (and simple) way to free up space in your mind, it is just one of the many ways in which we can improve our mental functions and abilities.

In David Rock’s book, Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long, Rock helps readers maximize their mental performance. He provides a high-level overview of how the brain works and explains why we get overwhelmed and stressed. He also provides several actionable strategies for improving weaknesses and making the most of your inherent mental abilities.

Here’s a summary from Amazon Books:

“Meet Emily and Paul: The parents of two young children, Emily is the newly promoted VP of marketing at a large corporation while Paul works from home or from clients’ offices as an independent IT consultant. Their lives, like all of ours, are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, yet more emails, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. Just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task.

“In this book, we travel inside Emily and Paul’s brains as they attempt to sort the vast quantities of information they’re presented with, figure out how to prioritize it, organize it and act on it. Fortunately for Emily and Paul, they’re in good hands: David Rock knows how the brain works -and more specifically, how it works in a work setting. Rock shows how it’s possible for Emily and Paul, and thus the reader, not only to survive in today’s overwhelming work environment but succeed in it – and still feel energized and accomplished at the end of the day.

“YOUR BRAIN AT WORK explores issues such as:

Why our brains feel so taxed, and how to maximize our mental resources
Why it’s so hard to focus, and how to better manage distractions
How to maximize your chance of finding insights that can solve seemingly insurmountable problems
How to keep your cool in any situation, so that you can make the best decisions possible
How to collaborate more effectively with others
Why providing feedback is so difficult, and how to make it easier
How to be more effective at changing other people’s behavior”

Selling Energy Blog

The post Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long appeared first on Selling Energy.

Weekly Recap, March 12, 2017

    

Monday: Read Captivology: The Science of Capturing People’s Attention, by Ben Parr, if you’re interested in gaining a deeper understanding of how attention works and how to leverage it to your advantage.


Tuesday: Explore how to develop a strong “internal champion.” 


Wednesday: Discover how to stimulate lateral thinking to improve sales creativity. 


Thursday: Check out 6 tips for finding great leads.


Friday: Learn the value of making non-industry connections at a networking event. 


Saturday: Read this article from the Inc. blog on “How Successful People Beat Stress.”


Selling Energy Blog

The post Weekly Recap, March 12, 2017 appeared first on Selling Energy.

Strategies to Stay Calm

When stress and anxiety take hold, it can be difficult to stay productive – and even to keep emotions in check. In much the same way as we reframe efficiency to convey value for our prospects, we can reframe the way we mentally approach stress to prevent it from creeping into our lives. It’s just a matter of making an effort to shift our outlook on the things that cause us stress in the first place.

An article published on the Inc. blog suggests several actionable ways to keep stress and anxiety from pervading our lives. My favorite of their suggestions is to write a “hard-luck” script and an “empowered” script, based on difficulties you’ve had in the past.

To read the full list of recommendations, read the article.

Selling Energy Blog

The post Strategies to Stay Calm appeared first on Selling Energy.

The Value of Making Non-Industry Connections

When you’re at a networking event and you meet someone who works in an entirely different industry, what do you do? I’m sure many of us would be inclined to say “nice to meet you” and move on to someone more “relevant.” If you find yourself in this situation, don’t walk away. Here’s a story that demonstrates the value of making non-industry connections:

A couple years ago, I met a colleague for lunch and he looked very downtrodden. I said, “Hey, what’s going on?” He said, “Last night I went to this trade org event. I just wasted my time.” I said, “What are you talking about? You’re usually so upbeat and that audience is full of prospects for you.” He continued with exasperation, “I spent 20 minutes pitching to a guy and then I asked, ‘What do you do?’ and he said, ‘I sell rugs.’ I wasted 20 minutes of my networking time talking to a guy who sells rugs!”

There are two aspects of this story worth noting. First, if you knew ahead of time that this person sold carpet, would you have used a different elevator pitch and/or spent a different amount of your valuable networking time? Second, what might that new and improved elevator pitch have been? Here’s how the interaction should have gone:

“Hey, how are you doing? I’m John.” 
“I’m Bill.” 
“Hello, Bill. So what brings you to this event tonight?” 
“I work for XYZ Carpets.”
“Oh, I guess you sell rugs.”
“Yes. We do.” 
“Whom do you sell to?” 
“Commercial offices, mostly.” 
“Aha. You know I sell to a lot of commercial office buildings as well. Who are some of your favorite clients around town?”
“Equity Office and Boston Properties.” 
“So I bet you do work for Tom at Embarcadero Four?” 
“Oh yeah. We helped him with several tenant fit-outs last year. He’s a great guy.”
“Wow, Tom. I’ve known him for years. Who else do you sell to?  I bet we sell to a lot of the same folks…”

Before long, you’ll be exchanging business cards and perhaps even working out a deal to swap leads, cross-promoting each other’s services. Now that’s how it’s supposed to work. 

Selling Energy Blog

The post The Value of Making Non-Industry Connections appeared first on Selling Energy.

6 Tips for Finding Great Leads

Embrace and cultivate all the empowering qualities of a sales professional.
Commit to being proactive rather than reactive.
Learn to leverage those who sell to your typical prospects before and after you do.


Property managers who need to field/address all of those “hot/cold” calls from disgruntled occupants
Building engineering firms who have to operate the aging equipment you should be replacing
Mechanical contractors who have to service equipment long past its estimated end-of-life
Other suppliers who provide parts for aging equipment
Air balancing firms, duct cleaning firms, etc.
Real estate brokers with knowledge of thermal comfort, noise and other building shortcomings


Think carefully about your ideal prospects and build a profile to begin pursuing today.
Take the time to build the tools you’ll need to open doors and keep them open.
Get organized and automated so that you can keep up with the surge of sales activity you’re about to experience. 

Selling Energy Blog

The post 6 Tips for Finding Great Leads appeared first on Selling Energy.

Stimulate Lateral Thinking to Improve Sales Creativity

Selling efficiency products and solutions takes a lot of creativity. There isn’t a single trick that will work in every situation, and it’s your job to figure out what angle will turn your prospect into a customer.

I heard a story years ago about an office building in New York City where people were vociferously complaining about how slow the elevators were. The landlord finally realized that he needed to address the issue, so he began seeking quotes from elevator vendors.  They said they would be able to increase the speed of the elevator by completely changing all the gearing.  It would be about a quarter-of-a-million-dollar fix.

The landlord, being a creative thinker himself, decided to take another approach. He wasn’t willing to invest that much money simply to save people a few minutes a day. Instead, he decided to cover the walls of the elevator lobby with mirrors.  People looked at themselves while they were waiting, and they never complained about the elevators again. His lateral thinking saved him a quarter of a million dollars… less the cost of a dozen floor-to-ceiling mirror panels!

So what does this story prove? Well for one thing, it proves that the elevator salesperson was not very savvy because he began his proposal with the cost of the project as opposed to the value and benefits. But the bigger moral of the story is that lateral thinking can lead you to a creative solution that may help you close a sale.

 

Selling Energy Blog

The post Stimulate Lateral Thinking to Improve Sales Creativity appeared first on Selling Energy.

How to Develop a Strong Internal Champion

 

For a decision-maker to feel comfortable with a purchase, he or she needs to be able to see the bigger picture and understand how it will affect the business as a whole.

Suppose you’re selling an expense-reducing capital product or service to a building manager. How do you eliminate the perceived risk of the transaction? You first need to demonstrate the value of the project to that manager, underscoring why it is in their best interest to serve as your “internal champion” and help you close the deal. 

Next, you need to equip your newfound ally with tools to help him or her sell the idea to anyone and everyone who would be affected by the change… not just the capital budgeting folks, but also the building engineering staff, the occupants of the building, etc. 

Be sure your proposal or presentation carefully considers: 

How the project affects each of the above-mentioned players (and potentially many more)
Which compelling benefits need to be communicated to each player to secure “buy-in”

It is my studied observation that taking the time to craft compelling value propositions that resonate with each player (and identifying and neutralizing potential objections up front) greatly increases your internal champion’s willingness to go to bat for you.

That means a much greater probability of closing the deal, and in many cases, a shorter sales cycle as well.

Selling Energy Blog

The post How to Develop a Strong Internal Champion appeared first on Selling Energy.

The Science of Capturing People’s Attention

One of the biggest challenges we face as efficiency sales professionals is how to capture our prospect’s attention. Whether it’s through a proposal, a meeting, or even an advertisement, we have a very limited window of time in which to pique their curiosity – and to keep that curiosity alive. So how do we make the most of those critical first moments?

According to Ben Parr in his book, Captivology: The Science of Capturing People’s Attention, it’s important to first understand how attention works. Parr delves into the scientific principles that underlie the “three stages of attention” – immediate attention, short attention, and long attention. He also provides several useful strategies for keeping your audience’s attention through each of the stages. If you’re interested in gaining a deeper understanding of how attention works – and how to leverage it to your advantage – I recommend picking up a copy of this book.

Here’s a summary from Amazon Books:

“Learn the secret to captivating your audience.

“In Captivology, award-winning journalist, author, entrepreneur and investor Ben Parr presents a new understanding of attention – how it works, why it matters, and how we leverage psychological triggers to draw and retain attention for our passions, projects, and ideas.

“Parr combines the latest research on attention with interviews with more than fifty scientists and visionaries – Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, film director Steven Soderbergh, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, magician David Copperfield, New York Times bestselling author Susan Cain, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, and more – who have successfully brought their ideas, projects, companies, and products to the forefront of cultural consciousness.

“The result is an insightful and practical book that will change how you assign jobs to your kids or staff, craft a multi-million dollar ad campaign, deliver your next presentation, attract users to your product, or convince the world to support your cause.”

Selling Energy Blog

The post The Science of Capturing People’s Attention appeared first on Selling Energy.

Weekly Recap, March 5, 2017

    

 Monday: Read In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions… When It Counts, by Jerry Weissman, if you’re interested in perfecting your Q&A responses.



Tuesday: Explore how jumping to conclusions without first thoughtfully assessing why your prospect hasn’t already given you the green light will result in longer-than-necessary sales cycles and greatly reduced closing ratios.


Wednesday: Check out 4 criteria for a high-quality prospect. 


Thursday: Explore “The Unassailable Value Equation.”


Friday: Discover if you take the time to understand your prospect’s segment, you’ll be better equipped to demonstrate value that your prospect will appreciate.


Saturday: Check out a recent article by Success Magazine online on “6 Mindsets Shifts That Will Improve Your Life.”



Selling Energy Blog

The post Weekly Recap, March 5, 2017 appeared first on Selling Energy.

6 Mindset Shifts That’ll Improve Your Life

 

To reach a high level of growth, you need to make improvement a lifestyle or mindset. I share articles on productivity every week. My hope is that many of these tips and tricks save you time and help you work more efficiently; however, each of us has our own unique situation and there’s a lot of things we can do to grow and learn. 

Today, I’d like to share an article in Success Magazine. It discusses six mindset shifts that will help to improve your life. As you go about your daily activities, think about ways in which you can improve and push your personal boundaries for the future. Do you repeat certain tasks on a regular basis that cause you to feel discomfort or incompetent? Can you find a way to shift your mindset? If you keep this in mind as you go about your daily life, I am confident that you’ll find new ways to develop your mind. 

For more information on this topic, read this article from Success Magazine online

Selling Energy Blog

The post 6 Mindset Shifts That’ll Improve Your Life appeared first on Selling Energy.