Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 256
January 21, 2017
How to Ditch Bad Habits
Becoming your most productive self is as much about avoiding bad habits as it is about actively employing best practices. We talk a lot about productivity-boosting strategies on this blog. Today, we’re going to look at productivity from the other end of the spectrum. If you can identify the habits that diminish your ability to be productive, you’ll be better positioned to rid them from your life (and on top of that, you’ll have more time to implement some of the strategies we discuss for selling more effectively).
A recent article published on the Fast Company blog suggests eight beliefs and actions that will hold you back at work this year. Reading through this list and thinking about whether you’re a victim of these common habits is the first step toward ridding them from your life. Take a read and see if you identify with any of these bad habits.
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January 20, 2017
What’s Your Prospect’s Comfort Zone?
All sales professionals encounter resistance in one form or another from their prospects. Some people resist simply for the sake of resisting. However, most people resist because what you are proposing is beyond their comfort zone… and you haven’t given them a good enough reason to venture beyond that comfort zone.
Let’s say your prospect is reluctant to endorse an expense-reducing upgrade because the savings are not guaranteed. The risk that projected savings will not materialize puts the approval outside your prospect’s comfort zone.
What if you reframed the situation and positioned not doing the upgrade as something that might undermine your prospect’s standing in his/her organization? What if you offered evidence that his/her competitors were already successfully applying your solutions? Reframing the situation in this manner would likely give your prospect the incentive to venture beyond his/her comfort zone, because doing nothing has the potential for generating more criticism than approving your project after an appropriate amount of due diligence.
What did you do when you last encountered resistance? Did you take the time to understand the source of the resistance? Did the prospect have a suboptimal experience with your product (or a product like it)? And is your prospect certain that the product was the culprit? Could it have been the way the product was applied? I once heard a building manager vow that he’d never use occupancy sensors to control his restrooms’ lighting. When pressed for a reason, he said that more than a decade earlier, a (very poorly placed) occupancy sensor left him sitting in his stall in the dark, and he had to toss a roll of bathroom tissue to get the lights to turn on again! Do you really think the sensor was to blame?
By the way, services get black eyes as well. Your prospect may be soured on the whole energy-management theme because a decade ago her company hired an energy auditor who failed to find anything that could be remedied with a payback period of less than a year, and she incurred the wrath of her manager for wasting money on an audit that didn’t produce any savings.
Overcoming resistance in this case might involve asking to see the original audit report (check the qualifications of the auditor and see how robust the findings were) or revisiting each recommendation (perhaps the intersection of more affordable technologies and rising energy prices would make the upgrade more cost-effective today). Alternatively, you might help the prospect leave the “comfort zone” of a one-year payback and embrace better financial yardsticks (think life-cycle cost or savings-to-investment ratio).
Whether your prospect’s reluctance to proceed is rooted in fact or fiction, the goal is to make your prospect feel more comfortable. If they are out of their comfort zone, they’ll let you know. First, discover the boundaries of your prospect’s comfort zone. Then either sell within those boundaries or convince your prospect that it is worth venturing beyond them.
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January 19, 2017
Focus on Motivation
Do you ever wonder why energy-efficiency reports are so long? Moreover, do you ever wonder if anyone actually reads them?
Tony Robbins is fond of saying that the quality of your life is directly related to the quality of the questions you ask. So here’s a more useful question for you to consider…
Do you want your readers to learn something new and interesting or do you want them to be motivated to take action?
It is my studied observation over the last two decades that most people who intend to write efficiency proposals actually wind up writing reports instead. This causes them to adopt the persona of a “building scientist” or “educator” – as if their prospect actually had the time or even the interest to suffer through 100+ pages and learn some new information. One need only witness the infinitesimally small percentage of these reports that make it to implementation to realize that this is a broken model.
This topic of focusing on motivation rather than education should inform all of our outbound communications. Whether it’s a phone call, a voicemail, an email, a report, a proposal, or a presentation, first decide on the goal. What do you want your prospect to do in the end? If you identify your one primary intention, you’re ahead of the game. And if you continue coming back to that theme, as a piece of music always returns to its refrain, you will reinforce that primary intention and motivate your audience to take the action you desire.
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January 18, 2017
The Symphony of Selling
When planning your strategy for closing the complex sale, one of the first questions you need to ask is, “How many stakeholders will be involved in the buying process – either as an initiator, a gatekeeper, an influencer, a decision-maker, a procurement specialist, or an end user?” (Those six classifications are the subject of an insightful Harvard Business Review article called, “Major Sales: Who Really Does the Buying?”)
The next question you need to answer is, “What does each of these stakeholders value?”
The third question to ponder carefully is, “How can I reframe my proposal so that it resonates with those values?”
Pursuing these three steps in this order will equip you with the insights you need to soft-circle approval of all players before you seek to close the sale.
By the way, imagine what would happen if you didn’t take the time to understand what each of these people thought about energy efficiency. What if you did what most salespeople do and tried to sell a single stakeholder on the energy efficiency improvement? Ask yourself a simple question: Do you really want the success of your sales process to hinge on that one person’s ability to translate and communicate your value proposition to everybody else around that table? Realize that your internal champion cannot approve, fund and implement the project alone, so if you sidestep your responsibility to do all of the selling, your outcome will be entirely dependent on the uncertain ability of someone else to sell your project for you. Are you willing to take that risk?
Let’s assume you’re trying to sell an energy upgrade to a multi-tenant commercial building and your initial point of contact is the property manager. Few property managers can unilaterally decide to move forward with an energy project. The manager has to convince the budgeting folks to authorize the capital. He/she has to convince the engineering staff that the project will not have any deleterious impacts on the building’s mechanicals. The manager also needs to convince the tenants that any temporary inconvenience caused by the installation is worth enduring. If capital cost recovery language will be used to recoup the landlord’s investment in the upgrade by clawing back some or all of the utility savings, the tenants also need to be briefed on how that process will work. And they need to be assured that doing the project makes sense even though they may not see any real savings for several years while the resulting utility bill reductions are being diverted to amortize the first cost (plus interest in some cases).
Sales professionals are like symphony conductors. The quality of the music they produce is a direct consequence of the collaboration between their players. And the more they understand who those players are, what each values, and what each is capable of contributing, the sweeter their music (i.e., their revenues) will be.
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January 17, 2017
Take the Long View
It’s a lot easier to make additional sales to existing clients than it is to get new customers. I’m always amazed when I talk to entrepreneurs – they can tell you all about their lead generation and customer capture processes; however, as soon as you ask them about account development, they freeze. Account development is one of the most overlooked (and vital) aspects of running a successful business, and your revenues will skyrocket if you develop and follow a strategic plan.
Take solar sales, for example. You sell solar panels to a customer, and the panels are going to last 20 years. Maybe they’ll need to buy a replacement inverter five years down the road, and assuming they still remember you, they may ask you to replace it. However, are you going to wait for that service call, or wait until they need new panels in 20 years? You may be retired by then! Instead, you should collaborate with one or more noncompetitive vendors in energy efficiency to bring that customer (and every other one!) every efficiency solution under the sun (pun intended). By the way, it goes the other way as well… An efficiency customer could easily become a renewable energy customer if the transition is handled strategically.
In order to make a customer into a client, you really have to understand that there’s a path to chart what services they could be buying from you and where they start in the chain. If someone wants a new air-conditioning system because they think their building is too hot, a sales professional tuned to look for other opportunities would certainly not limit the investigation to the AC.
What recommendations would you make if you discover that in addition to having an obsolete and inefficient AC system, they’re using twice the watts per square foot that they should be for lighting? An “AC salesman” would disregard the lighting and try to sell that prospect a new AC system. A sales professional would certainly include the lighting retrofit in the discussion for at least two reasons. First, a lighting upgrade that reduces connected load (and associated heat) often makes a smaller AC system possible. Second, lighting upgrades often feature more attractive financial returns than AC replacements, which means that if the lighting and AC upgrades were combined into a single project, it would be easier to build a compelling case for approval.
The moral of the story? Rather than seizing the first opportunity to do business with a prospect, slow down and take the longer view. Doing so will not only increase your revenues, but also ensure that your prospects will turn into clients instead of customers.
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January 16, 2017
How Improvisation Reverses “No, But” Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration
No sales professional wants his or her customers to be unhappy. It’s bad for business. However, I believe you should expect and pay very close attention to customer complaints and feedback in order to earn their trust and build rapport.
A recent article in Success Magazine suggests “11 Ways Master Entrepreneurs Make Unhappy Customers Happy.” If you need to turn things around with a customer, take the time this weekend to read the article and put these strategies into practice to show they are a valued customer.
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January 15, 2017
Weekly Recap, January 15, 2017
Monday: Read Judgment Calls: 12 Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams That Got Them Right, by Thomas H. Davenport and Brook Manville, if you are in a leadership position.
Tuesday: Learn how to reframe the benefits for small businesses.
Wednesday: Discover how you might approach a prospect who decides to drop a project or go with a different vendor and learn from your losses.
Thursday: Explore how “real talk” is more powerful than “small talk”.
Friday: Schedule a follow-up meeting in person at the conclusion of your meeting with a prospect.
Saturday: If you need to turn things around with a customer, check out an article published in Success Magazine on “11 Ways Master Entrepreneurs Make Unhappy Customers Happy.”
Selling Energy Blog
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January 14, 2017
11 Ways to Make Unhappy Customers Happy
No sales professional wants his or her customers to be unhappy. It’s bad for business. However, I believe you should expect and pay very close attention to customer complaints and feedback in order to earn their trust and build rapport.
A recent article in Success Magazine suggests “11 Ways Master Entrepreneurs Make Unhappy Customers Happy.” If you need to turn things around with a customer, take the time this weekend to read the article and put these strategies into practice to show they are a valued customer.
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January 13, 2017
Schedule Follow-up Meeting In Person
At the conclusion of your first meeting with a prospect, do you schedule a follow-up visit before you leave… or do you wait and do it over the phone later? In my experience, it’s best to schedule the next session before you leave. Why? The fact that they set up an appointment with you in the first place demonstrates that they clearly have an interest in your product or service and a desire to improve their efficiency or cut energy costs. If you wait, you give your prospect time to second-guess the urgency of your offering, you risk playing phone tag, and you may wind up losing the sale. Of course, if the first meeting resulted in a resounding “No,” you’re probably better off cutting your losses and focusing on a fresh prospect.
In his book “The 25 Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople,” Stephan Schiffman lists some common excuses salespeople make for not scheduling a follow-up meeting in person:
“I can’t ask for the appointment; I don’t know when I’ll be back in the area.”
“I can’t ask for the appointment; I don’t know how long it will take me to write the proposal.”
“I can’t ask for the appointment; I don’t have a quote ready for the prospect yet.”
“I can’t ask for the appointment; he may not want to give it to me.”
If you find yourself making any of these excuses, get yourself into the habit of scheduling your follow-up visits in-person.
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January 12, 2017
The “Real Talk” Approach
Let’s assume you’re meeting a new prospect for your efficiency offerings. What steps should you take to ensure that you’re as prepared as possible for a meaningful discussion that produces an actionable outcome?
For most “salespeople,” the answer is some variant of the following four steps: 1) Show up for the meeting. 2) Ask predictable opening questions to assess the prospect’s needs and/or interest in your offering. 3) Modify your “pitch” based on the answers you hear in Step 2. 4) Hope for the best.
If I had to describe the above-referenced approach in two words, it would be “winging it.”
Unfortunately, “winging it” most often produces suboptimal results. It squanders valuable meeting time on questions that could have (should have) been answered with a little pre-meeting research. Moreover, it gives the salesperson very little time to customize his/her approach to capitalize on the prospect’s answers.
Sales professionals approach this challenge differently. They take the time to research their prospect before the meeting. Where does the organization stand when it comes to improving its energy efficiency? Which players’ cooperation will you need? Construction? Design? Finance? Maintenance? Sustainability? What names are associated with each of those roles? How well do they work together? Do they have a reputation for working well together or hiding in their respective silos?
How do you acquire such insights? Talk to people in your network who may know them. Look them up on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. Google them thoroughly, looking for articles they have written, or articles in which they’ve been quoted. Look for committees on which they serve, national associations to which they belong, things that have been said about them in the news. Simply put, look for any information that helps you understand their backgrounds, preferences, biases toward or against enhanced efficiency, etc. Pay particular attention to anything that provides insight into the personalities involved. The information you assemble becomes the fodder for what I call “real talk” once you get face to face with the prospect.
Let me give you a real-life example. A couple years ago, one of my larger utility clients asked me reach out to a customer who controlled a large portfolio of high-energy-intensity buildings. The utility had noted that although this portfolio had tremendous potential for upgrades, it had not participated in any of the utility’s rebate or incentive programs. The utility thought that if I met with this company’s CEO, I could help them understand why efficiency had not been a higher priority for this customer.
So what did I do? The night before my scheduled meeting with the CEO, I did some research. In just a couple hours, I discovered that he was a larger-than-life character with a somewhat checkered past. In fact, he had gotten into some real “urinary Olympics” with neighbors and code officials alike. A common theme emerged from all of the articles I read: this CEO was an absolute megalomaniac. It’s not uncommon for a real estate CEO to be a megalomaniac. It takes a lot of drive and ego to build the sort of specialty portfolio that this man now controlled.
The following day, I drove to the customer’s headquarters to meet with the CEO. The traffic was terrible. It was raining so hard, if I had been Noah I would have started building my Ark! Oh, and just to make things more interesting, the headquarters was surrounded by multiple construction zones, which eliminated virtually all of the street parking.
Fortunately, I always try to arrive 30 minutes early, so even with the traffic, weather and parking challenges, I still arrived on time. What happened next was a direct result of the research I had done the night before.
I walked into the boardroom where the CEO had just finished an earlier meeting. Did I complain about the weather? No. Did I kvetch about the lack of parking? No. Did I talk about anything other than him? No. The first thing I said was, “John (not his real name), I really like what you said last April about the resilience of your property type in today’s real estate economy.” He smiled broadly and asked, “What did I say?” I replied, “You said that regardless of the state of the economy, your particular property type would escape unscathed because there’s consistent need for the kind of facilities you specialize in. And you know something? You’re absolutely right. My partners and I had a two-million-square-foot portfolio in Southern California in the late Eighties, and because of how careful we were in selecting properties, we effectively insulated ourselves from the economic hardships that defined the early Nineties.” He said (still beaming), “Where did I say that?” I said, “I think it was the Business Journal last April.” He said, “Oh yeah, I remember that interview. Come in, sit down. What did you want to chat about today?”
So what happened in those first couple seconds? My hunch is that he expected some energy-efficiency geek to arrive with an armful of utility brochures on rebates/incentives. Instead, he was pleasantly surprised to meet a peer, someone who really understood his industry… and perhaps more importantly, someone who respected him as a savvy real estate investor.
He probably appreciated the fact that I had taken the time to research and remember what he had said in an interview.
Those first few minutes of “real talk” framed the conversation we were about to have on the important role that energy efficiency could play in making his portfolio even more valuable.
True sales professionals are astute enough to realize that traffic, weather, parking or similar small talk wastes valuable “first impression” time. They realize how powerful “real talk” can be in setting the stage for a productive meeting. Moreover, they’re willing to invest the time up front to ensure that the “real talk” is absolutely spot-on.
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