Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 263

Business Etiquette

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I talk a lot about the importance of rapport building on this blog. One of the aspects of rapport building that is often overlooked in the discussion is etiquette. You may be very personable, funny, and likeable; however, etiquette blunders have the potential to damage good rapport. 

For those of you thinking, “I already have good manners…I don’t need to work on etiquette,” I think you’ll be surprised to know that business etiquette goes far beyond table manners, handshakes, and eye contact. Different situations call for different actions, and the way in which you conduct yourself in one situation may be very different from the way in which you conduct yourself in another. One of my favorite books on the subject of business etiquette is called The Etiquette Advantage in Business, by Peggy Post and Peter Post. This book covers everything from simple email etiquette to international travel. 

Here’s a summary from Amazon Books: 

“As today's workplace becomes increasingly more competitive, knowing how to behave can make the difference between getting ahead and getting left behind. In The Etiquette Advantage in Business, 2nd Edition, etiquette authorities Peggy Post and Peter Post provide you with the all-important tools for building solid, productive relationships with your business associates -- relationships that will help propel you and your company straight to the top. 

“In this completely revised and updated edition, which includes three new chapters on ethics, table manners, and electronic communication, the Posts show you how to handle both everyday and unusual situations that are essential to professional and personal success -- from resolving business conflicts with ease and grace to getting along with your boss and coworkers; from making long-lasting contacts to winning clients and closing deals. They also offer up-to-date guidance on pressing issues such as harassment in the workplace, worker privacy, e-mail dos and don'ts, and knowing how and when to shoulder blame. 

“Written for business workers of all types and backgrounds, The Etiquette Advantage in Business remains the definitive resource for timeless advice on business entertaining, written communication, dressing appropriately for any business occasion, conventions and trade shows, job searches and interviews, gift-giving, and overseas travel. 

“No matter the situation in which you find yourself, the Posts will give you the confidence to meet the challenges of the work world with confidence and poise – because today, more than ever, good manners mean good business.”

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Weekly Recap, September 4, 2016

 



  
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Monday: Read one of my favorite self-help books  Heavy Hitter Selling: How Successful Salespeople Use Language and Intuition to Persuade Customers to Buy , by Steve W. Martin, and find real-world case studies, examples, and exercises on how you can achieve and maintain a high level of sales success.


Tuesday: Looking to build your existing energy-efficiency business?


Wednesday: Learn how to be prepared for the objection "We don't have the budget for it."  


Thursday: Use "challenger selling" to listen to what the prospect says they think they want and reframe the offering to see a path toward something that is actually in their best interest. 


Friday: Explore an education angle when reframing a residential efficiency project to your prospect.


Saturday: Read this article published in FastCompany on "The Truth About Standing Desks and Productivity." 

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Truth About Standing Desks

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There are countless techniques or methods to increase productivity. I am always open to trying new productivity techniques and have dozens of tricks that I use on a daily basis. It’s great to test out new methods; however, some may or may not work. 

I came across an article published in FastCompany on “The Truth About Standing Desks and Productivity.” According to a recent study by Texas A&M University’s Health Science Center School of Public Health, these popular desks improved productivity. However, their study was far from a homerun given that no historical data was used as a baseline. While standing desks may promote happiness in the workplace and be better for your health, they might not directly benefit a worker’s productivity. If you’re interested in a standing desk, I encourage you to read this article.

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Reframing the Savings in a Residential Setting

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Selling efficiency in a residential setting has its own set of challenges. In many cases, the energy savings are not particularly compelling on paper. It can be difficult to convince a homeowner to invest time and resources to pursue an efficiency project that will not produce huge savings. In past blogs I’ve mentioned plenty of different angles you might choose to take when reframing an efficiency project. Today, let’s explore an education angle. 

Suppose your prospect is a young couple with a newborn. Based on your calculations, the project you intend to sell them will lower their utility bill by about $100 a month. $100 is not a very large amount of money these days. Coffee drinkers can easily spend that and more each month on their daily cup from Starbucks. Bottom line, it’s not a very compelling figure, so you have to find a way to reframe it. 

You could say, “You’ll save $100 a month if you approve this project.” Compelling? Not really. What if instead you said, “If you use the $100 per month savings we’re projecting to start a college fund for your new baby, by the time she’s ready to apply you will have saved over $20,000 that you can use to help pay for her first year. In fact, that college fund should grow much faster considering that energy prices are likely to rise significantly between now and then, which will increase your monthly savings. Wouldn’t it feel great to have a $20,000 or more head start on funding your daughter’s higher education? Oh and by the way, we’re talking about saving more than $20,000 after-tax.” 

What you’ve done is turned $100 into a far more significant amount of money that actually has the potential to affect your prospect’s family in a positive way. You should always be on the lookout for creative ways to reframe savings – particularly when the savings are not necessarily very compelling on their own. This reinforces the fact that it’s crucial you gain knowledge about your prospect before you propose a project. Simply knowing that your prospect has a newborn (as in this example) gives you the leverage you need to reframe potential utility savings in a powerful way.

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Be the Challenger

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In the weeklong Efficiency Sales Professional Certificate™ Boot Camp, we talk a lot about “challenger selling.” If you’ve read The Challenger Sale, by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, you are familiar with this concept. (By the way, this is one of my favorite books and is on the “required readings” list for the ESP Boot Camp course.) For those of you who don’t know about challenger selling, a challenger is someone who listens to what the prospect says they think they want and then reframes the offering to allow them to see a path toward something that is actually in their better interest. 

The Challenger Sale was the product of years of research where they studied several hundred organizations and identified more than 40 personality characteristics of their salespeople. They then clustered these characteristics into five archetypal profiles of salespeople: the relationship-builder, the hard-worker, the reactive problem-solver, the lone wolf, and the challenger. 

Whenever I teach the topic of challenger selling, I always ask the audience, “Which one of those archetypal sales types would likely have the highest percentage of high-performing sales professionals?” In most cases, people vote for the relationship-builder. Why do so many people think relationship selling is most effective? Because it’s so ingrained in sales culture that sales are made based on relationships and they’re lost based on price. Frankly, neither of these is true. 

I believe that successful relationships are the result of successful selling, not the other way around. I also believe that price should not be the arbiter, and if it is the arbiter, you're talking about the wrong things. Build good rapport with all of your prospects and customers, and use challenger selling to convey the true value of your product or service.

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We Don’t Have the Budget

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“We don’t have the budget for it.” Sound familiar? I’m sure many of you have come across this objection when trying to get efficiency projects approved. It’s true that many organizations don’t have a budget specifically for efficiency; however, there are many ways to fund efficiency improvements, and you need to be prepared to put those options on the table the minute your prospect expresses this concern.

 

The first question you want to ask your prospect in this situation is: “What budget are you referencing – capital or operating?” You want to make it clear that your prospect is spending plenty of money now (on unnecessarily large utility bills) and that you may be able to repurpose those dollars to cover the debt service to purchase new, efficient equipment with no additional monthly outlay – and perhaps even wind up with positive cash flow each month. Put another way, if they have budget to pay for overly large utility bills each month, they have the budget to finance the solution – provided they are credit-worthy, of course.

 

We mentioned loans, leases, and performance contracting earlier this month. In case you missed those blogs, you can view them here: Funding Efficiency Improvements, Part One and Funding Efficiency Improvements, Part Two. Ultimately, there’s almost always a way to come up with the capital necessary for efficiency improvements. Don’t walk away when your prospect tells you he or she doesn’t have the budget. Sometimes it’s as simple as moving dollars from one budget line item (“Utilities”) to another (“Debt Service on New Efficient Equipment”).

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How to Get Your Foot in the Door

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As I’m sure many of you know, in addition to efficiency-focused professional sales training, I also teach benchmarking workshops (both online and in-person). One of the workshops I teach is called, “Leveraging Benchmarking to Build Your Business.” As the title suggests, offering a benchmarking service is a fantastic way to build your existing energy-efficiency business. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s a great way to get your foot in the door with new prospects. 

There’s simply not enough space on this blog to go into all of the content of the workshop; however, I’d like to share with you a hypothetical scenario that demonstrates how offering to perform ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager® benchmarking can lead to new business. For the sake of example, suppose you are talking to a prospect that you met at a networking event… 

Prospect: “Well, we kind of have our energy stuff under control.”

You: “What do you mean by that?”

Prospect: “We’re already energy-efficient.”

You: “How do you mean?” 

[Notice that I’m using very open-ended questions. This allows you to get as much detail from your prospect as possible.] 

Prospect: “We’ve had a very capable third-party property manager in charge of the building over the last five years and I think he’s got his eye on the ball in terms of the utility bills, and I bet he’s done some stuff for us to control our energy use.”

You: “You know, it’s interesting. If your building is as efficient as you think it is – and I have no reason to doubt that you’re right – it would probably qualify to receive an ENERGY STAR® building label. Have you benchmarked the building yet?”

Prospect: “No, what’s that all about?”

You: “The ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool has been around since the late Nineties, and over a quarter of a million buildings have been benchmarked using it. The top performing buildings receive the ENERGY STAR label. If your building is as efficient as you say it is – and again, I have no reason to doubt that – you may be in the 75th (or higher) percentile of energy performance when all other normalizing factors are taken into account. At that point, you would qualify for the prestigious ENERGY STAR label. Perhaps you’ve seen it on some of your neighbors’ buildings. The label itself looks similar to the ENERGY STAR labels that the most efficient appliances sport.”

Prospect: “Yeah, I think I’ve seen a couple of those blue stickers around the neighborhood.”

You: “Yep, those are the ones. All you have to do is score among the top 25% most efficient buildings and you get that sticker of recognition.”

Prospect: “How much does it cost?”

You: “Well, I’d be willing to benchmark the building at no cost as a courtesy to get to know you and your operation and so that you can see how we work. If we do find that you have a score of 75 or higher, then we’d have to hire someone else (a licensed professional engineer or registered architect) to verify that the data we put into the tool was accurately entered, and assuming it was, you would receive your ENERGY STAR label shortly thereafter.” 

Now, assuming your prospect takes you up on the offer, you’re most likely going to find out that they are not, in fact, an ENERGY STAR-qualifying building. In that case, you’ll go back to them with something like this: 

You: “Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”

Prospect: “The bad news!”

You: “The bad news is that you’re not quite an ENERGY STAR-qualifying building yet. However, the good news is that you are a 68, and on the ENERGY STAR scale, that’s only 7 points shy of the 75 that you need to get the label. After chatting with your engineering staff, office manager and other people who are familiar with how the building is operated and configured, I have reason to believe that there are a few things we could do fairly inexpensively so that this time next year you’d actually have an ENERGY STAR-qualifying score. Would you be interested in exploring some of those improvement options?” 

And there you have it! If your prospect is wise, he or she would be open to a discussion, and you would be the first-choice vendor or service provider for a brand-new, ENERGY STAR label-motivated, energy-efficiency campaign.

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How Successful Salespeople Use Language and Intuition to Persuade Customers to Buy

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There’s no single formula that turns a salesperson into a successful sales professional. What is common among the best sales professionals, however, is their ability to combine proven sales strategies with their own strengths to produce an individual selling style that is effective in their market. 

Because selling is such an individualized thing, I am a big fan of self-help books. They allow you to apply proven techniques to the framework of your own life and your own target market. One of my favorite self-help books is Heavy Hitter Selling: How Successful Salespeople Use Language and Intuition to Persuade Customers to Buy, by Steve W. Martin. I highly recommend reading this book and doing the exercises. 

Here’s a summary from Amazon Books: 

“The best salespeople are those ‘Heavy Hitters’ who are able to use human nature, language, and intuition to build trusting relationships with customers and persuade them to buy. Based on his proven and effective sales program, author Steve Martin explains how you too can achieve and maintain that high level of sales success. Using real-world case studies, examples, and exercises, Martin provides the psychological, physical, and language-based tactics you need to turn yourself into a Heavy Hitter. 

“Inside, you'll find proven guidance and expert tips on:

Understanding how people think and communicate
Finding the right words at the right time
Predicting a customer's behavior and influencing his thoughts
Building customer rapport and understanding their motivations
Persuading both the customer's rational mind and his emotional subconscious side”

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Weekly Recap, August 28, 2016

 



  
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Monday: Read one of my favorite books  Confessions of a Public Speaker , by Scott Berkun, and explore public speaking techniques.


Tuesday: Funding efficiency improvements - Part 1. 


Wednesday: Funding efficiency improvements - Part 2. 


Thursday: Before stepping into a meeting, be more prepared than you think to ensure you're equipped with tools to tackle any situation.   


Friday: Are you putting your project in front of the right people?


Saturday: Read this article by Lifehack with essential lists for productivity. 

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Essential Lists for Productivity

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As we all know, the to-do list is one of the most valuable tools for increasing productivity and staying on task. There are many ways to optimize your to-do list, and it’s important to find an organizational method that works for you.

 

I found an article published by Lifehack with essential lists for productivity. The article suggests creating templates for recurring projects and context-specific action lists. If your system isn’t working, read this article for more details.

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