Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 268
July 17, 2016
Weekly Recap, July 17, 2016
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Monday: Read the book What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful, by Marshall Goldsmith, and explore some bad habits of successful people and how to overcome them.
Tuesday: Paint a new picture for the prospect or customer with unrealistic expectations.
Wednesday: Check out 7 practical tips to stay positive.
Thursday: Understand all the different values and decision-making drivers when selling expense-reducing capital projects.
Friday: Learn ways to dispel the it's too small objection.
Saturday: Check out this article from the HubSpot blog on "12 Bad Habits That Are Killing Your Productivity."
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July 16, 2016
12 Bad Habits to Break
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You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t have any bad habits. Why, you ask? Because habits are extraordinarily difficult to break! Many of our bad habits have a detrimental effect on our productivity at work. The Hubspot blog recently published an infographic about 12 habits that you should change to be more productive – both eliminating bad ones and adopting good ones. Take a read and see what you think.
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July 15, 2016
It's Too Small
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Have you ever been in a situation where a prospect doesn’t want to approve an efficiency project because they think it’s too small? Maybe the prospect says they want to wait until they do a major retrofit of the whole building before making any changes? This is a fairly common objection, and it’s one that you should be prepared to dispel at a moment’s notice.
In my experience, it’s best to reframe the situation by talking about tenant turnover. Think about this: The average lease is anywhere from three to seven years depending on the market and the country, and this means that the building is going to completely change occupancy in “x” number of years.
You could say something like, “If you never focus on energy efficiency in the context of any of the smaller retrofits when you have a change of tenants, when are you going to do it? You’ll never throw all the tenants out of the building, so if you decide to focus on energy efficient retrofits when each tenant rolls over, then by the time five or so years go by, you’ll have a totally renovated and energy efficient building.”
Ideally, you will also come to the meeting prepared with some financials that show the cost of delay. If you can make a case like the one above and back it up with compelling financials, your prospect would be foolish to say “no!”
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July 14, 2016
Selling Expense-Reducing Capital Projects
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What’s one of the first questions you need to ask yourself before attempting to sell an expense-reducing capital project? “Is the prospect an owner-occupant, a landlord, or a tenant?” Why? Because each of those parties has entirely different values and decision-making drivers.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard an efficiency expert returning from the field after having met with an income-producing property owner, totally aghast at the outcome of the interaction. “We did all this work to show him how he could save so much energy in his building, and at the end of the presentation, all he said was that we should show the proposal to his tenants because they were the ones who would benefit!”
Income properties are prime targets for energy efficiency retrofits. Why? To use a phrase that my friend Bob Sauchelli of the US EPA coined when we worked together back in the ‘90s to roll out ENERGY STAR® for Commercial Real Estate, “The building is the business.” In an owner-occupied building, the owner must pay the payroll of everyone who works in that building. In an income property, the landlord is only responsible for a few heads – the engineers, the property manager, the porter, etc. He’s certainly not paying the payroll for everybody who occupies the building. That means that while payroll is likely the largest expense for the typical tenant, it’s likely one of the smallest for the typical landlord.
In fact, if you look at the Building Owners and Managers Association’s Experience Exchange Report, which summarizes operating expenses for a wide variety of building categories across the country each year, you’ll likely find that utilities (which admittedly covers more than just energy) is the typical landlord’s largest controllable operating expense. Notice that I say "controllable," as opposed to “uncontrollable” (e.g., real estate taxes and insurance).
Keep in mind that just because utilities are the largest controllable operating expense, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the landlord pays that cost without recourse. In fact, in most buildings, some or all of that expense is redistributed to the tenants based on each tenant’s rentable square footage percentage or some other protocol.
It’s vital that you understand exactly how much of the utility cost the landlord is presently responsible for, and how the proposed energy measure would impact that number. That is where the gold nuggets are buried, particularly in cases where a lion’s share of the efficiency savings would inure to the benefit of the landlord, increasing not only his net operating income, but also his property’s appraised value.
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July 13, 2016
7 Tips to Achieve a Positive Mindset
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Last week, I wrote a blog about the importance of eliminating negativity and maintaining a positive mindset for improved sales performance (see “Benefits of a Positive Mindset”). As much as we would all prefer to eliminate negativity from our lives altogether, it’s easier said than done! If you want to retrain your mind – particularly the subconscious mind – you have to make a conscious effort to practice on a regular basis.
I found a great article in Success Magazine with tips to stay positive. I highly recommend reading the article and putting the "power of positive thinking" into practice.
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July 12, 2016
Paint A New Picture
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One of the most common roadblocks to a successful sale (that I’m sure many of you have run into) is the prospect or customer with unrealistic expectations. People have a tendency to expect things to be the same as they’ve always been.
This idea reminds me of a story about a little girl who goes to the multi-generational Easter dinner and the mother is cooking ham for the family and cuts the end of the ham off, puts the ham in the pan, and puts the pan in the oven. The little girl says, “Mommy, why do you always cut off the end of the ham before you put it in the pan and put it in the oven?” She says, “I don’t know, that’s what my mommy always did. Say, Grandma’s out in the parlor talking to your sister. Why don’t you go out and ask her?”
She goes out and asks, “Grandma, why does mommy always cut off the end of the ham before she puts it in the pan and puts it in the oven?” Grandma says, “I don’t know, honey, that’s the way I always saw my mommy do it. She’s outside with the dog. Why don’t you ask her?”
So the little girl trundles out to the yard and says, “Great Grandma, why does everybody in this family cut off the end of the ham before they put it in the pan, before they put it in the oven?” Great Grandma says, “I don’t know, child, I did it because the ham didn’t fit in my pan!”
What does this story teach us? It teaches us that people often make decisions based on what they’re accustomed to…without grounding those decisions in reality. When it comes to justifying an efficiency project financially, this can be a problem for us as sales professionals. You may have prospects tell you that they’ll only do a project with a payback of two years or less, for example. Why do they have such unrealistic expectations? Probably because they were doing business in the ‘80s when the prime rate hit 21 percent. It’s your job to paint a new picture for them – to be the “Great Grandma” who reveals the reason for their unrealistic expectations and explains why they shouldn’t dismiss your proposal.
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July 11, 2016
How Successful People Become Even More Successful
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Sales success often comes in waves. In the wake of a “great sales month,” many salespeople begin to relax, assuming that their success will simply continue in the same fashion. What often results, however, is a slump in sales performance. The panic that ensues reinvigorates the salesperson, after which his or her performance begins to rise once again.
If you examine this phenomenon in a context larger than sales performance, you’ll see that complacency and overconfidence can adversely affect all aspects of your success. So how do you avoid falling prey to the tendency to rest on your laurels? Marshall Goldsmith, in his book What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful, explores some of the bad habits that stifle the continued success of many successful people. He also suggests seven steps to overcome these habits and realize your true potential.
Here’s a summary from Amazon Books:
“America’s most sought-after executive coach shows how to climb the last few rungs of the ladder.
“The corporate world is filled with executives, men and women who have worked hard for years to reach the upper levels of management. They’re intelligent, skilled, and even charismatic. But only a handful of them will ever reach the pinnacle -- and as executive coach Marshall Goldsmith shows in this book, subtle nuances make all the difference. These are small ‘transactional flaws’ performed by one person against another (as simple as not saying thank you enough), which lead to negative perceptions that can hold any executive back. Using Goldsmith’s straightforward, jargon-free advice, it’s amazingly easy behavior to change.”
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July 10, 2016
Weekly Recap, July 10, 2016
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Monday: Read the bestselling book Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness, by Jeffrey Gitomer, and learn how to overcome your fear of rejection, how to avoid arguing about price, how to use passion to your advantage, and much more.
Tuesday: Be sure to include both "popular" and "proper" metrics on financial analysis spreadsheets.
Wednesday: Explore the habits of the most successful networkers.
Thursday: Before you approach a proposect, come up with an accurate estimate of old vs. new maintenance costs.
Friday: Do yourself a favor and sign up for Seth Godin's marketing blog.
Saturday: Check out this article from Lifehack blog on "10 one-minute time hacks that will make you more productive".
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July 9, 2016
10 One-Minute Time Hacks
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In order to boost your productivity, you need to make an active effort to modify your habits and routines. This effort generally requires some upfront investment of time. While the “ROI” of productivity-boosting efforts is significant, people who are most in need of help are often the ones who don’t have time to invest in the first place.
For those of you who are strapped for time and don’t have the patience to navigate complex and time-consuming productivity changes, check out this article from the LifeHack blog. They recommend 10 one-minute time hacks that will help boost your overall productivity. Even if you don’t have ten minutes to spare, I’m sure you can afford to test out one or two of these this weekend.
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July 8, 2016
Do Yourself a Favor
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How often do you read blogs and online publications related to sales and marketing (aside from this one, of course)? In my experience, most people do not feed their minds with sales material on a regular basis. And it’s a shame, because it’s not as if you have to spend a lot of money to do so. Thanks to the immense reach of the Internet, you can find a wealth of free resources for staying motivated and on top of your game.
One of my favorite resources is Seth Godin’s blog. Seth is a marketing genius. He's written best sellers on consumer marketing and similar topics. I particularly enjoy exploring concepts that he writes about and overlaying them onto the energy efficiency sales world because a lot of it is universal human psychology and can be applied to our industry. I highly recommend checking out Seth’s blog (and signing up for email updates so you don’t miss a beat).
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