Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 271
June 17, 2016
Time = Money
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One of the biggest roadblocks in getting efficiency projects approved is time. Busy people place a high value on their time, and even the most compelling value proposition can be shot down if the project requires too much investment of time and effort from the buyer.
One of our Efficiency Sales Professional Boot Camp graduates took this idea to heart and developed a business plan that would save his customers time and effort, making the decision to buy a no-brainer. He created a website that makes it easy to be in compliance with the city of San Francisco’s benchmarking ordinance, which requires buildings over a certain size to be benchmarked and audited periodically. Businesses that don’t have a director of sustainability or know the first thing about benchmarking can go to the website, watch a short video, swipe their card, and streamline the whole process. On top of it all, he optimized the site so that it is extremely easy to find when searching the web for benchmarking services in San Francisco. As you can imagine, the venture has seen great success.
I encourage you all to think about creative new ways to save your prospects and customers time and effort. Combine that with a compelling value proposition and your prospects will have no reason not to buy.
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June 16, 2016
Body Language Mistakes
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If you’ve attended one of my sales trainings or are a frequent reader of my blog, you’ve likely heard me talk about how to read body language clues and micro-facial expressions. You can learn so much about what your prospect is thinking by noticing their subconscious physical movements and expressions. The way in which you present yourself physically can have a major effect on your ability to engage and persuade them.
If you’re wondering what gestures not to use in your next presentation, flip through this slideshow published on Inc.com titled, “21 Common Body Language Mistakes Even Smart People Make.” Try testing these out on your friends and colleagues and perhaps you will start to see a pattern and gradually become more adept at recognizing body language clues.
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June 15, 2016
What's Your Focus?
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When you approach a prospect with a new project, you have a very limited amount of time to convince them that your product or service is a worthy investment of their time and money. For this reason, it’s vital that you decide ahead of time what you’re going to focus the conversation on. You can introduce your product or service in terms of its features, benefits, and/or value. Which of these should you focus on? Which of these is most likely to capture the attention of your prospect? Let’s use an energy management system as an example:
What are the features? It can track up to “x” thousand control points; it handles minute modulations of temperature; it monitors and controls building loads.
What are the benefits? You can facilitate commissioning; you can provide visibility of equipment; you can gain insight into occupant comfort; you can enable automated demand response strategies in territories where it’s actually economically worthwhile.
What’s the value? The public sees that you’re a green company; you have a better handle on comfort and control; your occupants are happier, more productive, and more likely to stay; you get the ability to brag about an amenity that your neighboring buildings don’t have.
After reading the features, benefits, and value of this hypothetical energy management system, which category do you think a potential buyer would be most interested in discussing? I can confidently tell you that most people aren’t going to buy the energy management system because of its features or benefits. Why? They lack emotional appeal. Remember, most decisions are made emotionally and then justified financially. If you can connect the product or service with something that the prospect truly values and desires, you’ll be miles ahead of the salesperson that squanders valuable selling time discussing technical specs and simple benefits.
Love one of our blogs? Feel free to use an excerpt on your own site, newsletter, blog, etc. Just be sure to send us a copy or link, and include the following at the end of the excerpt: “By Mark Jewell, Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! This content is excerpted from the Sales Ninja blog, Mark Jewell's daily blog on ideas and inspiration for advancing efficiency. Sign up at SellingEnergy.com.”
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June 14, 2016
It's Too Simple
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Simple Payback Period (SPP) is a metric that all too many prospects are tempted to use when deciding whether or not to fund an expense-reducing capital project. As many of you already know, I am not a big fan of SPP. In most cases, it’s far too simple a tool to evaluate proposed projects accurately. Here’s an example where relying on SPP along would clearly steer you wrong:
Assume a landlord realizes that he’s paying too much for utilities in his master-metered, gross-leased building. He’s considering investing $1.00 per square foot in an expense-reducing capital project that is projected to produce $0.25 per square foot in utility savings. One would be tempted to say that the arrangement would be a four-year payback, right? Well, maybe not. It would be a four-year payback based on utility cost savings alone. However, what if the landlord planned to have the building appraised the very next year for refinance or sale?
Guess what? The extra $0.25 a square foot in utility savings would increase the landlord’s net operating income by that same amount, but the bigger news would be that now the appraiser could justify adding an extra $2.50 per square foot to the property’s value. Why? Because $0.25 divided by an assumed cap rate of 10% increases the value of the building by $2.50 using the Direct Capitalization variety of the Income Approach to Appraisal. That bump in value equates to two and a half times the installation cost!
That said, the fact that the higher appraised value doesn’t happen in the first year would place it outside the realm of the simple payback period calculation, which only focuses on cash flows that occur in Year 1.
What if the landlord is laboring under the impression that the investment would have a four-year payback when in actuality, he would enjoy two and half times his money back as soon as he had the building reappraised? Focusing on the simple payback period and remaining blind to the most important part of the equation – the potential bump in appraised value – could lead a landlord to make the wrong decision.
So what’s the moral of the story? Take a look at the bigger picture before you present a financial analysis to your prospect. Show them why it doesn’t make sense to evaluate their investment with something as simple as simple payback period.
Love one of our blogs? Feel free to use an excerpt on your own site, newsletter, blog, etc. Just be sure to send us a copy or link, and include the following at the end of the excerpt: “By Mark Jewell, Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! This content is excerpted from the Sales Ninja blog, Mark Jewell's daily blog on ideas and inspiration for advancing efficiency. Sign up at SellingEnergy.com.”
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June 13, 2016
9 Biggest Sales Presentation Mistakes
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When it comes to presentations, the difference between “good” and “great” can make or break the sale. This is the reason I address presentation techniques so frequently on this blog… and why I encourage all of my students to dedicate a significant amount of time to honing their presentation skills.
If you’re interested in improving your performance, I highly recommend reading New Sales Speak: The 9 Biggest Sales Presentation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them, by Terri L. Sjodin. As the title suggests, this book analyzes nine of the most common mistakes that people make in the presentation setting, and it provides a bunch of tips on how to improve your performance.
Here’s a summary from Amazon Books:
“Written for anyone who gives presentations, New Sales Speak, Second Edition identifies the nine most common mistakes people make when presenting and shows you how to avoid them. Inside, you'll learn how to: build and deliver a presentation that is persuasive rather than just informative; make the best use of your allotted time and craft interest-generating elevator speeches; just say "No!" to boring PowerPoint presentations; transform fear into energy; and more!”
Love one of our blogs? Feel free to use an excerpt on your own site, newsletter, blog, etc. Just be sure to send us a copy or link, and include the following at the end of the excerpt: “By Mark Jewell, Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! This content is excerpted from the Sales Ninja blog, Mark Jewell's daily blog on ideas and inspiration for advancing efficiency. Sign up at SellingEnergy.com.”
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June 12, 2016
Weekly Recap, June 12, 2016
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Monday: Read the bestselling book Hope Is Not a Strategy: The 6 Keys to Winning the Complex Sale, by Rick Page, and learn how to assess and overcome the barriers of the complex sale.
Tuesday: Check out the 7-step referral checklist that top salespeople use to close more business.
Wednesday: Demonstrate your expertise and set yourself apart from your competition.
Thursday: Explore practices that make it easier to communicate and collaborate with remote teammates.
Friday: Read this story and learn how to reframe your offerings so that they resonate with what your prospects are truly seeking.
Saturday: Take a look at this article published on the Hubspot blog with 7 of the most interesting podcasts about productivity.
Love one of our blogs? Feel free to use an excerpt on your own site, newsletter, blog, etc. Just be sure to send us a copy or link, and include the following at the end of the excerpt: “By Mark Jewell, Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! This content is excerpted from the Sales Ninja blog, Mark Jewell's daily blog on ideas and inspiration for advancing efficiency. Sign up at SellingEnergy.com.”
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June 11, 2016
7 Most Interesting Podcasts About Productivity
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It’s hard to find time during the workday to keep up with industry trends and to learn about new ways of increasing productivity. Podcasts are a fun and relaxing solution to this problem. Whether you’re commuting to work or lounging on the couch after a hard day, you can listen to podcasts and learn from experts around the world.
Hubspot blog recently shared great podcast episodes about productivity. If you’re looking for advice or a great interview, I highly recommend checking them out.
Love one of our blogs? Feel free to use an excerpt on your own site, newsletter, blog, etc. Just be sure to send us a copy or link, and include the following at the end of the excerpt: “By Mark Jewell, Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! This content is excerpted from the Sales Ninja blog, Mark Jewell's daily blog on ideas and inspiration for advancing efficiency. Sign up at SellingEnergy.com.”
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June 10, 2016
Reframing Efficiency
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They say repetition is the mother of learning. You’ve probably heard me say more than once that one of the most valuable traits of an efficiency sales professional is the ability to reframe efficiency so that it can be measured with yardsticks that the prospect is already using to measure his or her own success. Here’s a great example of someone doing exactly that:
One of our Efficiency Sales Professional Boot Camp graduates was trying to come up with a way to convince small retailers to invest in LED lighting retrofits. Before presenting the business owners with a compelling case about why the lighting retrofit would be a smart investment, she first asked herself, “What do these owners really care about?” She quickly realized, of course, that small retailers are very interested in increasing foot traffic. After all, getting more customers to set foot in your store is the first step (pun intended) to boosting sales per square foot.
With this in mind, she came up with a creative campaign that would help her customers get more of their customers in their stores in the wake of the lighting upgrade. She targeted commercial areas that had concentrations of small retailers, walked into each of the stores and announced the following offer: “If you and nine of your neighbors on this street sign up for a full lighting retrofit, my boss and I will sponsor a ‘wine, cheese, and LEDs’ party. We will even bring sidewalk sandwich boards and little easels with foam core posters on them proclaiming what a wonderful thing you and your neighbors did. We’ll celebrate the fact that you're saving all this energy... and we’ll drive traffic into your stores. Not only will this event make more potential customers aware of your establishments, but it will also let the world know that you are a socially conscious business.”
The campaign was dramatically successful. Most people in this industry would agree that small businesses represent a hard-to-reach audience, fraught with high transaction cost, language barriers, and the like. However, the minute you start talking about what they care about (instead of chromaticity, color rendering, simple payback period, and so forth), the easier it will be to capture their attention and retain it long enough to motivate them to take action.
I encourage you to ask yourself this simple question before you make your next sales call: “What does my prospect really care the most about?” The answer to that question will help you reframe your offerings so that they resonate with what your prospects are truly seeking.
Love one of our blogs? Feel free to use an excerpt on your own site, newsletter, blog, etc. Just be sure to send us a copy or link, and include the following at the end of the excerpt: “By Mark Jewell, Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! This content is excerpted from the Sales Ninja blog, Mark Jewell's daily blog on ideas and inspiration for advancing efficiency. Sign up at SellingEnergy.com.”
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June 9, 2016
Making Remote Work Actually Work
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The prevalence of Internet access and broadband WiFi technology has made it increasingly convenient to work from home or virtually anywhere (no pun intended). More and more U.S. companies are giving employees the opportunity to work from home. In fact, my team at Selling Energy includes multiple fantastic remote employees and thrives as a result. Incorporating flextime and remote work arrangements into a company culture is attractive to both longtime employees as well as new hires.
HubSpot recently published a blog that explores practices that make it easier to communicate and collaborate with remote teammates. Take a read here and gain some insights into the methods that lead to successful, enjoyable and rewarding remote work.
Love one of our blogs? Feel free to use an excerpt on your own site, newsletter, blog, etc. Just be sure to send us a copy or link, and include the following at the end of the excerpt: “By Mark Jewell, Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! This content is excerpted from the Sales Ninja blog, Mark Jewell's daily blog on ideas and inspiration for advancing efficiency. Sign up at SellingEnergy.com.”
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June 8, 2016
Be the Expert
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Yesterday I shared an article on seven actions designed to help you get more referrals and introductions. Ideally, these referrals or introductions will emphasize your competence and expertise in your field. People are looking for experts. They're looking for someone who will simplify the decision-making process. Life is too short to delve into the level of detail that you have to know to make every single little decision.
In many cases, referrals will bring prospects to your door. What do you do to secure the sale in this situation? Demonstrate your expertise. The prospect already thinks highly of you based on the referral that brought them to you. You want to reinforce that confidence by demonstrating your abilities.
Here’s an example from an experience a colleague related to me. Chris needed some work done on his car so he went on Yelp to find the best shop nearby. He found a mechanic with about 50 five-star reviews, and after reading them, he gave the chap a call and explained the work he wanted done. The mechanic told Chris to come in so he could give the car a test drive and visual inspection. Chris went for the test drive with him and watched him inspect the car. He walked Chris through his assessment and told him that the part he had originally thought needed replacement could actually be fixed relatively easily… and at a fraction of the cost. Chris shared with me that he doesn’t know enough about cars to have realized this and that the mechanic could have easily sold him a new part. The mechanic also found one minor leak that Chris was unaware of and recommended he have it fixed, but told him it would be OK for a couple more months. On top of all this, he offered to give Chris a complimentary tune-up.
Not only did this mechanic demonstrate his expertise, he also saved Chris money and added value to the sale. His rates were slightly higher than those of many other mechanics, but Chris justifiably felt confident in his abilities, appreciated his honesty, and was happy to pay a bit more to have a true expert address the situation.
The moral of the story is obvious. Use your expertise to set you apart from the competition. In most cases, once you demonstrate that what you’re offering is genuinely superior, price is much less of a concern.
Love one of our blogs? Feel free to use an excerpt on your own site, newsletter, blog, etc. Just be sure to send us a copy or link, and include the following at the end of the excerpt: “By Mark Jewell, Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! This content is excerpted from the Sales Ninja blog, Mark Jewell's daily blog on ideas and inspiration for advancing efficiency. Sign up at SellingEnergy.com.”
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