Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 298

How to Speak, How to Listen

 

As sales professionals, effective communication is paramount to our success. When dealing with a prospect or customer, we have to be able to verbally persuade – and in order to persuade, we have to listen. What does my prospect care about? What tidbits of information did they give me that I can use to inform the direction of my value proposition? Knowing how to speak and how to listen are both fundamental and essential parts of our jobs.

In his book, How to Speak, How to Listen, Mortimer J. Adler makes the case that formal education fails to provide much instruction on public speaking (and none at all on listening). Unless you’ve taken a public speaking course, you probably had to develop these skills on your own. This book provides actionable strategies on how to improve public speaking and persuasion, and how to become an active and agile listener. If you’re looking to improve in either or both of these areas, I recommend picking up a copy of this book.

Here’s a summary from Amazon Books:

“Mortimer J. Adler’s classic How to Read a Book was an instant bestseller upon publication, and its worldwide sales today total over seven million copies. Audiences will find this companion book just as provocative as its predecessor.

“Drawing on decades of experience as an educator and philosopher, Mortimer J. Adler offers a short course in effective communication, filled with his wisdom and wit. Both instructive and practical, How to Speak, How to Listen will be invaluable to everyone: salespeople and executives involved in conferences and negotiations, politicians, lecturers, and teachers, as well as families seeking to improve communication among themselves.”

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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Weekly Recap, September 20, 2015

Monday: Read  Singletasking: Get More Done – One Thing at a Time , by Devora Zack, and learn why you should only be focusing on one task at a time. 




Tuesday: Learn why we should all strive to be more than just "competent."




Wednesday: Discover three tips for conquering the fears that are standing between you and high performance.




Thursday: Learn some strategies for getting your prospects to say "Yes!" to your efficiency projects.




Friday: Find out what it takes to become a true efficiency sales professional. 




Saturday: Read this article from the Business Insider blog and learn how to leverage the power of habit to boost 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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Get in the Habit

We all develop habits throughout our lives. Sometimes they’re beneficial for us and sometimes they’re not. One of the best ways to boost your productivity is to leverage the power of habit. Ask yourself, “What do I do consistently that’s slowing me down and making me less effective?” Once you have identified your productivity-killing habits, will yourself into reversing them. Also consider the habits you’ve already formed that are positive for productivity and make an effort to keep them.

An article published on the Business Insider blog last week suggests four habits that have a significant effect on productivity. Some of you “productivity mavens” may already utilize these strategies; however, I recommend everyone read through this list – the suggestions are pretty impactful if you make the concerted effort to turn them from concept into habit.  

http://www.businessinsider.com/4-habits-that-affect-productivity-the-most-2015-9

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Becoming an Efficiency Sales Professional

In order to become a sales professional, you must first realize that:

Energy efficiency products, services and programs all require effective selling.
Professional sales skills make you more successful at advancing any energy efficiency initiative, regardless of your role in the process.
You need to think of yourself as a sales professional even if your job title does not include the word “sales.” 

Secondly, you need to move from “reactive” to “proactive” sales. Can you really grow your business simply fielding calls and producing estimates upon request? Using this approach, by the time you hear about a project, you are often too late. There are several dimensions of being proactive:

Coaching others in the decision chain to drive requests for premium approaches
Communicating compelling value propositions that preempt value engineering
Selling directly to the owner

If you are proactive in developing INTEREST IN and DEMAND FOR higher-efficiency approaches, you will be paving the way towards increased sales. Getting to the owner and communicating how your solution makes his or her life easier or more profitable sets the stage for more effective selling later on.

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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How to Land the “Yes!”

Why might your prospect be willing to say “yes” to taking on a proposed energy-efficiency project? Is it about saving energy? Saving money? Saving carbon? Something else?

No doubt there are dozens of reasons a prospect might be motivated to say “yes” to pursuing your energy-saving project. I encountered one of the more surprising ones a while back when a workshop participant told me that her municipal client agreed to do a project because if they didn’t find something for one of their managers to work on, they’d have to lay him off. It wasn’t about saving the energy itself, the economic value nor the carbon content. It was all about saving their valued team member from the ravages of unemployment.

I often reference Seth Godin’s “hierarchy of business needs” (see this blog article from 2012 for more detail). Seth argues that if you’re selling a product or service to a non-business-owner in a B2B setting, the primary needs rank as follows: 

Avoiding risk
Avoiding hassle
Gaining praise
Gaining power
Having fun
Making a profit

How does the typical energy-efficiency proposal fare when juxtaposed to that hierarchy? Well, let’s think about it. 

How much risk does a manager take on by saying “yes” to a 50+ page proposal written in a language that’s not his own (think “engineer-speak”)?

How much hassle is involved in understanding all of the potential competing technologies and approaches, interviewing and then selecting suppliers, negotiating contracts, applying for and securing the necessary capital, filling out incentive applications, cooperating with pre- and post-installation walk-throughs, measuring actual savings against projections, etc.... all for the purpose of replacing equipment that is not technically “broken”?

And skipping down to the bottom of Seth’s hierarchy, how might the resulting energy efficiency map into the last item: making a profit? How similar is “saving energy” to “making a profit”? And how much is the estimated savings? Would it even “move the needle” when compared with the rest of the organization’s overhead? Who would actually receive the savings? And would that be the same person who had to endure all of the above-referenced risk and hassle?

Suppose your prospect is disengaged with his or her job, or even seeking a new employment opportunity. Can you imagine their perspective on taking on additional risk or hassle when, even if the project were successful, their “prize” would be their employer making more profit? 

I mentioned all of this at one of our Efficiency Sales Professional Boot Camps a couple years ago and someone wryly pointed out that the middle-ranked motivators – gaining praise, gaining power – still applied even if you were seeking other employment. Why? A successful energy project is a great resume builder! Reducing your present employer’s energy bills or capturing an ENERGY STAR label for the facility you now manage could be a feather in your cap while interviewing for a new role. 

One thing’s for sure whether your prospect is looking for another job or not. Someone who has the insight to connect the dots between enhanced energy efficiency and more traditional metrics of performance (think better productivity in office environments, lower scrap rate in industrial settings, better learning outcomes in schools, etc.) stands to receive praise and maybe even more power and influence within their organization by jumping on the efficiency agenda.

So what are the morals to this story? I see at least three: 

Never assume the reason that your prospect is interested in your offerings is as simple as saving energy or even money.
Realize that decision-makers are human beings first and job titles second.
Leverage the above-referenced Seth Godin hierarchy as you formulate compelling value propositions for your prospects. How? Well, how about these for starters....


Reduce the risk: Bring industry foreknowledge to the table – genuine insight into how your solution has provided value for others in your prospect’s situation and how your offerings compare to the competition’s. Doing so will reduce the perceived risk of whatever you are proposing and help the prospect feel more comfortable proceeding without undertaking extensive due diligence. 


Minimize the hassle: Make it easy to do business with you to reduce the perceived hassle factor. Act as a broker of strengths and coordinate your efforts with other vendors, if necessary.


Offer promise of praise: Offer to write a success story – or perhaps help the prospect apply for the ENERGY STAR label – after the proposed project is successfully implemented.


Draw a path to increased power: Help the prospect see how moving forward positions him/her more favorably in the organization. The above-referenced success story might also help the prospect justify a raise or promotion! 


Have fun: Wow, this point has so many dimensions, it deserves its own blog! Here’s just one to think about in the meantime: Make the effort to discover what the prospect finds truly fun and fascinating about his/her job, and then make sure your selling approach resonates with those preferences! Let’s say your prospect enjoys escaping the office for the occasional “field trip.” You might suggest a lunch at their favorite eatery bookended by two tours of buildings already benefiting from your offering. Above all, be eternally positive and personable, have a great sense of humor, and use it often. By the way, if you don’t have a sense of humor, get one! Your prospects want to be around people who make them feel great!


Demonstrate the true value: Take the time to connect the dots between efficiency and segment-specific outcomes that are more valuable than the cost of the kilowatts, kilowatt-hours or therms saved. Remember, there are three distinct categories of benefits to highlight when selling efficiency solutions: utility-cost financial benefits (utility bill savings plus any rebates or other financial incentives); non-utility-cost financial benefits (e.g., the value of increased productivity when your solution delivers improved occupant comfort and convenience in addition to the energy savings); and, non-financial benefits (e.g., earning an ENERGY STAR label). Keep in mind that in some cases, the third category blurs into the second one – for example, when an ENERGY STAR-labeled building commands higher rent per square foot, occupancy rate, or sales price per square foot when compared to its non-labeled peers.

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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Have No Fear

Fear can prevent us from pursuing what we really want in life. It can prevent us from starting our own businesses, making those cold calls to hot prospects, or asking for referrals even though we know in our hearts that we really deserve them.

The good news is that there are plenty of examples in our culture where overcoming the fear of failure has yielded great rewards. You hear stories all of the time about how the most successful have experienced the most failure. How Steve Jobs made huge mistakes and failed; how the greatest inventors of all time had the largest flops. When’s the last time you heard about a truly great dream materializing without someone taking a few well-calculated risks along the way?

Here are a few tips for conquering the fears that may be standing between you and high performance:

1. Have a plan – You’ll be more confident and more likely to succeed if you have a well thought out plan. If you’re thinking about making the leap to running your own business, make sure you have a solid business plan that’s been well vetted by people who aren’t afraid to give you “tough love” feedback on its merits. Before you pick up the phone to call the big fish, make sure you’ve run through what you’ll say, and that you’ve planned your responses to questions or objections they may have. Before you ask for a referral, take the time to plan the best opportunity for doing so.

2. Visualize Success – Taking the time to visualize a successful outcome is imperative. In fact, if you can’t visualize success, you need to take a step back and ask yourself why. The first person you need to convince is yourself. We teach our ninjas to visualize all five senses of the successful outcome: what will it look like, feel like, sound like, taste like and even smell like! A richly visualized outcome can fool your brain into thinking that the positive outcome has already happened! Did you ever close your eyes and visualize biting into a lemon, only to find your mouth salivating as if you had already done so? As powerful as it is, the human brain often has difficulty distinguishing between what is real and what is imagined... and that’s a good thing when you’re visualizing success outcomes.

3. Remember that your action will not determine the rest of your life. Woody Allen used to have such performance anxiety that before he’d walk out on stage to do his stand-up act, he’d close his eyes and repeat to himself, “Nothing I do tonight will influence my career in any way.” A mentor of mine once told me that if you just do the right thing all the time, sooner or later you’ll do it at the right time and you’ll finally enjoy the success you deserve. Another mentor once highlighted the difference between eustress and distress, emphasizing that a little anxiety can be empowering to high performance, while too much can lead to a suboptimal outcome.

I keep a small metal plaque on my desk that says, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” Can you imagine how much happier and more impactful you would be if you adopted this attitude in your own life? Just do it. You’ll wonder why you didn’t start living by this motto years ago.

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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Be More Than Competent

Most salespeople strive to be as competent as possible. Competence is important, but it’s not going to make you a great sales professional. Seth Godin, on his blog, writes:

“...competent, inspiring, passionate, obsessed, provocative, impatient, hungry, driven, adoring, inspired, an artist, a genius, someone who cares... With all these remarkable, powerful, important options available to each of us, why do so many of us default to competent?”

Godin is completely right in saying that we should all strive to be more than just competent. So what does this mean? It means that most people do not live a full palette of emotions – both prospects and salespeople. Your job as a sales professional is to get the full palette of emotions and to sell those emotions to your prospects. Get them passionate. Get them amped up. That’s the goal. You have to get them emotionally engaged in what you're doing. You have to be “Mr. Feel Good.” When you walk into the room, people should say, “I want to be around this person. I want to take this person's advice. He’s competent, he’s professional, and he makes me feel good.”

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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Singletasking

How many times a day do you switch from one unfinished task to another? If you’re like most people, you’re probably thinking of a pretty high number right now. In a fast-paced business with lots of distractions and multiple projects to juggle, it’s very easy to succumb to multitasking and task-switching. Unfortunately, this can take a huge toll on your productivity – and even your sanity.

In an ideal world, we would all focus on one task at a time and see it through to completion (or to a determined stopping point). This ideal world is, in fact, not so far out of reach. In Devora Zack’s book, Singletasking: Get More Done – One Thing at a Time, Zack explores the science behind multitasking and makes a strong argument as to why we should all learn to “singletask.” Her actionable advice on how to become a singletasker is perfect for anyone struggling to stay focused on “one thing at a time.”

Here’s a summary from Amazon Books:

“Too many of us have become addicted to the popular, enticing, dangerously misleading drug of multitasking. Devora Zack was once hooked herself. But she beat it and became more efficient, and you can too. 

"Zack marshals convincing neuroscientific evidence to prove that you really can't do more by trying to tackle several things at once—it's an illusion. There is a better way to deal with all the information and interruptions that bombard us today. Singletasking explains exactly how to clear and calm your mind, arrange your schedule and environment, and gently yet firmly manage the expectations of people around you so that you can accomplish a succession of tasks, one by one – and be infinitely more productive. Singletasking is the secret to success and sanity.”

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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Weekly Recap, September 13, 2015

Monday: Read  Winners Dream: A Journey from Corner Store to Corner Office , by Bill McDermott, and learn how to execute your outsized goals. 




Tuesday: Find out why it's important to quantify the cost of delay.




Wednesday: Use stories to teach, persuade, and connect with your audience.




Thursday: Get six tips on how to deliver winning presentations.




Friday: Learn what to do (and what not to do) when making introductions. 




Saturday: Read this article from the Entrepreneur blog and learn how to use psychology to boost your creativity and 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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Mind Tricks for Creativity and Productivity

 

What is the single most powerful tool for boosting creativity and productivity? Look in the mirror and you’ll see it! I’ve written about the key role psychology plays in the sales setting… it plays an equally important role in our own ability to be as creative and productive as we can be. With a few psychological mind hacks and a little practice, we can position minds to do some of the heavy lifting.

Entrepreneur published a blog this week that outlines a number of great mind tricks for boosting creativity and productivity. My personal favorite is “establishing psychological distance” – you can gain clarity on a problem (and find a creative solution for it) by creating psychological distance from the situation and approaching it as an outsider. The author analogizes it to the act of giving someone else advice. It’s much easier to advise others than it is to solve your own problems because of the separation between you and the issue itself.

For the full list of tips and tricks, read the full article below:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/250312

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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