Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 302

The Proof Is Not Always in the Pudding

One of the best ways to turn a skeptical prospect into a buyer is to give them evidence that your product or service has worked for a client in a similar situation. You might provide them with case studies, testimonials, or any other forms of “proof” that buying from you is the right decision. But what do you do when you’re rolling out a new product or service that doesn’t have any demonstrable history of success? In my experience, it’s all about how you spin it. Here’s an example of how you might approach the situation:

Prospect: “I don’t know if I’m comfortable being the ‘guinea pig’ for this new energy management system. I usually like to know for a fact that what I buy is going to work.”

You: “I understand where you’re coming from. The good news is that because you’ll be the first person to buy this system from us, we’re going to be especially flexible with our terms and lovingly support your installation to make sure that it goes swimmingly. In fact, we’re even thinking about writing a white paper for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s annual conference with the intention of positioning your company as the poster child for innovation in energy management. If you’re into that, we would be happy to produce that case study for you at no extra charge.”

At this point, your prospect is probably going to report back to the rest of the decision-making team and tell them, “If we get on board with this, we’re going to get twice as much love and attention from this vendor, and we’ll even get written up in an ACEEE white paper, which would look great for our company’s image.”

So what’s the moral of the story? It’s all about reframing the situation. If your prospect wants something from you that you cannot yet provide them (in this case, proof of success), find a creative way to reframe the picture by emphasizing the distinct benefits of being your first customer.

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Pushing Beyond the Cushion

Efficiency projects are all too often viewed as “optional” or “nice things to have if we only had the budget for them.” Since the great recession of 2008, many of you may have witnessed an increase in purchasing resistance because your prospects don’t think they have the financial resources to justify efficiency initiatives.

So how should you respond when a prospect says, “We’ll wait until next year when we have more cushion to afford it”? Guess what? You first need to break it to your prospect gently that the “cushion” he or she is seeking almost never comes. You then need to present a compelling argument for approving and funding the project today.

I like to take a psychological approach to this situation and ask an emotional question such as, “When was the last time in this business that you felt as if you had a cushion?” Chances are they haven’t had a “cushion” for at least the last six or seven years, since the beginning of the recession. Then you might say something like, “Guess what? If you had installed this upgrade six years ago, you would have paid for the project in the first three years (or less), and the next three years’ savings would have helped you accumulate a real ‘cushion’ that you could now invest in some other expense-reducing capital project.”

If you couple that argument with a little research ahead of time on rebates, incentives, and financing options that would make the project even more affordable, you stand a very good chance of closing the deal.

So what’s the moral of the story? Don’t let objections like “If we only had a cushion…” stand between you and a thumbs-up for your proposed project. 

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Less Is More

When you’re giving a presentation, one of the easiest things to do is to overwhelm the audience with information. Most salespeople go in figuring that if they throw enough Jell-O on the wall, they're going to offer enough information to appeal to everyone. It’s like a big Lazy Susan with 400 items on it…just spin it around and someone’s going to find something on that platter to eat. The problem with this scenario is that there is so much information splattered about the room that nobody can separate the wheat from the chaff or the noise from the signal of the radio. As a result, you don’t really make the message as powerfully as you could have made it had you thought about what the audience really needs to know and saved everything else for the “technical appendix.” 

I’ve been on the receiving end of this type of presentation, and I leave the room thinking that I learned nothing. They could have sent me a videotape, which I could have watched in my pajamas on a Saturday and we would have been just where we are today. As a presenter, it is a very demoralizing feeling to leave a meeting saying, “I don’t know whether they liked it or didn’t like it. They didn’t have any questions, and we didn’t really have enough time to discuss the important topics.” So don’t overwhelm the audience – keep it focused. 

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Captivology

One of the biggest challenges we face as efficiency sales professionals is how to capture our prospects’ attention. Whether it’s through a proposal, a meeting, or even an advertisement, we have a very limited window of time in which to pique their curiosity – and to keep that curiosity alive. So how do we make the most of those critical first moments?

According to Ben Parr in his book, Captivology: The Science of Capturing People’s Attention, it’s important to first understand how attention works. Parr delves into the scientific principals that underlie the “three stages of attention” – immediate attention, short attention, and long attention. He also provides a number of useful strategies for keeping your audience’s attention through each of the stages. If you’re interested in gaining a deeper understanding of how attention works – and how to leverage it to your advantage – I recommend picking up a copy of this book.

Here’s a summary from Amazon Books:

“Learn the secret to captivating your audience.

“In Captivology, award-winning journalist, author, entrepreneur and investor Ben Parr (Forbes 30 Under 30) presents a new understanding of attention – how it works, why it matters, and how we leverage psychological triggers to draw and retain attention for our passions, projects, and ideas.

“Parr combines the latest research on attention with interviews with more than fifty scientists and visionaries – Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, film director Steven Soderbergh, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, magician David Copperfield, New York Times bestselling author Susan Cain, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, and more – who have successfully brought their ideas, projects, companies, and products to the forefront of cultural consciousness.

“The result is an insightful and practical book that will change how you assign jobs to your kids or staff, craft a multi-million dollar ad campaign, deliver your next presentation, attract users to your product, or convince the world to support your cause.”

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Weekly Recap, August 9, 2015

Monday: Read  The Weekly Coaching Conversation: A Business Fable About Taking Your Team’s Performance – and Your Career – to the Next Level , by Brian Souza, and learn how to utilize the "coaching" style of management. 




Tuesday: Determine your competitive advantage by asking yourself these 8 questions. 




Wednesday: Learn what to do with your hands when you're giving a presentation. 




Thursday: Avoid asking your prospect too many questions. Instead, craft a few well-thought-out, specific questions that are the result of thorough research that you conducted before the first meeting.




Friday: Ask yourself these four questions before you approach a new prospect.




Saturday: Read this article from the LifeHacker blog and learn how to optimize your meeting schedule.

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How to Optimize Your Meeting Schedule

Do you spend more time in meetings than you do actually working? While meetings are great for brainstorming, planning, and problem-solving, they can take up more time than necessary. This is due in part to the fact that people tend to default to one-hour meetings, regardless of whether or not a full hour is needed.

According to an article published on the LifeHacker blog, we should schedule different meeting lengths for different meeting goals. They suggest using the 10-30-50-90 rule: 

10 minutes for check-ins and quick questions.
30 minutes for status updates and one-on-ones.
50 minutes for addressing multiple issues or topics.
90 minutes for brainstorming and problem-solving.

For more on this topic, read the full article below:

http://lifehacker.com/waste-less-of-your-time-in-meetings-with-the-10-30-50-9-1715014085

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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4 Questions You Should Be Asking

What 4 questions should you ask yourself about your prospects before you approach them?

1. What drives decision-making? 

2. Who are the decision-makers? 

3. What do they each value the most? 

4. How do your offerings map into those values?  

You need to understand who really makes the decisions, and how they decide how to allocate their finite capital, and perhaps even more finite management attention span. While some of your business is reactive – in other words, you’re addressing a request for a quote from someone else – if you want to turbocharge your business, you’ll want to expand your activities into the PROACTIVE mode. You will need to identify owners that need to make their operations more competitive, profitable and valuable.

If you create a felt need, one that is anchored in their values, you’ll succeed. What kinds of felt needs are out there? Well, there’s fear of downtime; the need to earn an ENERGY STAR label or LEED certification; the need to improve tenant comfort and convenience because in this real estate economy, the last thing you need is for your tenants to decide not to renew; for owner-occupants, there’s also the need to improve productivity.

On that note, think about it... If you pay $40K for an employee that occupies about 200 SF of your offices, your payroll represents $200/SF. What’s your utility bill? $2/SF? A 1% improvement in productivity pays for the entire utility bill! Isn’t that something that deserves to be mentioned when you’re discussing the comfort aspects of what you’re trying to sell?

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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Too Many Questions?

Effective questioning is key when it comes to finding out what your prospect’s needs and values are. It equips you with the information you need to create a compelling and persuasive case for change. A lot of people think that consultative selling is the bee’s knees – that if you just ask a lot of questions, the prospect will think that you’re interested in them and you’ll get a lot of information that you can somehow cobble into a compelling proposal.

Let me tell you something: people don’t want to play “20 questions” anymore. You’re actually doing yourself a disservice if you ask too many questions, especially if they’re questions that you should already know the answers to before you walk in the room. 

Take for example, “Tell me a little bit about your business.” Do you really need to ask your prospect to tell you about their business? If you think this is somehow going to show them you’re interested in their company, you’re wrong. Of course you’re interested in their company – you’re there to sell them a product or service! All this does is demonstrate that you haven’t even done your due diligence on their industry, much less their company, before meeting your prospect.

Rather than asking a lot of questions, come prepared with a few well-thought-out, specific questions that are the result of thorough research that you conducted before the first meeting.

If you want to score bonus points, ask a question that suggests that this is not your first rodeo...that you’ve helped others in the prospect’s situation... that you know the questions to ask that will lay the groundwork for providing your prospect with genuine insights even before they hire you.

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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What Are Your Hands Saying?

When you’re giving a presentation, the audience may be consciously listening to your words, but they’re also subconsciously tuned into your body language, facial expressions, and visual focus. The way in which you present yourself physically can have a significant effect on your ability to engage and persuade them. At this point you’re probably wondering, “When I give a presentation, what should I be doing with my hands?”

I suggest taking the middle road when it comes to gesturing while presenting. At one end of the spectrum is the speaker who leaves his hands at his sides the whole time he’s talking. This makes him look stiff and uncomfortable, and it makes the audience uneasy, whether they consciously realize it or not. At the other end of the spectrum is the speaker who uses a gesture with every word. This can be distracting and visually tiring.

It’s important to find a middle ground between these two extremes. Think about what you do with your hands when you’re having a conversation with someone with whom you’re very comfortable. You probably gesture occasionally for emphasis. You neither stand with your hands at your sides nor move your arms with every word. This middle ground looks natural while helping you maintain your listener’s attention. It provides visual reinforcement without being distracting.

On a related note, people often ask me if it’s OK to have your hands in your pockets while presenting. I don’t think it’s a big deal to have one hand in your pocket as long as you’re not fiddling with coins or keys in there…and as long as the rest of your body remains energized, your posture is good, and you’re physically engaged.

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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8 Questions to Determine Your Competitive Advantage

What is your competitive advantage? If you don’t have a clear picture of how your business differs (or fails to differ) from other similar businesses, you might want to spend some time researching your competition and strategizing new ways in which you might set yourself apart. Here are 8 questions you might ask yourself to determine your competitive advantage:

About your competition:

-What are they doing (and what are they not doing)?

-What are they best known for (both the good and the bad)?

-What do their customers value most about their product or service?

-If you worked for their company, what changes would you make?

About your business:

-Why did my customers choose me over my competitors (for closed sales)?

-Why did my prospects choose to work with a different business (for lost sales)?

-What do my customers value most about my product or service?

-What do I want to be known for (e.g., great customer service, highest quality products)?

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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