Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 313

Become a Challenger

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 worth of research where they studied several hundred organizations and identified out of their salespeople as many as 40 personality characteristics. They then clustered these characteristics into five archetypal profiles of salespeople. The five archetypes are 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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The Balanced Pitch

As I’m sure most of you know from reading this blog, truly great sales professionals maintain a quiver of well-rehearsed elevator pitches that can be used in a variety of situations. While it’s important to perfect the words you choose to use, it’s equally important to practice delivering your pitches. To deliver a great elevator pitch, you must find a balance between clarity, pacing, and energy.

Clarity and pacing: It does little good to have a great elevator pitch if you are so nervous in delivering it that you trip over the words. Keep in mind that in many cases you are going to be doing a pitch in the midst of a crowd of people. There may be a lot of background noise, people bumping into you, loud music playing, and so forth. If you’re at a networking event, there may even be alcohol involved. Bottom line, stay calm, pace yourself, and deliver the pitch in a way that the person is not struggling to hear every third word.

Energy: Keeping the above suggestions in mind, you also want to sound excited and be excited.  In fact, I tell all of our ninjas and soon-to-be-ninjas that they need to look for one sentence out of their prospect’s mouth. The sentence is something like, “Wow, you are so passionate about what you do!” Or, “You must really like what you do.” When you get that kind of feedback from your prospect, you know you are on the right track.

So, develop a quiver of stellar elevator pitches, find a balance between understandability and energy level, and you’ll be golden.

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Neuro-linguistic Programming

Long-time readers may recall the blogs I wrote about how to read body language (Part One and Part Two) and micro-facial expressions. You can learn so much about what your prospect is thinking by noticing their subconscious physical movements and expressions.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to a concept called “Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP).” Richard Bandler and John Grinder developed NLP in the 1970’s after noticing patterns between eye movements and specific cognitive processes. To boil this concept down to its core, if you ask someone a question, that person will likely unconsciously move his or her eyes in a certain direction based on the part of the brain he or she is accessing. Knowing the meaning of these eye movements gives you insight into your prospect’s thought process.


From: http://www.wisdom-square.com/eye-accessing-cues.html

The diagram above shows the different eye movements and their cognitive associations. Note that this diagram shows what you’d be seeing if you were looking at your prospect. Moreover, this diagram applies to a right-handed person. If your prospect is left-handed, switch the left/right sides.

So, how can you apply this information to an actual sales situation? Suppose you’re asking a prospect something like, “How many efficiency projects have you invested in that you’ve been happy with?” If they’re right-handed and they look to the upper right, you might wonder if they’re making up an answer. They may not be lying per se; however, they may be visualizing how to portray their past experience so that their answer would be more attractive.

I’ve been using NLP in sales settings for 20 years. I was recently giving a presentation to about a hundred people in Southern California that included a discussion of NLP and decided to do a little demo for the audience. I walked up to a gentleman in the front row and asked him, “Sir, do you remember exactly what you were you wearing at dinner last night?” His eyes looked up and to the right – the wrong visual field to be accessing his past visual experience! I asked him another question that would require him to tap his visual memory, and again, he seemed to be looking in the wrong visual field. I was somewhat surprised that this person would just fabricate answers to such straightforward questions – and then I looked down and realized that his pen was sitting on the left side of his desk. I said, “Sir, are you left-handed?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Great. Now I know why you were looking in the ‘wrong’ visual field!” Of course, lefties gets teased all the time, so the audience had a good time with that one.

Try this out on your friends, spouses, and business colleagues. Ask them a question about some visual experience they had in the past and see where their eyes look (and make sure you know whether they’re right-handed or left-handed). You’ll start to see the pattern and will gradually become more adept at recognizing subtle eye movements. Doing so will provide plenty of additional insights into your prospect’s thought processes. It’s powerful stuff!

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Thank you in advance for your support!

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Hug Your Customers

You may recall a blog I wrote last month titled, “The Repeat Customer.” In this blog, I discussed the importance of turning to your existing customer base when looking for new business opportunities. In order to fully leverage the power of “the customer,” however, you first need to ensure that you have great rapport with each and every one of them and that they are fully satisfied with the work you’ve already done for them.

So how do you build customer loyalty? In Jack Mitchell’s best-selling book, Hug Your Customers, Mitchell writes, “Only extremely satisfied customers are genuinely loyal.” He recommends going above and beyond what you may think is “satisfactory” customer service such that you exceed the expectations of your customers. If you can do this, you’ll have a following of fans who will not only be eager to work with you again, but also be glad to give you a referral. Read Hug Your Customers and discover a wealth of customer-building strategies to keep your business running strong.

Here’s a summary from Amazon Books:

“The 200,000-copy staple, praised by Warren Buffett as “a gem... I wish everyone at Berkshire would follow [Jack Mitchell's] advice – we would own the world.”

"A master of customer service, Jack Mitchell, reveals his secrets for developing long-lasting business relationships and customer loyalty in Hug Your Customers.

"The only way to stay in business is with customers and Jack Mitchell knows how to attract them, and how to keep them. He has a deceptively simple but winning approach to customer service – that a relationship is at the heart of every transaction. Jack's business philosophy is based on "hugs" – personal touches that impress and satisfy the customer, such as:

Remembering the name of your customers' dogs
Calling a customer to make sure he/she is satisfied after a purchase.
Having a “kids’ corner” with TV, books and treats in retail spaces.
Introducing customers to business contacts.
And so much more.

 “This is a proven theory – hugging works! Mitchells/Richards/Marshs/Wilkes Bashford achieves among the highest margins in its industry, as well as amazing customer loyalty. Complete with anecdotes that exemplify outstanding customer service, Hug Your Customers shows how any business can adapt this hugging philosophy to attract great staff, lower marketing costs, and maintain higher gross margins and long-term revenues. At a time when customer service has become the difference between success and failure, Hug Your Customers shows how Jack's one-of-a-kind philosophy brings the results for which you are working!”

We need your vote! Help us make Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! the #1 sales and marketing book of 2014. Click the link below to cast your vote. You may vote once every 12 hours between now and December 12th - no sign up required.

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Thank you in advance for your support!

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Weekly Recap, November 16, 2014

Monday: Read Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton'sbest-selling book,  Now, Discover Your Strengths , and find out why it's more productive to put time and effort into developing existing talents and strengths than it is to focus on correcting weaknesses.




Tuesday: Learn how to leverage the "unreimbursed operating expense" to boost your value proposition.




Wednesday: Discover some ways to dispel the myth that "old buildings are less energy-efficient."




Thursday: What do you say when your prospect tells you that they're “too busy with other improvements right now.”? Read this blog to find out. 




Friday: Energy efficiency can help reduce tenant churn. Learn why this is a strong addition to your value proposition.




Saturday: Read this article from Huffington Post and discover 10 great productivity tips.

We need your vote! Help us make Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! the #1 sales and marketing book of 2014. Click the link below to cast your vote. You may vote once every 12 hours between now and December 12th - no sign up required.

http://topsalesworld.com/topsalesawards/vote/top-sales-marketing-book-2014/

Thank you in advance for your support!

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10 Great Productivity Tips

Every so often, I come across an article on productivity that really hits the ball out of the park. This week, I found a gem on the Huffington Post blog titled, “10 Effective Strategies for Boosting Your Efficiency and Productivity.” Without stealing too much thunder from the article (since I think you should all read it), here are a few of my favorites from their list of recommended strategies: 

Find a healthy balance between challenge and skill so that you are neither bored nor frustrated.
Write an ongoing list of two-minute tasks that you can complete when you have a small window of time available.
Monitor your energy level throughout the day to determine the best time to work on challenging projects.
Use power poses to boost your energy level and focus.

Read the full article from Huffington Post below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thai-nguyen/10-effective-strategies-f_b_6083704.html

We need your vote! Help us make Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! the #1 sales and marketing book of 2014. Click the link below to cast your vote. You may vote once every 12 hours between now and December 12th - no sign up required.

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Leveraging Efficiency to Avoid Tenant Churn

There’s a strong correlation between energy efficiency and tenant retention. If you think about the benefits of energy efficiency from a non-financial perspective, it makes perfect sense that an efficient building would yield happy tenants – and ones that would be less eager to get out of their leases. Efficient buildings are simply more comfortable and attractive. If the tenants are paying their share of the utility bill, then there’s also a financial benefit that they would likely lose by moving to a less efficient building.

Today, I’d like to share an article with you that succinctly and effectively conveys the value of tenant retention. This article, written in 1992 by Richard C. Mallory and Anton N. Natsis, is titled “Tenant Retention in the ‘90s.” At the time this was written, the real estate business was so terrible that the mantra of developers was, “Stay Alive 'Til ‘95.” 1992 was right in that real estate recession and the cost of tenant turnover at that time was truly shocking.

According to the article, you could actually get the same return from an existing tenant receiving 95 cents per rentable square foot per month as you could from a new tenant paying $2.35 for the same square foot per month. Why? Because there were so many costs involved with tenant turnover.

The real estate climate has obviously changed in the last twenty years; however, tenant turnover is still very costly for a building owner or landlord. If you’re selling efficiency products in the commercial real estate environment, be sure to drive home this idea – and back it up with facts – in your value proposition.

Click HERE to read the article.

 

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We're Just Too Busy

In keeping with yesterday’s blog, today we’ll go over another common objection and how to overcome it.

It can be hard to predict your prospect’s current situation, even if you’ve done thorough research on the company, decision-makers, and so forth. In some cases, you’ll approach a prospective organization that seems to be a great fit for your product or service, and they’ll simply tell you that they’re “too busy with other improvements right now.” Rather than accepting this as the final answer, consider responding with something like:

“It’s funny you should say that, because that’s exactly the best time to be thinking about energy. Are you doing any capital improvements that either consume or generate energy?”

If you ask this question and happen to catch the project early enough, you may be able to improve the efficiency of the design (perhaps tremendously) at little or no marginal cost, particularly if you make certain aspects of the project rebate-eligible by tweaking the specs.

Additionally, you might even be able to leverage the existing project to reduce the level of inconvenience that your project would otherwise cause. For example, the existing project may require building modifications, and if contractors are already opening up walls and moving things around, you might be able to jump in there and make your own modifications without causing additional hassle for the tenants of the building.

 

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Myth of the Old Building

Have you ever tried selling an efficiency product or service to a prospect with an older building, only to hear your prospect say something like, “Our building is older, so you’d expect it to be less energy-efficient.”? This is a very common myth and you should be prepared ahead of time to overcome your prospect’s objection. Today, we’ll discuss a couple of responses that you might use to dispel this myth and move the discussion forward.

Response #1: “John, it’s funny you should say that because a lot of people are under that misconception (with all due respect). Did you know that the oldest building to get an ENERGY STAR® label in this country was built in 1820? How old is your building?”

Chances are, John’s building was built well after 1820 and you can continue the discussion with the response below.

Response #2: “In our research, we found that older buildings actually score better as long as they have been retrofitted and are being operated properly. Older buildings are often made with better quality materials, thicker walls, and smaller windows, all of which is great for thermal insulation. Additionally, older buildings are more likely to have had retrofits done than newer buildings, since the chillers, boilers, motors and drives on newer buildings are less likely to have totally worn out and needed replacement.”

 

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The Unreimbursed Operating Expense

On Friday, we discussed how to leverage the cap-ex cost recovery clause to secure more projects in commercial real estate (click HERE to read that article). In order to give you a more complete picture of how an efficiency maneuver might benefit the landlord, we’ll continue with some more bonus content on this topic today.  

In the wake of an efficiency project, a landlord may see a reduction in unreimbursed operating expenses. If you’re unfamiliar with unreimbursed operating expenses, here’s a simple explanation to help you wrap your mind around the concept:

If the tenant is paying for operating expenses based on his or her share of the rentable square feet of that building, and if any portion of the building is vacant, the landlord doesn’t have anybody to bill for that portion of the operating expenses. As a result, the landlord puts that bill in his pocket and that becomes part of the unreimbursed operating expenses.

So what does this mean? If you did a project that reduced energy spend on a property, then the percentage of vacancy would be the percentage that the landlord would enjoy as a result of doing the project. If you’re working with a building that has vacancy (or is expecting vacancy), this is definitely a point that you want to drive home.

A couple of other benefits that you should keep in mind when preparing a compelling value proposition: 

Lower operating expenses often result in higher base rents and/or better tenant retention and attraction.
Higher Net Operating Income supports higher asset value upon refinancing or sale.

 

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