Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 320

Equip the Internal Champion

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Many of my blog readers sell efficiency products and services to large organizations. Those of you who do sell to large organizations know how complex the decision-making chain can be. In most cases, you're not even in the room when your prospect’s organization decides whether or not to approve the project. So how do you ensure that your project will get the attention it deserves? You have to find an internal champion to be the project’s advocate, and you have to equip that internal champion with the right information and materials so that they can step up to bat for you.

Your internal champion will not likely know as much as you do about your product or service. Ultimately, if you equip them with the right message, they don’t actually need to be the expert that you are. Once you know that they want to help you get the project approved, you simply need to provide them with three key ingredients:

A meaningful and memorable elevator pitch
A clear and concise one-page narrative summary of the project
A one-page financial summary, using proper metrics

Why these three ingredients? If your prospect doesn’t get a chance to take the floor and speak during the decision-making process, he or she can simply present the two written documents (which speak for themselves). If your prospect only has a short amount of time to speak during the meeting, the elevator pitch – which is quick, meaningful, and memorable – will capture the audience’s attention, and they’ll want to know more about the project.

Bottom line, if you make it easy for your internal champion to help you sell, you’ll have a much better chance of sealing the deal. 

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The Turbo Pot

I’m always on the lookout for real-world examples of how non-utility-cost financial benefits can outweigh utility cost savings. I recently came across a product that has the stamp of approval from many utilities and efficiency organizations for its ability to reduce gas consumption in the restaurant industry. When I looked into this product’s features and benefits, it became clear that utility savings were not necessarily the most important driver for its widespread adoption.
The product is called a “Turbo Pot,” and what differentiates it from the average pot is its thick aluminum bottom into which fins have been milled. You can think of it as the opposite of a heat sink that you might find on a very powerful car stereo amp, which removes excess heat so the amp doesn't cook itself in the trunk of your car. The fins on this pot increase the surface area of the bottom of the pot, which is designed to maximize the pot’s absorption of heat.
When you put one of these innovative pots on a gas burner, you find that water boils 40% faster. From an efficiency standpoint, 40% is nothing to scoff at! Turbo Pot users have the potential to save a significant amount on their utility bill – that is, provided they turn the burner off after the boiling task is done. However, if you look below the surface and consider how restaurants actually use their gas burners, you’ll probably find that too many of them leave their gas burners on throughout the shift – even when there’s no pot atop the burner. Why? Too many cooks don’t want to take the time to extinguish and then re-ignite burners in the midst of busy shifts.
So why do you think some major restaurant chains have standardized on Turbo Pots across the country? Did they do it to save therms? I don’t think so. They did it to speed up the cooking process and turn around more meals in less time.
If you’re in the business of selling Turbo Pots, my recommendation is that you focus on the non-utility-cost financial benefit – the ability to prepare meals more expeditiously rather than the gas savings, which may or may not actually occur given how so many cooks use their burners.
If you’re an energy solutions provider who wants to leverage the Turbo Pot to post savings measured in therms, you’d be wise to bundle the Turbo Pot product with behavior modification training and/or sparking widgets that make it more likely that the restaurant’s gas burners are only blazing when actual pots are sitting on them doing useful work!

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Gains and Losses

“What does my prospect stand to gain from my efficiency product or service?” This is a question that many salespeople focus on when presenting a value proposition to their prospects. While it is important to note what is going to be gained in the wake of an efficiency project, it’s equally important to address what could potentially be lost if the prospect doesn’t sign off on the project. Depending on the situation, the avoidance of loss may be the strongest motivator for change. Here are a few examples:
Downtime: If your prospect has an old piece of equipment that needs replacing, what is it going to cost them in the event that the equipment unexpectedly fails? If you’re talking about a data center, the loss could be huge. The most recent statistic I read said that the cost of data center downtime is $5,600 per minute. If it’s an investment bank’s data center, the loss could exceed $1 million a minute!
Productivity: Some pieces of equipment are vital to the operation of a business. If employees were unable to do their job because of an equipment failure, how much would that cost in lost productivity? In the medical field, for example, the surgical suite must be properly pressurized in order for the surgeons to work. If the fan system fails, the surgeons would lose many days of work, and the hospital would lose a significant amount of revenue.
Damaged goods: Any business that relies on temperature control for the longevity of its products is susceptible to revenue loss in the event of a controls or equipment malfunction. Grocery stores, for example, could lose their entire meat or dairy inventory in a refrigeration failure.

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What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

You may recall a blog I wrote a few months ago about how 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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Weekly Recap, September 7, 2014

Monday: We launched the Selling Energy book! Read about why we chose to publish it on Labor Day and what you can do to help spread the word.Tuesday: Learn about how to use your five senses to prepare yourself for success.Wednesday: Discover why it's risky to present your prospect with too much information.Thursday: In the built environment, an increase in appraised value can be very beneficial. Learn how to reframe this potential benefit. Friday: Learn why ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager® benchmarking is a superior alternative to the free audit.Saturday: Read this article from Inc and discover why it can be valuable to quantitatively measure your experiences.
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, author of Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! This content is excerpted from Jewell Insights, Mark Jewell's daily blog on ideas and inspiration for advancing efficiency. Sign up at SellingEnergy.com.”

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Measure It

Yesterday, I wrote about using benchmarking as a service to get your foot in the door with new prospects. In the context of energy management through benchmarking, I always tell people “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” This concept extends beyond the realm of benchmarking and can be applied to our own personal and professional growth.
By reflecting on our experiences (which are often intangible by nature), we can rate ourselves based on how effective or successful we think we were. This simple act of assigning a numerical rating to our experiences opens up the door for self-reflection and encourages us to brainstorm ways in which we could have done better. The next time we are in a similar situation, we can use that information to inform our actions. For more on this topic, check out the following article published earlier this week in Inc:
http://www.inc.com/the-muse/the-easy-secret-to-making-yourself-better-at-anything.html

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Benchmark or Audit?

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You may recall a blog I wrote back in May about why the free audit doesn’t work. Today, we’ll discuss why ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager® benchmarking is a superior alternative to the free audit, and how you can use benchmarking as a quick and easy way to get your foot in the door with a new prospect: 

Considering how time-consuming a free audit can be, ENERGY STAR benchmarking is relatively fast. If you’re offering a free service as a calling card, your goal should be to provide the highest perceived value with the least effort, and benchmarking fits that bill.
Unlike an audit report, benchmarking results can’t be shopped around to other vendors.
ENERGY STAR benchmarking gives you an unbiased and authoritative read on the building’s energy performance, which should set the stage well as you propose what you plan to do to improve the building’s score.
Your building might actually get a high enough score to qualify for the ENERGY STAR label. If so, you’ve given your prospect a prize he or she didn’t even know existed, and you’ve created psychic debt.
Just because a building qualifies for an ENERGY STAR label doesn’t mean that there’s no room for further improvement. Suppose your prospect’s building scores a 75 (on a scale of 1 to 100). There’s a lot of improvement potential between 76 and 99.
Finally, if your prospect’s building gets a score in the high 90s, you will have saved yourself a lot of time just doing the benchmarking exercise rather than gearing up for an elaborate audit, only to discover that there’s little need for your solutions.

If you’re interested in learning more about benchmarking, we offer comprehensive ENERGY STAR benchmarking training online, on-demand. Several utilities sponsor this training for their ratepayers, so you may be eligible to access it free of charge. For more information, visit www.BenchmarkingHelp.com.

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, author of Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! This content is excerpted from Jewell Insights, Mark Jewell's daily blog on ideas and inspiration for advancing efficiency. Sign up at SellingEnergy.com.”

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Benchmark or Audit?

You may recall a blog I wrote back in May about why the free audit doesn’t work. Today, we’ll discuss why ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager®benchmarking is a superior alternative to the free audit, and how you can use benchmarking as a quick and easy way to get your foot in the door with a new prospect:Considering how time-consuming a free audit can be, ENERGY STAR benchmarking is relatively fast. If you’re offering a free service as a calling card, your goal should be to provide the highest perceived value with the least effort, and benchmarking fits that bill.Unlike an audit report, benchmarking results can’t be shopped around to other vendors.ENERGY STAR benchmarking gives you an unbiased and authoritative read on the building’s energy performance, which should set the stage well as you propose what you plan to do to improve the building’s score.Your building might actually get a high enough score to qualify for the ENERGY STAR label. If so, you’ve given your prospect a prize he or she didn’t even know existed, and you’ve created psychic debt.Just because a building qualifies for an ENERGY STAR label doesn’t mean that there’s no room for further improvement. Suppose your prospect’s building scores a 75 (on a scale of 1 to 100). There’s a lot of improvement potential between 76 and 99.Finally, if your prospect’s building gets a score in the high 90s, you will have saved yourself a lot of time just doing the benchmarking exercise rather than gearing up for an elaborate audit, only to discover that there’s little need for your solutions. 
If you’re interested in learning more about benchmarking, we offer comprehensive ENERGY STAR benchmarking training online, on-demand. Several utilities sponsor this training for their ratepayers, so you may be eligible to access it free of charge. For more information, visit www.BenchmarkingHelp.com.

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, author of Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! This content is excerpted from Jewell Insights, Mark Jewell's daily blog on ideas and inspiration for advancing efficiency. Sign up at SellingEnergy.com.”


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The Value of Appraisal

When you’re selling an efficiency solution in the built environment, you might consider emphasizing the potential for increased appraised value as an important benefit. Unfortunately, most energy solutions providers don’t take the time to reframe their proposed improvement in this context. Today, we’ll discuss some strategies for framing this potential benefit properly.
Suppose your prospect tells you, "We're not selling the building anytime soon, so increases in appraised value aren't important." There are plenty of opportunities in which a higher appraised value can help, even if you’re not selling the building anytime soon. Let’s say your prospect is interested in refinancing the building. Higher valuation paves the way to a more attractive loan-to-value ratio and/or provides headroom for a larger loan amount. 
In some cases, a prospect will not want to retrofit a building even if they are going to sell it soon. They might tell you, "We are selling the building soon, so upgrading it now doesn't make sense." What does "soon" mean? Is it already on the market? Will it be next month? Or perhaps two years from now? Think about it.  Let’s say the building is slated to be sold two years from now. That would give you a year to do the audits and the improvements, and another year to book the higher net operating income, which could support a higher sale price if the appraiser uses the income approach to appraisal. So, don’t accept “soon” as an answer without finding out what your prospect really means.

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, author of Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! This content is excerpted from Jewell Insights, Mark Jewell's daily blog on ideas and inspiration for advancing efficiency. Sign up at SellingEnergy.com.”


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Is Knowledge Really Power?

You’ve no doubt heard the old saying, “Knowledge is power.” “Knowledge” may be “power”; however, in many cases, efficiency salespeople (as opposed to efficiency sales professionals) lose the power of persuasion by trying too hard to demonstrate their knowledge. They talk way past the sale.  They overwhelm the prospect with too much information about what they do for a living, what the technology does, how the technology is installed and operated, and so forth. Believe me – most of that “knowledge” will not increase your probability of closing the sale. It will likely do the opposite.
Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. You’ve just been thrown so much information that you’re probably going to think to yourself, "I didn’t think this was going to be such a complicated decision. I had no idea there were so many choices to make. In fact, I don't understand half of what this guy is saying! What if he doesn't understand half of what he is saying? What if he’s making it all up to earn a commission?  I'd better get a paid consultant in here to serve as my translator and make sure I don’t buy the wrong solution."
This is not to say that you shouldn’t be an expert on your product or service – you should be. However, don’t let your product knowledge drive the discussion. Focus on the “why,” and leave the “how” and “what” for later.

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, author of Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas That Get More Projects Approved! This content is excerpted from Jewell Insights, Mark Jewell's daily blog on ideas and inspiration for advancing efficiency. Sign up at SellingEnergy.com.”


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