Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 55

Weekly Recap, October 9, 2022

Here are our sales-enhancing tips from this week's Selling Energy Blogs...

Why You Do Your Best in the Morning

It’s 6:30AM and the alarm clock rings. Many of us “early birds” jump out of bed with a smile on our faces, ready to tackle the day. A “night owl,” however, probably has a different reaction to the 6:30AM alarm ringing – one that involves multiple uses of the “snooze” button and the question “Why do I have to get up so early!?” 

The Rule of Three

In keeping with yesterday’s blog about creating memorable and repeatable elevator pitches, your pitch should also adhere to the “rule of three.” If you’re not familiar with the “rule of three,” it’s the concept that people are comfortable with things that are grouped in threes. I’m sure you can all think of numerous real-world examples of this concept – “Location, location, location,” “Lights, camera, action,” “Reduce, reuse, recycle,” “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” “Three blind mice,” and so forth.

Make Your Pitch Memorable

When you’re developing a quiver of elevator pitches, one of the key things to consider is whether or not your pitch is memorable enough to be worth repeating to others. It is one thing to capture your prospect’s attention; however, if they cannot repeat it, you are squandering a wonderful opportunity to make that message go viral. A few years ago, I was teaching the weeklong Efficiency Sales Professional™ Certificate Boot Camp to a group of four controls companies that had hired us to do a command performance for their teams. When we got to the section on elevator pitches, I had each person take some time to write down an elevator pitch to test out on the class for feedback.

Questions That Will Help You Uncover the Real Reasons People Buy

One of the keys to success in sales is knowing what the buyer is thinking. If you can predict what might be going through your prospect’s mind, you’ll be well-positioned to address any questions or concerns ahead of time. Marketing expert Jeffrey Gitomer tells a story about an experience he had with a prospect. While Jeffrey was giving his sales pitch, the prospect was writing furiously on a legal pad. The pace and magnitude of what he was writing seemed to bear no resemblance to what Jeffrey was actually saying.

Relationship Selling vs. Challenger Selling

As most of you know from reading this blog, I’m a big proponent of challenger selling. I’ve written about the benefits of challenger selling and the downsides of relying on relationship-building to close sales. Today, I’d like to offer a scenario that highlights the differences between these two approaches.

Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

The world of business is often described as “cutthroat” and competitive, earning the stereotype of attracting people who “are in it for themselves” or “aren’t here to make friends.”  But as anyone in the business world knows, the industry is more varied than the bad behavior that dominates headlines.  There are people who succeed by taking, giving, or a little bit of both. 

Weekly Recap, October 2, 2022

Here are our sales-enhancing tips from this week's Selling Energy Blogs...

Focus Mode

There are a wide variety of things that can derail your productivity, but one of the biggest and most common culprits is distractions. Staying focused on the task at hand is not always easy, particularly if it’s mundane work that you’d rather not be doing in the first place.

Make it Easy for Your Internal Champion to Help You Sell

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: