Mark Jewell's Blog: Selling Energy, page 65

Setting Yourself Apart from Your Competition

When it comes to sales, a lot of our time is spent learning about a prospect’s needs.  Sometimes, one needs to “connect a few dots” to help the prospect realize just how urgently they need your proposed solution. 

Good Pitching

If you’ve attended one of my sales trainings or are a frequent reader of my blogs, you’ve likely heard me talk about crafting the perfect elevator pitch. An elevator pitch is a concise statement that grabs the attention and communicates values, ideally leading to a next step. 

Win Over Your Audience

How do you prepare a presentation that will win over your audience? The first step is to carefully contemplate the ways in which your audience might resist. I believe that repetition is the mother of learning, so if you anticipate the objections and you inoculate your presentation with the answers to those objections, you’ll have a much more seamless approach to persuading somebody to do what you want them to do. Addressing these objections also shows them that you’ve carefully thought through everything, which will reduce their anxiety.

What Does My Listener Need to Know?

I talk a lot about communication strategies on this blog because effective communication is vital to success in sales (see last week’s “Take Responsibility for the Quality of Your Communication” blog). There are so many well-intentioned technologists, well-intentioned scientists, well-intentioned building experts, and even well-intentioned salespeople who take a haphazard approach to communication. Without the ability to communicate exactly what they’re trying to say, they’re unable to grab the attention of their audience effectively.

How to Be a Power Connector

I’ve often told my students that networking is essential to their success.  To some, it feels monotonous or even risky. However, performed correctly it can be incredibly fun. If you aren’t committing to networking, what are you missing?  A lot. 

Weekly Recap, June 26, 2022

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

13 Ways to Enhance Focus and Performance

As humans, we have limited control over our mental energy. For the most part, we’re at the mercy of our body clocks. If you’ve monitored your own performance, you may have determined the approximate time of day that you reach your peak. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to prolong that period of focus and mental acuity?

Designing the Office That Works Best for Your Team

If you were to update an office for today, I would make the following recommendations for your floor to make it more flexible and efficient: 

What Unexpected Benefits Could Your Product or Service Deliver?

In many of our keynotes and workshops we highlight “non-utility-cost financial benefits” and “non-financial benefits.”  These are positive outcomes that happen after an energy project is implemented.  Sometimes these effects are completely unexpected, changing a company in ways the sales professional and their customer couldn’t have anticipated.

Overcoming the Killjoy

At some point, all of us have dealt with (or will deal with) a character I call “The Killjoy.”  This person may be found on a board, budgeting committee or similar group of people assembled for negotiations.  Some people call them the “Doubting Thomas;” however, I call this persona “The Killjoy” because they likely don’t believe in energy efficiency or have had a bad experience with it in the past.