In this episode, we discuss how to use targeted account selling to bypass gatekeepers and advance your sales efforts.
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Transcript
Phil Zito 0:00
This is the smart buildings Academy podcast with Phil Zito episode 316. Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome to episode 316 of the smart buildings Academy podcast.
Phil Zito 0:11
In this episode,
Phil Zito 0:16
I am going to be talking about if you hit a wall, how you can use targeted selling to get in the door of your customers like how can you bypass your potential blockers, influencers, etc. And get directly targeted in on the person who's going to make the decision related to the building automation purchase. Alright, so I apologize for the new time today. This, this podcast time is going to ebb and flow. We're rolling out what is our first cohort of workforce development. Basically, we're taking people who have never worked in building automation before. And through a combination of live instructor training, on the job training, exercises and videos, we're going to train them to install control systems in 11 weeks. So pretty ambitious, pretty exciting. We're actually going to be opening up Cohort Two in a couple weeks for enrollment. And that is why you're gonna see the times shifting around on the podcast episodes. So just be graceful and forgiving that that may change the times. Okay, so, pitcher. That's right. And we've all been here, if you've been selling for any amount of time, you're working with a customer, and this customer is like you're not progressing the sale at all. And after a little digging, you find out who you thought was a qualified buyer is actually maybe an influencer. Maybe they're a technical evaluator, maybe they're a blocker, etc. And you really need to figure out how do you get in the door direct to the person who's going to make the monetary decision in regards to whatever you're selling, whether it's service, whether it's install, whether it's retrofit, etc. And if you've been following the podcast for the past couple weeks, we've went through Retrofit, we've went through service, we've went through install, and we've talked about how to sell in each one of those scenarios. And now we are looking at, okay, we need to get to whoever is going to make the decision. So first off, we've got to figure out who is going to make the decision. And this used to be superduper, simple, someone had a budget assigned to them, they made a decision. But nowadays, it's become much more complex. In the construction side of things, it's still fairly easy. You know, if you're under a mechanical that mechanical is going to make the decision unless the owner actually has influence. And then in which case the owner can override, potentially the general and the mechanical. So it can get a little murky. Where it gets specifically murky is when we're doing owner direct work. You know, I remember working on the Phillips 66 headquarters, and the Phillips 66 headquarters building the there were several decision makers, right. And one of the most interesting things was I got flown down as the quote unquote technical expert for building automation and integration. And their IT group actually was making a no bid decision on who could bid and who couldn't. So they weren't making a buy decision, they were making a no bid decision. And it was based on a cybersecurity analysis of the building automation system. So what we found out there was these people wanted to do essentially a analysis of the protocols. They wanted to do analysis of the building automation system, they wanted to understand our cybersecurity process, and based on that they were going to qualify or non qualified people to bid opportunities. So in this case, how would have targeted selling affected us? Well, if we hadn't known that this was coming down the pipe, then we wouldn't have been prepared to have cybersecurity experts from the company that I was working at the time come to speak and answer those questions. But because we had a targeted selling approach, where we said okay, this is the financial buyer, these are the technical influencers, these are who are going to block us these are who are going to influence these are who can potentially change shut down our bid before it even happens. We were able to provide account coverage of these different buyer and influencer archetypes. I'm using very specific terms. For any of you who have been through targeted account selling training, you've heard of influencer, you've heard of blocker. You've heard of economic buyer, you've heard of technical buyer, all of those things, you've heard a budget holder, etc. So I'm using these terms just to kind of get us on the same page. Now, how do you use this in something that maybe isn't a, you know, 12 to $10 million control job, something that's more around the range of 250 to $500,000 patrol job, which is what most of us are targeting, right? Most of us are targeting that quarter to half a million dollar controller's job. And if we get a big whale, like a multimillion great, that's awesome, but it's not realistic for most of us. So if we're targeting a $250,000 retrofit, and let's say it's a school district retrofit, how do we go and use targeted selling to coverage that or to cover that? Well, first off, if it's a retrofit, then we need to understand a couple of things. Right? retrofits are typically driven by engineers, right? So there's an engineer who's designing the retrofit in case of the school district, or by the controls company, in the case of like maybe a commercial office building where it's owner direct. So we have to understand first, who is designing the scope boundaries in which we have to operate, then we have to understand the procurement model, right. So if it's owner direct procurement, they may be able to make a direct decision without going out to bid if it's K through 12, it may have to go through a bid process. But we can also potentially influence that bid process by getting ourselves flat Specht. In some scenarios of government work, you can go and based on existing systems, based on provider preference, etc, they can potentially flat spec you. And in that case, that would mean we'd have a different influence. Now, I'm not specifying who we're influencing yet at this point and who we're targeting yet, I just want to paint this picture, right. So we've got two potential buckets, a commercial office building bucket, where it's owner direct, and not, not a whole lot of procurement model restraints around there. And then we've got maybe K through 12, higher education, local government, with a some procurement model constraints around how we go about doing business. That being said, we can still use targeted selling in both models. Let's talk about the more restrictive procurement model first. And then let's look at a less restrictive maybe like commercial office building or private, private ownership, etc. And let's look at how we would use targeted psyllium. That, so in the more constricted procurement model, first thing we would have to understand, right, we'd be involved in capital planning, we would understand retrofits are coming down the road, we maybe have a service relationship, etc. And we would understand the procurement model and how we can work within that procurement model. So we'd have a couple targeted people who we would be going after first is procurement, we would target the procurement group and we would understand okay, who do we need to work with in there potentially, to take advantage legally of the procurement rules to potentially flat spec us, or to potentially make us the preferred vendor? Additionally, we would look at the engineer who's most likely doing this retrofit design. And we would say, Okay, how do we influence that person to become basis of design? Can we write their design for them? Can we influence that in any way? How can we do that, and then we would look at the financial decision maker within the K through 12. District, this may be the superintendent, this may be the school council, this may be the actual facility director, depending on how funds are allocated within this district or within the school. So we have three potential targets to cover right we have a procurement target to cover, we have a engineer target to cover and we have a owner slash monetary economic buyer to cover so you can see targeted selling, if we just did our traditional sales approach of just going to the facility director or just going to the superintendent or whoever and trying to influence there, then we would not be covering the basis of design. And we would not be covering the procurement so we would be greatly reducing our ability to close a sale. Now. If you're like me, you're probably thinking okay, so now you took one person you're asking me to cover three people, and this is where team selling comes into play. So if you have a team This makes it much easier easier, you have someone who's specific to engineers, and they cover engineering firms, you have someone who's specific to owners, and they cover owners, and you have someone who's specifically experienced in procurement. This is why, if you go back several episodes, I really hammered the point of when you're trying to build a book of business initially focus on a vertical market, specifically target that vertical market, and pursue that vertical market and be like, Hey, I'm going to go after K through 12, or I'm going to go after hospitals or I'm going to go after hospitality, whatever it is. And once you target that market, then you start to learn how things work in that market. So you may have 123 salespeople involved in a pursuit. Now, a credit split will most likely have to take place. And I know that's not really exciting for salespeople, they don't like the idea of a credit split. But a credit split of $100 is better than 100% of $0. And as you team sell your likelihood to close more complex sales, and to cover the buyers is increasing. This especially becomes important when you get into the seven to eight figure control sales. If you want to sell a $1 million controls project, and you're not considering team selling and doing a targeted account map, then you're making a very poor choice, in my opinion. So what we're going to do now is we're actually going to switch over to the whiteboard. Actually, uh, no, no, we won't do whiteboard today, I don't need that, I was going to switch over to the whiteboard. And I was going to map out an account. But I feel like I can do that verbally without doing it visually. So whenever you want to go and approach an account, and this is something you should be doing just in general, which by the way, if you don't have a CRM, or a way to manage accounts and manage data related to your customers, you really should get a customer Resource Management Software Suite.
Phil Zito 12:11
We don't obviously sell that. So I have no dog in that fight. But we personally use HubSpot. And it works really well. I like it, it does a lot for us. So as far as mapping out and account goes, what I would specifically focus in on is your technical influencers, your economic decision makers, your technical decision makers, and your blockers, so people who are going to block. So an example of this, maybe in a commercial office building where or a private entity where you don't necessarily have as restrictive of procurement laws. An example of this would be okay, you got boiler Bob, maybe he's been there for 40 years, he likes his pneumatic system, he absolutely does not want to retrofit it. So he is going to be a technical blocker. So you need to be cognizant that he will be going to the economic decision maker and blocking your purchase decision. Because his argument will be something like, Well, were our pneumatics were great already. It's gonna cost a lot of money to retrofit, what's the benefit, we're gonna have to learn a new system, I can do all of this on my own, we've never had complaints in the past, etc, etc, these are all going to be kind of things that a blocker is going to throw in your face, especially if they're on the technical side, economic blockers are a little different. They're going to be going and saying, Well, what's the ROI? If we invest this cash, you know, $100 into this control system, we could actually invest $100 into landscaping, I'm just pulling something out there here. And it would do even better, it would maximize curb appeal, etc. So you have economic blockers and technical blockers, and you need to be aware of both. And you need to be able to counter them. You can counter them either through education, you can understand their concerns, and you can educate or, as my wife, who is a clinical social worker likes to say you can understand their core need and core concerns. So you can actually look and say, what is it that this 40 year boiler Bob is really concerned about? Well, maybe he doesn't feel technically competent with computer based control systems. And he feels confident with a pneumatic system. So as soon as you take this pneumatic system away, you're in effect taking away his competency and his value to the organization. So you need to be able to either mitigate that by having a conversation and showing a path of which you can develop that person or you need to just straight up in some cases, point that out to the economic buyer and go, Look, you've got a person who's been here forever, and they're great. And they've done a great job. But your control systems, the things you want, like the enhanced IQ, the tenant experience, the ability to flex on demand with energy concerns, those don't come in a manual system, you need a actual computerized system to do that. And this person is going to keep you from achieving those coordinates. Which brings us to understanding the technical buyer and the economic buyer. If you've watched some past episodes, you know that I've discussed in detail about understanding key initiatives of the buyer and decision maker. So if they have an IQ or an energy or a sustainability goal that they're trying to reach, understanding those goals. Let me take a sip of water real quick for just a second.
Phil Zito 16:06
Understanding those goals, is going to enable you to analyze your blockers and counter those arguments based on goal adherence and goal performance. And it's also going to enable you to communicate and position your solution in a way that the decision maker is going to resonate with. So so far, right, we've talked about blockers, and we've talked about decision makers. The most important in my opinion, that we need to cover is influencers. So blockers, blockers are hit or miss. Sometimes they're really well respected. Sometimes they're not, the influencers are definitely respected quite often. So these are technical and economic influencers. These are people who are looked at as the technical expert within the organization. And this is the person that an economic buyer who maybe doesn't feel comfortable with the technical concepts is going to look to so in the case of a school district, you may see a superintendent or someone similar. Turning to the energy manager, or turning to the facilities director for an influence based decision, they're going to look at that person, and they're going to say, okay, this person is the energy expert. And our goal is to meet this energy goal. So I'm definitely going to look at what this person has to say if they say that we are going to meet our carbon reduction goal or our kilowatt reduction goal, or our renewable goal, whatever it is, you know, kind of hitting all the hot buttons nowadays, at least on LinkedIn, then that person is going to give the kind of thumbs up and that economic buyer is going to feel more comfortable in making a buying decision. So when you make an account map, you want to map out who holds the budget, who makes the economic decision, they may not be the same person who makes the technical decision. So technical decision maker, economic decision maker, who is a blocker, who is potentially going to block the technical or economic decision. And there's also a third type of blocker, which we'll talk about in just a second called a cultural blocker. And then third, we want to map out our influencers, who's our technical influencer? And who is our economic influencer. Now, that third kind of blocker, the cultural blocker that I mentioned, let me talk about a scenario with a major social media company that I was involved with, who
Phil Zito 18:57
you may know, and this large social media company wanted to do a smart campus. And what was happening was you had people who were coming into the decision and they're like, Well, what if we monitored the grease on all of our fry traps in our cafeteria, and then we logged how often the grease is replaced. And based on that logging, we could save a little bit of money by replacing less grease. And they were actually influencing the selection of technical vendors based on unrealistic technical requirements. If you know anything, which I didn't at the time, but now I do if you know anything about grease and fries and stuff like that, you are not saving a lot of energy or money by replacing grease at a lower frequency or at a higher frequency. It just isn't making a big difference. But if you know anything About control systems monitoring grease, and how often it's changed is not a very easy thing to do. First off the environment in which a fry cooker is existing that machine, it's kind of a very volatile environment. It's like going and trying to monitor acid tanks, right, you have to tend to replace the sensors quite often. So allowing that cultural influence to potentially persuade an economic, or a technical buyer from making a decision is a threat that you need to counter especially as you get into large organizations. Now, I know that seems like a ridiculous example. But it happens all the time. You're in a K through 12 environment. And the teachers literally don't like the way that the thermostats look. And because they don't like the way that the thermostats look, they complain to the principal who complains to the superintendent. And next thing, you know, you've got people complaining about the aesthetics of something that has almost zero impact on the performance and the achievement of maybe an energy goal, or a IQ goal excetera. So you need to be cognizant that there are people from a cultural perspective, who can block your ability to make a sale. And if you don't realize this, and this is something quite frankly, I didn't realize until I was much further along in my career, that there are people who have irrational expectations that in no way influence the technical solution that will go and complain. And you need to be prepared to deal with this. I'll give you one last example. And everyone seems to laugh at this. But you know, we were looking at a university, and we're going to put in a major control system retrofit. And one of the major complaints of the control system was that it could never achieve setpoint never achieved that point. And we put in our new control system. And we were going for a service contract. And the person, the older lady who was sitting in this kind of office area was like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe you spent all this money on this new controls. She didn't call controls at the time, she said new air conditioning, which it wasn't new air conditioner was just new control sensors. And it's still always cold in here always called was complaining. And so we're like, okay, all right. It's always cold. And she's like, they can't service things. I'm always cold they never respond at and I was complaining the facility director and he's like, how am I going to make a case, to the dean of this program, that we should be spending money on you, when this person's always cold and complaining. So we dug into it. And it turns out, you know, she's just older lady was very thin, always cold. So, and I mean, I'm kind of proud of this, I thought it was pretty smart in the moment, told her that it was a pneumatic thermostat, it wasn't a pneumatic thermostat was control thermostat, and said, you see that button on the pneumatic thermostat, you've got to go and push it, you got to push that button to pump the air to turn on the heat. I said, this is just how these systems work. There's just no other way to make them work. And the act of her simply getting up walking over to the thermostat and pushing the occupancy override, which didn't work because it was unoccupied. But just pushing it to pump the system up, got her blood moving, got her warmed up. And she was like, Oh my gosh, I actually have control of the system. I actually feel warm. Now. The system's working, you solved it. It's you've solved the problem for me.
Phil Zito 23:54
And, you know, from then on, she sung our praises and was like, that's the company you always have to have out. You have to have them out. Because they're the ones who made it work. And it hasn't worked for the 10 years I've been working here. So silly story, silly example. But an example nonetheless, of how someone who has almost no interface or interaction with you know, the systems in which we are basically selling was able to be satisfied, and then stopped complaining. started praising and made it super easy for the facility manager that then say okay, now I can give you all a service contract. And these kinds of things happen all the time. And that's why I hammer at you. You have to understand, and this is something to educate your service teams, if you're on sales, is educate them and understanding that just because someone who's unrelated to the facilities group is complaining does not mean that that complaint can't impact their ability to have a sale or have some work. Okay, so there you have it. I hope this has given you some tips and tricks around why you should use targeted selling. I hope you have some ideas around targeted selling now. And as always, feel free to share your ideas in the comment section wherever you're listening to or watching this podcast. The podcast will be available this afternoon at podcast at smart buildings academy.com Ford slash 316. Once again, that is podcasts that smart buildings academy.com For slash 316. We are officially done with the sales theme. And we are going to be pivoting to a technical theme now. So for the next several weeks, we're going to be diving into technical topics. We're gonna be using the whiteboard much more. And then from there, we're gonna pivot into workforce development. So hey, thank you so much for all of you being here. Mitch, I see you in the comments. Good to see you. Thank you so much, everyone for listening, be sure to share this. And as always go to podcast, smart builders academy.com, forward slash 2016. And as I mentioned in the beginning of the episode, if you are looking to train talent for your team, we are going to have another cohort of workforce development opening up in the next couple of weeks. And so if you'd like to get some brand new people, like people who aren't even in the industry yet trained up so that they can be executing summer work definitely reach out to us. So thank you so much for being here and I look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday in Episode 317 of the smart buildings Academy podcast. Thanks. Take care
