Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com July 10, 2017 • Hartford Business Journal 21 BIZ BOOKS Tips for B2B sales strategies "D ea l st or m i n g — The Secret Weapon that Can Solve Your Tough- est Sales Strategies" by Tim Sanders (Portfolio/ Penguin, $28). Today's world of B2B sales has many moving parts because a sales team must deal with the varying perspec- tives of contacts, influencers and stakeholders who provide input on the buying decision. The buying process moves up, down and laterally in an organization. To effectively deal with buying teams, you need to develop selling teams capable of address- ing the sale from multiple viewpoints. Sanders relates the 4Cs of sales (Contact, Conceive, Convince, Contract) in the context of a team-selling effort. Here's a snapshot of each: Contact: When identifying contacts, look well beyond the initial touchstone; check the prospect's website for others who may have a stake in the buy. Use LinkedIn and Google search to find information. Use your internal staff, too, because they may know someone who knows someone — particularly if they're active in professional associations. Connect as many networking dots as you can. Conceive: Use network- ing within the prospect's industry to find information about its business (e.g. his- tory, competitive position, strategy, etc.) to identify the potential pain points that your potential solution could address. With this information, coupled with a thorough knowledge of your product/ potential solution (including customization), engage the prospect contacts to delve deeper to confirm what your homework uncovered. If the prospect has already embarked on a solution-finding mission, you'll have to find where it's at in the process, and the research it has done. Use this information to hone your pitch — including pick-and-choose features and benefits, which create pricing flexibility. Convince: Showing the prospect that your solution reduces costs, increases effi- ciency, etc. may not be enough; with multi- ple perspectives in play, there will always be questions about probability and uncertainty — especially because any solution requires the prospect to change its processes. Selling change can also be difficult because its implementation costs are difficult to assess. Pointing out the costs of delaying a decision (i.e. the prospect continues experiencing pain points that hold it back) usually resonates with those involved in the buy decision. Contract: Negotiating terms involves the ability to "fit" the way both you and the prospect do business. There will be stick- ing points; someone has to bend. Be aware of the "must haves" and "like-to-haves" of both sides when negotiating. The longer it takes to reach agreement, the greater the likelihood the buyer will second-guess its ability to work with you. • • • "Leadership and the Art of Struggle: How Great Leaders Grow through CHAL- LENGE and ADVERSITY" by Steven Sny- der (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, $19.95). Shakespeare's Henry IV: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." The test of true leaders comes when things are not going well. Snyder's reveal: When difficult decisions must be made, leaders don't want to openly discuss their struggles with prob- lems and solutions. Why? Leaders harbor the belief that acknowledging their strug- gles will make them appear weak — pre- cisely the last thing followers want to see. Snyder sees dealing with struggle as a building block of leadership because change, and its implementation, triggers trail-break- ing decisions. As different replaces existing, change leads to tension and an out-of-balance condition — internally and within the ranks. Dealing with challenge and adversity requires adaptive energy — the force that aligns actions with a leader's inner values and principles and the external criteria necessary for success. It also shows leaders they are not alone. Those with adaptive energy seek, listen to and assess feedback and incorporate new perspectives and learning into their decision-making process. Knowing people have their back, a leader can turn inter- nal struggle into creativity and goal-oriented pursuits. "The greatest adversary of adaptive energy is fear." In some cases it's ego-driven (i.e. ceding control); in others, it's the what-if fear of failure. n Jim Pawlak is a nationally syndicated book reviewer. Jim Pawlak OTHER VOICES Natural gas infrastructure critical to keeping CT businesses competitive By James King L ast month, groups around the country participated in National Infrastructure Week, a bipartisan effort to focus atten- tion on the need to invest in essential infra- structure assets. Among the most critically important infrastructure proj- ects are interstate natural gas pipe- lines. The mainte- nance and expan- sion of interstate gas capacity is neces- sary to both enhance energy reliability and affordability and to achieve many of the state's energy efficiency initiatives. Specifically, increasing the availability of such capacity will, among other things: help to alleviate recurrences of price spikes during winter periods; increase reliability and availability of pipeline capacity for Con- necticut's growing reliance on gas-fired, electric-generation plants; increase avail- ability of gas service to all customers, includ- ing commercial and industrial customers in pipeline-constrained Connecticut; and assist the state in furthering policies of increasing availability of gas service to all of its citizens. Recent winter periods have included numer- ous multi-day cold snaps that significantly chal- lenged the capabilities of the gas and electric systems to provide affordable and reliable service. As has been repeatedly observed, the resulting high prices and tight supply were not necessarily the result of an inadequate supply of natural gas. Instead, those problems were caused by the lack of adequate pipeline capac- ity to transport natural gas from its production sources to where gas was needed. This inadequate transport capabil- ity resulted not only in astounding levels of interruptions in constrained areas, but also historically high electricity prices. According to ISO New England, the independent, not- for-profit entity that manages New England's electricity grid, "this situation has severely limited the delivery of fuel for much of the region's generating capacity, which, in turn, threatened the reliable supply of electricity and drove up wholesale electricity prices and air emissions." As a result, estimates show that New Eng- land homeowners and businesses paid $7 bil- lion in extra electricity costs than neighbor- ing regions during the 2013-2015 winters. The increased demand for natural gas caused by the severe cold weather events, combined with inadequate natural gas pipe- line capacity in different regions of the state, also has resulted in a significant increase in the number of service interruptions. These substantial levels of interruptions cause major problems for Connecticut's ener- gy-intensive large commercial and industrial customers. Customers currently receiving interruptible service and otherwise unable to obtain firm service or adequate alterna- tive fuel supplies experienced frequent and prolonged interruptions. In some instances, the frequency and dura- tion of interruptions forced businesses in Connecticut to curtail operations costing mil- lions of dollars in lost production and wages. The problem in Connecticut has been, and continues to be, that retail energy prices are too high. Indeed, Connecticut's price for industrial electric energy is 75 percent high- er than the national average and the price of industrial natural gas is nearly 70 percent higher than the same average. Businesses utilizing natural gas are the backbone of the state's economy. They need lower-priced energy now. The large commer- cial and industrial sector accounts for over 12 percent of our state's economy, employ more than 190,000 residents and pay over $460 mil- lion in property taxes to local cities and towns. These high energy costs create competi- tive hardships for customers and impact the decisions of businesses to locate or expand in Connecticut. It is clear that the development of solu- tions to address the availability of interstate pipeline capacity in the state is essential to the maintenance of reliable electric and gas service, as well as the improving the econom- ics of conducting business in Connecticut. n James King represents the Connecticut Industrial Energy Consumers, a coalition of large industrial energy users that col- lectively employ thousands of Connecticut workers at locations across the state. James King ▶ ▶ The longer it takes to reach agreement, the greater the likelihood the buyer will second-guess its ability to work with you.

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