What questions should you ask yourself about your prospects before you approach them?
1. What drives decision-making?
2. Who are the decision-makers?
3. What do they each value the most?
4. How do your offerings map into those values?You need to understand who really makes the decisions, and how they decide how to allocate their finite capital, and perhaps even more finite management attention span. While some of your business is reactive – in other words, you’re addressing a request for a quote from someone else – if you want to turbocharge your business, you’ll want to expand your activities into the PROACTIVE mode. You will need to identify owners that need to make their operations more competitive, profitable and valuable.
If you create a felt need, one that is anchored in their values, you’ll succeed. What kinds of felt needs are out there? Well, there’s fear of downtime; the need to earn an ENERGY STAR® label or LEED® certification; the need to improve tenant comfort and convenience because in this real estate economy, the last thing you need is for your tenants to decide not to renew; for owner-occupants, there’s also the need to improve productivity.
On that note, think about it... If you pay $40K for an employee that occupies about 200 SF of your offices, your payroll represents $200/SF. What’s your utility bill? $2/SF? A 1% improvement in productivity pays for the entire utility bill! Isn’t that something that deserves to be mentioned when you’re discussing the comfort aspects of what you’re trying to sell?
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