Selling Energy: Inspiring Ideas that Get More Projects Approved

A casual observer would assume that vendors and contractors sell energy projects to multifamily building owners. In reality, the energy managers and other internal champions connected to those buildings wind up doing most of the selling. They’re the ones who lobby to gain consensus among their peers in property management, facilities, and engineering, persuade senior management to prioritize the initiative, and ultimately convince capital budgeting to approve the needed funds. And if the residents’ cooperation is needed to make the proposed initiative a success, those residents need to be sold on the idea as well. With all of this selling going on, energy management professionals are smart to embrace two winning strategies commonly seen among the world’s top sales professionals. The first is understanding all of the benefits of your proposed initiative and then expressing them in ways that resonate with your prospect. The second is ensuring that all communication with your prospect is both compelling and concise. Let’s talk about the benefits. First, understand all of the benefits your proposed initiative could provide: utility-cost financial, non-utility-cost financial, and non-financial. While utility-cost financial benefits may be the most obvious, they are rarely the most compelling. Non-utility-cost financial benefits include improved resident retention or attraction, higher rental rates, lower capitalization rates, and/or higher asset value—all of which are factors that handily trump energy savings. This is especially true in situations where residents are submetered for a large portion of the building’s energy use and would receive the lion’s share of any savings. Moreover, some seemingly non-financial benefits (that is, securing a high Energy Star score as a result of improved energy performance, or seeing a rise in resident satisfaction as a result of improved thermal comfort or better lighting quality) can dri...