Commercial Energy Sales: How To Manage Your Leads

Staying organized in your sales efforts is one of the most important skills to develop in order to become a successful energy broker. As you start to close accounts, continue to prospect for new customers, and follow up on sales leads, disorganization is prone to happen. Here are three tips on staying organized as you grow:

Plan Your Day

Have you ever felt like you were busy all day, but did not accomplish anything? Do not fret. It happens to the best of us. Planning each day and setting mini-goals is a great way to prevent this from happening. As you get more and more busy in your energy career, time management becomes critical. It is always best to set goals for your day and have a clear vision for what you would like to accomplish. Try avoiding time-wasting activities that take you away from your goals. Here is a great example of how to plan your day:

Organizing your time slots is not enough. It is best to have a specific goal you would like to accomplish with each task (e.g. prospect 25 new accounts in-person between 1pm – 5pm). Setting mini-goals each day and accomplishing them is a great way to build confidence and momentum in your sales efforts. It also keeps you on-task and focused on the things that matter most.

Have a Notetaking System

Some of us are old-school and prefer writing things down. In that case, a yellow tablet might do the trick! Make sure to label each page with the date and develop a system for taking notes on your prospects. It is always best to remember personal things about decision-makers (e.g. what sports team they like, where they just went on vacation, where their kids go to college, etc.). Furthermore, a notetaking system will keep you organized on who you recently spoke to, who you need to follow up with, and how many sales calls you made each day.

For those of you who are more technologically-savvy, a CRM system is the ideal tool to use when prospecting. Many energy CRM systems, especially Diversegy’s in-house broker CRM platform, allow you to add details about prospects that pertain to their energy supply contracts. Making note of when that manufacturer’s electricity contract ends, what he is paying per kWh, and what ESCO supplies him, is a great practice to win the business in the future. Learn more about Diversegy’s energy broker CRM platform here.

Now that you’ve created your prospect list, decided on the prospecting methods and come up with a daily action plan, it’s time to start tracking your efforts. This is where most salespeople fail. They have all the right intentions when they get started, they have success prospecting, close a few accounts, and then they get lost in the feeling of temporary success that they forget to keep their pipeline full of new leads.

One of the most important aspects of the sales process is to always have new prospects in your pipeline who eventually lead to new customer accounts. The easiest way to mess this up is to not track your sales efforts. Simply keeping daily log of the new prospects you contacted, the accounts on which you follow up, and the new accounts that you closed will speak wonders to you. Here are some of the benefits to keeping a sales log:

Data Tells You Where To Focus

Let’s pretend its the end of the month and you are reviewing your sales log for the previous month. Maybe your sales log looks something like this:

• 200 new cold prospect contacts made
• 600 follow up contacts made
• 30 new energy bills received
• 1 new closed account

The scenario above indicates that this salesperson is great at prospecting and following up. He made 200 new cold prospect attempts (roughly 10 per working day) and followed up with each prospect three times (200 cold prospects x 3 = 600 follow up attempts). He is even pretty good at getting energy bill copies from his prospects with a success rate of 15% (30 bills from 200 prospects). Where he needs help is in closing the deal. He only closed 1 account out of the 30 bills he acquired. A good energy broker can help you with your closing skills to increase that ratio.

Let’s look at another scenario:

• 20 new cold prospect contacts made
• 30 follow up contacts made
• 15 new energy bills received
• 7 new closed accounts

This salesman is a great closer. He was able to secure 15 energy bills from 20 prospects, and he closed 7 new accounts! The number of new cold prospects, however, is incredibly low! Imagine if he applied the same effort as salesman 1. He would have closed 70 new accounts!

The numbers do not lie, and they help to keep you on track to achieving your goals as a retail energy broker.

Data Keeps You Accountable

Not only can your sales log show you where you are weak and need training, but a good sales log will also keep you accountable to your goals. It is very easy to lay off the gas pedal when you just closed a few accounts. You are happy about your recent success and the daunting task of cold prospecting seems like it can wait for another day. Wrong. Not only is the best time to cold prospect after you just closed a deal due to your positive attitude, but you have to keep feeding your pipeline with new leads or your funnel will run dry in a few weeks.

Have you ever wondered why you can stay consistent with closing new accounts? Do you have a few good months and then seem like you can’t close anything? The reason has nothing to do with your sales skills. It is all about your prospecting efforts. People are emotional and no one wants to feel rejected when cold prospecting. Salespeople do everything in their power to avoid it. They attend trainings, they make plans with managers, and they think about the future – all in an effort to avoid the most emotionally-grueling task of all, cold prospecting. And, there’s no better excuse to skip a day of prospecting like a newly closed account.

“Why make cold calls today? I just closed a deal!”
-The Unsuccessful Salesman

Keeping a sales log holds you accountable to always feeding your pipeline with new prospects. Again, the numbers do not lie, so when you go two days in a row with sub-par prospecting numbers, you only have one person to blame. No matter how busy you are closing new accounts, you must find time to prospect!

“In sales, all of the success is found in the follow up.” -Anonymous

Developing a methodical follow-up system is critical to your success as an energy sales professional. The reality of sales is that the large majority of customers do not buy from you on the first call or visit. Customers may have concerns, excuses, or simply be under contract with another energy supplier. So, having a system to track all of your leads, their status, and relevant notes is paramount. Diversegy offers its sales partners a proprietary CRM software system for doing just that. Some of the benefits of using a CRM to track your follow up efforts are as follows:

• Never miss an opportunity because you simply forgot about the account
• Set reminders for competitor contract expiration dates so you know when to follow up
• Develop a routine for staying in front of prospects so they remember your name
• Track your customer contracts and organize your renewals

Want to learn more about how to sort and filter spreadsheets so you can manage your lead data?

Diversegy’s full-serve sales platform offers agents, teams, brokers, and customers many benefits. Our program is a commitment and investment into the future of the competitive retail energy industry. Here are some of the key benefits of our platform: