By Steve Ashkin, The Ashkin Group

Improving sales success has lots and lots of factors ranging from understanding the needs of your prospect to knowing your products to defining “green” to mastering key sales skills like prospecting, time management, overcoming common objections, closing techniques, interpersonal skills, and so on. And to learn more about these issues, I encourage you to go back through our archive of articles or purchase a copy of our book on Green Selling Tips.

But even knowing all of these things --- success can still be difficult especially in our highly competitive marketplace. So this Green Selling Tip begins the first in a series that is intended to dig into what I consider the key to Green Cleaning sales success. While there are lots of thing for you to learn and do, but if you are looking for the one “key” then this is the series for you.

During the Green Cleaning sales process it is common to have a prospect ask for help making the conversion to Green Cleaning and ask “what do you recommend we do?” And I often am disappointed how some sales people answer this question.

Far too often they will immediate jump into a list of products they can sell pulling out brochures, samples, MSD sheets, technical bulletins and pricelists. If the prospect is currently using ready-to-use glass, all purpose and disinfectant cleaners, they might simply recommend their comparable green products.

If the prospect is using 32 ounce cotton string mops they might recommend comparable mops made with recycled content.

If the prospect is using multifold hand towels, small single roll toilet tissue and a dozen different sizes of plastic trash can lines each made from virgin materials they might recommend identical replacements with recycled content.

If the prospect is using a 12 inch vacuum they might recommend their 12 inch vacuum that is “green label certified”. And so on.

After all, for sales people this is our job --- to sell something --- and how we make our mortgage payments. And a one-for-one replace of traditional products with greener alternatives is definitely a step in the right direction because it can help to reduce negative health and environmental impacts associate with the prospects current cleaning products.

But this approach is extremely limiting as it is likely to miss some of the best opportunities to really help improve the prospects cleaning operation. For example, if the current products and processes are resulting in a dirty and unhealthy building, then simply changing the cleaning products WILL reduce the impacts from those products, but the building will still be dirty and unhealthy. And from a sales perspective, you are also likely leaving lots of money on the table by missing important sales opportunities that really would help the prospect and everyone in their building by creating a cleaner, safer and healthier building.

So for the past 18 years, I have been trying to figure out how to effectively convert a customer to Green Cleaning and I keep coming back to the same answer when the prospect asks me “what do you recommend we do?” What I have learned and what we (members of The Ashkin Group) have taught to lots of successful “green” sales professionals is that the best answer to this question is NOT “let me make a one-for-one product comparison”.

What I recommend is something that goes like this, “Ms. Prospect, I would be happy to do a one-for-one comparison for you. But what we have found is that when we just switch products we often miss the best opportunities to “green” your cleaning process.

“What I have found to be much more beneficial would be to would allow me to conduct a simple audit and evaluation of your current products and cleaning practices. Then based on those findings I will make a series of recommendations, which I call the 3 Bucket Approach.

“I will sort my findings to make it easy for you to identifying those green opportunities that might save you money, or are no- or low-cost increase. The second bucket will be for those opportunities at the other end of the spectrum that may require a capital budget request, such as purchasing a large riding scrubber. A final bucket will be for those opportunities in the middle.

“This approach will allow you (the prospect) to see all of the green opportunities available to you and then you can make the decisions that make the most sense to you.”

The value of the 3 Bucket Approach is simple because it is a logical approach to managing a lot of information and results in what easily translates into a purchasing plan. And it is relatively easy to do.

And perhaps most important, it is an excellent sales strategy. As a matter of fact, I have found that an average sales person will close the sale on the bucket labeled "saves you money, or are no- or low-cost increase" 75% of the time, while a good sales person will close more than 90% of these. And by any measure, a 90% closing rate is very good!

And as the sales person continues to understand more about Green Cleaning, improve their ability to discuss the opportunities and benefits even more clearly, and able to help the prospect even more --- the more of the other two buckets they will sell as well.

In coming articles we will help you identify what to look for when auditing chemicals, paper, equipment, etc., as well as help writing the reports all of which will help you translate the opportunity into real sales.

Remember, customers and prospects are increasingly converting to Green Cleaning and they are going to be purchasing products from someone. And we’d prefer that it’s from you!

Good luck selling,

Steve

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About the Author:

A 25+ year veteran of the cleaning industry, Stephen Ashkin is the author of Green Cleaning for Dummies and a tireless advocate for environmentally preferable cleaning products. Often referred to as the “father of green cleaning,” Ashkin has played a pivotal role in setting industry standards, promoting environmentally preferable products, and advocating for socially responsible practices.

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