Sales Empathy

Moving energy is a business of details: Not only do we have to keep track of the energy itself – the molecules and electrons that make up natural gas and electricity – we also need to track customer consumption which changes daily (or hourly as in the case of electricity) based on weather and such things as whether Junior has decided to take a shower today (thank goodness!) or Dad has a football game he can’t miss.

And that doesn’t include all the details related to meter reads at odd times of the month, data exchange with the utilities, managing sales and marketing, and then keeping all of our data systems running smoothly. On top of the sheer volume of data is the fact that it all interrelates. A change in consumption affects the supply and the billing. A change in the weather forecast can have huge consequences.

This is why we have a philosophy at MX: Everybody should be a jack of all trades and a master of one. We all have skill sets that are important, but only if we know how they fit into the whole can we truly make a valuable contribution. I am always glad to hear when our people express interest in making a move within the company. This helps spread knowledge to other departments and everybody learns more about how we operate.

Recently, I realized there was another benefit when our people move around, particularly when they want to move into sales. Why? To be good at sales requires that you in touch with a customer’s needs. It isn’t enough to get up in the morning and say, “Today, I’m going to sell electricity.” There are lots of competitors that want to do the same and why should somebody deal with us?

There has to be something more: An interest in and understanding of our customers’ energy needs, i.e., empathy. Our business, like most businesses, is about service first and energy second. Harry Bullis, once the chairman of General Mills, said to his sales people: “Forget about the sales you hope to make and concentrate on the service you want to render.” Our customers want to know that their energy needs will be satisfied, they will be billed accurately, and they will have a fair price. The sale is not what serves their needs; it is the service that meets their needs. When our first objective is to serve our customers, our customers will respond with appreciation.

I find that when our people move into sales from other departments, they are better equipped to understand a customer’s business. After all, they have been in the customer’s shoes within our very own business. If they have accounting experience, they understand our customer is watching his billing and the bottom line. If they have IT experience, they understand our customer wants his information in an easily digestible, reportable format. If they are simply breathing, they understand that good service requires integrity, rapid response and thorough attention.

Our products – fixed rate price protection, carbon dioxide offsets – have always been challenging to explain to commercial customers. It gets a whole lot easier when the MX team members making the sale care about and understand the customers’ needs.

Poor Little Lambs

“AAAARGHHHH!!!!”

If you were standing outside anywhere in the Northeastern United States last Saturday morning, you would have heard this plaintive cry.

“AAAARGHHHHH!!!”

My wife had just arrived back from her third (in as many days) frustrating visit to Fedex/Kinko’s with a tale of woe. And being the resident cranky, customer service curmudgeon in my own company, I thought I would bring it to your attention.

The story starts in 1970 in Santa Barbara, California, where Kinko’s first started. According to the Fedex/Kinko web site, the first store front “measured 100 square feet and featured a single copier, offset press, film processing and a small selection of stationery and school supplies.” I think of this as the “copier that could.” Within four years there were 72 other locations.

I can relate to this story because those were the four years that I was in college. I remember the little copy center in New Haven on College Street where copies were 3 cents a page and the people behind the desk knew your name when you came in at 6 am after finishing a paper due at 9.

Over the years I spent many a night in Kinko’s. I remember 4 in the morning in Honolulu. I had a presentation the next morning before Hawaiian Airlines. I had gotten back to my hotel room from dinner the night before and learned that there were going to be 10 more people than I expected.

“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll find Kinko’s.” And so I did.

And that night in Baltimore, Maryland, in November 1999. MXenergy was launching its first product – a one year fixed price offer for natural gas to customers of Baltimore Gas & Electric. I was knocking on doors in Lithicum, MD, and the product sold so fast I needed to make more copies of our customer contract.

“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll find Kinko’s.” And so I did.

Or that time I visited a commercial customer with a colleague in Cleveland, shortly after Hurricane Katrina blew in. On the way to the meeting we learned that natural gas prices were hitting all time highs. I wanted to bring our customer a price chart and needed to find a computer…quickly.

“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll find Kinko’s.” And so I did.

Today you can find 1200 stores in 10 countries with 20,000 employees. Actually, Kinko’s calls its employees “team members,” something we do here at MXenergy as well. Which is one reason I always worshipped this company… until recently.

As much as I admire Federal Express, I’m afraid that I must date the decline of my little “copier that could” to the acquisition of Kinko’s by Fedex in February 2004. Fedex is a great company with its own history, dating back to an undergraduate paper written in 1965 by Frederick Smith. Smith recognized a need for a more efficient mechanism for distributing packages. More power to him. He capitalized on a great idea and built an international business that has improved business productivity worldwide.

I don’t blame Fedex for seeing a good fit with Kinko’s. But soon after the buyout I noticed a few things. The hard-working crew at Kinko’s were no where to be seen. Where were the team members that knew your name and remembered your order? That used to exceed expectations every time by having your copies ready hours before they were promised? That used to go out of their way to offer suggestions to improve the look and feel of your presentation?

I wonder if anybody at Kinko’s noticed that I stopped visiting on my out of town trips. It started when I went to a Kinko’s at midnight…and it was closing!

“But…you…can’t,” I mouthed to the employee on the other side of the glass door. “You’re…always…open!” He ignored me.

And then my wife’s experience. She needed to make 100 copies of a program for a theatrical performance she had produced. After waiting in line for some desultory employees to look up from their work, she left a sample to copy. The next day – after even less motivated employees finally found her order – she found the copies had not been made. She came back a couple hours later after having ordered 100 copies, only to find later that only 50 were made.

“But 50 times 2 pages is 100 copies, no?” asked the confused employee.

“No,” my wife explained. “I ordered 100 copies of a two page program which means 100 copies, not 50 copies.”

“AAARRGHHHH!!!”

What happened? Could it be that the entrepreneurial spirit of Kinko’s was crushed out of existence when Fedex moved in?

I remember late one night in the good old days one of the Kinko’s people – an immigrant from Russia, I recall, who worked long hours – told me that she felt like an owner because she held stock options in Kinko’s. She was motivated because she believed that good customer service would lead to more business and more business would lead to more value in her pocket. I understood this kind of motivation because we try to create the same kind of ownership pride at MXenergy, where many team members have the opportunity to own options or stock in our company.

If anybody over at Kinko’s sees this blog entry, I hope it doesn’t discourage them. Great companies can lose their way and still come back. I hope Kinko’s succeeds, with or without Fedex’s help. I still believe in the “little copier that could.”

Meanwhile, I am reminded of the Whiffenpoof song:

“We are poor little lambs who have lost our way,
Baaaah, Baaaah, Baaaah….”

The Last Six Miles: Not Strength but Will

Sir Edmund Hillary died early this month. He was a childhood hero of mine, one of the first to summit Mt. Everest in 1953 with Tenzing Norgay, his Sherpa. After tackling Everest, Hillary went on to other startling achievements, such as reaching the South Pole in 1958, the first successful overland attempt since Robert Scott’s fatal trip of 1912. His passing started me thinking about the amazing things that human beings can accomplish if they set their minds to it.

Over the years I have had several friends who have attempted to accomplish prodigious feats of athletic or intellectual skill. Their accomplishments may not have been on the order of Hillary and Norgay. But to me they were equally dramatic: Running the 26.2 mile marathon, sailing across the Atlantic, memorizing the Kings and Queens of England, helliskiing in British Columbia, almost climbing K-2 in the Himalayas (28,251 feet), reciting “pi” to 256 decimal places, successfully climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa (19,300 feet). Until recently I admired all of these feats (performed by different people, of course!) with the detached bemusement of an indulgent uncle, pausing over a picture on a mantelpiece here or reading a long letter in the comfort of an armchair there.

Then recently my family and I decided to attempt our own adventure: trekking four days through the Andes to reach Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. We had never done anything as ambitious – or as insane! We flew to Cusco, the Incan capital, which sits at 10,000 feet. After a couple days of acclimatizing, we set out into the mountains, hiking almost 25 miles, much of it on vertical stone trails set in the mountain over 600 years ago. At one point we climbed a pass at 14,000 feet, climbed down a couple thousand feet and then returned to another pass at 13,000 feet.

For our teenage sons it was a day in the park. For my wife and me it was the most demanding athletic challenge we had ever faced. Physically, we were perfectly fit and had no muscle aches going up or down. But in the thin oxygen at that altitude we found ourselves gasping for breath. Frequently we stopped and questioned whether we could go on. After a minute of deep breathing and slowing heart rates, we resumed, telling ourselves again and again that there was no option: We had to go on. And we could go on, as had centuries of Incans and other Andean natives before us.

We dismissed our hardship to age. Then we heard from one of the 32-year old members of our tour party who had run four marathons. “This was like the last 6 miles of a marathon,” she told us. “You train for 20 miles and then you hit the wall. The last six miles you have to dig deep down into yourself, where you find not strength but will.”

“Not strength but will.” As I sit here looking at the screensaver on my computer -- a picture of my family standing in front of Machu Picchu – I am reminded of both the exhilaration and the pain of that journey. For the first time in my life I feel I can relate to Hillary and Norgay trudging those last few hundred feet to the summit. Or to our marathon friend in those last six miles. Each step must have been agony. But there was no option.

Many times in business we face obstacles that seem insurmountable. In our business we are faced daily with demands for overwhelming amounts of information. After all, energy is a 24/7 business. Electricity is dispatched and balanced every 5 minutes. Our customers are located at thousands of different load pockets and pipeline delivery points around the country. Our supply must be constantly balanced against the instantaneous needs of our clients. The weather is unpredictable and differs in every one of our 38 different market areas. And all of this data needs to be rolled up, captured, reconciled, billed accurately, and reported to our customers, our bankers, our shareholders.

These are intimidating requirements. We have built the infrastructure and have the muscle to succeed. Nevertheless, at times when we launch a new product, or enter a new territory, or pursue new customers, we ask ourselves, “Is it worth it? Can we do one more thing? Aren’t we working hard enough? Wouldn’t it be easier to sit back in our armchairs and watch others on the bloody edge of change and growth?”

“Not strength but will.” Our friend said it all. In our business, as on the summit of Mt. Everest, it is the will to succeed as much as the strength to do so that helps us meet our goals. And when we accomplish our objectives, we feel more relief and satisfaction than pride. Hillary said at the end of his life that he never felt like a “hero,” just a guy doing a job nobody else would do. Not a bad legacy to leave behind, whether climbing mountains or serving the needs of customers.