• September 20, 2013
  • Mark LaCour
  • 0

Learn what the second biggest mistake salespeople make, what’s a pig, why you might need a MOC process, what’s the best low cost marketing tool, why peak oil is easy to understand put hard to make reality and finally why robbing oilfield workers may not be good for your health!

 

Transcript of Session –

Hey, folks. Let’s learn something new about the oil and gas industry.

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All right. Today’s show is where we answer e-mails, so these are August e-mails.

Number one. I know you say the biggest mistake salespeople make when meeting with potential clients is not understanding their business. Now, I’m curious on what is the second biggest mistake you see?

That’s pretty easy. Not driving commitments. So, when you meet with the prospective client, they have an interest in what you do, right? Or they wouldn’t be meeting with you. Part of you driving that process is to be able to get your customer to commit to doing things. So, committing to follow-up meeting, committing to having a phone call about the features and functionality of your product, committing to bringing the decision makers, committing to get your budgetary numbers. Those are all things that you need to drive as a salesperson. That’s probably the second biggest mistake I see people make is they had meetings about driving commitments from the clients.

Number two. What is a pig?

Yeah. That’s pretty funny to think there’s something in the oil and gas industry called a pig. But basically what it is a tool that pipeline companies use originally to clean out the inside of the pipeline. In the old days, it was metal with leather seals and then when it came down the pipeline it make a squealing sound, so that’s where it got the name pig. Nowadays, it’s pretty damn sophisticated. So they use it for everything from routine maintenance to inspection to x-rays, they even can separate things like cooking oil and crude oil in the same pipeline at the same time with the pig, so that’s what a pig is.

Number three. We are a large engineering consulting firm which has a substantial oil clientele including a few of the majors, but we struggle with unbillable hours when our clients demand changes. This really hurts our financial performance and it’s a strain to our people. Any suggestions?

Yeah. You need to implement something called an MOC– Management of Change process. Here at Modal Point, we have one in every contract we do ‘cause what happens is your clients ask you to do extra things and that’s called scope creep. With those extra things, you should be able to bill for, but usually you don’t – those extra things aren’t re-written in your scope of work your SOW, so you need to implement a process to capture those things and get the client agree to pay for it. It’s called an MOC – Management of Change. Google it or reach out to me via e-mail, I’d be happy to help you.

Number four. We are a small software company looking to maximize our exposure to the oil industry. What is the best marketing resource in your opinion that is not cost prohibitive?

That’s easy, LinkedIn. So, Google LinkedIn company pages and then check out the website HubSpot, they have some great tutorials in there. But basically last year of a thousand small businesses that set up a company page on LinkedIn, 43% of them pick up new clients and it’s free, so you can’t beat that for small marketing company and even large company use LinkedIn company pages to drive customer engagement. So I hope that helps.

Number five. This may be a stupid question, but what is peak oil?

So first thing, there are no stupid questions. Second thing, peak is theory that’s hard to connect with reality. So the theory is at some point we will tap all of available oil and the production of oil globally will start to decline and continue to decline, right? So we hit a peak oil and then we go downhill.

The problem is technology changes, so peak oil in the US in the 1910’s and 1920’s was all that Shell place now; Pennsylvania, New York, West Texas, the Dakotas, and they got 5% of the oil out the ground and decided that the oil fields are no longer productive. When you fast forward to now with the new technology of the horizontal fracking and we’re able to grab 15% of that oil out of those old Shell place which is at one point were considered depleted. Well, 15 plus 5 is only 20, which means 70% of oil will still be there. So in the future I fully expect and so do most experts that new technologies will allow you to tap in that. So peak oil is a hard thing to pin down realistically, but the theory is pretty simple to understand.

And then finally, I want to show you a little video clip. Some bunch of Halliburton guys – oil field guys in Brazil just got off of work and they’re trying to grab a bite to eat have a cold beer and somebody decides to walk in and rob them. I want you to see what happens when you try to rob oil guys.

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