This editorial is dedicated to Jason.

There are few things in life more enjoyable than taking in a Red Sox game on a sunny weekend afternoon.  Walking down Yawkey Way with your ticket in hand, the smell of roasted peanuts, popcorn, and the incessant call for "get your programs heaaaah!"  [That's "here" for those of you not accustomed to the Boston accent].  But nothing tops the smell of those sausage carts, the one victory a Sox fan can be assured of taking home from Fenway...the never-ending taste of a foot-long sausage sandwich, wrapped in foil, and overflowing with peppers and onions!  Good stuff...well, not really but it certainly looks and tastes great.

The street vendor is clever businessman when you think about it...ancient really. Stimulate all of the superficial senses of the buyer...smell, sight, taste until any sense of reason is completely suffocated by layers of steaming peppers and onions; the only two, non-toxic ingredients included in this biological bomb.  After all, nobody would so much as serve the neighbor's barking dog the ingredients pumped into that transparent casing if they knew precisely what was in there.  In the world of sales, I believe they refer to this phenomenon as "selling the sizzle, not the steak."   You know, old school when you used to be able to sell on more fiction than fact; Cigarettes and sun tan oil...the less you knew, the better.

Like many white collar professionals these days I pride myself as being part of a more modern, sophisticated industry that is well beyond the simple street cart methods of sales and marketing...or so we think.  The educational institutions we are now brought up in would suggest the sausage man utilizes marketing methods that are outdated for the complex professional services businesses of today...not substantive enough for the educated buyer.  Marketing energy portfolio services, risk management services, etc....now that is a different story.  The C's, VP's, and Director level people that I deal with can see right through the sizzle.  Some of them can even tell you how many calories are in the steak...these guys and gals are some smart cookies.  It's all about the bottom line and facts...no peddlers welcome.

I recently had an opportunity to introduce SilentSherpa's energy portfolio management services to a prospective client, a VP of a small university here in Rhode Island which is paying approximately 150% prevailing market rates for their electricity +/- on any given month.  Certainly, this opportunity proposed to be a classic example of how the steak is more important than the sizzle.  Remember, I'm dealing with academia here...you know the smart people who can see through the sell.  The same organizations who are pitching eighteen year olds the importance of higher learning so they can avoid the rigors of hustling sausage sandwiches to the masses.  To boot, I had the clear benefit of referencing the results of their current energy management solution which was a reverse blind auction.  The result they got was certainly reverse of what they hoped for and clearly for the blind if they are paying minimum 50% above market.  This was quite straight forward...push the logic, and smother the superficial glitz and glam of sweet-sounding reverse auction glossies with proven processes and 5x - 10x documented ROI's at universities and colleges just like his.

So, it was the perfect match...just one lunch conversation away from our newest client.  I've done this dozens of times over the past decade.  Two days of emails from me later, follow up calls from my Business Solutions Manager...even emails from one of our oldest university clients [a colleague of this VP] who was kind enough to outline how our services have benefited his university could not get me a lunch date with this VP.  Such a road block was virtually impossible given the circumstances...it was a no brainer.  I even went so far as to kindly advise this gentleman on the specific flaws of his current energy risk management practice, as if it were not obvious enough based on what he was paying.  Regardless of my attempts, he just didn't want to hear it.  Obviously, the reverse blind auction man...a/k/a the sausage man of the retail energy industry did not encounter the same problem.  He had nothing on me, delivered a junk product, yielded no transparency, and yet he succeeded in selling the sizzle while I couldn't sell the filet mignon of energy portfolio management.  So much for complex, substantive marketing theories...this professional got taken to school by the sausage man!

Thinking back to my fondest memories of Fenway, I can tell you the sausage man is not just alive and well at ballparks across America.  However, instead of a $10 spend for a belly-buster...it's a seven figure spend for a budget-buster with heartburn that lasts for 2-3 years instead of one night.  You would think an institution of higher learning [of all sectors] would desire full-transparency if not mandate it.  I serve many that do, but not this one or others like them.  And it's not much different in many other sectors, as organizations frequently tell us their brokerage services are "free" because the supplier pays their broker or consultant.  Who and what does the broker or consultant work for if you are not directly paying them?  These folks would probably vomit if they knew what their energy supplier was baking into their $/kWh or $/therm rate for that "free" service...2% - 5%, some are higher for doing nothing more than trafficking paper in many instances.  Ask your supplier for itemization of association fees, broker fees, etc...and they will smother you with peppers and onions.  The new energy marketplace is about selling sausage, not substance...the facts are not very appetizing!