I had a great day today at the annual Boulder County Green Building Conference at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I attended the Business Development track with this year’s theme being Ideas to Action. About 175 highly educated green building professionals attended with experience ranging from current CU students to presenters with 30+ years experience in building energy efficient buildings. Some interesting thoughts occurred to me throughout the day – since I do “green building marketing” most might conclude that positioning a company as green is simple, but this usually not the case. While most contractors have found their niche and know the technology inside and out, this doesn’t translate to a sales pitch or a marketing strategy… what works is defining your customer’s goals, listening rather than presenting, and simplifying everything in to terms they understand. An elevator pitch of a few simple, yet carefully worded sentences can go much further in your marketing strategy than more graphs of energy costs or savings projections. This information becomes more relevant after the customer’s goals or motivations are clearer. I love this “upside-down” approach to sales.
The other big take away was about financing for companies who are seeking loans to do building energy upgrades. Once the proposal and project scope are defined, have a 3rd party energy modeler/rater create reports projecting energy cost savings (future reduction in overhead) and use these to generate your 3-5 year projections required for the financing. Showing reduced costs in overhead will not only increase the payback of the upfront costs of the project, but will also show banks that your financial future is more fixed and actually reduced by the energy savings. EPIC! This may bridge the gap for many businesses to justify upgrading the AGING existing building stock.
No comments:
Post a Comment