Exclusive Training: Helping Energy Companies Make More Money

Hey guys, this is Dakota with Community Solar Authority. I co founded Community Solar Authority. We've unlocked access to over $35 million plus in future electricity savings. And we make these videos as a way to explain our business in an easy to digest way. Today I am mashing together a couple of clips I did talking to an energy brokerage, an energy company, on the value of synergy, why it's better than wasting energy in competition, how to take advantage of creating larger pies and taking smaller slices, but ultimately having that be a hundred times more valuable than what they're currently. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the channel and I'll catch you guys on the next episode. Hope you enjoyed this one. All right guys, today I am going to go over a concept that will make your brokerage and business way more money, which is learning how to delegate value add. Now we do this in the context of Community Solar where we're working with Escos and brokerage companies like yours and other cross lateral industries just to be transparent and we help their clients access available energy incentives. But the idea of using synergy to drive new revenue without effort can map over into virtually any business too. The place that I want to start here is why synergy is better than competition. I look at synergy as the future of business because of the free energy that is created when you remove constraints, push for efficiency and really just combine resources. When we first started in the community solar space, we would visit and call on clients to do business with a one on one setting. So we would call up the business owner, say hey, we want to work together. And we realized that almost every big business already had an energy consultant or brokerage or an advisor that they were working with. So outbound directly to customers was almost always going to end up in talking to their energy consultant anyway. We were actually doing was butting heads because we would reach out to the business, they already had someone and so naturally there is a conflict. Instead of butting heads with them because they're mad they weren't a part of the deal, and to prevent them from wasting time trying to find a deal that they can be included on and make money from, we just started partnering with them, the advisors and energy companies and consultants and greater ESCOs. And it was a simple way to include them in the deal, make them look good and obviously generate additional business. They already had the good relationships, which is what I talk about in terms of delegating value add, which I'll get into the trust from the relationship that your company has built with your clients, that trust serves as a bridge. And the whole idea of using synergy is driving value across this bridge again. So synergy is all about repurposing the energy that is otherwise wasted in competition and pooling those resources together to create a better outcome for everybody. These guys already had good relationships with the clients. We benefited greatly from walking into rooms where they were already welcome. And again, the consultant got to look good for recommending this value to their client. We dubbed this trifecta of value. Our end clients, the affiliates that we were working with, and us getting to fill our solar projects, triple wind synergy. It's effective, it's extremely powerful, and it's how this concept was birthed for Community Solar Authority. All right, so next, the thing I want to talk about now is the mindset around delegating value add. When you're partnering with other people to build synergy, recognize that they solve unique problems that actually help your clients even deeper. They'd be looking to those same solutions on their own anyway, so you might as well be the person to do it. Meaning your company that you're. Or, excuse me, your client that you're working with, let's say that you're an energy advisor, so you're already helping them with energy. Well, guess what, they have more problems in the energy space than just something narrow like energy supply. So that client is already looking for solutions, in our case, like Community Solar. But if you were the person to introduce them to that value, then that client is going to remember that you were the person that did that. And that's why you end up looking like a hero and ultimately get to become a part of the work that we're doing. Another example, we had clients in the auditing space who would look at utility bills for clients. They would review what they were overspending on and then provide those savings to the client. They were again already looking at energy bills, dealing with the utility company, finding them energy savings, then turning around and suggesting our services to save additional dollars using Community Solar. Our work was completely in alignment with what they were already doing, and it made perfect sense for the client to say yes when they were already getting value from the same area. It is the equivalent of an easy upsell. Like when you buy shoes, you can add some new socks to go along with it. That's the relationship between Community Solar and energy supply. As I see it, you have to understand that, again, your clients are always looking to have additional problems solved. It is the problem solution equation. You solve a problem for their client, they become into a new desired outcome or state, and now they have new problems to solve for. And so earning something off of this additional value is better than not being the person that introduced it to the client, because you don't get the improved relationship, and obviously you also don't get paid. You're making your clients lives easier by being the person to introduce them to available value, whether it's community solar or something else, as an example. And essentially you are providing awareness to your clients that it's possible we are driving the value over the bridge of your relationship. And again, everybody gets to benefit. It virtually takes no time or effort or energy to be the matchmaker to your clients. And again, you look like the hero while actually getting paid to do it. My kind of tip and thought process here is find the types of companies who can drive relatable value to your clients and you'll be off to the races. The idea that getting into community solar as an energy supplier or as a brokerage, you know, sometimes brokers want to be the person to do community Solar themselves. And this is why delegating value add is so important, which is why I want to get into what the structure actually looks like compared to how you might think it's set up. If you have clients that you've been working with, you've built a relationship with, maybe you've saved them, made them a lot of money, there's a certain level of trust that makes them inclined to continue to keep working with you or at least hear you out. This is why it's way easier to keep customers versus getting new ones. Because you've already successfully built this bridge of trust between you and and your client. The idea of delegating value add is that you can drive additional value over the bridge. But so many organizations only try to do it using their own time, energy and effort. And this is where everybody gets it wrong. The bigger idea is that you can offer other companies to drive their value over your bridge into the customer and benefit from the transaction. It doesn't require time, energy, or effort or resources on your end. But as long as the companies you allow over your bridge are valuable, credible and trustworthy, you look like a hero and you get to benefit. And this is the game that we play with our affiliate partners. We become your trusted community solar partner and we'll drive the value over the bridge and help your clients save money. In exchange for matchmaking us to your clients, you'll get a portion of the revenue you get to improve the relationship you have with your client. And you get to add that additional value to the relationship. This works for some of the largest energy companies, Escos and affiliates, for us, because they recognize our niche expertise and how much value it actually carries that nobody else can drive across. They see we have a track record of doing it successfully and they have as many bridges as they do customers. So again, we'll run a pilot deal, show you how it works, show you we're credible, we know what we're talking about and, and then we'll take that case study of the value we drove across the bridge and we'll show you our growth playbook to get it in front of the rest of your customers so we can keep running this play over and over and over again. And this is how you scale something like community solar. You are not trying to do everything yourself. This is the old way of doing things. This is the least valuable way of doing things. People think, okay, I'll go get my own community solar deal. I'll go and be the person to sell energy supply and I'll also sell them community solar. And again, what you're doing is you are keeping more of a small pie. The way that we think about it is, you know, just thinking about companies who have IPO'd. Jeff Bezos owns like 13% of Amazon. If he owned 100% of it, it would not be a trillion dollar company. Same with any other company that is generating billions in revenue or more. There are opportunities for you to invest into synergy, take smaller slices of a much bigger pie. And that's what we're talking about doing in the community solar space. The tip here I have is thinking about where you can be the matchmaker to other organizations to drive value across the relationship bridge you have with your clients. So you could work with us in the community solar space. If you're doing energy supply, for example, you could work with auditors like I had mentioned. And again, think about as many cross lateral industries as you can. And this is a simple way to drive additional revenue to your company with without having to expend a lot of effort. This is the game of synergy. To wrap up this kind of segment here, guys, I want everybody to drill into their brain that synergy is better than competition. A bigger pie and a smaller slice is way better than a smaller pie with the whole slice. The benefit from working together, combining resources, becoming more efficient and is 100x more valuable than trying to do everything on your own? Wasting time, energy and effort and not being someone who can delegate value add. Think about the type of synergy that you can create to give your clients a better experience and ultimately you will become more valuable to them. If you listen to the segment and you feel like you might be a good fit to be a partner of Community Solar Authority where we can help your clients access the Community Solar program turnkey in states like Illinois, New York and a couple of others. I want you to go to communitysolarauthority.com reach out to us, schedule a complimentary strategy call and we'll see if it's a good fit. I appreciate you guys tuning into these episodes. Let me know if this was helpful and I will catch you on the next episode.