Stacking the Deck in Your Favor, Part 1

When you’re going to market with a new product or service, what niches and value propositions would allow you to stack the deck in your favor? In determining an answer to this question, there are three key questions you should first ask yourself:

Why should a particular prospect or group of prospects be interested in what I have to say?
How might I reframe the value so that it resonates specifically at their frequency?
Where might I reach my prospects once I determine that that's the message I want to deliver?

Let’s take the example of the HVAC sales professional selling “smart valves.” Over the course of the next two days, we’ll discuss several scenarios to stacking the deck in your favor and get the wheels spinning in your mind as to some possible answers to these questions:

Utility Programs

Why?

Utilities need the savings; some utilities find it genuinely challenging to find projects that will actually generate savings calibrated in therms.
They need to prove those savings to the regulators, and your smart valve solution will give them concrete data as evidence.
Some utilities are just fond of seeking new technologies so they can fulfill a market transformation goal.

How?

Propose a pilot program to prove the concept.
Instead of just having a prescriptive rebate (where they give $100 per smart valve, for example), suggest to the utility that they do a custom pay-for-performance incentive (where you get paid only for the energy savings).
Once the pay-for-performance incentive proves itself, you can suggest migrating to a prescriptive rebate, which may turn out to be much more generous than the previously mentioned $100 per smart valve.

Where?

You might work with third parties to find utility partners (such as rebate administrators).
You also might start with the utilities serving your test sites if you want to do a pilot program.

Retrocommissioning Specialists

Why?

Retrocommissioning specialists are sophisticated enough to understand the benefits of your technology.
They also have insight into the highest-value applications.

How?

Work with a retrocommissioning specialist, have them use the product, and then feature a product case study on a reference library website.
Present a paper at the National Conference on Building Commissioning about how this smart valve technology could help a retrocommissioning specialist gain more control over a facility that they get hired to optimize.

Where?