Jessie
Great question and it spawned a few additional questions.
1. How many on the list here do urban only or 97% on grid vs off grid systems?
2. How many urban solar folks today, have segued to mostly micro inverters vs
string inverters?
3. How many wrenches here do mostly battery systems?
4. How many folks here have sales engineers or sell systems themselves?
5. If you have a sales team, what are they allowed to do? Go on the roof and
measure? Open an electrical panel/meter?
Reason I ask, is the trends seem to be shifting in our area and perhaps because
its more urban. Sales folks are trained to do preliminary work- google
earth/pictometry etc.
Then have a baseline for system sizing, prior to the site visit. They contact
prospects and go over their needs and get the electric bill prior to the visit.
If the prospects express all of the buying signs or its a referral- hot to
trot, many companies here will give a proposal within the second visit, pending
the electrician/pre inspection to dial in the electrical and roof verification
items to ensure whats being proposed can actually be installed for final
proposal presentation. Many companies don't allow sales folks on roofs or near
electrical panels for many reasons including liability and lack of background.
So, if you're a small company- all electricians, so to speak, this test and the
supporting framework would be very helpful.
For alot of the larger companies- and I mean over 5-10+ sales force, I believe
the structure of how they approach prospects has shifted over the last couple
of years, especially in light of micro inverters and their relative design
simplicity. I believe this trend will continue, as we see more and more micro
or AC output modules entering into the marketplace.
For the folks that are doing off grid stuff, I've always found it to be a more
unique niche, as its a very technical sale and requires a deeper skill set, as
the competence of the sales/designer/installer/service team is usually a small
group of people from a small company, but I reserve the right to be wrong about
this. I see a future when and where we will all be off grid and there will be a
huge market to service the energy storage devices that support our baseline
energy from solar or another non firm energy resource to power our futures, as
grid saturation and feeder capacities at the utility level will cause us to
head in this direction, naturally.
Aloha, Keith
________________________________
From: Jesse Dahl <dahlso...@gmail.com>
To: Wrenches <RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2012 8:05 AM
Subject: [RE-wrenches] NABCEP Sales
Hello,
I'm prepping for the NABCEP sales exam and was wondering if others on here have
taken it? What are your thoughts?
Jesse
Sent from my iPad!!!
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