Battery storage, DERMS, EV charging, and solar companies sell into buyers who want a number before they'll take a call – a real savings estimate, a rebate they actually qualify for, an interconnection timeline that isn't a guess. Most marketing sites hand that job to a generic contact form and a PDF brochure. We build the calculators, eligibility checkers, and lead-routing infrastructure that turn a skeptical visitor into a qualified pipeline entry, and we measure whether it's working.
The Problem
Incentive math is different in every state, and your site treats it like one number
A homeowner in Sacramento and a homeowner in Albany qualify for completely different rebate stacks, utility rates, and interconnection rules, but most CleanTech marketing sites show one generic savings estimate or none at all. Visitors who can't see their real number bounce to a competitor's calculator instead. Every day that gap stays open, you're funding the ad clicks that convert on someone else's site.
Your CRM and your web forms don't talk to your installer network in real time
A residential solar or EV-charging lead fills out a form, and then sits in an inbox for two days before anyone routes it to the right regional installer or sales rep. In a market where three other companies are calling that same lead within the hour, a manual handoff is a lost deal, not a slow one. Nobody built the automation because it looked like a CRM admin task instead of a revenue problem.
Technically skeptical buyers can smell a marketing site that can't answer a real question
Utility procurement teams, municipal buyers, and grid-software evaluators show up already fatigued by greenwashing claims and vague sustainability copy. If your site can't produce a real interconnection timeline, a battery degradation curve, or a DERMS integration spec on demand, you read as another pitch deck instead of a vendor worth a technical call. That skepticism doesn't get overcome by better copywriting – it gets overcome by tools that show the actual math.
Long sales cycles mean a slow site kills deals nobody notices for months
CleanTech purchase decisions – a battery storage RFP, a fleet EV-charging rollout, a hydrogen offtake conversation – can run six to eighteen months from first visit to signed contract. A landing page that loads slowly, a quote tool that times out, or a rebate checker with stale IRA/ITC data doesn't cause an obvious bounce, it just quietly disqualifies you from the shortlist before anyone tells you why. By the time pipeline numbers show the damage, the quarter is already gone.
How We Help
We start by auditing the actual buyer path, not the site map.
From there we build a build plan around the tools that actually move a CleanTech deal forward: a solar or EV savings calculator that pulls real utility rate and incentive data instead of national averages, an interconnection or rebate-eligibility checker keyed to zip code and utility territory, and quote infrastructure that survives a spike in ad-driven traffic without falling over.
Execution runs in parallel tracks. One engineer builds and ships the calculator or eligibility tool with your actual rate and rebate data wired in, state by state. Another wires the CRM and lead-routing logic so a qualified lead from that tool lands with the right regional installer or sales rep within minutes, not days, with the eligibility data attached instead of lost.
We measure everything against pipeline, not vanity traffic. Calculator completion rate, lead-to-routing time, cost per qualified lead by state or utility territory, and where in a multi-step eligibility flow prospects actually quit.
What makes this different from hiring a web development agency is that we're operators first. The team embedded on your account has sold and marketed technical, regulation-heavy products before, so the calculator logic reflects how CleanTech buyers actually evaluate a purchase – not a generic template with your logo dropped in.
Deliverables are concrete, not conceptual. You get shipped tools, wired integrations, and a measurement dashboard – not a strategy deck that describes what someone else should build.
What we deliver
- Solar, battery storage, or EV charging savings calculator with live state-by-state rate and incentive data
- Interconnection and rebate-eligibility checker by zip code and utility territory
- CRM and lead-routing automation connecting web leads to installer or sales networks in real time
- High-consideration landing page infrastructure built to handle state-level incentive variation without a rebuild per market
- Conversion and performance measurement dashboard tracking calculator completion, routing speed, and cost per qualified lead
If a prospect can't see their real rebate number in under thirty seconds, they've already started filling out a competitor's form – your copy doesn't get a second chance to fix that.
Our Methodology
We run CleanTech growth engineering engagements as 90-day sprints, not open-ended retainers. Days 1-15 are the audit: mapping the actual conversion path for your specific subcategory – residential solar, battery storage, DERMS, EV charging, or hydrogen – and identifying which one or two infrastructure gaps are costing the most qualified pipeline. Days 16-60 are build: the calculator or eligibility checker gets shipped in stages by state or utility territory rather than held until every market is ready, so early data starts informing the later builds. Days 61-90 are measurement and iteration: real usage data replaces assumptions about which states or buyer segments need the eligibility logic refined first.
The difference from a traditional agency retainer is that nothing in this sprint is speculative work billed by the hour. Every deliverable ties to a specific conversion gap identified in the audit, and the team embedded on your account stays through the measurement phase instead of handing off a finished site and disappearing. If the 90-day sprint surfaces a bigger opportunity – say, a fleet-EV lead-routing system that needs its own build – that becomes the next sprint, scoped and priced on its own, not folded silently into scope creep.
How We Work
The first 30 days are audit and prioritization: we review your current site, CRM, and lead flow, interview your sales team about where deals stall, and pull utility-rate and incentive data for your priority markets. You get a prioritized build plan by day 30, not a generic recommendations document.
Days 30-60 are active build. A small embedded team – typically one growth engineer and one marketing-side strategist – ships the calculator, eligibility checker, or routing automation in weekly increments you can see and test as it's built, rather than waiting for a single big reveal at the end.
Days 60-90 shift to measurement and refinement. We instrument every tool we ship with real conversion tracking from day one, so by day 60 there's enough data to know which state flows or lead segments need adjustment, and we make those adjustments inside the same sprint.
Clients should expect a working cadence of a weekly standup and a bi-weekly metrics review, direct access to the engineer building the tool rather than a account manager relaying requests, and a scope that's fixed at sprint start so priorities don't drift mid-build. Most clients extend into a second sprint once the first tool is live, typically to expand state coverage or add a second product line's calculator.
- Faster lead-to-routing time between an online quote or eligibility check and first sales contact
- Higher completion rates on savings calculators and rebate-eligibility flows
- Reduced cost per qualified lead as unqualified traffic self-selects out earlier in the funnel
- Sales teams spending less time re-explaining incentive eligibility that the site should have already answered
If your cleantech & energy company needs growth engineering leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does CleanTech growth engineering cost with Winston Francois?
A typical 90-day sprint runs $30K-$70K depending on how many states or utility territories the calculator or eligibility checker needs to cover at launch, and whether CRM/lead-routing integration is in scope. A single-state solar calculator with basic routing lands at the lower end; a multi-state battery storage or EV-charging build with full CRM automation lands higher.
How long until we see a working tool, not just a plan?
The first shippable piece – usually a savings calculator or eligibility checker for your top one or two markets – typically goes live between day 30 and day 45. We build in stages by state rather than holding everything until every market is covered, so you're seeing real leads move through the new flow well before the 90-day sprint ends.
Do we need to give your team access to our CRM and sales data?
Yes, for the lead-routing piece to work correctly your team needs read/write access to whatever CRM and installer-network system you're running, whether that's HubSpot, Salesforce, or a custom platform. We scope exactly what access is needed during the audit phase and work within your existing security and data-handling requirements rather than asking for broader access than the build requires.
How is this different from hiring a web development agency?
A web development agency builds what you specify and hands it off. We come in as growth operators who've run marketing and sales for technical, regulation-heavy products, so the calculator logic and routing rules reflect how a CleanTech buyer actually decides, not a generic template.
How do you measure ROI on a rebate calculator or eligibility checker?
We track calculator and checker completion rates, drop-off points within multi-step eligibility flows, lead-to-routing time, and cost per qualified lead by state or utility territory – all instrumented from the day a tool ships. That data tells you which states or subcategories are converting well and which need a rework, instead of relying on overall site traffic as a proxy for whether the tool is actually working.
Is Winston Francois a good fit for an early-stage CleanTech company, or only established players?
The ideal-fit profile is a company with a real sales team and enough marketing spend that a lead-routing delay or a broken calculator is measurably costing pipeline – typically post-seed CleanTech companies selling into residential, commercial, or utility buyers across more than one state or territory. A pre-revenue company still validating product-market fit usually gets more value from a lighter, cheaper landing page than a full growth-engineering sprint.
Can you handle the interconnection and rebate rule changes that come with new IRA or state policy updates?
Yes, and this is one of the reasons a generic web agency struggles here – incentive rules change with policy updates, and a calculator built once and never touched goes stale fast. We build the eligibility logic so it's straightforward to update state-by-state rate and rebate data as rules shift, and we flag when a policy change is significant enough to warrant a scoped update rather than letting the tool quietly show outdated numbers.
