Residential solar and EV companies burn cash chasing homeowners who stall at financing or permitting, while utility and industrial teams run RFP cycles with no repeatable pipeline behind them. Winston Francois builds the acquisition system for whichever buyer you actually sell to – not a generic funnel bolted onto a policy-driven market.
The Problem
Residential funnels bleed out between quote and install
A homeowner requests a quote, gets excited about the incentive math, then disappears during financing underwriting or a permitting delay that stretches install to 90-plus days. Every week of delay is another week competitors or a rate change can pull the deal. Paid acquisition teams keep feeding the top of funnel while the real leak sits in financing approval and permitting turnaround, which marketing rarely owns or measures.
Utility and industrial deals die in committee, not in sales calls
A single champion in procurement cannot approve a battery storage or DERMS contract alone – engineering has to validate specs, sustainability has to sign off on claims, finance has to model the multi-year contract, and legal has to clear interconnection liability. Sales teams built around one decision-maker pitch a great demo and then watch the deal sit for eight months because nobody built the internal business case for the other four stakeholders.
Buyers have stopped trusting clean energy marketing claims
Utility engineers and industrial facility managers have sat through enough greenwashed pitch decks that generic sustainability language now triggers skepticism instead of interest. A vague claim about grid resilience or carbon impact gets discounted immediately if it is not backed by interconnection data, degradation curves, or a named pilot outcome. Acquisition content written for a general B2B audience actively costs credibility here.
Pipeline is hostage to policy that changes faster than the sales cycle
A residential solar campaign built around a 30 percent ITC assumption or a state net-metering rule can see its economics shift mid-quarter, and a utility RFP built around expected IRA guidance can stall when interconnection queue rules change before the contract is signed. Teams that built their acquisition plan on a fixed policy snapshot end up re-pitching prospects on math that no longer holds, and lose the trust they spent months building.
How We Help
We start by mapping which buyer you are actually acquiring – residential/DTC, or enterprise/utility – because the fix looks nothing alike for each. Most CleanTech & Energy companies are running both motions with one team and one message, which is the root cause of underperformance on both sides.
For residential and home-energy acquisition, the strategy phase rebuilds the funnel around the actual friction points: financing pre-qualification moved earlier, permitting timeline set as an expectation instead of a surprise, and paid spend reallocated away from channels that generate quotes nobody can close.
Execution is where the fractional model earns its keep. We embed inside your existing sales and marketing operation rather than handing you a strategy deck and disappearing.
Measurement gets rebuilt around the metrics that actually predict revenue for each motion: cost per installed customer (not cost per lead) for residential, and stakeholder-stage velocity (not just deal count) for enterprise. We report against these numbers monthly, and we adjust the acquisition plan when a policy shift – an ITC change, a new interconnection rule, a state rebate expiring – moves the underlying economics.
What makes this different from a traditional agency retainer is that we operate like an internal growth team you can turn on and off. There is no account manager relaying instructions to an execution team that never talks to your prospects. The person building your RFP response strategy is the same person reviewing why your paid residential campaign underperformed last week.
Deliverables are built to be used by your team long after the engagement, not slides that sit in a shared drive.
What we deliver
- Funnel or deal-stage audit identifying the specific point where residential quotes or utility RFPs stall
- Buyer-motion-specific acquisition plan (residential financing/permitting funnel, or enterprise multi-stakeholder RFP and pilot strategy)
- Messaging and proof-point library built for technically skeptical buyers, tied to real interconnection, performance, or compliance data
- Channel and outreach plan reallocated toward sources that produce installable customers or committee-ready deals
- Monthly acquisition scorecard tracking cost per installed customer or stakeholder-stage velocity, with policy-change triggers built in
In CleanTech & Energy, the acquisition problem is rarely top-of-funnel volume – it is the friction between interest and install for residential buyers, and the friction between champion and committee for enterprise buyers. Fix the friction point, not the funnel.
Our Methodology
Our 90-day sprint starts where most engagements skip: figuring out which acquisition motion is actually broken. Weeks one through two are the assessment – pulling funnel-stage data for residential clients or deal-stage history for enterprise clients, interviewing your sales team about where deals actually stall, and auditing existing messaging against what technically skeptical buyers need to see.
Weeks three through six are strategy and build: for residential, that means redesigning the funnel sequence around financing and permitting realities and rebuilding paid channel allocation; for enterprise, that means building the stakeholder-specific proof library and outreach cadence for procurement, engineering, and sustainability contacts. Weeks seven through twelve are execution and measurement – campaigns live, sales enablement in use on real deals, and the scorecard running so we can see which changes actually moved cost-per-install or stage velocity before the sprint ends.
A traditional agency sells you a campaign and measures impressions. We measure whether a residential quote turned into an install, or whether a utility deal moved from engineering review to signed contract, because those are the only numbers that matter in a business with sales cycles this long and buyers this skeptical.
How We Work
Day 30 closes the assessment: you get the funnel or deal-stage audit, the buyer-motion diagnosis, and a written acquisition plan with specific changes to financing sequencing, permitting communication, or stakeholder outreach. Day 60 is mid-build: new messaging and proof points are live, channel reallocation is running, and if you sell to both residential and enterprise buyers we have separated the two motions into distinct plans instead of one blended campaign. Day 90 is measurement: the scorecard is live, we show what moved and what did not, and we set the plan for the next quarter based on real data rather than a renewed assumption.
The team is fractional and embedded – typically one senior operator leading strategy plus specialist support for content, paid media, or sales enablement as the engagement requires. You are not assigned a junior account coordinator; the person who did the assessment is the person adjusting the plan in week eight.
Cadence is a standing weekly working session plus async access – we are in your CRM and campaign platforms, not waiting for a monthly report to surface a problem. Clients should expect direct pushback when a request does not match what the data shows, not agreement for the sake of the retainer.
Engagements are built around 90-day sprints so you can evaluate results before committing further, and most clients running both residential and enterprise motions run two parallel sprints rather than one blended plan, because the buyers and metrics do not overlap enough to share a playbook.
- Fewer residential quotes lost between quote and signed financing
- Shorter time from utility RFP response to committee decision
- Messaging that survives technical scrutiny instead of getting discounted as greenwashing
- An acquisition plan that adjusts when ITC, PTC, or interconnection rules change, instead of breaking
If your cleantech & energy company needs customer acquisition leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does a customer acquisition engagement cost?
Most CleanTech & Energy acquisition engagements run $12K-$28K per month depending on whether we are covering one buyer motion or both residential and enterprise in parallel. Pricing scales with the number of channels and stakeholder segments involved, not with company headcount.
How long until we see a change in pipeline?
Residential funnel changes typically show movement in cost-per-install within 4-6 weeks because paid channel reallocation and financing-sequencing changes act on live traffic. Enterprise and utility deal velocity moves slower – expect meaningful stage-progression signal by day 60-90, since RFP and pilot cycles are measured in months, not weeks, and we need at least one full committee cycle to see the new proof points work.
How does your team integrate with our existing sales and marketing staff?
We work inside your existing tools – CRM, campaign platforms, RFP response documents – rather than building a parallel system you have to reconcile later. For enterprise engagements we often sit in on sales calls and RFP review sessions directly.
How is this different from hiring a traditional marketing agency?
A traditional agency sells you a campaign and hands off execution to a team that never talks to your prospects or reads your RFP responses. We are fractional operators who stay embedded through strategy and execution, which matters in this vertical because a six-to-twenty-four month enterprise sales cycle or a policy shift mid-quarter requires someone who understands both the campaign and the underlying deal, not a monthly report reviewer.
How do you measure ROI on customer acquisition work?
For residential, we track cost per installed customer, not cost per lead or per quote, because a cheap lead that never finances or permits is not a result. For enterprise and utility, we track stakeholder-stage velocity – how long a deal sits at each committee gate – alongside win rate on RFPs where our proof materials were used.
What kind of company is the best fit for this engagement?
Companies selling residential solar, home battery storage, or EV charging equipment with an existing quote funnel that is leaking between interest and install, and companies selling battery storage, DERMS, grid software, or hydrogen infrastructure into utilities or industrial buyers with a multi-stakeholder RFP process that has no repeatable content or outreach behind it. Pre-revenue companies with no live funnel or pipeline to diagnose are not a fit yet – come back once you have deals in motion to analyze.
Do you handle both residential and enterprise acquisition in the same engagement?
Yes, but we build them as two separate plans running in parallel rather than one blended campaign, because the buyers, sales cycle length, and success metrics do not overlap. A company selling both residential solar and commercial battery storage needs a financing-and-permitting funnel on one side and a committee-outreach strategy on the other, and treating them as one motion is usually why the acquisition plan was underperforming before we started.
