Utility procurement teams, DERMS evaluators, and installer networks build their vendor shortlist at a handful of industry events, not through inbound forms. Most cleantech companies show up with a generic booth, no speaking slot, and a demo that looks like everyone else's. Winston Francois builds the field marketing program – booth strategy, technical demo staging, speaking placements, and follow-through – that turns those two or three events into your actual sales engine.
The Problem
Buying Committees Only Show Up in Person a Few Times a Year
Utility grid modernization teams, IPPs evaluating storage, and municipal fleet electrification buyers don't take discovery calls from cold outbound – they walk the floor at the handful of major utility technology and storage conferences each year and quietly build their vendor shortlist there. If your booth is unstaffed by anyone who can speak to interconnection timelines or UL 9540A test data, you lose the shortlist slot to the competitor whose VP of engineering is standing at the booth.
Booths Built for Brand Awareness, Not Technical Credibility
Cleantech buyers are greenwashing-fatigued and technically skeptical – they've sat through a hundred pitches with a solar panel prop and a vague sustainability banner and tuned all of it out. What actually earns a follow-up meeting is a live DERMS dashboard pulling real feeder data, a battery rack cutaway, or an EV charger running an actual OCPP session on the floor.
No Executive Visibility in the Room That Matters
Speaking slots and panel placements at the leading utility technology conferences and the major solar and storage summits get allocated 6 to 9 months out, and utilities weight vendor credibility heavily on whether an exec is on stage versus just on the floor. Companies that treat event marketing as a booth-only line item skip the abstract submission deadline every year, then wonder why a smaller competitor with a panel seat gets the RFP invite.
Field Events Disconnected from the Installer and Permitting Network
For residential-facing subcategories – solar, home battery, EV charging – the highest-intent local channel is the installer and permitting-office relationship network, not a national trade show. Companies running a national conference strategy with zero local field presence leave the actual point-of-sale influence to whichever competitor showed up with a regional rep at the installer training or dealer day.
How We Help
We start by mapping your buying committee's actual event calendar – which utility technology conferences, storage summits, solar trade shows, and regional installer events your named accounts and target personas physically attend – against what you've historically shown up with.
From there we build a 12-month event calendar tiered by committee proximity: which two or three flagship events warrant a full executive speaking push and staffed technical demo, which mid-tier regional shows get a lean booth and a sales rep, and which installer or permitting-office touchpoints get a field rep on a recurring cadence.
On the executive side, we handle the abstract submissions, panel pitch decks, and talking points for the conference speaking calendar six to nine months ahead of the deadlines that actually matter, because a missed submission window means a full cycle without stage visibility in front of the buyers who weight it heavily.
On-site we run booth staffing plans that put the right technical person in front of the right buyer persona, build the demo script so a feeder-data dashboard or a charger session tells a specific story to a specific committee role – engineering, procurement, sustainability – and train the team on the objections utility buyers actually raise about interconnection and permitting timelines.
For residential subcategories we run the field program in parallel – installer network trainings, permitting-office relationship touchpoints, dealer days – staffed and scripted the same way as the national conferences, because that's where the point-of-sale influence with homeowners actually lives.
Every event gets a follow-up sequence built before the show starts, not after. Named-account meetings booked on-site get a same-week follow-up, badge scans get segmented by role and routed to the right nurture, and speaking-slot attendees get tracked into pipeline separately so we know whether the stage time is actually converting into meetings.
Unlike a traditional agency that hands you a booth graphic and a lead-scan spreadsheet, we embed with your sales and product teams as a fractional field marketing function. We've run the technical demo scripts ourselves, sat through the utility procurement conversations, and know why a panel seat at the right conference outweighs three months of paid social.
What we deliver
- 12-month event and field marketing calendar tiered by buying-committee proximity
- Executive speaking-slot strategy: abstract submissions, panel pitches, talking points
- Technical demo build (DERMS dashboard, battery rack, EV charger session) matched to buyer persona
- Booth staffing plan and on-site objection-handling scripts for utility and procurement buyers
- Installer network and permitting-office field program for residential subcategories
In cleantech, the sale doesn't happen in a form fill – it happens the moment a utility engineer sees your DERMS dashboard pull real feeder data on a conference floor, and if you're not standing there when that happens, you don't get a second shot until next year's show.
Our Methodology
We run event and field marketing in 90-day sprints tied to the actual event calendar, not an arbitrary quarter. Sprint one maps the 12-month calendar, locks the flagship two or three events, builds the technical demo spec, and gets speaking abstracts submitted against deadlines that are often already close. Sprint two builds the booth staffing plan, on-site scripts, and the installer or permitting field cadence for residential subcategories, then executes the first flagship event.
This is different from a traditional agency retainer because there's no separate event marketing team that hands off a booth kit and disappears until the invoice. The same fractional team that built the calendar is on the floor running the demo and on the follow-up call three days later.
How We Work
Days 1-30: we audit your last 12-18 months of event spend against actual pipeline outcomes, interview your sales team on which shows their target accounts actually attend, and build the tiered 12-month calendar plus the technical demo spec for your flagship event.
Days 31-60: we submit speaking abstracts against upcoming conference deadlines, build the booth staffing plan and on-site scripts, stand up the installer or permitting field cadence if you sell residential, and execute the first flagship event with the fractional team on-site.
Days 61-90: we run the post-event follow-up sequence, segment and route every lead by role and event source, and report back on which parts of the calendar – flagship conference, regional show, installer touchpoint – actually produced next-meeting conversions so year two of the calendar is built on evidence, not guesswork.
Team structure is a fractional lead handling strategy, calendar, and executive speaking prep, plus a field and ops person who handles on-site logistics and demo builds, both embedded in your Slack or Teams alongside sales rather than routed through an account manager.
- A 12-month event calendar tiered by actual buying-committee attendance instead of habit or sales team preference
- Technical demos built to match the buyer persona in the room, not a generic brand booth
- Executive speaking slots secured ahead of submission deadlines instead of missed for another cycle
- A follow-up sequence built before the show starts, so on-site meetings and badge scans don't go cold
If your cleantech & energy company needs event & field marketing leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does event and field marketing cost with Winston Francois?
Engagements typically run $8K-$18K a month depending on how many flagship events you're staffing and whether you need a parallel installer or permitting field program for residential subcategories. Pricing scales with the number of events and the complexity of the technical demo, not a flat retainer.
How long until we see results from an event marketing program?
The first flagship event typically happens within 60-90 days of kickoff, since speaking abstracts and booth logistics have long lead times at the major utility and storage conferences. Pipeline impact shows up in the weeks after that event as the follow-up sequence runs, though the real compounding effect – securing better speaking slots and a stronger booth tier – builds over the first full 12-month calendar cycle.
Will your team actually work with our sales and product teams, or just hand us a booth kit?
We embed with your sales and product teams for the length of the engagement, sitting in your Slack or Teams, joining the pre-event prep calls, and staffing the booth or demo alongside your team on-site. The person building your speaking abstract and demo script is the same person standing at the booth, not a separate account manager relaying instructions.
How is this different from hiring a traditional trade show or event marketing agency?
A traditional agency usually delivers a booth design, a lead-scan spreadsheet, and an invoice, with account management standing between you and whoever actually worked the floor. We run as a fractional, embedded team – the strategist who builds your calendar is the same person who preps your exec for the panel and runs the demo script on-site, so nothing gets lost in a handoff.
How do you measure ROI on cleantech event marketing?
We track named-account meetings booked on-site, badge scans segmented by buyer role and routed into a follow-up sequence, and whether speaking-slot attendees convert into next meetings, all tied back to the specific event they came from. Because your buying committee only attends two or three events a year, we weight ROI on next-meeting conversion per event rather than raw lead count, since a smaller flagship show with the right committee members can outperform a larger show with the wrong audience.
What size or stage of cleantech company is the best fit for this?
This works best for companies selling into utilities, municipalities, IPPs, or installer networks where the buying committee is small and genuinely does most of its vendor discovery at two or three industry events a year – typically post-seed through growth-stage battery storage, DERMS or grid software, EV charging infrastructure, solar, or hydrogen companies with a named-account sales motion already in place. It's a poor fit for a company still figuring out who its buyer is, since the calendar strategy depends on already knowing which committee you're trying to reach.
Do you handle the residential-facing side, like solar or home battery installer events, too?
Yes – for residential subcategories the program runs in parallel with the national conference calendar, covering installer network trainings, permitting office relationship touchpoints, and dealer days, since that's where point-of-sale influence with homeowners actually lives. We staff and script these field touchpoints the same way we do the national conferences, just at a regional or local cadence instead of an annual one.
