Tailor differentiated messaging to multiple buyers
The energy industry is changing, and the strategies and tactics that leading energy companies use to attract and retain B2B customers are shifting along with it to remain competitive.
Many energy company leaders are deploying an integrated marketing and sales approach focused on reaching an expanding universe of buyers in multiple roles who have influence over vendor selection. Energy suppliers are reaching new customers and strengthening relationships with their current customers through a comprehensive message development process that educates buyers about how the supplier can improve their business.
The output of this approach is customized messaging with core differentiators to each buyer who has different expectations and goals — defined as “jobs to be done” in their respective roles. With the right message, suppliers can credential themselves and stand out in a crowded energy industry marketplace.
“The landscape in the energy industry is becoming more competitive,” said Grant Thornton Growth Advisory Services Managing Director Adam Bowen. “We’re seeing a larger group of sellers expanding their suite of service solutions. However, in some cases, we’re seeing two guys in a pickup truck competing against some of the largest, most sophisticated energy companies. It’s definitely a buyer-beware world out there.”
The challenge for buyers is knowing which suppliers to choose to do business with. Suppliers need a sales strategy that shows they can be trusted and gets them in the game:
- Energy companies need to know what qualities of their products and services truly differentiate them from those of their competition — Bowen calls this their “superpower.” This superpower, incidentally, should never be price, but it could be deep experience, large datasets and insights, proven solutions, partner networks or some combination of those factors that isn't easily replicable.
- Sellers need to help the various buyers understand how that differentiator can meet their needs, building trust with potential customers.
- This differentiator can then become the focal point of a modern marketing and sales plan where the messaging around the differentiators is woven into sales pitches and content — articles, videos, webpages, case studies, conference sessions, social media, podcasts — each working in a coordinated fashion to educate potential customers and ultimately turn them into buyers.
These tactics may be more effective in some energy industry sectors than others. Long-term relationships remain common in energy exploration and production, pipeline and refining companies whose infrastructure costs can make the cost of switching vendors or providers extremely high. But if vendors don’t keep up with the technology changes that can deliver added value, a door can open for new suppliers that can bring transformative solutions. And switching costs often aren’t nearly as high for companies that operate in the renewable energy supply chain.
“Traditionally, we’ve seen a reluctance among customers to switch to new suppliers who choose to differentiate themselves on price alone. Changes in customer demographics, and an interest in sustainability, are spurring changes in decision-making in the energy industry,” said Grant Thornton Global Head of Energy and Natural Resources Bryan Benoit.
Energy sellers can put themselves on the winning end of those decisions by gaining a full understanding of these multiple buyers and their priorities — as well as the marketplace in which they operate. Energy companies that want an objective, outside-in point of view or that lack the marketing muscle to deliver on this task often turn to advisors for help.
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Develop messages that resonate
with each buyer
An important early step in any customer acquisition or retention process is a determination of the jobs to be done for key buyers. Once an energy company has conducted research and gained insights into customer requirements, it can refresh its value proposition and key differentiators to better align with such needs. Quantitative and qualitative market research, including buyer interviews, helps define the customers' specific “jobs to be done,” which can vary from buyer to buyer. These interviews often yield more honest responses when conducted by third parties rather than the energy company itself.
Subsequently, draft messages should be crafted and market-tested to demonstrate how the energy company's unique differentiators can assist individual buyers in achieving their objectives. For instance, Grant Thornton has evaluated both their clients’ and competitors' energy-focused messages by surveying respondents to gauge message effectiveness. This approach enabled the identification of the most impactful messages for each buyer segment.
These insights can be used by either the third-party facilitator or the energy company itself to create tailored pitch decks, build website and email content, and build positioning for conferences and events — assets that infuse the messages that will resonate best with each buyer. Current customers also should receive this content, nurturing their relationship with the seller and perhaps alerting them to new products or services the seller can provide them.
Content should be relevant to customers’ needs and delivered in a convenient way to buyers who may be skeptical. Often the new buyers in energy will be technologically savvy customers who will want to research their options carefully — and they may not be easily swayed by pre-existing relationships.
“The seller’s job is to improve relevance and reduce friction in the buying process, making it easy for buyers to become more educated on a solution’s technical details,” Bowen said. “Content should not be hyperbolic or salesy. It should be clear and concise and contain relevant data and case studies, structured in a narrative form.”
Companies in many industries, including energy, are recognizing the benefits of marketing in this way, and they’re creating vast amounts of content that weave in relevant critical buyer messaging. The content is developed through what Bowen calls “content factories” in-house, or by third-party contractors. In the energy industry, the most successful practitioners of this marketing model have created expansive digital content delivery platforms to extend their share of voice in the market. They have built substantial brand recognition, and their sticky products keep buyers coming back for more.
Fortunately for energy companies that are rolling out these content marketing strategies, generative AI under the supervision of skilled marketers can be used to create substantial quantities of high-quality content tailored to each buyer to distribute to customers and potential customers.
“You can train generative AI solutions on your brand voice to become your own publishing arm, obviously with human intervention,” Bowen said. “Marketers can identify buyer need states and produce content in their company’s brand voice showing how the company’s differentiators can meet those need states with relevant products and services.”
Content can attract potential customers by highlighting how an energy company's products or services meet their needs. This awareness leads buyers through the marketing funnel, from developing interest and desire to ultimately making a purchase.
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A new sales model for energy
This model involves sales tactics that are much different from those used previously by companies across the industry spectrum. For example, in the past a pitch to a prospective customer might start out with a request from the seller such as: “Tell me what you need.” That’s no longer the case in effective sales.
Bowen said sellers need to use what’s known as a “challenger” sales model, which means coming to a pitch prepared with an informed understanding of buyer’s needs and an explanation — usually backed by data — for how the seller can meet those needs. The salesperson needs to describe:
- The market trends and what the future may hold
- What’s working and what’s not in the buyer’s market
- How the seller can help the buyer succeed amid the challenges in the marketplace
Every salesperson in the organization should be trained to go to market in the same way, with similar pitches backed by buyer-specific messaging and sales enablement solutions.
“All the various components that go into the sales process should be highly engineered, because that’s how you win,” Bowen said.
Winning new business, of course, is the ultimate goal, and the new marketing model has the added advantage of enabling data-driven tracking of the sales and marketing content that leads to a company’s wins. The messages that lead to more engagement from customers and ultimately more sales can be duplicated and replicated — positioning a company for even more wins in the future.
"It's a more strategic and precise approach to market entry, especially as traditional customer-facing strategies and tactics used by energy companies may need to evolve to capture market share and meet buyer needs," Bowen said.
These sales tactics work in energy because customer relationships are changing in the industry after historically being driven by long-term alliances that could span decades with vendors and customers whose fortunes were closely intertwined. These strong relationships still exist, but a new paradigm is emerging as well. Factors that are causing buyers to consider new supplier relationships include:
- New technologies emerging in the energy industry that deliver improved operational capabilities from upstream to downstream to the back office, enabling improved budgeting and forecasting and significant cost savings. If incumbent suppliers don’t possess this technology, this creates opportunities for new suppliers to take market share.
- Renewable energy is upscaling with agile business models that can accommodate rapid change, opening the door to new suppliers in a growing subsector as the industry continues on its transition journey.
- Energy demand continues to grow, with new revenue opportunities to provide service to power-intensive data centers that are sprouting to support rapidly emerging AI and expanded computing capabilities. New suppliers may be able to help buyers pursue those opportunities.
Leading suppliers in the energy industry can thrive amid these changing dynamics when they aim to acquire new customers using the modern marketing and sales approaches discussed earlier.
“Buying patterns and competitive patterns in energy have changed, and many times what used to work in customer acquisition and retention is not proven to work in the future,” Bowen said. “The buyers of today are interested in new ways of doing things, and therefore sellers may find that they need a better way to go to market.”
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