Challenges accompanying the change of strategy

Da Vinci Green Energy - one of the companies in the investment portfolio of WP2 Investments - has undergone a thorough change of strategy over the last two years and is an example of a company in which radical decisions allowed the company to efficiently "switch" from an individual customer to a business customer.

Bartłomiej Tuleja, President of the Management Board of Da Vinci Green Energy, explains what was the purpose of changing the strategy and switching the sales direction to the business customer, and what challenges the company faced in the course of this change.

Bartłomiej Tuleja: The mission of Da Vinci Green Energy is to develop and popularize solutions based on renewable energy in Poland. At the beginning of our journey, we focused our activity on individual customers, advising and building photovoltaic installations and heat pumps. At the same time, the business client was still in the circle of interest of DVGE, which allowed for a smoother and easier transition from a B2B to B2C customer after the change of strategy.

In both of these areas, there have been major changes, forcing the development of a new strategy for the company. There have been statutory changes on the photovoltaic market changing the rules of the prosumer. As of April 2022, the grid has ceased to be a virtual storage facility and surpluses from the production of photovoltaics on rooftops have begun to be balanced, i.e. the purchase and resale of electricity. This change caused the market to shrink by nearly 80 percent, which meant that almost 20 thousand companies involved in the construction of photovoltaic installations had to radically change their strategy or close down.

Thus, legislative changes and market expectations accelerated our decision to look for new directions of development. We saw an opportunity for our company in taking care of the business client's market. Why? We knew that our advantage was to have competences in the team in the field of: the energy market and its volatility, the process of purchasing energy for enterprises, or issues related to measuring the carbon footprint. If we add to this the experience related to the corporate client, we have all the attributes to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves.

Nevertheless, creating an offer for very demanding B2B customers required:

• building additional competences of employees,
• updating or creating appropriate tools,
• implementation of products that can be modified to meet different customer needs
• to rely on a proven and experienced implementation team.

Above all, however, everyone had to start with..... building a database of contacts and a strategy for communicating with them.

What challenges accompanied this change - organizational, communication, finding the right competencies in the company?

BT: At the beginning, the most important thing was to build the right competences in the team. Over time, it turned out that people who move well among individual customers do not find themselves in business relationships at all. This resulted in a very high turnover in the sales network and the search for people with competences to work with B2B customers, which sometimes turned out to be a really breakneck challenge.

In addition, the market of advisors was simply "dissolved", because they expected the employer to provide them with contacts, meetings and the entire sales potential.

Meanwhile, reaching decision-makers in companies required a sophisticated approach that no call-center or lead delivery companies could provide. And this required a completely different way of thinking, different skills, experiences, techniques, a completely different attitude to sales, if someone had previously sold to individual customers, in most cases it did not mean that they would be equally efficient in dealing with a business customer.

How big a change has there been in the sales strategy and in the way customers are acquired?

BT: Actually, it was a revolution. Starting from the change in the approach to the customer, to the tools used and the sales process, which has turned into a consulting and long-term process.

The change in the perspective of the B2B customer has resulted in the introduction of innovative tools, thanks to which we are able to very precisely profile the energy demand of each entity. In fact, the scale of our detail means knowledge about every 15 minutes of energy consumption throughout the year of a given company.

This knowledge allows us to very precisely select individual solutions for a specific customer.

Thus, it allowed us to become credible and increase the chances of final success. Combined with a competent team, this allows us to expand our sales potential through the recommendations and referrals we receive from our customers.

How has the company's structure changed due to such a big change in the approach to the entire strategy?

BT: Of course, there were difficult decisions and the implementation of the cost optimization process. In the first place, we resigned from services that do not translate into business results. The next step was a zero-one approach to the sales network and focusing on people with potential who were motivated to follow the new course.

We changed the system of our work, which focused more on project activities for a specific client. This allowed us to engage only such resources that are necessary and cost-effective.

The final solution was to give up maintaining large warehouse areas in favor of stocking up for specific projects and delivering materials directly from manufacturers to customers.

How long did it take to see the results? Were they in line with expectations?

BT: Changing the strategy is a process that, especially in the case of B2B customers, really takes some time, but we were aware of that. It has cost and still costs a lot of work to build the potential that turns into contracts and implementations.

It is encouraging that the portfolio of our clients is growing, which translates into an increase in the potential and further development of the company, also towards more and more interesting and larger projects. The prospects for the RES industry are getting stronger and the pursuit of zero emissions is a process that will continue.

This is due not only to environmental considerations, but above all to a clean economic calculation and requirements from contractors, especially those from Western Europe.

The key to staying on this market is and will be the complementarity of services not only in the construction of RES installations, but above all in the creation of intelligent and efficient energy solutions.

Interviewer: Ewa Pysiewicz; April 2024