In a competitive situation, it’s important to be the best in at least one of the main areas of comparison – speed, service, or price.

In the early 2000s, our energy company was near the bottom in every category, and I was trying to win more commercial business through our broker channel. I needed to convince third-party energy brokers to bring their clients to our firm. But there was one giant problem. We were slow with everything (credit checks, pricing, contract creation), our service wasn’t best-in-class, our contract terms were average or below, and our price was consistently higher than at least five of our competitors. The new clients trickled in slowly, and the results were not indicative of the work.

Under those circumstances, we would never be able to put together a winning team. It felt like insanity to start each new day doing the same thing as before and expecting a different result.

We couldn’t win, so we decided to change the game. Twice.

First, we looked at all the potential business clients in Texas and realized that some were very lucrative and exciting while others were small and messy with a ton of meters and very little power usage, making them unattractive to just about everyone. At the time our company served over 200,000 residential clients. We were used to small and messy clients with very little power usage.

So, we decided to target billboard companies, internet repeating stations, and stand-alone water-filling stations, all of which had high meter counts and little usage. In studying these clients, we found that they paid high rates along with high monthly meter fees and received almost no attention. The suppliers and the brokers didn’t want to get near them because accounts like these required a ton of work with very little margin for either party.

We built a product to attract these clients and then met with a few energy brokers to walk through the details. We showed the brokers how we could serve these clients exceptionally well and then revealed an approach no one had taken before us. In addition to better rates for these accounts, we would also offer a reduced monthly meter fee, and get this; we would split the meter fee margin with the energy broker to make the extra work well worth their time.

The clients received lower rates, lower meter fees, and someone who cared about their accounts, while the energy brokers made great margins and entered unchartered waters with almost no competition. We also engineered the offer so that the meter fees were lucrative to our company as well.

In less than a year, we went from mostly losing on every pricing presentation we made to winning extremely large accounts that included thousands of meters for multi-year contracts. This was a multimillion-dollar turnaround that only materialized when we changed the game.

The profits we made while serving the needs of both clients and brokers gave us breathing room to work on other projects, including our second game-changing event, the pricing portal we launched a few years later.

Having established an internal culture of innovation and collaboration, we enlisted the entire support team within our company to assist in automating every step of the commercial sales process. We pushed the envelope on what was possible daily and made breakthroughs that many said were impossible.

After two years of grueling work, we launched the industry’s fastest and most user-friendly online pricing and contracting system for energy brokers. Over that period, our contract terms became more user-friendly, our pricing models were tweaked to be more competitive, and our service department received a major upgrade. We were now one of the best in almost every category that mattered, and we had our initial high-meter count product strategy to thank for the space we were afforded to be so creative. For three years after the launch of our portal, the company experienced record-breaking growth that helped to drive the exceptionally high valuation we received when our parent company put us up for sale in 2011.

When I look back at the times we successfully took a creative approach to change the game, I am inspired to ask myself what challenges I currently face should be treated the same. Am I trying the same thing daily with poor results and hoping for something different? Do I need to zoom out and examine a part of our strategy or process to see it all in a brand-new light?

What about you? Are you in need of a creative brainstorm or a strategic upgrade?

We would love to talk with you about all of the above.