An interview with Evergen Authorised Partner, Jonathan Fisk, Director, Solaray Energy.
How do you see the renewable energy sector at the moment?
Storage is one of the critical building blocks for the future of the grid in Australia. And we’ve got to get this right. We’ve got to get it right from the battery technology and its accessibility to VPPs and distributors and for peak management. We’ve got to get it on a large scale for exactly the same reasons. The whole of Australia will benefit dramatically as battery storage becomes more and more pervasive.
Why did you partner with Evergen?
So the market we operate in is brutally competitive, as everyone knows. So we’re always looking for a way to differentiate ourselves. We’re always looking for a way to make ourselves just that little bit better in terms of what we can offer customers. Evergen’s software fits really nicely into that. It delivers more customer savings to get extra value at no extra cost on their solar and battery investment, and future value as well.
We took quite a bit of time going through the decision to partner with Evergen and really did a lot of due diligence. But once we said go, it was really, really easy to set up. We did an EDM campaign to our existing battery customers and had a phenomenal take-up rate, which was really good. We also trained our salespeople, we now include it on all our quotations, bundle it in with every battery we sell and it has been just a seamless process that allows our salespeople and consultants to position themselves slightly ahead of the game and different from our competitors.
What marketing activities worked for you and why?
In the first run, we had 60% of our existing battery customers sign up for Evergen. Somewhere north of a quarter of them have since signed up for an Evergen run VPP, which means on occasions they are getting paid for power they are exporting to the grid. Partnering with Evergen has certainly added value to our business. It allows our salespeople to communicate better, not only the standard value of the battery, but also future savings, future innovation and future benefits, either through VPPs or just battery optimisation. The fact that batteries are likely to last longer, there’s a whole range of benefits, and it’s really easy for our people to communicate that.
How do you work with Evergen?
So the way we worked with Evergen through the portal has been really easy. We have simply provided the information, upload serial numbers, customer names, etc and then Evergen have taken it from there and dealt with the customer / followed it through to completion. The maintenance is now pretty much all done and it’s ‘set and forget’ and it happens automatically just with a small process change here or there. Our team are also working with Evergen on future marketing campaigns to get the rest of our battery tail signed up and also to make sure that the experience with the new customers works really well and we can turn them into referrals.
How would you describe the partnership?
So we’ve been working with Evergen now for a relatively short period of time, but so far it’s been a great experience, really good team of people, always willing to help, our guys love working with the Evergen people and so far it’s been really successful.
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