Video: Business Leadership Summit 2024 Takeaways
BayWa r.e. recently hosted top customers and solar industry experts at its Business Leadership Summit. Director of Marketing Summer Rain Ursomarso and VP of Sales Jason Liehr, joined Power Forward! to share takeaways from presentations, and what installers were saying on site. Watch the full conversation right here, or read through a partial transcript.
Crowell: Whose words are still ringing in your head when it comes to leading a solar business today from the presentations at the BLS?
Ursomarso: Raghu Belur, CPO and co-founder of Enphase, really kicked us into gear at the beginning of the conference. We had our theme this year as being ‘building better leaders’ – how can we all be these better leaders for the industry? And really honed in on what that means. He talked a lot about the responsibility that we all have in the industry to support our homeowners. Of course, we all know there’s a few bad players in the market, but the majority of solar companies are really ethical, and they’re really doing their best to help their companies to get access to better energy options. But he was really talking about how selling solar is not enough. Every install business, every distributor, every manufacturer, etc., has a responsibility to help the whole industry do better.
We all know that homeowners want more electrification; they want more options. What they really want is accessibility and affordability and reliable energy.
But Belur spoke a lot about how that was a commodity … and so it’s really vital that as an industry, we aren’t just building more solar systems on roofs, but that we’re all coming together to actively drive a better industry, and that we’re really involved in creating that energy security.
Crowell: You touched on it a bit there, about, unfortunately, there’s a lot of talk about the untrustworthiness of solar installers. There’s been a lot of focus in the media, at the state level with regulators, and SEIA is really starting to promote consumer protection ideas as well. On your agenda, there was a focus on ethics and building a foundation of trust. What does that look like?
Liehr: There’s been a mentality the last couple years of growth at any cos, and I think that’s bred some bad behavior. It’s led to expectations set with homeowners that are not true. Companies that attended the BLS are the leaders in the industry, and it it’s interesting when to hear what they are doing as an installation company to ensure that the right expectations are being set with customers. To make sure they are partnering with the right sales orgs, if that’s part of their strategy. That didn’t used to be part of the considerations taken into account, and now I hear it over and over again. If we don’t clean up this industry, the AGs will.
Crowell: What else was a big topic of discussion?
Liehr: Chris Collins from Ohm Analytics, touched on the commercial side, and what I heard from installers after that session, is that some of them are considering commercial or expanding their commercial offering. So, they’ve had some success with it, but really want to start to scale that side of the business. I think that’s on the mind of a lot of installers across the country. You have the headwinds on the residential side of the business, and are we encountering those same things in the commercial side? And the numbers would indicate no, that there’s growth over there. But commercial is its own beast. You’re not going to just take a residential machine over here ,and focus it on commercial and be successful.
Pick up the conversation right there:
Comments are closed here.