Commercial solar case study

Luz Solar case study: commercial rooftop leads with the decision maker in the room

Stephen James of Luz Solar has built commercial and large-scale solar since 2010. Starting commercial rooftops again on a lean model, he uses TNW to get in front of MDs and finance directors, and says not one lead has been a waste.

Watch the full interview with Luz Solar. This page summarises what they told us on camera.

Interviewee

Stephen James, Luz Solar

In renewables since

2010

Projects he targets

50kW to 400kW commercial rooftops

Site visits so far

Four or five, two moving towards installation

Who Luz Solar are

Stephen James has worked in renewables since 2010. Luz Solar started out developing domestic sites, building just short of a thousand properties for an investment company, then moved into large commercial rooftops. In 2012 it built what Stephen describes as the largest at the time, just short of a megawatt in Oldham, and went on to ground-mount solar, starting with a 10MW site in Cornwall. Over the years the business developed around 220 commercial solar projects in the UK and worked abroad with partners.

When the UK market crashed, the original company closed. Stephen worked overseas, including two and a half years in Brazil, then came back and started again. Luz Solar now develops large-scale solar and battery storage, and has just started on commercial rooftops again.

The situation

This time Stephen runs a lean business: an electrical engineer, designers and a team of experienced installers, with everything else outsourced. Back in the day Luz Solar found its own commercial clients in-house; he did not want to build that team again.

His earlier experience of bought leads, at a company he worked for after returning to the UK, was poor. Leads were shared out to three or four other companies, they were not qualified properly and often did not reach the decision maker. In the end they claimed a lot of the money back.

What TNW delivered

For Stephen the most valuable part is the quality: speaking to the MDs and finance directors who make the decision. The clients he has met through TNW are genuinely interested, whether or not the timing is right yet, and he gets the information he needs to put a proper proposal together.

Commercial buyers will still want more than one quote, which he is happy with, but he is not one of four or five companies sent into the same auction from day one.

Luz Solar targets systems of 50kW to 400kW. In his experience megawatt-scale tenders tend to go to companies with large balance sheets, so that range is the sweet spot for a business of its size.

There have been plenty of leads to choose from; Stephen made a commercial decision to get the first few across the line before taking more. One site in Birmingham needed an asbestos survey and a structural survey before anything could be installed, and he would not take one like that again. Because every lead comes with its details first, he can see that beforehand and pass.

He describes the service as very good, with a team always on the phone to go through any questions, and says he would use TNW and recommend it to other companies.

The model behind it is the same for every installer: TNW finds and qualifies the business, books the meeting into your diary and you pay per qualified, attended appointment, not per raw enquiry or a monthly retainer. Read how pay per appointment commercial solar leads work, or see the checks behind each booking in how to qualify commercial solar leads.

Results

• Every meeting is with the decision maker: MDs and finance directors who are genuinely interested in solar.
• Of the four or five sites he has visited, two are moving towards installation, about 50%.
• Not an auction: he had paid before for leads that were sold to three or four other companies.
• His sweet spot is 50kW to 400kW, and the detail up front lets him turn down the sites that are not for him.