Selling AC Units and Heaters with a Tweet-A-Watt

This post is a devia­tion from my other posts.  Rather than dis­cuss tips for job hun­ting or how to apply Nuke skills to the green job mar­ket, this post is an expla­na­tion of an idea for appl­ying our engi­nee­ring skills into sales.  My idea pro­vi­des cus­to­mers with per­so­nal infor­ma­tion about how a new AC unit or appliance would save them money.

I am con­si­de­ring ins­ta­lling a duct­less heat pump.  I sur­vi­ved with a win­dow unit and fans for coo­ling in the past.  The duct­less heat pump dea­lers I con­tac­ted were extre­mely vague when desc­ri­bing the cost savings.  I am willing to make the invest­ment ($5,000 before incen­ti­ves), I just want my engi­nee­ring curio­sity satis­fied before I act.

The Tweet-A-Watt

I am buil­ding a Tweet-A-Watt, a power meter based on the Kill-A-Watt and Twit­ter feeds.  I am also hac­king a wire­less rou­ter to tweet the data so a com­pu­ter does not need to be run­ning at all times.  My goal is to parse the Twit­ter stream, store the data in a Goo­gle data base, and deve­lop a dash­board visua­li­za­tion based on the data.

Uses for the Tweet-A-Watt

I want to see if the Tweet-A-Watt and energy dash­board can be an affec­tive sales tool for large elec­tri­cal applian­ces such as A/C units, fur­na­ces, and refri­ge­ra­tors.  The com­mon sales approach to use energy savings is to use gene­ral esti­ma­tes to cal­cu­late savings and pay­back period.  The pro­blem is that gene­ral num­bers and esti­ma­tes are not conc­rete enough to eli­cit cus­to­mer action. The goal of using the Tweet-A-Watt is to use the cus­to­mer spe­ci­fic data to deli­ver conc­rete savings esti­ma­tes and drive cus­to­mer action.

Using the Tweet-A-Watt, you will be to tell the cus­to­mer exactly how much it costs to run the win­dow A/C unit or space hea­ter.  This approach esta­blishes you as an autho­rity in the eyes of the cus­to­mer because it is per­so­na­li­zed and advan­ced (doing something others aren’t).  Using your know­ledge of the pro­duct, uti­lity incen­ti­ves, and ins­ta­lla­tion costs, give the cus­to­mer a dash­board that cal­cu­la­tes the pay back period.

Pro­ce­dure

1. A poten­tial cus­to­mer expres­ses inte­rest, but wants to know more than “peo­ple gene­rally save 10% on their energy bill.”
2. Loan the Tweet-A-Watt to the cus­to­mer for one or two weeks.
3. Use the collec­ted data to give the cus­to­mer detai­led, per­so­nal infor­ma­tion on how they will save money with your product.
4. Close the sale.

Requi­res poten­tial cus­to­mer to have non-dial up inter­net connection.

Atten­tion: Resi­den­tial HVAC Con­trac­tors or Appliance Salespeople

Do you want to try out the Tweet-A-Watt sales approach?

I want to work with a HVAC con­trac­tor or appliance sales­per­son to deve­lop a dash­board and mar­ke­ting approach that maxi­mi­zed sales.

1. I finish the ini­tial deve­lop­ment of the Tweet-A-Watt and dash­board.  Test pro­totype on my appliances.
2. I would get your input on the design of the dashboard.
3. Once deve­lop­ment is com­plete, I would send the Tweet-A-Watt off to you.
4. You use the Tweet-A-Watt to inc­rease sales.  Feed­back is used to design tweaks.

Inte­res­ted?  Have sug­ges­tions on how to make my idea bet­ter?  Please leave a comment.