Managing Preliminary Interactions with Customers

An energy services company provides electricity, gas, and value-added services to residential, commercial, and industrial customers. This company has an opportunity to provide a full range of energy services to a customer in one contract. The customer has various business locations, including many fast food restaurants, food processing facilities, warehouses, garages for its fleet of vehicles, offices, and employee training centers.

The customer provides the energy services company with a list of its current business locations, and for each business location provides the service points, meter numbers, and business use for electricity and gas. The customer also provides the energy services company with its accounting locations for processing and paying utility bills. The energy services company assesses two years of energy use for the customer to characterize the energy volume and energy load-profile of the various sites. The customer also provides the energy services company with a list of its restaurants that are scheduled to open and close over the next two years and its new warehouse and its extension plans for food processing facilities.

The customer and a sales agent at the energy services company discuss the types of value-added services of interest to the customer and the supply of energy services.