The Landscape

Through 2017, the Sunshine State’s solar forecast was actually quite cloudy. Despite its favorable climate, state policy restricted solar development, placing Florida behind 19 other states in renewables rankings. Further, most renewable generation capacity was in the hands of utility-scale providers eager to maintain control.

An April 2017 decision by the Florida Public Service Commission cleared the way for residential solar leasing. Sunrun became the first national installer to enter the market.

But with minimal adoption of residential solar and low prices for grid power, Floridians needed some convincing that this new approach might work for them.

I led the work to develop a compelling value proposition and sales resources tailored to the Florida market.

Project Overview

Team // Joe Nangle & Jonathan Horiel (Sunrun); Carissa Justice & Diva DiMartini (nimble, copywriting).

Deliverable // Market-specific sales collateral and resources for 30+ salespeople.

My Role // Project management, customer research, synthesis, Figma prototyping & iteration, training.

What to Cover

We saw widespread excitement about solar in our ridealongs and ensuing analysis. But people asked questions that we sometimes took for granted as common knowledge--like how net metering works. 

Prospective customers didn’t have their bearings about what options were open to them, either. It became clear that the existing presentation was overly focused on why Sunrun was the best option. That didn’t matter if prospects weren’t concept-commited to solar in the first place.

So we began developing a new presentation that would start at the beginning. It would cover the personal, community, and global benefits of switching to a consistent, renewable power source. Only after building commitment in the category would we present the case for Sunrun in particular.

Managing Copy

This project presented a growth opportunity for me to manage the collaboration on sales copy with a boutique copywriting agency called nimble.

We also collaborated to develop a number of opening lines for the retail lead generators who support the region’s salespeople. These “hooks” corresponded to elements of the presentation, so we could test which were most engaging with hundreds of Costco shoppers each day. By tracking responses systematically, we got feedback about what parts of the new messaging was hitting home.

With this feedback cycle, we iterated on the exact wording, imagery, and emotions we wanted to evoke in customers. Working in a shared Figma file allowed for rapid updates and easy remote collaboration. 

With nimble’s help, we quickly produced a prototype and prepared to see how customers would respond.

Feedback & Iteration

In order to quickly deploy the newly developed presentation, we built a fully interactive & polished prototype in Tiled. This allowed us to gather feedback quickly without a full development cycle on Sunrun’s internal sales platform.

Tiled captured interaction data that allowed us to see which salespeople were using (or skipping) individual slides, for how long, and whether customers were revisiting the presentation after meeting with a Sunrun consultant.

In addition to this rich data, we also captured qualitative feedback via Google Form to better understand how sales reps were using the presentation and what they might improve.

End Result

Two strong conclusions emerged from our customer research.

First, overall category awareness was very low. Most Floridian homeowners didn’t know anyone else who had gone solar. We needed to start with high-level education about the category and offer the social proof that others are making the switch before getting into what makes Sunrun special.

Second, the solar buying decision is best influenced with a mix of rational and emotional messaging. Our message was most successful when we began with the rational elements of rate predictability & control, then moved onto the bigger picture benefits of solar. 

Browse the gallery below to see the final product.