Talking the customer’s language
The energy markets are currently going through major changes and electricity producers’ businesses are also shifting. Renewables have entered the landscape, but the intermittent supply they provide means that generation asset flexibility has become a very valuable attribute. Our products offer the highest flexibility among thermal power plants and already serve as profitable solutions for many customers all over the world. But to speak generally, many prospective customers aren’t yet familiar with our technology, and in any case tend to be quite conservative when making their decisions.
Getting through to potential customers in established markets like the U.S. was a big challenge at first. No one wants to invest large amounts of money in technologies they are not familiar with. It’s a hard sell, from that point of view. Promoting the features of our technology will not take us there.
We gradually overcame this challenge by changing the focus of our customer meetings to the value we can bring to their business. We started putting more emphasis on highlighting the importance of flexibility, and showing them how our solutions fit their portfolios, and how they would impact directly on their bottom line.
We can really encourage dialogue on a higher level when the customers see that we understand what they do and what is important for them, and that our offering is genuinely of great benefit to them. We’re bringing them something they hadn’t considered before: a new way of thinking about future power generation and often a new business model. Accepting new ideas can be difficult – it’s all about how the story is explained to you. Now we talk the customer’s language. And it’s working.
Today, Smart Power Generation, as a potent symbol of flexible power generation in practice, is among the four main solutions on the table in discussions of the future of European power generation. This is obviously a great achievement and a superb opportunity for Wärtsilä, but it didn’t come easily. By conceptualising what we do in this way, and demonstrating the value of Smart Power Generation as part of the power system, we’ve made the benefits apparent in a way that politicians can understand, as well as businessmen and engineers. We made something that even slow-moving, conservative markets could eventually accept.
