Monitor the effectiveness of contractor and workforce development efforts, motivate improvement, address low performers, and adapt on a regular basis.
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Develop processes, strategies, and procedures to continuously improve your organization’s operations and position in the market.
Develop the procurement, outreach, and loan support resources required to perform your financing activities.
Implement contractor coordination and workforce recruitment and training in concert with other program components
Develop workforce and contractor engagement procedures, forms, and materials
Publicize benefits and lessons learned resulting from your organization’s success in the market.
Develop processes to evaluate your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and market position on a regular basis.
Solidify your program strategy and decide which customers you will focus on; what products, services, and support you will provide; and how you will partner with contractors and others to deliver services to your customers.
Launch your financing activities in coordination with other program components.
Establish relationships with organizations that can help deliver your program by enhancing your knowledge, resources, capabilities and access to customers and contractors.
Create your organization’s business plan, which describes how your operational and financial structure will support the delivery of energy efficiency services.
Define your business model, including market position, products and services, type of customers, financial model, governance structure, and the assets and infrastructure your organization needs.
Monitor the effectiveness of marketing and outreach strategies and adapt as needed.
Implement marketing and outreach activities in coordination with other program components to generate demand for your program's services.
Develop a plan and metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing and outreach strategies.
Establish relationships with organizations that will assist with program marketing and outreach.
Establish or update your organizational mission, vision, and goals to encompass energy efficiency programs.
Survey existing and potential demand for energy efficiency products and services based on an understanding of policies, housing and energy characteristics, demographics, related initiatives and other market actors.
Develop contractor engagement, quality assurance, and workforce development plans that include strategies, workflow, timelines, and staff and partner roles and responsibilities.
Improve your program’s efficiency and effectiveness through regular information collection, assessment, decision-making, adaptation, and communication.
Develop the necessary materials, tools, and staff capacity to effectively deliver and manage your program.
Solidify your program strategy and decide which customers you will focus on; what products, services, and support you will provide; and how you will partner with contractors and others to deliver services to your customers.
Establish relationships with contractors who will deliver program products and services, and with organizations that train and certify workers.
Support and partner with the workforce who will deliver your program’s energy efficiency services by understanding their capacity, recruiting contractor partners, enabling technical training and business development support, fostering clear communication, and refining program processes over time, in partnership with your workforce.
In order to craft a sustainable financial model, organizations need to identify long-term sustainable revenue sources. As with the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, grant funding can be a great way to get an effort off the ground; however, grant funding does run out, leaving the need to secure...
Effective home performance contractors require many types of skills and expertise. To help individuals develop those skills, programs can target training on the specific topics and skills needed for successful home performance work. Many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners found that they...
Many home performance programs have confronted the challenge of how to reach out to more customers and to improve conversion rates of customer interest into completed upgrades. Realizing that the contractor is a primary face-to-face link between customers and the program, some Better Buildings...
Homeowners do not benefit from access to financing if they don’t know about or understand options available to them. Contractors are often the primary transaction point for selling upgrades, and many programs have found that ongoing collaboration with contractors through sales training, regular...
Incentives can be the easiest approach to overcome motivation barriers and attract customers’ and contractors’ attention, as long as the upgrade and reimbursement processes are kept simple and easy to follow. Successful programs have found incentives help entice customers to complete upgrades...
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Efficiency Maine,
Efficiency Vermont
This webcast reports on the energy efficiency services sector workforce size, expectations for growth, and training needs and features a case studies from Efficiency Vermont and Efficiency Maine.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
New Mexico Energy$mart,
Energy Trust of Oregon,
Community Power Works
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on strategies for contractor training.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Build It Green
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focuses on how mentoring on sales skills and business management helped one contractor increase sales and become more profitable. The call also covered top tips for supporting contractors, such as helping contractors develop systems to be more efficient in completing projects and creating a service plan with customers for additional improvements in the future.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
EnergyWorks,
Efficiency Maine,
BetterBuildings for Michigan
This peer exchange call summary focused on sales training assistance programs for contractors.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Efficiency Vermont,
Fayette County Better Buildings Initiative,
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
Presentation on five steps to building a profitable contractor base. The steps include sensible program design and administration, certification and credentialing, communicating with contractors, contractor requirements (business vs. trade), and training and sales support.
Publication Date
This marketing plan template was developed to assist Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) participating contractors develop their marketing plans.
Publication Date
This marketing tactics spreadsheet was developed to assist Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) participating contractors.
Contractor Sales Training: Providing the Skills Necessary to Sell Comprehensive Home Energy Upgrades
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Efficiency Maine
This Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Clean Energy Policy Brief describes how adding sales skills to contractors' existing technical expertise helps convert more assessments into comprehensive home energy upgrades. It profiles Efficiency Maine's contractor sales training and includes a list of resources.
Publication Date
This guide discusses the findings of research in moving existing companies, with a focus on HVAC, to deliver more comprehensive energy saving upgrade services. It also helps the industry understand the business processes and strategies for transitioning to such an approach.
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Organizations or Programs
Energy Upgrade California
This guide shows HVAC contractors how to get started in the home improvement market. It explains the approach of treating a house like a system and provides step-by-step instructions on setting up a home performance contracting business.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Connecticut Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge
Connecticut's Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge uses dashboards that display key project data for administrators and contractors to monitor progress over time. The program has evaluated performance at different steps in the process and identified strategies to improve performance where needed, such as sales training for contractors, energy advisors, monthly contractor scorecards, and multiple customer "touches." These improvements increased the close rate from 26 to 60 percent in one year.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
New York Home Performance with ENERGY STAR offers a series of training videos for new contractors covering topics such as creating processes and procedures to manage projects, consumer incentives and financing options, and Quality Assurance (QA) inspections.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Fayette County Better Buildings Initiative
This case study discusses strategies that Fayette County, Pennsylvania used to provide Building Performance Institute (BPI) certification and business skills training to aspiring energy efficiency contractors.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Efficiency Maine
This case study explains how Efficiency Maine provided contractor sales training to boost upgrade conversions.