Case study about a brilliant sales person from what I call Elite class. He turned a H/W purchase into a customized solution and had his customer issue a single source purchase. The only way he could do that is by using Elite sales techniques .

1. BACKGROUND
South Asian Electricity Company (SAEC) faced a surge in consumption that exceeded its
production capacity and could not be fulfilled unless the generation plant is upgraded, which is a
costly proposition. The cost of the upgrade is in the billions of dollars which is not justified
especially that the over capacity period is 100 hundred hours per year that occur on summer
season during peak hour use 8 AM – 4 PM.
SAEC conducted a “load peak time” and found out the peak is during the summer and the best
commercially viable option is “load shifting” during the peak hours, in which they will utilize
digital meters technology with multiple registers so they can devise a new dynamic tariff scheme
DTS until their 3 years Smart Grid project is rolled out.
The new tariff system does not affect the 24X7 commercial consumers like airports and hospitals
as the consumption peaks and valleys will balance out between the three tariffs (peak, normal,
and off-peak), so there will be practically no financial burden on this class of consumers.
Other large consumers such as shopping malls, exhibitions, amusement parks, etc. will have to
either distribute their consumption or pay extra premium for their high lighting and air-
conditioning consumption
SAEC procurement regulations do not allow strategic purchase from one vendor, so digital
meters were purchased from 3 different manufacturers all following the same standards, these
meters were installed in factories and big malls to be ready before next summer i.e after 6
months. The challenge is to build the reading infrastructure (hand-held readers’ HW and SW,
reading staff, programs to post the readings in the four mainframe systems across the country).
The digital meter committee called the three meter manufacturers for a solution, each meter
vendor provided software with a hand held device and Infra-Red Probe which connects to the
meter and reads it. The meters then are mounted on a cradle and transmit the readings to an
excel sheet in the regional office.
The problem with this solution is that the meters in the field are randomly distributed; so in the
same street block three meters from three different manufacturers can be found.
This would require the meter reading clerk to carry three different hand-held devices and use
them to read different meters. This solution was not acceptable and SAEC was now looking for an
innovative solution.
Our elite sales person (will refer to his name as AM) is working for an IT company who had won a
contract with SAEC to provide meter readers and meter reading system. He was always probing
for a new buying centre NBC within the same customer, so he came across the opportunity.

2. With careful probing and proper salesmanship he identified the following observations:
1. There is a compelling reason to act (by the summer the system must be up and running,
CEO mandate).
2. Failure to act will be costly:
a. Head of digital meters department will be professionally affected.
b. Surplus revenue will be lost.
c. Consumers will continue their behaviour leading to blackouts in some areas.
3. Hand-held manufacturers’ solution is only for their own brands.
4. Reading clerks’ technical level is low; any solution should be extremely simple.
5. The three hand-held devices use Windows mobile.
6. AM asked the customer “If we can avail a hand-held reader for you that can read three
different meter types, would you commit to our solution?” the answer was a big fat YES!
7. AM asked for access to the meter lab facilities and a counterpart technician to work in
tandem with AM team.
THE SOLUTION
AM mobilized a first class programmer from his company and together they developed three
windows mobile programs that can read data from the three different meters. He showed the
customer that one hand-held can read three different meters. This step was meant to shut off
competition completely, which is what happened. AM has proved an added value that no other
vendor has demonstrated.
Next step was to automate the process (three programs were resident and have to be started
and switched by the reading clerks), so AM and his team worked on one program that can talk to
three different meters using a serial interface cable that the team has designed. The hand-held
manufacturer was cooperative and helpful all the time; however the manufacturing of the infra-
red probe and cable were done by our elite sales person.
Because of the time constraint, SAEC went with a single source purchase (which is extremely
difficult in large companies). They could justify the single source because of the unique value
proposition demonstrated by AM and his team.
What started as a HW public RFP to provide few hundred hand-held meter readers, turned into a
single source purchase of a customized solution and follow on business.
One last thing, AM expanded the scope of his deal by asking his customer “how will you integrate
this solution with your current environment?” there was no clear vision on the way to handle the
data until it reaches the billing system in four different regional offices.

3. Our elite sale person known as AM and his team developed two more value add solutions:
1. An application that runs on a server to collect the readings from each region and forward
them to the four mainframes in four regions.
2. A route management SW that assigns routes for the digital meters reading clerks.
This is an example of what a sales person can do when he/she uses probing in the right way and
try to find a differentiating value in what they offer so they can sell benefits , not features,
Happy selling everyone.