setting up a joint venture!

[DurhamSparky]

looking at the possibility's of offering Solar as service to customers however!!

i am a one man band with a part time worker and little in the way of changing any time soon!

what im looking for is a collective number of other electricians in a similar situation who would like to offer PV.

im going to do a bit more digging but i would like to here from 3/4 others who may be interested in setting up a partnership company to offer this service to new customers

obviously legal issues and contracts need to be produced but it could be a start in the field!

 

[Newsome3]

I might be interested pal

 

[ratpig]

Could be interested too, obviously the distance may cause a problem but hey, you may need a Welsh branch!

 

[DurhamSparky]

cool, it needs a lot of set up and man hours + dedication and as a single business i cant manage by my self! plus if from a decent area coverage more potential customers!

 

[Newsome3]

Count me in a a possability

 

[DurhamSparky]

will do.. bud! just guaging opinion at this stage!

 

[Green]

I run a company that is already MCS accredited. If you're interested in getting into this line of work I'm sure we could come to an arrangement using the subcontractors clause. I already do this with a few electricians, who don't want the hassle of MCS but want to open up another avenue of work.

Let me know if that might interest you and we'll have a chat about it. If not, then good luck with setting yourselves up

 

[sjhall]

I was thinking along the same lines , I was after a Local (to me) Spark who would be willing to put in the same time, money and effort as me , but if you have any ideas how you could make it work for a few of us from different areas , I'm all ears ..... Maybe something along the lines of a Franchise / group of people each with there own catchment areas , but all working under the same company name/ umbrella ., split the marketing , lots of plus points, look like a big organisation , help off other when needed , etc......

Ste

 

[bugsy]

Food for thought!

 

[Worcester]

The biggest element of this enterprise would be co-ordinated sales, I know of a lot of GOOD commission only sales people (good people skills, not double glazing/conservatory) used to selling professional services and dealing with Mr and Mrs Joe Public, national coverage, and I have already spoken to them a week ago about this idea, and they are up for it in principle.

If we could get a big enough group of independants together, we could easily take on the larger guys, bearing in mind that a sales & marketing team with management overheads will add about 20% to the costs - salesmen will want ~ 8-10% in commission then the regional managers, training / churn etc (ALL COMMISSION ONLY) I also know the Regional & National Managers that could a) do this and b) pull it together.

Single 'Brand', Single Marketing costs makes it easy to dominate a market. Could also then take on the likes of Tesco - yep their back in the market, came up against them yesterday, customer will go with me though their T's and C's were full of get out's on price AND they didn't actually listen to what he wanted, just what they wanted to sell him!

By working with a few key MCS certified installers, we can then build local teams, to take on extra electricians as needed without them having to get MCS certified.

Also they can offer a national brand to their customers and still do it themselves, so they retain the customer relationship.

" I can get that for you, and I'll come and install it for you Mrs Jones, so you know it'll be right, cos it's me ..."

Then when it comes to G83 / G59 / big installs we could bid those and know that the resources can be pulled together to deliver..

 

[SRE]

Be careful not to lose the "local" service, our customers won't entertain the nationals because they want to use local know how. Tesco spent over £80 million on advertising in 2009 and they didn't have anywhere near the top market presence - if 1% of that was spent on marketing pv that's still 800k .... it takes mega bucks to get anywhere near the big guys and even trying a model like Euronics which can't take on the likes of Curry's, Dixons, etc costs in excess of £2 million and all of that is without the professional services of advertising agencies and marketing professionals to build a brand. The Energy Saving Trust had 2% brand recognition in 2009 after spending 10's of millions on branding and advertising over 12 years. It takes time and money, lots of both.

It might be a good idea to pool successful marketing ideas and press releases more informally and have some agreements to pass on referrals that come from further than you'd like to travel to others in the group, maybe set up a buying group to get cheaper supplies and use the website that Markc has set up for a bit of Internet presence. Would be a lot cheaper, quicker and growth would be manageable. That way you'd keep your local reputation but have group buying power.

 

[Ramjam]

Take a look at this for producing quotes...


http://www.silverstonesolar.co.uk/SS9999-ProjectDetailsV2-CustomerName.xls