Developing Biz-Dev Opportunities In Building-Integrated Solar Thermal

I accidentally happened across the note I wrote following one of the many hundreds of calls I made over a period of two or three months earlier this year. In my effort to research the appetite of the largest U.S. dairies for building integrated solar thermal hot water heating, I spoke with someone from Leprino Foods, apparently one of our county’s top manufacturers of cheese, a process that requires a huge amount of hot water. The note in my database read:

Receptionist at the Greeley facility insists that I physically mail something; they don’t use email. I thought about offering to send it by pony express, but if she got the joke she might not be amused, and it would violate my personal policy against being mean and condescending–even when provoked with absurd circumstances. I’m betting that a company that doesn’t use email isn’t likely to be an early adopter of solar thermal; looks like a big fat dead end here at Leprino.

I post this mainly to make the point that personal contact still works (though it certainly didn’t here). I developed a number of really good biz dev opportunities for my client (PlexiSun) simply by using the Internet and the telephone.