In a Market With No Competitors, You Win by Educating First | Jeremy Byars

How to market to customers who cannot switch providers

United Systems sells metering, software and IT to utilities, and a utility has no rival to switch to, so the competitive playbook does not apply. The company's answer is education, delivered patiently to an industry with thin budgets and constant staff turnover, with service reputation doing the persuading. Its next test is selling new software to utilities that know it only as a metering vendor.

Takeaways

• Utilities are monopolies, so marketing means education. There is one water provider and one electric provider in each market, so competitive plays do not work and selling starts with solving pain points. Byars calls utilities an underserved population that runs on razor-thin budgets.
• Turnover makes education and re-education continuous. Byars says many people treat local government and utility jobs as dead ends, so the industry churns and customers need re-educating. United Systems aims to be a thought leader and stays patient while funding is cut.
• UPM cuts utility phone calls by 25%. The flagship utility management software cuts incoming calls by at least 25%, which matters most to teams of three or fewer. Byars rebuilt it on arrival and has sold it to existing customers upgrading from legacy software. Metering-only customers are next.
• Service reputation beats bigger rivals like Oracle. Direct rivals are about its size, plus larger software providers and Oracle, which Byars says does not care about the space the way United Systems does. He never criticizes competitors, and says customer feedback rates the service number one every year, thanks to southern hospitality.
• AI saves the marketing team half a day. Development uses AI for QA testing and product for story creation and acceptance criteria. Byars' two-person marketing team uses Claude or ChatGPT daily for copy editing and ideas, and Gemini for image mock-ups that save half a day or more. Vector illustration still has to be finished in Illustrator.
• AI does not replace graphic designers. Byars says AI means he spends less time on design and that no designer goes unhired because of it. Without the tools other work would not get done, and poor prompting costs time.

Byars' route from $7 an hour to CMO

1. Earned master's degrees in English and writing at Murray State University and taught there for a few years.
2. Left the university for a customer service job paying $7 an hour.
3. Became a customer service manager within a year, and managed customer service and purchasing within two.
4. Within three years was hired as a VP at a sister company running inventory management.