Marketers of Technology
00:06:50 · Jeremy Byars
[00:06:50] S0: Sure. I take quite a bit of what I bring to this industry from the financial industry because of that sort of quasi regulated aspect. And that is most of the customers, whether they understand it or not, whether they think they need it or not, do need to be educated because there is an education shortfall. And honestly, this industry, there's so much turnover. A lot of people do not want to work within local government and with utilities. They feel like those are dead end jobs. They absolutely are not. They are amazing jobs. And I wish more people realize that. But as a result of that turnover, education and reeducation is so critical. So I guess maybe it helps to have that education background that I have and then to be in that highly regulated industry of finance and in retirement accounts, which is what we focused on, which is a subset, more regulations, Having that experience and having that sort of interest already, because I also was heavily involved in employee training, all that stuff co mingles and mixes together and makes it so that I want to make sure that, yes, we want to make the sale. Of course we want to make the sale. But sometimes you want to educate the customer first and you want to make sure that their pain point isn't solved by just more information, right? And if we can provide that solution to them and be that thought leader, be that company that understands, okay, yes, we want to have the product readily available, but we also want to make it known that we get it. We absolutely get it. And so I would say in this industry in particular, and during these times when funding's being cut and things like that, sometimes instead of trying to just wait on the long tail to be shorter, sometimes it's really just about providing that type of service, that knowledge, that hey, we will be ready when you're ready because patience is an absolute virtue in this industry.
00:08:52 · Andres Figuera
[00:08:52] S1: It is. It is. And Jeremy, when you're mentioning understanding the pain points for the customers and that way being able to empathize with them and show that you get them, how are you able to do that analysis? Or where do you get the data that allows you to know the pain points that the customers are suffering from?
00:09:09 · Jeremy Byars
[00:09:09] S0: Definitely being a former product manager, this helps, but customer interviews are huge. One of my favorite parts of job is going on-site and just seeing what type of conversation we can have. Yes, we get some great takeaways and testimonials from them, but to truly understand, because the difference between a small utility and a large municipal utility that may be a metro area, It is a massive delta between the two. And even a large utility, say in our backyard here in Kentucky, completely different than say a utility up in Wisconsin or Minnesota, and we work with all of them. So it really does, I don't want to say every single one is unique because that's a cliche, but more times than not, there are unique things, unique pain points, unique interests, unique goals that they have. One of our products that we offer, it's called UPM, and it's the flagship offering on one side of our business, the software and utility management side. And a reduction of 25% of the phone calls coming into the office, that's one of the solutions that we provide, at least 25%, that makes a humongous difference if your team is, say, three people or less. If your team is staffed out 30, 40 large, may not be as big of a difference. And then we have to look at some of the other solutions that we provide as a part of the UPM package to really help their efficiency and so on. That simplifies a little bit, but it really does. And also too, the things that you wouldn't think people want to continue to do, the old fashioned, as we would say, ways of operating, simply because they don't know that there's a better option out there. And even if they might know there's a better solution, whether it be technologically related or just education or what have you, they might worry about the amount of training, the amount of the between the ear stuff, like really having to re set their thinking. And one of our biggest challenges sometimes, particularly in some of these smaller utilities, is just helping them to understand, hey, this transition that we can provide you to this better way of operating, it's not as scary as you might think it is. So again, it's all about shortening that tail, yes, of course, but you've got to wiggle your way in and provide that connection first.
00:11:36 · Jeremy Byars, Andres Figuera
And in a, again, technologically underserved industry, and I can't stress that enough, as scary as that sounds, we're talking about water coming into your home for drinking, we're talking about gas being piped into your home and electricity being provided. The fact that this is a technologically underserved industry is a bit terrifying. All that said, we're here to assist with making sure that you aren't underserved. [00:12:03] S1: No. And I can only imagine because I've also spoken with companies or agencies that also help out more orthodox industries get revamped and modernized with technology, and there's always this little bit of pushback that they have, because they've been doing these processes forever, and they aren't broken because they work, but they could be optimized and made better, so it's making them understand, as you're mentioning, that you will provide a value that will ease the headaches going forward, but they do need to do the work of making sure it's implemented correctly, and working in a cohesive way with United Systems in order to be able to really evolve into what is going on in the world with more advanced companies nowadays. But Jeremy, once you have understood the pain point that you know the company you wanna talk to, how then do you showcase that you learned these pain points and what channels work for you in that regard?
00:13:00 · Jeremy Byars
[00:13:00] S0: So a lot of what we're doing on the software side is relatively new. So when I got here, my main job was to rebuild this UPM concept and turn it into what it is today. So showcasing it up to this point has only been with our current customers and getting them to upgrade from our legacy software to this new thing that really just completely expands the operational benefit more so than they've ever thought about before. Now moving forward, pretty soon we're going to be rolling that out into areas that don't know us from software. They may know us on the metering side of things and they most likely do, but they don't necessarily have experience with our software. So the way that we showcase is we get a ton of video on-site when we have customers, we get a ton of audio because at the end of the day, we can send our salespeople there all day long and knock on the door and go in and say, you're using us for this, try using us for this other side as well. But really and truthfully, is that down home testimonial from someone on the other side of the state that they're in, or maybe in a similarly sized utility, or maybe has nothing to do with the utility itself, but the pain point is the same. Or maybe it's the goals that they're trying to reach. Maybe they're trying to not necessarily reduce staff, but not hire more staff as they continue to expand. There's all these different things that they're looking for. The best way to do that is don't take our word for it. I wish you would, I'd love for you to take my word for it. But the best thing to do is use the feedback and the testimonials. And also for our company in particular, for the forty some odd years, forty nine years that we've been in existence, our support is considered second to none against our competitors. So a lot of times having our support and the evidence of how we're able to help them again in maybe another vertical, because we have multiples, we do manage the IT and networking for customers. Again, we've got the relationship with Itron and other metering providers. We do a lot of things. So we do have the advantage of obviously cross selling every single day, but ultimately it's that old school, hey, let's get somebody on camera. Let's get them to just speak their mind. I will tell you, being the CMO here, I also still have a foot in the product side.
00:15:22 · Jeremy Byars, Andres Figuera
So those testimonials are, they have so many benefits for me because then I can take some of the product feedback and say, okay, you can hear it from me, product team, and I can tell you that this is not the best way to build this. Or here's Jenny with Stewart, someone that I spoke to a couple of weeks ago, North Stewart County in Tennessee, not far from Nashville. This is her precise feedback about this particular feature, right? And so it helps us as a company as well to build out the next best thing. The next thing that is really going to improve not just her daily life at the utility, but those in similar situations as her. [00:16:00] S1: Okay. No, I understand now a lot better. And Jeremy, you mentioned then that your service is second to none in regards to your competitors, but when you're telling me that this is an underserved underserved technology industry, how is it that... Or how do you feel that the competition is? Is there a lot of companies that are trying to do this and you're placed as the leaders in the market? Or how is that looking for you guys?