Selling to utilities

Utilities buy slowly, carefully and in public. That's not a problem if you plan for it. The buying cycle is long, but the programs are big, the budgets are approved in advance, and the problems are written down for anyone to read.

If you can sell patiently and you can read a regulatory filing, utilities are some of the best accounts in services.

Who buys

At a mid-size utility, the committee is usually broad and senior.

The economic buyer might be a COO, a chief customer officer, a CIO, or the head of a business unit like transmission or distribution. Big programs often need sign-off from the CFO and sometimes the board.

The champion is often a director-level leader who owns the problem day to day. A director of grid operations, a head of customer systems, a director of asset management.

The technical lead is usually in IT or operational technology. Utilities run two very different technology worlds, the corporate systems and the systems that run the grid, and the people who own each are rarely the same.

Write to each seat. And expect procurement to be involved early. Utilities follow formal purchasing rules, and many larger engagements go through an RFP.

The pressures they face

Grid modernization is the biggest one. Utilities are under pressure to upgrade aging infrastructure, add renewable sources and handle new load from electrification. That means new systems for planning, monitoring and outage response.

Customer expectations are rising. Customers want outage updates on their phone, accurate bills and self-service. Many utilities run billing and customer systems that are decades old.

Regulation shapes everything. Rate cases decide what a utility can spend and recover. A program that's approved in a rate case has budget. A program that isn't, doesn't.

Workforce is a real issue. Experienced engineers and operators are retiring, and their knowledge is hard to replace.

And cybersecurity is a constant concern, given how critical the systems are.

The signals that matter most

RFPs and vendor searches are the strongest signal here, and utilities issue them often. Watch public procurement portals and the utility's own supplier pages.

Business pressure in filings is unusually rich. Utilities publish rate case filings, integrated resource plans and annual reports that spell out their programs, timelines and budgets in detail. A rate case approving a customer system replacement is about as clear a buying signal as exists. The 8-K items post covers what to watch in current reports.

A new leader matters a lot. A new CIO, COO or chief customer officer usually gets asked for a plan for the programs the last leader started.

Hiring for the problem you solve is useful. A cluster of roles for grid analytics, outage management or customer systems tells you which program is being staffed.

Tech stack signals in job posts tell you which billing, asset or outage platforms they run, and which ones they're moving to.

An example opener

Say a regional electric utility gets approval in its rate case to replace its customer information system over three years. A new chief customer officer started this fall.

The rate case approval this fall includes replacing the customer information system over three years, and you started as chief customer officer around the same time. New leaders in that seat usually inherit the timeline and the regulator's expectations on day one. My guess is the hardest part is keeping billing accurate and outage messages working on the old system as the new one is built. Is that right, or is the bigger worry somewhere else in the program?

That opener names a public, approved program, ties it to the reader's first months, guesses at a concrete risk, and invites correction.

What to avoid

Don't expect speed. Utility programs move on regulatory and budget cycles. A conversation this year might become a contract next year. Plan for that.

Don't skip procurement. If an RFP is coming, relationships before it opens matter. Once it's live, contact rules usually limit what you can say.

Don't lead with innovation language. Utilities value reliability above almost everything. Talk about risk, continuity and getting it right.

Utilities publish their problems in more detail than almost any industry. Read the filings, know the program, reach the right seats early, and be patient.