3 Ways Energy Consultants Can Increase Productivity

Energy consultants are too busy to not streamline their businesses: Here are 3 ways energy consultants can increase productivity.

That’s why it’s so important for consultants to streamline their operations: they need to optimize their day to increase productivity. This way they can spend more time closing deals and less time doing the administrative work that bogs them down all day.

So let’s look at the three biggest time-consuming tasks and learn how energy consultants can streamline them to increase productivity.

Ways Energy Consultants Can Increase Productivity

1. Streamline Energy Pricing

Too many energy consultants still spend way too much time getting updated rates from suppliers. Depending on how many suppliers you have, getting pricing can eat up hours of your day.

That’s why it’s essential to streamline the task. You can do this either by hiring more staff to get the pricing for you or you can get technology that takes care of it.

Reducing the time to get pricing to just a few minutes will suddenly open up a nice chunk of time in your schedule, so you can get out and increase sales rather than collect rates.

2. Automate Contract Creation

Creating contracts for your clients can be an arduous and error-stricken task.

For many energy consultants, it involves writing multiple drafts – oftentimes making small adjustments here and there – and making sure you cover all your legal bases.

A good first step for automating this process is to create basic templates in Microsoft Word or whichever tool you use to create contracts. But there’s a good chance you’ve already made this step, but still find yourself revising and rewriting more than you’d like.

You can also turn to generic contract management software. Many of these programs let you build an automated contracting workflow so you can move away from word processing and towards true automation.

There are a few downsides of generic contract software:

  • It can cost a fair amount for just contract automation. Many programs do not offer any additional benefits.
  • The initial setup process can be time-consuming, confusing or even expensive if you need a third-party consultant.
  • You always have more risk when using generic business programs in the deregulated energy sector: they might not account for more nuanced requirements to ensure compliance with local regulations.

This is one of the reasons we built automated contract creation into our proprietary software for energy brokers. It gives brokers the ability to quickly and easily generate and close contracts while providing comfort in knowing the contracts are made to meet the requirements of the deregulated energy market while also integrating DocuSign.

3. Delegate Responsibilities

Delegating responsibilities sounds easier than it is.

It’s hard to find someone you can trust with the day-to-day energy consultancy tasks. Or maybe you don’t have or want any additional employees – that’s common in the deregulated energy industry too.

But you shouldn’t handle everything on your own. Not if you want to increase your productivity and close more deals.

Even if you streamline your pricing and automate contract creation, you’re still left with an armload of administrative tasks that keep you away from sales.

For more complex deals, you’re suddenly on the phone with suppliers for hours on end. Some tougher prospects might require more negotiations, so you get back on the phone. Maybe your client has a ton of questions only a supplier can answer…and you’re on the phone again.

Many energy consultants jump to the conclusion that they must hire employees to increase productivity, whether they can afford a new hire or not. But that’s not the case. Hiring is far from your only option.

Instead, you can find a partnership.

Companies like Broker Online Exchange were created to help energy consultants increase productivity so they can stick to what they do best—selling energy.

BOX has a whole office of support staff that ensure you get the answers and pricing you need when you need it, without wasting hours on the phone or pushing papers.

Want to Join BOX and Increase Productivity?

When you sign up with BOX you get access to our proprietary software that gives you instant access to energy rates from 90+ suppliers in all North American markets. Of course, we offer automated contract creation with DocuSign integration as well.