THE CHALLENGE
As a leading retailer of energy and energy solutions, Direct Energy offers its customers expertise and innovative opportunities to help manage their home or business. This means that not only is a sales force necessary, but the sales representatives must be knowledgeable and act as a consultant to the customer in order to find the very best product and/or services for their home or business. To stay competitive in the retail energy business, a door-to-door approach was determined to be the most cost-effective way to reach the customer and uphold Direct Energy’s customer charter – a commitment based on four simple promises:

• To give the customer consistent, expert advice about the energy management of their home or business;
• To respect and care for the customer’s property;
• To stand behind Direct Energy’s employees, their work and their products;
• To provide easy options for customers to contact Direct Energy.

This means working with a vendor partner that has special training, skills and knowledge about all of Direct Energy’s products and services and who can directly communicate that knowledge to potential new customers. This partner would become Cydcor.

THE CYDCOR SOLUTION
Cydcor’s sales professionals were immediately trained to be completely knowledgeable about specific products and services being offered by Direct Energy. This enabled the sales force to act as consultants to potential customers and allowed them to answer questions and explain various types of services in a way that made the customer feel comfortable with the sales professional and the products and services being offered.

With Cydcor’s advanced systems of sales reporting, Direct Energy receives timely reports that enables them to track the progress and advancement of the campaigns. It was clear to both Direct Energy and Cydcor that the partnership would be very successful for both companies.

CYDCOR RESULTS
After a 30-day pilot program that began with 3 offices on the campaign, Cydcor launched campaigns in two separate sales channels, one for businesses and one for residential.

Cydcor’s sales professionals quickly adapted to product and service information, which was then taken directly to potential new customers for Direct Energy. Within ninety days of starting the two-channel campaign, Cydcor expanded from 3 sales offices to 15 offices and also increased the number of qualified applications from 300 to more than 5,000 per month with expansion plans for another 12 sales offices in 2006.