Energy / Utilities · Manager Coaching Call
Sales Coaching Roleplay for Energy / Utilities Teams: The 45-Minute Call After Two Missed Quarters
Your rep sells asset intelligence into distribution network businesses. Their pipeline is Heads of Asset Management, Network Planning Managers, and the occasional Chief Engineer who has veto power over anything that goes near an energised pole. Their deals die in asset committees, get parked until the next regulatory determination, or evaporate after a Manager Regulatory Affairs asks who's funding it inside the current capex allowance. And they've missed two quarters in a row — not spectacularly, just consistently.
That's what makes this call hard. Half of what your rep is about to tell you is true. Capex is locked into multi-year periods. Type approval and OT security review do take months. The Chief Engineer does genuinely kill things that can't answer 'what happens if this device fails on a live pole.' If you rebut the first excuse the moment it lands, you'll spend forty minutes arguing about regulatory reset timing and never get to the thing they won't volunteer: that their discovery is shallow, they never got a SAIDI number or a transformer failure rate out of anybody, and they stopped prospecting somewhere around week three while they 'worked' two deals that were never going to be funded this period.
This playbook is the structure for that conversation — what to pull before you sit down, how to drain the excuse list before you touch any of it, how to separate a genuine three-year regulatory headwind from a rep who never asked what the outage minutes were worth, and how to leave with one changed behaviour they actually agreed to. Run it as a sales coaching roleplay for Energy / Utilities teams before you run it live, because the version where you improvise this is the version where you end up delivering a pep talk to someone who's already checked out.
The manager coaching call script
Say it in your own words. The structure is the part that matters.
- 1
Before you open your mouth: pull the tape
Do not walk into this with a feeling. Walk in with six things: 1. **New opportunities created, last 90 days, by week.** If they created 7 in month one and 1 in month three, that chart is the entire conversation and you barely have to speak. 2. **Pipeline coverage against next quarter.** In this market, discount it: anything sitting with a 'we'll look at it in the next submission' next step is not coverage, it's a bookmark three years out. 3. **Stage conversion against the team median.** Specifically first-call-to-second-call. In utilities, that's the gate — did they earn a second meeting with the Network Planning Manager, or did they get a polite 'send me something for the asset committee'? 4. **Closed-lost reasons, counted.** How many say 'no capex allowance'? Then count how many of those had a documented SAIDI target, an unplanned transformer failure rate per 1,000 units, or a vegetation spend per line kilometre written down in the opportunity. Usually near zero — which means it was never a funding problem, it was a value problem dressed up in regulatory language. 5. **Two recordings.** One deal they won, one they lost, timestamped. First calls, not demos. 6. **Peer comparison on the same source.** If they're claiming the list of DNSPs and regional networks is picked over, check it against the rep working the same segment. If 'the accounts are all mid-period' is real, you'll see it in a normal meeting rate and a normal second-call rate with deals stalling at business case. If it's not real, you'll see the floor drop out right after the first call.
- 2
Open: name the stakes in two sentences
> "Two quarters is a pattern, not bad luck, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But I didn't book this to read you your numbers — you know your numbers better than I do. I want to work out what's actually going wrong, because I think it's one thing and not five, and I genuinely don't know yet which one. Fair?" No 'how's your week been.' They know why the meeting exists; false warmth reads as a setup and they'll lock down before you've asked anything real. No mention of a formal plan, a PIP, or HR in the first ten minutes — the moment they hear it, diagnosis stops and defence starts, and you've lost the only honest conversation available to you today.
- 3
Drain the tank: get all the excuses out before you touch any of them
> "Before I say a word about any of it — give me the full picture. What's making this hard right now? All of it. I don't want the diplomatic version." Then after each one, the only word you need: **"What else?"** Ask it three times minimum. Write the list where they can see you writing it. It will look something like: - Every account is mid-period, there's no capex allowance until the next reset - The Chief Engineer at Kalinda killed it on type approval before it got to a business case - Two of my best DNSPs went to the enterprise team in the territory carve - Eastland already bought a condition monitoring platform three years ago and nobody uses it - Their asset data is a mess so the pilot scope keeps shrinking Read it back flat, no editorial: *"So — regulatory cycle, type approval, territory carve, the incumbent platform at Eastland, and data quality. That's the list?"* Getting them to confirm the list is complete is what closes the escape hatches forty minutes from now.
- 4
Sort the list: real, partly real, story
Take each one completely seriously, then put it against the data you brought. Start with the one most likely to be real — conceding the true thing is what buys you the right to press on the rest. > "Territory's real. You lost Kalinda and Riverina in the carve, and between them that's about a quarter of the pipeline you built last year. I'm not going to pretend that isn't a headwind, and I'll come back to what I'm doing about it." Then the one you've already tested: > "Regulatory cycle. If that's the blocker I need to know, because it changes how we resource this whole segment. You worked nine opportunities last quarter. Marissa worked eleven in the same segment, same mix of distribution businesses, same point in the determination period. Six of your nine closed-lost say 'no allowance this period.' Two of hers do. Help me understand that gap." Then the question that does the actual work: > "Of those six — how many had a number in them? Not a feature list. A number the customer said out loud. Their SAIDI target for the period, their unplanned distribution transformer failure rate per 1,000 units, what STPIS is worth to them at the end of the reset. Walk me through Eastland. What did the Head of Asset Management say the outage minutes were costing?" When they can't answer, do not say 'exactly, that's the problem.' Say: **"Okay. What do you make of that?"** Then stop talking. Ten seconds of silence here is worth more than anything you were about to add.
- 5
Make it safe to say the real thing
They know their discovery is thin. They know they stopped prospecting. What stops them saying it is the belief that admitting it turns a soft quarter into a documented case. Break that belief out loud: > "Let me say the thing that's sitting between us. I am not building a file today. If the answer is 'I got spooked in week three and stopped calling into new networks' — that's fixable, I've fixed it with reps before. What I can't fix is a version where every cause is external, because then neither of us has anything to do on Monday." Then the two questions that usually crack it: > "If I handed you six new distribution businesses tomorrow, all of them drafting their next submission — do you hit the number?" The hesitation is the admission. Let it sit. Then: > "Walk me through the last three weeks of the quarter. What did a Tuesday morning look like?" A rep who's been prospecting describes activity — the Vegetation Management Program Manager who finally called back, the list of regional networks they worked through. A rep who stopped describes deals. That's the tell. And if they hand you a fast, flat *"yeah, you're right, I need to prospect more"* at minute six, don't take it. That's not an admission, that's a rep managing you out of the room, and the tell is that it arrived before a single number was on the table. Say: *"Maybe. But we haven't looked at anything yet. Let's look first."*
- 6
Go to the tape: a moment, not a theme
'Your discovery needs to be deeper' is a horoscope. Play ninety seconds. > "This is minute nine of the first call with the Manager Network Performance & Reliability at Eastland. He says — and I'm quoting — 'vegetation is still our biggest cause of unplanned minutes on the rural feeders.' Listen to what you do next." [play it] "You went to the model output slide. What were the three questions you didn't ask?" Let them name the misses. The good ones here are obvious once you're not in the call: what's their vegetation spend per line kilometre and which way is it trending; how many worst-served customers are on those feeders and what have they paid in GSL payments; what does the Manager Regulatory Affairs need in a submission for that program to survive the reset. If they can name the misses, this is execution — they know the move and aren't making it, usually because they're rushing to prove value before an engineer writes them off. If they genuinely can't name them, it's a skill gap and you're training, not coaching. That distinction sets the plan. Don't skip it.
- 7
Land on one root cause and say it plainly
> "Here's where I've landed. Territory is real, you lost two networks and I'm not arguing that. But the thing actually killing you is that you're presenting at minute nine instead of finding out what the outage minutes cost them. So every conversation becomes a technology comparison, and when it reaches the asset committee there's no cost-benefit and no risk quantification in it — which is exactly the paper that doesn't survive. And because you created four new opportunities in the last six weeks instead of fifteen, you can't afford to disqualify the two that were never going to be funded this period, so you kept working them. Does that match what you see?" Ask for agreement. If they push back with a real argument, listen — you may be wrong. If they push back with a new grievance, name it: *"That's a sixth thing. We agreed the list was five. I think you're looking for a reason this isn't about the calls."*
- 8
Let them write the plan
> "So — what do you want to change first?" Manager-written plans get complied with for eleven days. Rep-written plans get done. Then convert whatever they say into something you can both check on Friday. Two or three items. Not nine. - "Prospect more" → *"Tuesday and Thursday, 8 to 10, blocked. Target five new opportunities a week, and at least two of them into distribution businesses drafting a submission in the next eighteen months."* - "Better discovery" → *"No product on a first call for three weeks. If they push, you say: I'd rather understand your fleet than show you forty screens — give me ten more minutes of questions."* - "Quantify it" → *"Nothing advances past stage two without three numbers in the pain field: their SAIDI position against target, their unplanned transformer failure rate per 1,000 units, and what STPIS is worth to them at the end of the period. No numbers, it sits."* Then your half, out loud, because a plan that only assigns work to the rep reads as a warning: > "I'll be on your next two first calls and we debrief straight after — same day, not Friday. I'll go get the list of regional networks that just opened their submission process to backfill the carve. And I'll come with you to the Eastland asset committee prep if you can get me in the room."
- 9
Close on the standard, not a pep talk
> "So: Tuesday and Thursday eight to ten, no product on first calls for three weeks, three numbers in the pain field before anything advances. I'm on your next two discovery calls. We sit down Friday at four and look at opportunities created — opportunities, not deals. And to be straight with you: a third quarter like the last two changes what this conversation is. I don't think that's where we're heading, but I'd be doing you a disservice not to say it." Then the last question, and don't skip it: > **"What did you hear me commit to?"** Their summary tells you whether any of it landed. If they play back only their own actions, you didn't make it a partnership. If they play back a motivational message, you gave a speech instead of running a diagnosis.
- 10
If they never admit anything
Some of these end with the rep still holding the line on the regulatory cycle and the territory carve. Don't push for a confession — you'll get a fake one and lose the relationship on top of it. Convert the stalemate into an experiment: > "Alright. We disagree on the cause. Let's test it. Three weeks: no product on a first call, five new opportunities a week, three numbers in the pain field before anything advances. If it's genuinely the determination cycle, none of that will move and I'll take the segment coverage fight upstairs myself. If it does move, we know what we're dealing with. Either way we know more in three weeks than we do sitting here." That gives you a clean decision point, keeps them working, and means the next version of this conversation is about data rather than about who was right.
How the call actually sounds
Prospect on the left, the rep on the right.
Rep
Two quarters is a pattern, not bad luck, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But I didn't book this to read you your numbers. I want to work out what's actually going wrong, because I think it's one thing and not five. Fair?
Buyer
Fair. Though I'll tell you now, most of it isn't mine. Every network I'm in is mid-period. Kalinda's determination doesn't reset until FY28. There's no allowance for anything that wasn't in the submission, and I can't invent one.
Rep
Okay. What else?
Buyer
The carve. I lost Kalinda and Riverina to enterprise in March, which was about a quarter of what I'd built. And Eastland already bought a condition monitoring platform three years ago that nobody logs into, so their Head of Asset Management has basically stopped taking meetings on the category.
Rep
What else?
Buyer
Honestly? The Chief Engineer problem. At Kalinda the Principal Distribution Engineer killed it before the business case existed — wanted type approval and an OT security architecture review before he'd even look at a retrospective study on their own historical data. Two years of gates before anything touches an energised asset. And half these networks can't give me clean nameplate data on the rural transformer fleet anyway, so the scope keeps shrinking.
Rep
So: regulatory cycle, territory carve, the dead platform at Eastland, type approval and OT review, data quality. That's the list?
Buyer
That's the list.
Rep
Territory's real. You lost two networks and that's roughly a quarter of your historical pipeline — I'm not going to argue it and I'll come back to what I'm doing about it. Regulatory cycle I want to test, because if it's the blocker I need to resource this segment differently. You worked nine opportunities last quarter. Marissa worked eleven, same segment, same point in the cycle. Six of your nine closed-lost say 'no allowance this period.' Two of hers do. Help me understand that gap.
Buyer
She got luckier on timing. Two of hers were already drafting their next submission when she got in.
Rep
Maybe. Take Eastland then. Their Manager Network Performance & Reliability took two calls with you. What did he say his SAIDI position was against target, and what's their unplanned transformer failure rate per 1,000 units?
Buyer
He didn't give me a number. He said reliability on the rural feeders was a known issue and that the asset committee would need a paper.
Rep
Okay. What do you make of that?
Buyer
...That I probably should have pushed. But you don't push a network performance manager in a first call. These are engineers. If you come in hard on numbers before you've earned it they write you off as a vendor with a spreadsheet.
Rep
That's a real risk and I've watched it happen. But there's a difference between pushing and asking. Let me play you ninety seconds. This is minute nine of that second call. He says vegetation is still their biggest cause of unplanned minutes on the rural spurs. Listen to what you do next. [plays] You went to the model output slide. What were the three questions you didn't ask?
Buyer
...Vegetation spend per line kilometre and where it's trending. How many worst-served customers sit on those feeders. And what their GSL payments looked like last year.
Rep
You named all three in four seconds. So you know the move. Which tells me this isn't a knowledge gap — it's that you're reaching for the product at minute nine because you're worried they'll write you off before you get there. Does that sound right?
Buyer
Probably. Also I only had four live things last quarter, so I couldn't afford to blow one up by getting too curious. Kalinda and one other were never going to be funded and I worked them anyway because there was nothing behind them.
Rep
That's the whole thing right there, and it's one problem with two halves. Thin pipeline means you can't disqualify, which means you protect deals instead of qualifying them, which means no numbers, which means no paper that survives an asset committee. Given that — what do you want to change first?
Buyer
The pipeline half. If I've got twelve live conversations I'll ask the hard questions, because I won't care as much about any one of them.
Rep
Good. Make it checkable — what does that look like on a Tuesday?
Buyer
Eight to ten Tuesday and Thursday, blocked, calling into the regional networks. Five new opportunities a week. And I'll go find which ones are drafting submissions in the next eighteen months, because that's where the Manager Regulatory Affairs is actually looking for programs to put in.
Rep
Done. Add one from me: no product on a first call for three weeks, and nothing advances past stage two without their SAIDI position and their transformer failure rate written in the pain field. My side — I'm on your next two first calls and we debrief same day, and I'll get you the list of networks with submissions opening. Friday at four we look at opportunities created, not deals. And straight with you: a third quarter like the last two changes this conversation. What did you hear me commit to?
Objections you will hear
What they say, and what you say back.
| Objection | How to answer it |
|---|---|
| “"Every account I've got is mid-period. There's no capex allowance until the next determination — that's not a me problem."” | Concede the mechanic, then move the target. The cycle is real; what's not real is treating it as a wall. Coach the two moves your rep skipped: first, find out when the next submission is being drafted and who owns the reliability program business case — that's the actual timeline and it's a reason to be in the account now, not later. Second, test whether it can be funded as opex or out of an existing maintenance line: if it defers a handful of transformer replacements or cuts emergency truck rolls on unplanned faults, it may never need new capex at all. Then check the closed-lost records. If 'no allowance' appears six times and a documented dollar figure appears zero times, the rep never tested the objection — they accepted it as an exit. |
| “"The Chief Engineer at Kalinda killed it. Type approval, OT security review, chief engineer sign-off — that's two years before anything goes near an energised asset."” | Ask your rep one question: what did you propose that required any of those gates? If the answer is a device on a pole, they walked into the veto voluntarily. The coachable move is to agree with the process and shrink the first step — a retrospective analysis on the network's own historical SCADA, outage and asset records. No hardware, no OT connection, no permit-to-work, none of the three gates apply. That gives the Principal Distribution Engineer something to judge on their own terms while approvals run in parallel, and it tells everyone inside a few weeks whether the model finds anything real on that fleet. Roleplay it until the rep can say it without sounding like they're dodging the process. |
| “"Eastland already bought a condition monitoring platform three years ago. Nobody uses it and now the whole category is poisoned there."” | A dead incumbent is an opening, not a wall — but only if the rep does the autopsy. Coach them to ask what specifically killed it: alerts nobody trusted, a separate login the control room never opened, or outputs that never made it into the asset register or the works program. Then be explicit about which of those they avoid and how. If it can't surface inside the ADMS/OMS workflow the control room already lives in and drop into the works program the planners already run, it dies the same way. And have the rep ask to speak to the person who owned the failed system rather than routing around them — going around them is how you acquire an internal opponent. |
| “"Their asset data is a mess. Half the transformer install dates are wrong and there's no nameplate data on the rural fleet, so the scope keeps shrinking to nothing."” | This is usually the rep's discomfort talking, not the customer's. Coach them to reframe it: data quality is the reason to start, not to wait. What the model needs is loading, temperature, fault history and switching records — that often carries more signal than a clean register. Then be honest about coverage out loud: 'we can model the sixty percent of the fleet where the data is usable, and the exercise will tell you exactly which records to fix first.' Networks respect a vendor who scopes down honestly. A rep who lets the scope quietly evaporate to avoid saying 'sixty percent' has confused politeness with progress. |
| “"They asked me how it improves safety and I gave them the reliability answer. It didn't land."” | Because reliability isn't safety and the Chief Engineer knows the difference. Drill the concrete version until it's automatic: a failure found before it happens is planned switching in daylight with a full permit-to-work and an access authority. A failure found the hard way is a night callout to an energised fault, a crew working near a burning pole-top, and kilometres driven under fatigue rules. Fewer emergency responses means fewer live-line jobs and a TRIFR conversation the chief engineer can take to the board. Make the rep say it out loud three times in the roleplay — if they hedge it, it won't survive the room. |
| “"They said send something over and they'll take it to the asset committee. That's a good sign, right?"” | That is where your rep's deals go to die and the pipeline review keeps counting them. Coach two questions they must ask before agreeing: what does the committee actually decide, and what does a paper need to contain to survive it — cost-benefit, risk quantification, alignment to the existing reliability program. Then offer to build it with them rather than emailing a PDF that gets forwarded once. Get a date for the committee and a fifteen-minute prep call beforehand so the rep knows what was asked even when they're not in the room. If your rep can't name the committee date, the opportunity isn't at proposal — it's at 'polite exit' and should be marked accordingly. |
Questions reps ask about this call
- Why does sales coaching for energy and utilities teams need its own approach?
Because the excuses are unusually credible. In most segments, 'no budget this year' is a soft objection. In distribution networks it can be literally true — capex is locked into multi-year determination periods and there is no allowance for something that wasn't in the submission. Type approval and OT security review genuinely take months. That means a manager who can't separate the real constraint from the story will spend the whole 1:1 relitigating regulatory policy. The diagnostic move is always the same: check whether the closed-lost records that say 'no allowance' contain a SAIDI position, a transformer failure rate, or an STPIS number. If they don't, the rep never tested the objection.
- What should I pull before running this coaching call?
New opportunities created by week for the last 90 days, pipeline coverage with anything parked until the next reset discounted out, first-call-to-second-call conversion against the team median, counted closed-lost reasons cross-checked against whether a quantified customer number exists in each one, and two timestamped first-call recordings — one won, one lost. In this segment also pull how many opportunities are sitting on 'going to the asset committee' with no committee date, because that's where soft pipeline hides.
- How do I use roleplay to fix shallow discovery on utility calls?
Run first calls only, with the roleplay buyer playing a Manager Network Performance & Reliability or a Head of Asset Management, and impose one rule: no product, no slides, nothing but questions for ten minutes. Score the rep on whether they came out with three numbers — SAIDI position against target, unplanned distribution transformer failure rate per 1,000 units, and either vegetation spend per line kilometre or what STPIS is worth at the end of the period. Reps improve fast when the pass condition is a number rather than a vibe. Repeat with a Principal Distribution Engineer who opens with the safety veto, because that's the persona where reps panic and reach for the deck.
- My rep says the territory carve is the reason. How do I tell if that's true?
Compare their meeting rate and their first-to-second-call conversion against a peer in the same segment at the same point in the cycle. If both are normal and volume is simply lower, the carve is real and it's your problem to fix, not theirs — say so out loud, because conceding the true grievance is what earns you the right to press on the rest. If their meeting rate is fine but the floor drops out after the first call, the territory is a headwind and the calls are the cause. Concede the first, coach the second, and don't let one excuse the other.
- What's the one behaviour change worth asking for after two missed quarters?
Pick one, and let the rep choose it. In this segment the two that move the number are a hard prospecting block into networks drafting their next submission in the coming eighteen months, and a rule that nothing advances past stage two without a quantified customer number in the pain field. Both are checkable on a Friday. A nine-point plan teaches the rep that your plans are optional; two items with a date and a review teaches them the opposite.
- What if the rep never admits anything?
Don't extract a confession — you'll get a false one and lose the relationship as well as the quarter. Turn the disagreement into a three-week experiment: no product on first calls, five new opportunities a week, quantified pain before anything advances. If the constraint really is the determination cycle, nothing will change and you'll go fight for segment coverage yourself. If it changes, you both know what you're dealing with. Either way you have data in three weeks instead of an argument today.