To sell commercial solar and battery storage, identify a site your offer can serve, establish who controls it, and find who pays its electricity bill. Then approach the people who can supply the missing information. A large roof starts the research; it does not qualify the sale.

Use these checks before your team invests in a proposal:

Start with one segment in one service territory. Research its ownership patterns, build a small account list, and record why each site belongs. Expand after replies and assessments show which assumptions hold.

The market is large. Your addressable market is a set of sites.

The latest available deployment data show substantial activity: IEA PVPS reports 282 GW of global distributed PV additions in 2025, across residential and non-residential applications. Europe has considerable remaining physical potential. A January 2026 Joint Research Centre study estimates about 500 GWp on EU non-residential rooftops. These figures describe different things: annual deployment and technical potential. Neither is a count of companies ready to buy. For sellers, the practical opportunity depends on site control, electricity use, connection options and an investable project.

Build your total addressable market from the bottom up:

1. List facilities in territories your installation, engineering and maintenance teams can cover.
2. Separate owner-occupied sites, leased sites and portfolios controlled by one owner.
3. Filter against your minimum project size, preferred use cases and financing requirements.
4. Map each facility to its meter, occupier and approving entity where those details are available.
5. Keep sites with unanswered qualification questions separate from sites assessed as suitable.

Estimate potential project value only when you have a defensible system-size range and current pricing assumptions. Report eligible sites, estimated capacity and potential contract value separately. One property owner with several facilities may represent one commercial relationship and several engineering assessments.

Useful starting segments include owner-occupied manufacturing, cold storage, distribution facilities, retail portfolios and fleet depots. Choose according to your offering. A solar installer needs a credible generation-and-consumption match. A storage integrator needs a defined value stream, such as managing demand charges or supplying selected loads during outages. REopt's modeling guidance explains why load, utility rates, system dispatch and resilience requirements matter.

Qualify solar and storage separately

An account can suit solar while failing your storage criteria. Existing solar does not establish surplus generation, a favorable tariff or room for a battery.

For solar, establish roof condition, remaining roof life, structural suitability, shading, access and the electricity supply arrangement. For storage, add the intended operating mode, interval demand, existing equipment, available space and the approvals needed for the proposed installation. BC Hydro's commercial guidance identifies roof condition, structural load, equipment choice and battery configuration as project-specific checks. Treat public research as preparation for those checks, rather than an engineering conclusion.

Your qualification record should distinguish observed, inferred and unconfirmed information. A company announcement can establish that a depot is expanding. It cannot establish the future charging schedule or an approved battery budget.

The US Department of Energy's federal PV procurement guidance supports a staged approach: check site plans and electricity contracts, screen physical and electrical constraints, then assess financial and regulatory conditions. Adapt that screening sequence to your commercial sales process and the customer's project requirements.

Keep regional research specific:

The UK Solar Roadmap identifies commercial lease complexity, finance and grid connections as deployment barriers. The EPA's financing guidance distinguishes self-ownership from third-party ownership and notes US state restrictions on some structures. For a Canadian example, BC Hydro's application process requires account and meter information, equipment checks and technical acceptance. Confirm the current rules for the actual project location.

Find the people behind the meter

Search by responsibility and site, then verify the person's current role. A group sustainability lead may support the project while a property director controls whether it can proceed.

Maintain a committee map for each qualified account. Record the role you have confirmed, the decision you believe it influences, and who still needs an introduction. Ask the first contact how the decision works internally. Do not infer signing authority from a senior title.

Turn a site signal into a useful message

Illustrative account: a logistics company announces an expanded refrigerated facility. Your CRM contains an old solar discussion that stopped because roof replacement was pending.

The expansion is public evidence. The old discussion supplies relationship history. Roof completion, current electricity demand and landlord approval remain unknown. Check with the account owner before reopening the conversation.

For a new account, connect the observed event to an assessment you can perform. Keep the first request smaller than a full feasibility study.

Illustrative cold email, not a sent campaign or customer result:

Subject: Solar assessment for the expanded cold store

Your announcement describes additional refrigerated space at the depot. We assess commercial rooftop solar against the site's electricity use and property constraints.

Is your facilities team reviewing on-site generation as part of the expansion? I can send the short input list for an initial assessment.

The message names a real research input, explains the offering and asks about the decision. Before using it, replace the scenario with verified account facts. Offer only an assessment your team can deliver.

For storage, make the question about the relevant load or operating requirement. An EV-fleet announcement can justify asking about charging plans. It cannot justify stating that a battery will reduce that site's bill.

Follow up with new information or a more useful request: a load-data checklist, an explanation of your assessment scope, or a question about the right project owner. Repeating “checking in” adds no reason to reply.

Reopen the CRM around what changed

Segment dormant conversations by their original blocker: roof works, lease timing, financing, connection costs, site expansion or an incomplete assessment. Keep active opportunities with their owners. Respect exclusions and previous requests to stop contact.

Prioritize accounts where a change can resolve the recorded blocker. Review the old proposal before contacting the buyer; assumptions about tariffs, equipment or project scope may need refreshing.

Illustrative CRM revival message:

When we discussed rooftop solar, the roof replacement was the next decision. Has that work been completed, or is it still planned?

If the timing has changed, we can revisit the assessment using current electricity data. Would it help to confirm what needs updating first?

If the roof remains a blocker, record the next review date. If the project has been cancelled, close the loop. CRM revival should produce useful decisions, including a clear decision to stop pursuing an account.

Build connections that reach several relevant sites

Create a separate relationship list for roofing contractors, electrical contractors, property managers, energy advisers and existing customers. Ask which relationships can introduce you to the people responsible for suitable sites.

Prioritize three things: access to the actual decision process, relevance to a current project, and reach across a serviceable portfolio. A property manager who can introduce an asset director during planned roof works may be more useful than a broad executive contact with no project involvement.

Make introductions easy. Supply a short description of the sites you serve, the information needed for assessment and the reason the introduction could help the recipient. Agree responsibilities before pursuing partner-sourced projects. Record the introducer and any existing commercial relationship in the CRM.

Use conferences to arrange the next project conversation

Choose events according to the people you need. A solar industry event can be useful for channel relationships; a logistics or property event may better fit a campaign aimed at occupiers and owners.

For example, RE+ publishes exhibitor, speaker and attendee-related resources. Treat each listing according to what it establishes. An exhibitor listing establishes a company's exhibition presence, not attendance by its facilities director.

Before the event, qualify the account and contact separately. Ask a relevant prospect whether they are attending, then suggest a short conversation about the specific site or portfolio issue. Give your attending rep the account brief and missing qualification questions.

After the event, follow up on the actual discussion. “You mentioned the lease review comes first” supports a useful next step. A badge scan alone does not establish a qualified project. Track partner introductions separately from direct buyer meetings. Our conference outreach service connects the research, messages and follow-up to your team's event plans.

Measure the path from reply to assessed project

Agree definitions before launch. For email, measure unique replying contacts divided by unique contacts receiving a delivered message in that campaign. Track LinkedIn messages separately and specify whether the denominator is messaged contacts or accepted connections. Do not combine unlike denominators.

Tag service territory, use case, site type, property arrangement, stakeholder, channel and campaign. Keep one account history when several contacts discuss the same facility. Link related facilities to the parent account so a portfolio project is not counted repeatedly.

Review lost and deferred opportunities alongside wins. If a segment replies but repeatedly fails the lease or load assessment, change qualification before increasing volume. Compare cohorts at similar stages; a recent campaign has not had the same time to reach investment approval. The campaign analytics guide explains how to connect campaign activity with later sales outcomes.

Run the research and outreach alongside your sales team

Emitree builds the account research around your exact solar or storage offer, service territory and project criteria. We combine public sources with the CRM history and private information you share, check relevant contacts, and run email and LinkedIn campaigns in your voice. Your reps receive replies with the research and conversation history. They handle meetings, engineering assessment and commercial decisions.

Think of it as pairing your sales team with a go-to-market team that has the technical know-how to run research, qualification, messaging and outreach. Our commercial proposition is the work of four BDRs for the price of one junior BDR. We agree the scope and price around your offering, markets and workload.

Emitree reports 3–7% cold email reply rates and 14–22% LinkedIn reply rates across clients' sustainability campaigns. If your campaigns currently return 0.45% on email and 3% on LinkedIn, measured on the same basis, those ranges are roughly 7–16× and 5–7×, respectively. These are all replies, not sector-specific results or positive-reply rates. Compare rates using the same denominator.

Strong outreach starts with evidence of fit. For solar and storage, that means checking site control, electricity demand, procurement timing and the person responsible for the investment. That is the preparation an expert BDR would do with enough time to research each account. Emitree makes that preparation the default. Automating delivery does not replace this work.

Campaign reviews show which territories, site types and outreach approaches deserve further investment. Start by agreeing the offer, qualification rules and evidence needed for one useful campaign. Explore Emitree for commercial solar and storage.