Having a Customer Centered Business - Darryl Parker

In this podcast, Suncast host Nico Johnson speaks with CEA’s Vice President in Sales and Marketing, Darryl Parker about taking a customer-centered approach to sales and marketing. This practical look at how sales & marketing is evolving will help guide your thinking about your own business!

Based in San Francisco, CA, Darryl Parker brings more than 35 years of extensive high tech, manufacturing and power electronics experience to his role now in the clean energy revolution.

In this episode, Darryl and Nico cover the gamut of his deep tech expertise from Sun Microsystems early days to Satcon powers, rapid expansion and beyond. Darryl has helped multiple startup companies, particularly in hardware, grow past that first $100 million revenue marker. Nico digs into just how Darryl sees the clean economy evolving, and where you can use his insights to make your big impact.

Video Transcript

Suncast Intro

Nico Johnson
Hey there, solar warriors, I'm Nico Johnson. And this is Suncast. Each week. I pull back the veil on the life and business insights of Cleantech entrepreneurs, building the most noble and impactful companies of our time. I hope what you learn from this conversation is a catalyst for your own growth. So thanks for tuning in and welcome to our tribe.

Hey, welcome back solar warriors to another Suncast episode. Thank you so much for lending me your ears. And you know what also the only non-renewable resource that you've got, and that is your time wherever you are, you could be spending that time doing anything. So I'm expressing my deep gratitude that you have pressed play on this episode. If you are new here. Thank you. I really look forward to your feedback and I appreciate you giving us a chance to earn your attention. Today's entrepreneur is no stranger to new product and new technology introduction with roots in the early days of Silicon valley. Darryl Parker brings more than three decades of extensive high-tech manufacturing and power electronics experience to his role.

Now in the clean energy revolution, he currently leads sales and marketing, solving clients, solar and storage challenges at Clean Energy Associates with their comprehensive suite of technical advisory services.

You'll no doubt. Remember our interview with past CEA folks like Andy Klump, their CEO. Well today, Darryl and I cover the gamut of his deep tech expertise from Sun Microsystems early days to Satcon Powers, rapid expansion and beyond. He's helped multiple startup companies. And particularly in hardware grow past that first hundred million revenue marker, and I dig into just how Darryl sees the clean economy evolving and where you can use his insights to make your big impact.

If you like what you're hearing right now, I'd be so honored if you would subscribe to the show because that's going to ensure that you won't miss out on our twice weekly content, just like this. Of course, you can always check out almost 400 additional founder stories and startup advice over at mysuncast.com. And if you have advice or on who or what else should be featured on Suncast? Well, just text me at 310, 634, 1780. And let me know. I promise I will get back to you for now. Get ready to tune up your skills, solar warrior, as we tune in to another powerful conversation here on Suncast.

Interview Intro

Nico Johnson

All right. Well, as I mentioned, today's guest is my friend Darryl Parker. He's been in high-tech manufacturing power electronics for more than 35 years. Many of you veterans, solar buffs out there are going to recognize his first solar gig: Satcon Power, where he grew their inverter sales and power electronics business globally from 7 million, about the time that I started buying Satcon inverters to over 180 million in revenues. He also helped power electronics company. Ampt - you might notice that name as well - achieve a 10X growth over the course of the last five years. His past four roles, in fact, have all had global context with either restarting an enterprise or beginning startup venture funded companies. Today, we're blessed to have Darryl grace, the Suncast stage Darryl, welcome to Suncast.

Darryl Parker
Well, thank you very much, Nico. I appreciate being here and having a conversation with you.

Darryl Parker, Background

Nico Johnson
Well, we have a lot of ties, I'll never forget meeting you back in, I think 2008, right? As you were getting a start at Satcon, when I was at DRI and, I, we were installing second inverters, but in fact, my first project ever at Chartwell School in Monterey, California used a 35 kilowatt Satcon inverter. And we joked that day about how, it was a common known problem with that smaller, line of inverters that there, there were some power problems in terms of just turn on and off, and then you quickly moved into sort of solving the world's problems in, Hawaii, microgrids, et cetera. We're going to get into all of the many, trials and tribulations as well as rewards that came along with your first gig, as I mentioned at Satcon. But before we do that, you're one of the few people, candidly, that I know in the industry who was actually born and raised in the Bay Area. Where did you grow up and what was life like around the dinner table when you were a kid?

Darryl Parker
I grew up in, Oakland, California and Alameda, California in the public school system and also in the private school system here going to a Catholic high school once I turned 14. So, it was very interesting, my father was a, electronics engineer. He always had a lot to say around the dinner table about what was happening in those days, because it was the very late sixties, early seventies and eighties. And as a result, we were always,  well-rounded and, we discussed a lot about school. Typical dinner time conversation was all around, well, what have you studied and how well do you know it? So, it was definitely a strong influence on my life. You

Nico Johnson
You mentioned that your father was in electronics and he was an engineer. What led you into the world of engineering and then eventually technology sales?

Darryl Parker
Actually following behind him. He actually worked on P-3 Orions at the Naval air station in Alameda re-engineering and calibrating the electronics for the radar systems. In those days, P-3s flew up and down the coastline of California searching for submarines. He always was a tinkerer, kind of a person. So we built a lot of projects together, he showed me how to fix television sets and radios and things like that. And I always had a keen interest on how things work. So, it was no, no small, incident that, I decided that engineering was going to be the pathway that I would go because, it, it at least shows you how things work.

Darryl Parker
So it's kind of funny. The first time I came in contact with, Satcon, I was actually at an SPI in San Diego. I was working with, just going around and looking at all of the different products, that were there on the floor, fascinating, and I came across Satcon and there was an engineer there. And, he knew that, I had interviewed for the role in sales and I walked up to him and I said, open up the doors and show me how it works. So he opens up the doors and we start talking about the power electronics inside and how it's actually operated. And he stopped. And he looked at me and said, are you a salesperson because I've never seen anybody want to know so much about how the inside of this thing work. And I go, yes, but I'm also an engineer. I'm also an, certified, licensed, electrician here in the state of California. And I just love these things. I love understanding how the electrons flow, and I never get tired of it even to this day.

Nico Johnson
I want to back up a few years, a decade or so maybe, but before Satcon, you mentioned to me that you sort of got pulled into like a Silicon valley, sort of found you and pulled you into the work world. What was that like for you, a Bay Area, kid, an engineer, getting a chance in the nineties to get into, you know, what we now look back and see as the high tech boom.

Darryl Parker
Well, I had a initial beginning at, IBM and, I started off as an engineer at IBM on the design side, and I took an opportunity to go what they call to the field, and become a systems engineer in the field and in so doing, I was introduced to a small startup company called Sun Microsystems that was highly interested in Unix and the Unix platforms and risk technology. And I again, found that fascinating. And, I joined them at a time where things were building and they were growing, and those days hiring 200 people per week, it was the rate that the company was growing, but they offered me a different type of an opportunity, not one to design new products and be fresh. They offered me the opportunity to do international work, to actually take their products and go overseas with them.

Darryl Parker
And I was a part of a very small group of people that, opened up a lot of the international markets for Sun. And I found that even more fascinating to take technology out to, people around the world and, have them understand what this technology could mean for them. It was all Unix-based, it was all risk-based, and it really enhanced my understanding and ability of how world economies actually operate, how they use technology to advance themselves, and how that actually ties back into a lot of the innovation that was going on in the Silicon Valley, so it was a fantastic, career path and ride for me over the years, as we grew that business multiple times, in fact.

Nico Johnson
As you reflect on the impact of the role that you had at Sun, are there, are there any particular skills or moments in time that you feel, really, helped calm give that compound effect for your career path?

Darryl Parker
Absolutely. It taught me a couple of very basic fundamentals of life, and those are wherever you go anywhere in the world, people absolutely love their families. They do everything they can on behalf of their families. Also everywhere you go, people work very hard, they always put in that time.  there's no, no one has the market cornered on, on how hard people work. And the third thing is that people really want to do a good job. They're focused on doing the very best they can do and excel as much as they can. So wherever I've been, wherever I've gone, I've always focused on those things, showing people how they can be the very best that they can be. They're working very hard and the impact it's going to have on their family. And I've been able to do business in 56, 57 countries around the world. I've never had a problem ever connecting with people culturally or, technically, and, and it's been a large part of my success.

How to Bridge Cultural Gaps

Nico Johnson
Is there anything that you've found helps you, maybe it's conferred to it as a tool, but conversation starter or an awareness that you have going into sort of first getting to know someone that allows you to cross that cultural gap or to have, to create, an early sense of comradery and, and build that relationship.

Darryl Parker
Absolutely. You should have an undying curiosity, a curiosity about people, when, when I've been asked, what do you focus on? I focus on customs and cultures. I focus on the people because at the end of the day, we do business face to face. We do business with people, and they're human beings. So, one of the things that I would always do, you ride from an airport into a meeting and you start talking with the taxi driver, what's your country like? What are your customs? What are your cultures? And the first thing you mentioned, when you step into a, a business meeting is you talk about the person's country. You talk about what you saw, what you liked, what is good about their, their customs and their cultures that you like. And it opens up a sense of, you're not there just to do business, you're there to actually learn who people are and know people. And, I've made, met friends all around the world that I can actually truly call my friends because we actually start from a friendship position. And then when we're talking about business, we can discuss business in the office. We can discuss business over lunch or over dinner. It doesn't matter. You're having a conversation with people who actually know that you care about them and they care about you.

Entering the Solar Industry

Nico Johnson
Well, you know, the common threads in the renewable industry, not only is that we care about the mission of, you know, massively impacting climate change and, weaning the country and the world off of fossil fuels. But it is an industry where people often work together in multiple iterations of their career. I know that you have seen that. There's a really interesting tie often that we find that folks will find out that as they're joining a company, someone else on that, in that company has a tie to your past experience. I've seen this countless times.

Tell me a bit about your first foray into solar power, renewable energy with that job at Satcon, how did you fall into that role? What was it about Satcon that convinced you to leave high tech and Silicon valley for the renewable energy boom?

Darryl Parker
Well, what I found in Satcon was a very interesting company, they were building inverters in north America, in Canada at the time. And they had developed some technology, which was rather unique at that time where they had built the very first, fully enclosed inverter. It wasn't in multiple parts like it was, say in the previous years. So they had put it all together and they had thought about the maintenance of the device. And so they had brought all of the equipment that required maintenance upfront and put it in the part of the cabinet where you could easily open it and get access to it. So I thought it was really fantastic. It actually reminded me of the old disk drives that we would develop at IBM on how you would replace a dispatch or the logic circuitry.

Darryl Parker
So I found that absolutely fascinating. The company was actually trying to grow. It was having some difficult, start times growing and North America was to be the largest, the largest marketplace. So, I was really intrigued with the opportunity to grow in North America, I had just spent the previous 15 years outside the country, so working in various places. So, I found this really an excellent place to go. And the story that I can relate to you, that was quite interesting, where I knew I had gone full circle and I was in the right place for the rest of my life was as a boy engineer, working for IBM, I was a part of a large data center move from, Intel Corporation out of Santa Clara and the data centers in Sunnyvale to a Folsom in Sacramento area, circling around, almost 25 years later. I'm at, Satcon and we're installing a 1.5 megawatt, solar system at Folsom for Intel to power a data center that I moved mainframe computers in 25 years before. And I just said, I'm here. This is my home it's business comfortably. Now I'm a solar soldier for life because I could see the entire cycle of me from the beginning, all the way to where I wanted to be and where I want to be is in solar. This is great.

Nico Johnson
You know, one of the things that I think is Satcon was really good at was pulling people in from, from high-tech and, and in particular high tech sales and marketing. I remember if I'm not mistaken, you reported to Pete deGraf, the EVP at Satcon. Can you tell me the story of the first time you met Pete and, the connections you guys had?

Darryl Parker
That's a great one. The first time I met Pete was, at a lunch at a cafe in Los Gatos, California, the recruiter had told me, you know, go in and see him. And, and I walked in and I had my suit and tie on and all, and, and he looked at me and he said, tell me about your background at Sun and all of the, things that you had done there. And, oh, by the way, ditch the tie. We don't use that. So I took my tie off and we started having lunch together and I told him, hey, the last role that I had at Sun, I was actually managing the portfolio of application suppliers that we had. So it was a, the applications for Oracle, PeopleSoft, Siebel's, Sybase and all of the, high tech ones that ran the desktop. Like in those days it was Daisy and Mentor Graphics. And so on, it turns out that Pete had worked at a Sybase, and we knew a lot of common people together. I didn't know him personally, but everyone else in Sybase I knew, and he knew them too. So we had a lot of discussions around, the 'good ol' days' you might say. And, he was just locked in at that point and just said, we stood up from the the meeting and said, I'm going to have you talk to our CEO. Don't worry about it. And we're going to have you in Satcon. That was it.

Nico Johnson
That is fantastic. That ability to, yeah, I mean, I pointed that out because there are so many things that we think about, like, how do we finesse this or that piece of a conversation to get the job that we want to move into the new roles that we find exciting. And sometimes you just can't, you can't anticipate that something as seemingly far removed as the guy who's hiring, you worked at an account, you managed, can have a big impact, you know, and I think that as we it's often hindsight's 2020. We can look back on our career arc and paint a beautiful picture. And in the moment, it still feels like chaos, as we're trying to decide, those next steps.

Navigating the ‘Solar Coaster’ During Satcon’s Turmoil

Nico Johnson
Well, you know, Satcon made a huge impact, a huge splash early, but it was not without its own, moments of chaos. And another thing that we find in the clean energy revolution, especially those of us who've been in it for 15 or so years, what we call the 'Solar Coaster' is that companies, boom, and bust and our careers, we have to manage our careers in a way that preserve our reputation in the marketplace, Satcon is one of those companies that for reasons outside of your control or, or most of the employees there didn't survive the tremendous growth path that we all experienced in the industry. How did you go about, or think about preserving your reputation at a time where the startup that you helped grow past a hundred million, it started entering into a period of turmoil?

Darryl Parker
Well, that was interesting because quite honestly, I did not actually think about my reputation personally, what I thought about was our customers, and I had grown to know a lot of them very well and very deeply, and I cared about them a lot.

So I put a lot of energy into working with the, a manufacturer, which was Great Wall in China at the time, we had moved our operations off shore, some other relationships that I had made, with some friends in Satcon and another company called SIC out of Taiwan. And I wrote up a business plan for them. And the business plan was very simple. We would start up a, service and maintenance business here in California. And we would contract with Great Wall to supply both, inverters and parts. And we would deliver service to all of the Satcon clients. There was well over 300 megawatts had been sold worldwide by that time. And there was a viable business there to maintain support and sell equipment.

So that took us about six months to stand up. The company kind of went down in 2013. So about, April of 2014, we had it up and running again. And, we could reach out to all of our, past customers, past clients and, allow to have them service and support. And, I, man, the phones at that time, it became a more entrepreneurial type business, but we did have the financial backing to actually make it work. And that business is still standing today.

We, managed to bring in a couple of the, chief, technicians that could actually do a lot of the work and understood how the inverters operated and keep our customers, alive and keep them running because they were kind of between a rock and a hard place. They had signed up. There was 20 year PPA was in place. These machines had to keep running and, even though some were lost and they swapped out inverters, the majority of them stuck with it and kept going. And once we had that up and running, then I could move on to, then go worry about my career again. But, we had take care of the people first.

Nico Johnson
I really appreciate that story of focusing on your customers in the face of not having this corporate backing behind you anymore, but just that care of, and recognition that these customers are the industry, your ability to help and serve them, not only ensures that you did the right thing and that they can preserve their commitments and their contracts, but I am positive. It's come back, you know, tenfold for you in momentum and relationships as you moved on in your career.

Darryl Parker
Yes, it has. I've seen smiling faces everywhere I go and people do remember me and they go, I remember when you helped me. I remember when you were there, you did not let us down, and that's great whenever you can do that. It, it actually, it's a personal success is what I would call it.

Entrepreneurship Journey

Nico Johnson
So obviously you've moved on to, to bigger and better things, tell me about the journey through entrepreneurship, into Ultra Solar and ultimately into Ampt.

Darryl Parker
That was it's very interesting technology swinging. I, I was, really intrigued by it, I thought it was quite interesting. It also opened the door for me to, to, take a company which was really starting out and, and try to build a name for it, a reputation in the industry for it, and, and find that business. We talked a lot about the technology and what it could do, I definitely understood it was going to be a bonus for the industry if we had a product like that, that could enhance, what comes off the PV field. And, it just allowed me to do some things that I had wanted to do, so, build up...

Nico Johnson
Darryl, for those unfamiliar, what exactly was Ultra Solar trying to do? And how did you go about getting smart on what that technology meant?

Darryl Parker
Well, the basis of the product was really, opening up the blue light band on silicon to allow you to capture more electrons, you know, more photons from the sun, creating higher efficiency, high efficiency for the panel, and then just transfer those electrons. And so you'd, in theory, get more, more energy, what I found fascinating about it was, it was a technology that was a physics based. It was beyond me, but I had a brother-in-law who was a physicist. So I flew to DC and went to UDC and I took him all of the information. And I said, explain this to me, make sure that I understand, is it, is it working well? Is it real? And, he had convinced me that, yes, it is all possible, whether or not it can be put into a product and made viable, it becomes the question at that point, so talking with the owner and the engineers, I said, okay, it looks like there's a possibility for a product to be generated from this technology.

Nico Johnson
I love it. I'm seeing a trend, you know, in my mind, I see you standing in front of that Satcon inverter, again, asking, explain this to me, right. And there's this trend in, at least in your story that, is, if I'm going to sell this, if I'm going to represent this in the marketplace, I want to be able to defend it. I don't want to have to defer to some other technical salesperson. And I also want to know intellectually that I'm making the right decision, that this isn't something that is pie in the sky, and I've been hoodwinked by the creators.

Darryl Parker
Exactly.

Moving to Ampt

Nico Johnson
So I understand that, you were approached not once, but twice by Ampt. Tell me the story of what, what convinced you to finally to join Ampt team. I think it'd be fair to those who aren't familiar maybe to give a brief description of the power electronics company Ampt that you just recently left.

Darryl Parker
Sure, yeah. Ampt is a power electronics company that focuses on optimizing your PV field, the uniqueness of the product is that it does do an MPPT by string level. What it does is it takes a variable output from the PV field, and it makes a constant output, when you have a constant output, there's some very interesting things you can do, you can focus in on the inverter and have it run at its optimal efficiency, but if you're also, doing a PV plus storage, you can actually charge batteries, and so I found that technology fascinating as well, and it, allowed us to do a number of applications that are very difficult to do in the PV world, but, operate with simplicity when you incorporate, the Ampt optimization.

When I was first approached by the company, some years before I joined, they were a module based, so it was a module level, power electronics, and, and I had felt, that, you would not be able to meet the cost per watt threshold to actually be viable, but when I was approached the second time, they had actually built that out to a string level. So you can now actually follow the, cost per watt curve of an inverter. And you could actually make the product viable in a, in a large scale utility class, PV field. So I felt this was a technology whose time has come. The engineers were great at explaining it to me, and, we had a very, very strong technical team.

Navigating a Complex Sale

Nico Johnson
Well one of the things that has been a common thread for you in the roles that you've, had at the companies that you've served is, finding a product that oftentimes involves a complex sale. What do you enjoy about the nature of a complex sale? And can you unpack the specifics of architecting a deal that involves, you know, complex sale, both from, you know, all the way back to, Sun Microsystems and up to Ampt, like, how do you think about complex sales and, what can we learn from your experience there?

Darryl Parker
I think the secret of a complex sale is, not just understanding all of the elements, that might be comprised of it, be it, elements on the customer's business side or elements, inside a set of products.

It's, understanding the story that you're, you're telling your customer because in any complex sale, what you're looking at is, what I like to refer to as a design win. It goes all the way back to the early days of selling, where you're looking at designing yourself into where the customer has to go, it's either a design win in there, a circuit design capacity in a place like an Intel or a Fairchild Semiconductor. And you're trying to design in your workstations to be the best workstations that they can design with all the way into Ampt, where you're involved in the power, electronics, PV feel, but you're going to impact everything that's in the, in the chain. So you'll impact the combiners you'll impact, the inverter you'll even impact, what's going on the transformer side, so you have this holistic view and you can speak to the story of how, what you're doing fits into that holistic view that enables edit a design win for your company. It's not an easy story to build you.

You do have to listen. You, you do have to understand the customer's business as well as they understand their own business. And you can only do that by listening. And, what I find always enables me is, taking the story from where they are today to the end point of where they want to be. And if you can speak to that story, then they will be listening to you at that point. And you've opened yourself up to have that design win. And that's really the complexity that you're looking.

Nico Johnson
It's that consultative sale of understanding. I have a mentor, and I've mentioned this on the, on the podcast a couple of times who always said, as in sales, understand how your customer makes money and help them make more of it. At the end of the yeah. At the end of the day, if you can do that. And I think that's true as an employee, it's true in life in general, if you want to build that sense of rapport, you want to build that sense of, continuity that you are not just in it for yourself. If you can figure out what their goal is and, and help them achieve it, that's the, that's the crux of consultative sales, because at the end of the day, if you can't help them achieve it, then your product is not a good fit. And you're saving both your, but you're saving both entities time by identifying it early.

Darryl Parker
That's so true, Nico. And one of the things that we forget a lot of times when we're in front of a customer, but all businesses work the same. It's, it's universal, that there's budgets already put in place. And when they put the budgets in place at the beginning of the year, a hundred percent of all of their money is already committed. So whenever you're sitting in front of them, you have to tell yourself, what am I actually doing or saying that shows my customer, that I'm 51% better than what he's already doing today so that he will, de-commit the dollars that he has and recommit the dollars to me. And we forget that a lot. We think customers have money. They actually don't have any money. The money has already been budgeted out and they have to move it from something to give it to you. And they're only going to do that. If you're accomplishing their goals, if you're making them more revenue, if you're making their business better. And I love it otherwise, there's no reason to,

Nico Johnson
Darryl, I think this brings up another area of conversation. And, I wanted to ask a question based on your deep understanding of, working with customers around the globe. Can you teach me a bit about your understanding of the customer, how to go beyond the sales training to that point that you're actually listening to the customer. I know that you've got a lot of experience working with multiple sales teams in different environments. What does your experience suggest about how, how we could listen better to the customer?

Darryl Parker
Well, I think the first thing is the step that gets you into it is do you have empathy for their concerns? And, and actually, do you ask that, do you ask a customer, what are your concerns? And then not only listen, but write it down and ask questions, qualify it, and make sure that you really know how this impacts them. And when they tell you, ask them again, how does this impact your business? what will happen if we can address this concern, what will be your outcome? Will you be successful? How successful will you be, and really dig into it so that you understand. And if there's a part that you don't understand, you're in a position at that point to ask and say, tell me more about your business so that I understand how this concern really affects you and starting learning their business and learning all.

And it really becomes a critical when you're dealing with a large entity and they might have multiple divisions that are doing different things, but understanding that can really open your eyes to where the customer wants to go. And then you can also structure your business to help them go to that place. They want to go. It really starts with that first step, have empathy for their concerns. And if you don't, you're doing what we call a lot of times in the businesses you, you show up and you throw up, which is you'll get there. And all you're doing is talking about you, you, you and your, your, your, and you're not listening to them, and you're not playing it back to them to, to actually qualify that you truly understand, and they will stop you and tell you, you don't get it. Here's what I'm trying to say. And in that case, show more empathy and say, thank you. I really want to understand this. And then it flows from there. And then you'll start talking to the real person, not the person who has the wall up in front of him saying I'm in front of a sales guy. You know, you know, you'll talk to the real person.

Nico Johnson
Tell me about the kinds of questions you might ask to gauge. Not only if you've heard the customer properly, but if you understand who's involved in the decision-making, who could blow it up, who could help it, et cetera,

Darryl Parker
You could ask them, pretty directly who is going to make the decision and how do they then fit into that whole decision making process. In some cases, they will be the, recommender in other places. They'll be the person that is supplying all the datall the detail, and they don't have a recommendation type role. In some cases there'll be the actual doer. So what you're supplying to them is actually going to impact their success directly. And what you really want to understand is how can I make you successful and how can I make your boss successful? And, and back when I was, a young guy, I was, I I'll do this today. But back when I was a young guy, I would actually ask people, tell me how you're measured. Just tell me, how are you measuring? What is success to you? And that's what I'm dedicated to. And, and then they know you're aligned. They know you're aligned. I wouldn't do that today. But I, back when I was just starting out, because I needed that information to really make sure I was doing the right thing, I would just ask. And what you'll find a lot of times is people care about you asking.

Nico Johnson
Yeah, because at the end of the day, they're focused on their families and their careers, and you worked at IBM. So you understand what it means to say nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM. Right. That idea of listening to the customer, you, you refer to it as listening to your own listening, in a previous conversation we had, what do you mean by that?

Darryl Parker
Right, well, what I mean by that is when you're sitting in front of someone, don't think about what you want to say next. Think about absorbing what they're saying. We all have this little voice in the back of our head, and this little voice is saying, I've already told them about the product. Now I need to tell them about the specs. And then I need to tell them about the price. How do I get to that? How do I get to that? What do I do to, so I can lead into that, no stop, listen to what they're saying. And that, that guide the direction of the conversation. And you'll have plenty of time to talk about the speeds and feeds. We would call it of your product, that's not, what's important. What's important is fixing their problem and stay focused on that. And don't listen to your own listening.

Nico Johnson
I think a lot of folks may, wrongly assume that that applies just to like the complex sale we were talking about where you have multiple stakeholders, et cetera, but it's just as true for the door to door, residential sales knocker, as it is for the executive, vice-president managing, you know, multi a hundred million dollar, infrastructure. That's really helpful. Darryl, thank you for expounding a bit on this idea of, how do you really listen to the customer? I hope that's really valuable for, for someone out there.

On Switching Careers

Nico Johnson

Darryl, I am, you know, I'm intrigued by how navigate the arc of their career. And when we get a chance to work on a product that can scale quickly, and that has massive application in a sector, it's exciting. And I always wonder what is the spark that causes someone to kind of, I'll say, jump from one horse to another one, race to another one industry or sector to another, even in the face of a thriving growth at, at their current role. I have been amazed to see how you've grown the Ampt product, differentiating it in the marketplace, scaling it more than 10 X. What's so exciting about the service side of the business that even though Ampt is rocking, you would jump ship as it were. And, jump on with my buddy, Andy at Clean Energy Associates,

Darryl Parker
You know, I've always had a desire to do more trusted advisor consultative selling. I do that in every company that I had been in, and I wanted to actually operate more with the developer side of the business, and so I had been looking for a while at what developers were out there and really get into what I would call the front edge of solar, really pushing solar out there into the markets all around the world.

And so Ampt was flying high. It was doing great. I had been there for five years, and it really looked like it was on a, on a plateau that would just keep going on its trajectory, but it was, you know, my work was done there. We had, shown the marketplace. We had built a strong marketing platform. I had, really helped with the development of some very strong people that were in positions to be, be promoted and just take over without skipping a beat, and in my career, I've been very, very fortunate to have worked with some excellent, excellent people, and, watched their promotions of forward into the C class ranks, and so this was yet another one. I called it a feather in my cap, to, to lead people of such caliber and, CEA came along and it came around with really on, an accident almost.

I was busy looking at some developers and developer companies. And, one of the recruiters said, Hey, I've got this other company here that I'd like you to just take a look at. And I said, okay, I don't have a problem. And I did. And what I found was, the company's focus in drive with developers and what I liked the most owners, the actual owners of the PV systems are the other people that are really leading this charge for us globally. And as I interviewed through the company, I actually found, I liked the company more and more with each person I talked to. And, to me was a signal that, okay, this looks like the place for you. And it involved very complex sales, it involved future looking.

So, we do a lot of work, where is solar going to be in five years in 10 years? And I really enjoy that. And really the drive that we actually have in battery storage, quality assurance, you know, supply chain, to all these different things is really geared around giving people the support they need to lower their risk and support their business decisions, which is exactly where I like to be, support the business decisions going forward. So it helps drive the industry going forward. So, so I saw it as a key, a key driver.

Nico Johnson
That's cool. And, and it feels like it's, an expansion on what we talked about with being able to listen to the customer, understand that their business, and provide a solution that achieves what they're looking for. Not just that achieves your bottom line of, moving another product into, another warehouse.

Darryl Parker
Yep, totally. Right. And you go, I, I look at it as, since 1988, all the way up to 2020, I had been selling products which, for better, or for worse, it's always going to be a point solution. You're always looking to find a solution for something that needs to have a product put into. And now we're looking at the business decisions where the decisions that customers are making around the solutions that they need impact and drive the entire business. And to me, I find that fascinating, absolutely fascinating.

Building a Marketing Platform

Nico Johnson
We talked about how you've built the marketing platform for both hardware, and now a service focused companies. I'd like to understand like roles and responsibilities for those who maybe are trying to figure out where they fit in the organizational structure. Tell me a bit about what it means to be the VP, first and foremost of sales and marketing. And what does it look like to actually build a marketing platform? what's involved in that?

Darryl Parker
The marketing platform, first of all, starts off with, it's a vision it's to me, I, I have always been a sales leaning marketeer. So I look at marketing as providing that air cover that I need so that when our sales force goes out to see customers, they don't say who is CEA they say, we know about CEA we've seen you in the marketplace. We've seen the kind of things that you've done. Please sit down, talk with us. And we were doing the same thing at Ampt and the same thing at, at Ultra Solar.

So you're known in the marketplace, and then what you're doing is your platform is actually going to be today. We use social media quite a bit, in the past, we would use our own marketing engine to do it, but at, where I am today, we're using our own web site. We're using the social media to make sure that our message is out there for all the clients. And we, we actually drive that through continuous campaigns, based on, what we're working on in any particular quarter. We try to drive that through on a quarter by quarter basis.

The story doesn't change right now, we're looking at, at, supply chain and traceability. We're trying to make sure that our clients understand and know that all of the, industry cares about these things. And if you're going to be in solar, you're in clean energy and you want the environment to be clean, you want the working environments to be clean. You want to make sure that you're doing the right thing, across the entire industry.

Nico Johnson
I love that you said marketing provides that air cover. One of the ways that I describe, marketing at any level is understanding the story and helping others know that the company exists, why the company exists and how the company can help you before the sales person ever walks through the door. You know, it's, it's that brand recognition, as well as, not just brand, but under really understanding through various communications channels, what the company is about is I think it's beyond just brand recognition. I'm curious how the rubber meets the road at that VP level on a strategy versus execution. What are you responsible for on it from a day-to-day basis versus your team?

Darryl Parker
Yes, well, my team, on the senior marketing side are responsible for taking the company's vision and breaking that down into the bite-sized bits that you actually see, start to flow out from all of the various channels that we reach. We also determine what channels we're going to use as well. So, we had take the CEA, for example, the top level vision. And then we divide that up into what are the offerings going to be? And then those offerings, how do we now approach our customer? The execution is then done by the teams that are actually building out the websites, building out the drip campaigns that we actually execute on, building out the slides that go into the conferences and, various panels that we would sit on. And they also build out the messages that go out on social mediand, and which messages go out on which social media platforms. So there's a clear delineation on, on what's happening on the vision what's happening in the messaging, and then how the messaging actually executes on them. One of the things

Nico Johnson
That I've come to really expect from CEA is rooted in how Andy and the CEA team Paul, Paul and many others, who have deep experience have this filter that allows pattern matching, which is key to trend spotting. And I feel like, you know, Andy, as an example, reached out to me many months ago and said, Hey, this whole idea of traceability is ultimately going to come to a head with these things happening in Chinaround forced labor. And, you know, I think that you want to stay on top of it. And he, you know, like he and the leadership team at CEA serve that trusted advisor role, what are some of the messages that you and the CEA team are routinely engaged in helping, supposed to advertise and monitor on behalf of clients right now, as you look forward to 21' and 22' and how the industry's evolving?

Darryl Parker
It, it, it breaks down, relatively simply, one of the things that, we are really messaging right now is that it becomes a question of, provenance. Can you actually demonstrate, the origin of things? And, and if you can show that provenance, then you are well ahead of, any of the entanglements that you can be engaged in the other piece is that understand that it's not just, one thing, the whole goal and why it actually fits into the entire solar industry is that when you can show traceability, now you actually have the platform where you can start working on recycling. You can also be working on say base metals that could damage the environment so you can help clean up the environment. You can help recycle the goods, so there's far more and far reaching messages that, CEA's engaged in to, to understand this is not just a one topic thing, one and done no, it's something that one, the industry probably should have been engaged in well before, and to should stay engaged in going forward, because it's good for the planet.

It's good for the people. It really makes sense. And, and what happens is you you've been in solar as long as I have. It takes a while for us to take these new ideas and incorporate that into the business plans and into the financial plans to make everything viable. You know, remember when we started out, it was all about, can you become market focused and, grid parody with the existing infrastructure that was in place around fossil fuels. And now we actually have exceeded grid parity, you know, we're better than those. And, and the same thing with this, you know, understanding that traceability, understanding what provenance really means is actually going to be integrated into how solar will go forward from here on it. And I think it's a good thing.

Energy Storage

Nico Johnson
What other problems are you solving, for clients right now? in particular around the evolving nature of energy storage, as an example?

Darryl Parker
Energy storage comes in a number of ways customers are looking at now is because of the way the grid is structured around the world. Energy storage becomes a platform that you can actually use to enhance grid operation, the earlier versions of energy storage focus, mainly on, frequency, support, and voltage support, things that really the grid needed help doing, what we're seeing now as a whole lot of, time of use type applications. There's even some Blackstart applications. If you have to start the grid from scratch and a host of other applications, storage, I believe is here to stay.

It's going to actually follow a pathway, down in cost per watt, as more and more technology comes online, you're going to see more and more R and D money put into it. And, and it reminds me of, when I talk about being a boy engineer, my, instructor in college, told us, in our engineering math class, that the people who solve the story of storage will make billions of dollars, and, and that's so true, and we can see it now come to the forefront, that energy storage. I had predicted two years ago that eventually in the US you would not see PV go in without storage, we're still a little bit of ways, but, it's going to happen.

Nico Johnson
Yeah, well, I think we're seeing in the residential market.

Darryl Parker
Absolutely. We see it in the residential market and that will help be a driver.

Nico Johnson
Yeah. In all, pretty much all island environments. I know of, Puerto Rico and Hawaii being great examples. There are all virtually no systems going in without storage, as we see increasing grid constraints in the United States, not just at the residential, but at the CNI and microgrid levels, we're going to see lots of storage.

Darryl Parker
But yes, and there's a parallel to, we didn't talk about it, but there was one time I spent five years, the telecommunications industry, I'm actually a three industry hopper. And, and one of the things that we did as we were building microwave networks around the world, where people have not put in landline infrastructure, they skipped over landline infrastructure and went directly to mobile. I would predict that we'll see the same. When you look at some of the, growing economies around the world where they don't have grid infrastructure in place, you'll see micro grids go in and they'll just get building grid infrastructure, because it's too cumbersome. It's too expensive. You don't have that centralized government control everywhere that you used to have. So you have these large telecommunications and energy companies, that run all that, there'll be smaller and there'll be more distributed. What

Mentors and Key Lessons

Nico Johnson
Are some of the key lessons or takeaways for you from the most important mentors in your life or career?

Darryl Parker
Probably the best one was a gentleman by the name of Tim Dwyer, who was my, a VP while I was at Sun and then running the international business. And while I was managing, Eastern European, middle Europe, and I was living in Hungary at the time, he told me it's always the people, no matter what, it's always the people. You, you, you think you can turn some dials and pull some levers, but, your success comes from, you figured out who belonged in what place and you nurtured them along. So never forget. It's always the people. And so I thank Tim Dwyer for that forever because I, I've never forgotten that, that piece of advice.

And then from, Howard Lance, who was the CEO of Harris Communications, when I was in the microwave business, he said, make sure that you, you, understand your numbers, says your numbers will help you make your decisions. And, you can always count on that. And, he was a great person on the numbers. If you ever put up a slide and had a wrong number, he would dial into it like a heat seeking missile. You would not forget it, and so I always am very sharp on the numbers and the numbers will always help you.

And then from, IBM, management school, it's, it kind of follows what Tim had told me. He says, your job is to manage your people. And if you take care of your people, they will manage your business. And I've never forgotten that either, and so, with those, you notice two or with people, and one was with business, that that's where you're spending your time, your business will turn out. Okay, and just, don't forget that. Yeah.

Nico Johnson
I love that. And that, that's emblematic our friend, Andy who's. Now you're a CEO over at CEA , or he, who is the CEO of where you now joined, there are a few folks in the industry, I think, who really get that concept of building the right team surrounding yourself with just A-players and making sure that you can get out of their way, and they have clear direction and clear, clear guidance. Well, I wonder, is there anything along the lines of you guys' role as strategic advisors, your deep experience with, and the power electronics industry and seeing how the solar industry and economy have evolved, where do you believe is the huge, the next huge problem we have to solve in clean energy?

Darryl Parker
I'd say the next huge problem that we have to solve is a greater expansion and implementing energy storage. We see a lot on the horizon with say green hydrogen, I think green hydrogen really pushes us into the gigawatt zone of how you're going to actually implement energy on a very, very large scale, and I've had the pleasure of working with some of the systems where you would say, even skip the inverter portion of it, and, and drive, solar powered energy directly into the converters that are actually making green hydrogen and really lowering that price point. So that you can run whole countries from a few plants, so you'll really have to have mega large solar fields and very large hydrogen plants, and then you'll have that storage behind it all. So I see the future is really scaling up to very, very large scales on the scale of what nuclear plants can do today. That's really where it's going to be heading in my opinion. And I really want to be in there on that one, because that's going to be just a blast.

Nico Johnson
That's a remarkable, I look forward to that as well. For sure. I agree with you. And we've got some stuff up coming about green hydrogen, and, I'll be, I'll probably have to reach back around and ask you for advice on, who the real, who the actually real action takers are that we should be featuring.

Book Recommendations

Nico Johnson
Darryl. I'd love to, pick your brain a bit on how you, sharpen the ax. How do you, stay, stay sharp, stay ahead of your peers, in particular, I believe that readers are leaders and leaders are readers, are there any books that you have recommended or gifted the most and why

Darryl Parker
There were actually two books? One was, the 'Customer Centric Attitude', that I really liked a lot. And then the 'People's Principles' and, one was all about customer service and how you should build a customer service centric organization so that everyone focuses on the customer. And it takes us back to a principle that everybody sells, no matter what you're doing, you're always in front of your customer and everyone is selling your business, the second one was about how your personal relationships that we spoke about earlier have such an impact on it. Donahue peoples was a real estate developer out of Washington, DC. And he talked about the relationships that he had built up to do his first few projects and how that expanded from the people he knew and being introduced to the other people he knew, and he become a multimillionaire real estate developer. And he was African-American. He was a black man, and it was so unique in that environment during the seventies and eighties, to be able to actually achieve what he achieved. So that was particularly relevant to me. And, you know, it stuck with me.

Nico Johnson
One, the people principle, our revolutionary redefinition of leadership by Ron Willingham.

Darryl Parker
No, are Donahue Peebles five, cool. Okay. Peebles are the B

Nico Johnson
I did not hear Peebles. Okay. That is super cool. Okay. Yeah. Glad that and glad that you clarify that. P E E B. Fantastic. Yeah, there's another book, a called the people principles. So I was trying to make sure I got it. Fantastic. Sweet. Yeah. Always a link to the, to the books so that folks can easily find them. The other one that you mentioned, I couldn't find the Customer Centric Attitude, but I'll have to look for it.

Darryl Parker
I'll dig it out and send it over to you too. Do you have

On Meditation

Nico Johnson
A particular morning or maybe even an evening that helps define how you show up in the world?

Darryl Parker
Absolutely, I wake up in the morning and I meditate. I'm super happy that I do. It calms your center and it gives you a good sense of what your life is all about. And, and it makes sure that you address, the world in a very straightforward and calm way, if I don't meditate, I'm usually a bit agitated when I started out. And then before I go to bed at night, I meditate. It allows you to clear your mind. Oh yeah. At least 20 minutes a day. So I do 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes at night. Yeah. So it just calms you down and you have a restful sleep, and so it also puts everything in perspective when you completely clear your mind. So you're not.

Nico Johnson
Do you have any tips on how to clear your mind,

Darryl Parker
Focus on your breathing. Yeah. It's very simple. You focus on your breathing, you breathe in, you breathe out, you don't have to count the breaths. If you have a mantrand you can do your mantra, you don't have to, but really the secret is, you clear your mind, if you were, had an app on your phone like Headspace, what they would have likened it to is you sit on the side of the road and you watch the traffic go by and you let the traffic just go by. Right? And you don't try to get involved with the traffic. You don't try to run out into the street, those are the thoughts are going through your mind. You just kind of let them go by, but you don't try to engage with them. You just let them join in your mind will eventually just clear by the time you're done with your 10 minute session, your head is clear. You can lie down or you can get up and get, get started.

Nico Johnson
I love the reference to the Headspace app. It's actually how I got started in meditation as well. I currently use insight timer, but one of the things that Headspace does really well is their take 10 challenge, which is something I've recommended to folks continually, if you, are regular listeners Suncast, you've heard how meditation, is a recurring theme. And it's also not just a powerful lever in my life. And, and obviously Darryl's and many others. I would encourage you to check out Headspace. I've no affiliation, but check out a Headspace their, take 10, challenge is 10 days of meditation and their app is really beautiful and walks you through it. And then there are many like Calm and Insight Timer that are great apps as well, that give you access to guided meditations so that if you need someone else's head a voice in your head, to help you center, then that's also helpful.

Darryl Parker
I have all of them as well, Nico, and, and use them all. I use them all. So sometimes you need help getting into the zone, so, the other time that sometimes when I'm meditating more than twice a day is usually when I'm traveling, because I usually always meditate before the plane takes off it. And it's funny. I fall asleep. I really, I haven't seen a takeoff in probably 10, 15 years cause I meditate before the plane takes off. And when the pressure of the cabin pressure rises, I fall asleep. I wake up, where am I?

Nico Johnson
That's a, that's really, really good priming right there. Yeah. Well Daryl, where can, folks best engage with you? Where, and how do you like to be found?

Darryl Parker
They can actually find me on LinkedIn. I have one of those interesting, LinkedIn profiles that it's not listed as my name with a bunch of other, you know, numbers and letters behind it. It's under global leadership. I, since I was an early user of LinkedIn, I grabbed that one and it's been with me ever since. So if they just searched on global leadership or my name I'll pop right up,

Nico Johnson
That's fantastic for those who understand how LinkedIn works in forward slash global leadership, very easy to find and engage with their own there, how can the Suncast audience help?

Darryl Parker
Oh, the feedback really, if this helped them in any way, shape or form, I'd be more than happy to work with Nico. I, as you probably know this from the early days, Nico and I go back, we go back to my early days in solar. He was one of the ones that he helped me cut my solar teeth on. I appreciate that, Nico, and you forever for that because he didn't chew me up and spit me out. I kept going, you're resilient. So, that's great. I really want to help the platform of Suncast.

Nico Johnson
I really appreciate that. Yeah. And it's a common theme for the CEA team. I'm really grateful for all of, for all the many times that we've been able to share the stage together. It's really fantastic having you come on the show today. I'm really excited to see how you're going to contribute to a company that I admire and a team that I deeply admire many, many others in the industry do as well. Well, let's end today, Darryl, as we always do with what we call a bold prediction, what one thing do you see happening in the market that maybe nobody else is tracking what's in your crystal ball. You've already shared a few things with us. So I'm wondering if there's any other Nostradamus moments here.

Darryl Parker
Well, they're they're yeah, they're mostly mundane because the, the hydrogen one was, was a big one that I really think is a bold statement. The other piece that I, I do expect to see happening, I do expect storage to become pervasive. You do hear a lot about, it's really expensive right now for Europe, is still expensive for a lot of developing countries, but I expect stores to become ubiquitous and pervasive and in everything and everywhere, there'll be some time to get the technology to a point, but I believe that the overriding value and advantage to having it in your systems, is just gonna push it forward. And eventually we will be that environment where storage isn't everything

Nico Johnson
And it's chemistry, and the chemistry continues to evolve as does your career and mine, Darryl, I'm super grateful to have you on Darryl Parker is the VP of sales and marketing for Clean Energy Associates. And it has been fantastic to have you here on Suncast.

Darryl Parker
Great Nico. And it's a pleasure to see you again, it's a pleasure to do anything I can do to help and assist in growing solar across the world. Thank you very much.

Nico Johnson
Look forward to hosting you here in Durham sometime. And, also look forward to seeing you before to seeing you in new Orleans. I hope

Darryl Parker
I will be there. Absolutely. It's already done

Closing

Nico Johnson
All right. Solar warrior. Well, that is a wrap on today's episode, and I'm just so honored and humbled to have had a chance to have Darryl finally, on Suncast, as we talked about Darryl, and I go back way back to 2008, when he first joined Satcon a couple of years into my own career in the solar industry, when I was very much still installing solar projects around, the Western half of the United States. And it was so fun to catch up, but also to get into the, the mental yarn of someone who has such breadth of experience. I hope that it was instructive and informative for you. It certainly was for me. I took a lot of notes myself on kind of the way that Daryl thinks about customer engagement and brand building and marketing platform building. So if you are eager to keep learning, then you, my fellow fellow math can find those resources and highlights from this. And frankly, every other podcast discussion along with social media links and book recommendations, and so much more over on the blog at mysuncast.com. If you click on the show notes tab, that'll take you to the page where all of these episodes are housed. And depending on when you listen, Darryl's should be there at, or near the top, but you can also scroll all the way to the bottom and click on search, and you can search Darryl's name and easily find the post on this episode,

As he mentioned, and we will be, going to north Americat smart energy week in September, 2021, depending on when you listen to this, it might still be time for you to book your tickets and go visit us there. I would love to see you there. I'd love to hear as well, your thoughts on, whether or not you'll go in and why, if you haven't yet, why don't you go ahead and text me 3 10, 6 34, 17 80.

And let me know that you're going so that I can make sure to add you to my list of folks to see while I'm there. I will get back to you. Just bear with me. I don't always get back immediately to those SMS, that number again is 3 1 0 6 30 17 80. Well, I hope that you will continue to join us here. As we dig in every week to interviews just like this with Darryl and other clean energy economy leaders and entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, executives, founders, startup junkies, and those of you, maybe like me who are simply just trying to figure out am I doing this right? We can match every Tuesday and Thursday. And I hope that you have already subscribed and bookmarked Suncast podcast, but you could also join our mailing list where we can drop it into your inbox every time we've got a new episode live. Thanks once again, to our sponsors for helping make this content free to you. You could learn more about those sponsors as well as how you could partner to reach thousands of Suncast tribe listeners, just like yourself at mysuncast.com forward slash sponsor. Remember, you are what you listened to. Thanks again for showing up solar warrior. It's half the battle.