How a Static PDF became an Interactive Sales App

We turned a one-page cost comparison into the TCO Studio, an interactive tool Evoltix’s sales team now runs live with prospects. Here’s how it came together, and what it could do for your sales team.

Evoltix Energy had a good proof point stored in a static PDF. Their CapEx/OpEx report compared one of their customer’s sites against a traditional diesel-and-shelter setup. The numbers were strong: 85% lower capital cost, 90% lower operating cost, $650,000 saved over ten years, payback in three.

The problem was the word “one.” A 911 director in North Carolina doesn’t run a solar site in New Mexico. A tower operator with 300 sites wants to know what happens at 300 sites. Every serious prospect asked the same question: “What would this look like for me?”

The real answer lived in a spreadsheet that held the actual inputs and formulas, which meant only a handful of people could answer the most important question in the sales cycle.

Building it, one version at a time

Early on, the sales engineering team sat down with me and shared their spreadsheet. That was the turning point. Instead of guessing at the model, I was building on the one Evoltix’s own engineers trusted.

Within a couple of weeks we were on version 5, with roughly 40 variables: number of sites, battery age, truck rolls per year, grid conditions, and more.

The next month was about pressure-testing. The engineering team checked the outputs against what they knew from real deployments, and we fixed what didn’t hold up, including an export button that didn’t work the first time. We also brought in Evoltix’s IT team early to talk about hosting and single sign-on. A sales tool that lives on my server isn’t really a tool the client can own long term.

Version 6 added a back-solve feature, so a rep can start from a target savings number and see what it takes to get there. We demoed it the same week for one of Evoltix’s resellers, who works with customers in Canada and the Caribbean. When he first heard the idea, his reaction was that engineers and field crews love this kind of thing.

The last step was moving it to production. I sent the code to Evoltix’s IT team as a pull request into their own repository on Github. It now runs on an Evoltix web address that the sales team controls, with a short intro video for employees.

What Evoltix’s sales team has now

The biggest change is who can answer “what would this look like for me?” It used to take an engineer’s time and a spreadsheet. Now any rep, or a reseller, can walk a prospect through their own sites in a single meeting.

• Every prospect sees their own numbers. Site count, battery age, truck rolls, and regional solar output replace one customer’s case study.
• Everyone uses the same math. Reps and resellers work from the model the engineering team built and checked, not their own estimates.
• A better reason to meet. Evoltix now invites prospects to “schedule a TCO Studio session” in its outbound and in a recent press release. For a curious engineer, that’s a more useful ask than “learn more.”
• Resellers have a reason to call. A reseller can reopen a quiet conversation by offering to run a customer’s sites through the tool.

What we learned, and who else this fits

Four things made this work, and they apply well beyond power systems.

• Start from the expert’s model, not the brochure. The PDF told us what mattered to buyers. The engineering team’s spreadsheet told us how the math actually worked. We needed both.
• Decide early who drives. Building for a guided screen share, not a self-serve calculator, kept the tool honest and kept the salesperson in the conversation.
• Ship versions, not a finished product. Six versions over a single summer meant Evoltix reacted to something real every few weeks instead of a spec.
• Hand it over. The tool lives in Evoltix’s repository, on Evoltix’s domain, managed by Evoltix’s IT team. Barnett Strategies built it; Evoltix owns it.

If your company has a cost comparison or ROI story trapped in a PDF, or a sales engineer whose spreadsheet answers the question every prospect asks, you likely have the raw material for the same kind of tool. That’s the kind of work Barnett Strategies can do alongside the campaigns and content that fill the pipeline in the first place. If you have a PDF that’s doing less than it could, I’d be glad to take a look. Book time with me here.