Centrica Business Solutions case study: 890 opportunities from outbound sales development
durhamlane generated 890 qualified sales opportunities and 340 closed-won deals for Centrica Business Solutions over five years of outbound sales development in the turbulent UK energy market. The campaign converted at 38% and delivered a 174% ROI against gross margin — proof that a consultative approach wins in a price-driven sector.
Centrica Business Solutions is a corporate energy solutions provider, leading the transition to net zero by balancing their customers’ environmental goals with profitability. They help businesses navigate the ever-changing UK energy market and provide consultative advice on becoming more energy efficient.
With energy prices rising sharply and decision-makers thrown into turbulence, generating new leads and growing pipeline has become one of the hardest jobs in the sector.
INDUSTRY
Energy & Utilities
TIME
5 years
BUSINESS SIZE
Enterprise
SERVICES
The cost of energy had become the deciding factor for businesses, and providers were competing on price alone. Centrica Business Solutions saw things differently. In a turbulent market, the providers that win are the ones that act as consultants, not suppliers.
Consultative selling is a sales approach in which the salesperson leads with advice and insight, understanding a prospect’s business, challenges, and goals before recommending a solution. To champion this approach at scale, Centrica needed an outsourced partner with proven capability to drive net-new business opportunities while deepening existing customer relationships through direct sales.
durhamlane built a dedicated outbound team for Centrica, led by a team leader with considerable experience in the utility space, targeting enterprises in high-consuming industries, using between 0.5 and 30 Gigawatts or more of energy annually across metal production, manufacturing, mining, hospitality and education.
Armed with daily market price reports, our team adopted a data-driven, solution-led approach: constantly optimising processes, identifying the industries where we were having most success, capturing renewal dates of businesses already in contract, and advising prospects on adapting to the UK government’s decarbonisation agenda.
Despite market conditions in which prices nearly tripled during the project, we hit every KPI.
“durhamlane presented to us exactly what we needed, agile project delivery and complete transparency in a very challenging period for the energy market. Given the volatile market, we wanted to really understand the businesses of our customers and prospects to explore the challenges they were facing, and ultimately help us find ways to support them. We worked closely with the durhamlane team right from the start and achieved great results that have helped shape our sales strategy going forwards.”
Lorraine Goode
Outsource Relationship Manager
The outcome: 890 qualified opportunities and 340 closed-won deals
890
sales-qualified opportunities
340
closed-won deals
174%
ROI against gross margin
Within five years of the project going live, our four full-time delivery team members had created 890 qualified opportunities and 340 closed-won deals for Centrica Business Solutions, converting at 38% and returning a 174% ROI against gross margin.
The partnership continues to strengthen, with the insights our team gathers — from contract renewal dates to sector-level engagement trends — now helping to shape Centrica’s wider sales strategy.
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