Cutting offer creation time by 72% for a multi-market solar sales team

Design Brief

Our objective was to design a fit-for-purpose sales tool to enable 1KOMMA5°'s international teams to sell their solar and energy solutions more efficiently, reliably, and intuitively. Utilising a consistent design language, implementing a design system.

Key Goals

• Reducing cognitive load and manual input errors
• Leveraging the newly integrated ZohoCRM back-office system
• Streamlining the end-to-end customer engagement and offer creation process

Discovery & Definition

Our research process began on the ground with the local teams in Berlin and Hamburg, followed by a trip to Sweden, the pilot launch market.

What we did

• 1-on-1 shadowing during both remote and on-site sales calls
• Workshops, surveys, and feedback sessions with sales agents and leadership
• In-depth mapping of existing workflows using disparate Google Sheets, Excel, and presentation decks

Key insights

• Difficulty building trust for such a high-value investment
• Lack of brand consistency and trust-building materials
• Frustration with disjointed tools and complexity when configuring custom energy systems

Key decisions

1. Built for screen-share and tablet, not the desk

   Agents sell on video calls and face to face in showrooms and in the field, so every screen had to read well when shared and work by touch.

2. Country templates instead of a blank configurator

   Configuring custom energy systems was one of the biggest frustrations in research. Pre-configured packages per market let agents start from a sensible offer and adjust from there.

3. Stop impossible systems at configuration time

   Reducing manual input errors was a core goal, so a configurable rules system warns agents, or stops them, before they build a package that cannot work.

4. A story-led pitch, built with marketing

   Agents struggled to build trust for a high-value purchase and lacked consistent materials. The pitch uses progressive disclosure and on-brand 3D assets, tailored by market.

5. Localisation in the pipeline from day one

   Sweden was the pilot market, so multi-language content was needed from the start. Lokalise let non-technical teams update strings without engineering.

Solution

We designed a sales tool optimised for use in video calls (screen sharing) and on tablets by field and showroom agents.

Customer Portal

Enables quick creation and management of customer profiles, integrated directly with ZohoCRM.

Pitch Section

Sales reps are supported with structured, persuasive content, tailored by market. Utilising 3D assets, and slick animations. I worked closely with the marketing team to ensure messaging aligned with brand standards and customer expectations. Utilising fundamental principles like progressive disclosure to take the user on a journey with a convincing story line. Click the images below to see the expanded full views.

Video: Version 1 of the Pitch Section for Sweden

System Builder

A visual, interactive module resembling a web store. Agents select from pre-configured templates (customised per country) to speed up offer creation. Live values (e.g. production, consumption, ROI) are dynamically calculated based on customer data.

Cockpit and Automations

Make everything available from the system builder allowed us to keep the user in the flow, reducing interruptions to sales. A robust configurable rules system; alerting and warning or preventing sales users from creating packages or systems that do not work or are not possible.

Development

Once the prototype was validated, I worked closely with our engineering team to plan and develop an MVP. We maintained daily stand-ups and incremental usability tests. Lokalise was integrated early on to handle multi-language content, allowing non-technical team members to update strings without engineering overhead. Feedback from the Swedish team helped us refine the tool in real time, ensuring local needs were met ahead of rollout.

Where AI helped

• Consolidation and summarisation of Survey data
• Automated language string replacements for ease of multi-language design

Beyond the numbers

• Reduced training time for new agents
• Increased sales team satisfaction
• Improved consistency and standardisation of offers across markets
• Marked improvements in NPS, CES, and churn rate