Marketing for TPIs who compete on service, not rate.

A broker selling a single-site switch is often competing on who can turn a quote around fastest at the best rate. A TPI is usually pitching ongoing portfolio management: tracking renewal dates across a client's estate, managing multiple suppliers, handling contract queries and billing disputes as they arise. That's a different sales conversation, and marketing built around headline rate comparisons undersells it badly.

The procurement manager or finance director on the other end of that conversation is asking a different question than “what's your cheapest rate?” They're asking whether you'll still be managing their contracts competently in year three, and whether handing you an LOA is a decision they'll regret. Marketing that answers that question directly, with specifics, converts better than marketing that dodges it with generic reassurance.

I write copy around actual process: how renewal dates are tracked across a portfolio so nothing lapses onto a deemed or out-of-contract rate unnoticed, how billing queries are escalated with a supplier, how a multi-site client's contracts are staggered or aligned depending on what suits their cash flow and risk appetite. That level of specificity does more to reassure a sceptical buyer than any generic claim about being trusted or experienced ever could.

This also means being honest about scope. If your firm manages portfolios of ten sites and under, the marketing should say that plainly rather than implying capability at a scale you haven't actually operated at. A procurement manager who discovers a gap between the marketing and the reality during onboarding won't give you a second chance.

Market-wide Half-Hourly Settlement is changing how consumption data is collected and settled for a growing share of commercial meters, and clients with half-hourly portfolios are asking their TPI what it means for their contracts and their billing accuracy. A TPI whose marketing can address that clearly, without hand-waving past the detail, signals genuine sector expertise. One that avoids the topic entirely signals the opposite.

I write this content to be technically correct and current, using the terminology properly — EAC, AQ, half-hourly settlement, MHHS — because a portfolio manager reading a page that gets the basics wrong will assume the rest of your service has the same gaps.

Signing a Letter of Authority is the point where a prospect becomes a client, and it's usually the biggest trust gap in the whole journey. I write copy that explains plainly what an LOA does and doesn't authorise you to do, what onboarding looks like in the following weeks, and how the client stays informed once you're managing their contracts on their behalf. Vague reassurance at this stage loses deals that the rest of the site had already won.

I'm not a compliance consultant, and the underlying LOA and onboarding documents themselves should go through your own legal review, but the customer-facing explanation of them is written to be as clear and specific as the rest of the site.

I won't write copy that implies independence from every supplier on the market if your panel is actually limited to a handful of preferred partners, and I won't lean on vague claims about being the “leading” or “number one” TPI in a sector with no independently verified rankings to back that up. It reads as confident right up until a sceptical procurement manager asks you to substantiate it, and then it costs you credibility you'd otherwise have kept.