Encouraging commercial building owners to set measurable energy goals before design begins can drive design and contractor teams to develop innovative energy efficiency solutions within conventional building budgets. The successes and lessons learned by a federal building owner's performance-based procurement project formed the basis of an expanded program using utilities as the outreach channel to replicate the approach. The utilities delivered incentive-based offerings to focus building owners on the whole building rather than on individual building components and systems. This 11-page paper documents the core principles, successes and lessons learned from these utility programs in different areas of the country.