Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail.
Speaker: I teach you how to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
Speaker: What is a solopreneur you might ask?
Speaker: A solopreneur is a new breed of solopro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.
Speaker: Hey, what's going on, Sorpreneurs?
Speaker: Today, we're going to be talking about something that might put you to sleep, except for in today's podcast, you're going to love it.
Speaker: But that is the big C word, contracts, except you should never be telling people contracts.
Speaker: It is a customer agreement.
Speaker: It is a forms.
Speaker: It is the paperwork.
Speaker: Never say the word contract, but we're going to be digging into the agreements today.
Speaker: and talking about why it's important that we understand these things and why we help our customers also understand.
Speaker: Okay, all that and a whole lot more.
Speaker: Thanks for tuning into the podcast.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads, and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: Thank you for tuning in every Tuesday and Friday where we bring to you fresh...
Speaker: new content and hopefully make your lives a lot easier.
Speaker: And this is a topic that I'll be honest, I did not care to really understand customer agreements or even read them.
Speaker: It wasn't until pretty recently that I actually read an entire agreement for the first time.
Speaker: And some of you might be thinking it's pretty sad.
Speaker: We should all understand the agreements.
Speaker: But those that know me know I am like
Speaker: the least analytical type.
Speaker: I just want to get things done, get them done now.
Speaker: I hate going through fine print, all this stuff.
Speaker: So that's why it's been a little bit tougher in my solar career to sometimes empathize with these analytical buyers, the engineers, the owls, as we call them.
Speaker: But I think it has helped me back a little bit because we all know that we're going to come across these engineers, these analytical types, and we need to know how to sell them.
Speaker: We need to know how to speak their language.
Speaker: And part of that is actually understanding the customer agreements.
Speaker: And so if you have not, that's the first to do for you after listening to this podcast.
Speaker: If you have not
Speaker: To this point, I've read an agreement, read what you're actually helping people sign up for, then maybe even turn off this podcast and go read it right now because that's the most important thing you could do and will just help you understand way better, answer people's questions a lot better by actually understanding the customer agreement.
Speaker: So that's the big reason.
Speaker: But on top of that, if that doesn't inspire you enough to actually start understanding these agreements, I've done...
Speaker: a few podcasts with some guys that have an insanely high close to install ratio.
Speaker: And some of you, you may listen to a podcast we did with Jack Pastrana.
Speaker: He is over here.
Speaker: I work with him actually here in San Diego, consistently installs over a hundred every year in San Diego, as we know, as a saturated market.
Speaker: And he does it mostly all self gen deals.
Speaker: And it's just super impressive to see him hit this year after year after year being pretty new in solar as well.
Speaker: And so he is the top installer, at least over here in our office.
Speaker: We asked him this, we asked him, Jack, what do you think you do differently?
Speaker: Or what do you think helps you avoid cancellations and actually get the glass to roof?
Speaker: And he talked about a few things.
Speaker: You can go listen to podcasts.
Speaker: He shares all his secrets.
Speaker: Yes, we can link that in the show notes.
Speaker: But one of the top things on his list was he actually goes through the entire customer agreement with people in the home.
Speaker: And I don't mean read every single word.
Speaker: But I mean, he actually goes to all the parts where they initial, all the sections where he thinks they could potentially have questions later down the road or when he leaves.
Speaker: He goes through with them.
Speaker: As he was explaining this to us, he says, yeah, none of my customers even open up their agreements ever again.
Speaker: because they know that I went through every single bullet point with them.
Speaker: I explained it.
Speaker: They trusted me completely because I went through every section that they're initialing.
Speaker: I explained it.
Speaker: The words are backing up what I'm saying.
Speaker: So they don't feel the need to actually open up the customer agreement.
Speaker: Okay, how many of us have had customers who signed up, they open up the agreement later that they signed because we just said, hey, click all the yellow boxes.
Speaker: You don't need to read this.
Speaker: You'll get a copy.
Speaker: So they felt like, oh, you know, I better, I have no idea what I even signed.
Speaker: Let me open this up.
Speaker: And then all of a sudden they see five, six, seven things that they had no idea about.
Speaker: And hopefully you're not, hopefully even if your customers are, you know, skimming through it, going through the agreement quick, you should explain to them all the points.
Speaker: There should be no surprises in the agreements.
Speaker: Even if you were having them skim through, but yeah.
Speaker: At the end of the day, there's going to be little things I've had customers cancel for the most ludicrous, ridiculous things like them not knowing small details about the agreement and cause them to cancel.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, and I'll go through a couple of sections of our agreement right now.
Speaker: We're using mostly Everbright.
Speaker: But, you know, things as simple as them not knowing exactly how it works when they move.
Speaker: I remember when I was when I was new to solar, them not knowing exactly how the financing works.
Speaker: And if you've closed a loan, a solar loan, you know that there's the truth and lending page where it shows what the total of their payments will add up to.
Speaker: And I remember so many people in the beginning when I was a new closer, I would not explain this correctly.
Speaker: They would see these bigger numbers that weren't explained and they would cancel.
Speaker: They'd look at it later.
Speaker: They'd get confused.
Speaker: They'd think I misled them or told them that something wasn't true.
Speaker: And really, I just didn't explain that, hey, these higher numbers are if you don't apply the tax credit and it's the worst case scenario, the total it's going to add up to.
Speaker: And I lost a lot of deals because of it.
Speaker: So make sure you understand the agreement and make sure you know, especially the more controversial points or sections like that where it could be interpreted as something negative or something bad.
Speaker: You definitely want to handle those points because we all know the best way to overcome an objection is to bring it up before the homeowner can, before the customer can.
Speaker: Hey, so very important points just before we get into reviewing some of everybody's agreement that we're going to do on here.
Speaker: Hey, just remember, that's what the top installers are doing is they are making sure their customers understand the agreements and they're going through the bullet points.
Speaker: They're going through all the initial the sections where the customers need to initial.
Speaker: Yeah, I've started doing this and I have noticed
Speaker: my sign to install ratio has gone up just by doing this simple thing.
Speaker: So there's your two homework items.
Speaker: Number one, understand the agreements, even if you're not closing deals in if you're setting, probably still a good thing to understand.
Speaker: Just make sure you're not overwhelming customers.
Speaker: or overwhelming homeowners at the door.
Speaker: Don't give people too much information, especially if you're a newer setter.
Speaker: Then number two, from now on, as you are in homes, if you are closing deals, make sure you actually go through all the bullet points, all the sections where they initial.
Speaker: Don't make the mistake I made and say, hey, just click all the yellows.
Speaker: You don't need to read anything.
Speaker: You can read it later.
Speaker: It leads to cancels.
Speaker: So learn from my mistake, do it the right way.
Speaker: So some of you already know that I run my own door-to-door sales team here in San Diego.
Speaker: And as we are gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results.
Speaker: But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
Speaker: Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout.
Speaker: But it's not a door knocking app.
Speaker: It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market.
Speaker: It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later canceled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given e-word.
Speaker: It's been working for a lot of teams across the country, and now I'm on board too.
Speaker: I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up.
Speaker: But I told them, hey, if I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal.
Speaker: And they did.
Speaker: So go to solarscout.app forward slash Taylor and book a demo with them, and you'll get 10% off your first month when you sign up.
Speaker: That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
Speaker: Okay, back to the show.
Speaker: Okay, so that's the two tips.
Speaker: And I'm not going to go through an entire agreement right now because I know people could fall asleep to this.
Speaker: I've already been told that sometimes I'm a little monotone on the podcast.
Speaker: So if I just read this thing, it would definitely put you to sleep.
Speaker: But I just want to point out a few sections on our current agreements.
Speaker: And this may or may not apply to you.
Speaker: Here in California, we are primarily selling power purchase agreements just with a battery and nature of higher interest rates, things like that.
Speaker: In my opinion, it's the way to go in California right now.
Speaker: So we're using Everbright.
Speaker: and they recently changed their agreements.
Speaker: That's another thing to be aware of.
Speaker: From time to time, these lenders, these financers will update their agreements.
Speaker: They'll change little things.
Speaker: An example of that, in Everbright's case, if you are selling through Everbright, they recently changed where their power purchase agreement, the buyer, if the homeowner sells the home with the system,
Speaker: The buyer has to qualify for it now.
Speaker: Their credit has to pass in order to transfer the system.
Speaker: Where before, they didn't have to pass.
Speaker: There was just, if someone had bad credit, there was a $250 fee.
Speaker: It wasn't a big deal.
Speaker: So that's something that changed, something that could easily be missed by people if you're not reading your updated contracts, updated agreements.
Speaker: Okay, so I'm going to go through just a couple bullet points of things that I point out to homeowners in the close.
Speaker: And hopefully this inspires you to do the same, go read it, figure out if there's things that I thought I was explaining correctly, but I remember first time reading the contract word for word, there were several things that I think I wasn't explaining either enough or I was explaining partially incorrect.
Speaker: So very powerfully if you can read it.
Speaker: Hey, so Everbright's agreement.
Speaker: I mean, they have a bunch.
Speaker: The good news is use typically all these agreements.
Speaker: The first couple pages will just like bullet points, essentially summarize the entire agreements.
Speaker: So you can go through those and that gets you through most of it.
Speaker: But again, you should go through the places where they need initial after.
Speaker: So in the case of Everbright, we're doing a power purchase agreement.
Speaker: A one thing, the first point that it has them initial is that they're going to renew their agreement automatically if they do nothing.
Speaker: So what that means is if the homeowner doesn't send in written notice, doesn't call,
Speaker: Then after 25 years, they're going to renew their power purchase agreements automatically.
Speaker: Okay, so I go through that.
Speaker: Second section is if they need additional energy, they may have to buy it from the utility.
Speaker: Most of us know that.
Speaker: There's sections that talk about batteries.
Speaker: There's sections that talk about a performance guarantee.
Speaker: And here's another example of something that I was explaining incorrectly for a while until I, or at least leaving out details until I actually read through this and understand it.
Speaker: If you are selling Everbright, I believe it's the same for a lease or a power purchase agreement.
Speaker: But the way Everbright does it for their production guarantee is if the system underproduces,
Speaker: They won't get a credit for that energy that was underproduced until after a 24-month period.
Speaker: So it's not just like the month after they're going to get a credit.
Speaker: They have to wait 24 months because everybody is hoping that it's going to overproduce on other months and balance out.
Speaker: Um, so something to be aware of and something that you probably should be pointing out to your homeowners, because if you sign them up, you tell them there's a production guarantee, but you leave out that detail.
Speaker: Uh, they might not be the happiest campers when they don't get reimbursed after a year.
Speaker: They have to wait 24 months.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And yeah, some people could, um, feel the need to leave that out because it's not the most, um,
Speaker: um ideal thing like we would love to have it reimbursed the month after but yeah you got to be up front with people um so that's the section and yeah not to get too much in the weeds but another section where the initial is just talking about arbitration we don't go to regular courts we don't get a judge we use an arbitrator
Speaker: Um, they have to opt out of class action lawsuits.
Speaker: They can't do any of that.
Speaker: Um, roof penetration warranty is 10 years.
Speaker: Um, and yeah, another section is just, we have the right to take a picture of their system and call them.
Speaker: So keep in mind, all these things, they're mostly positive.
Speaker: OK, so we should not be scared to actually go through this agreement with people and be upfront about everything because most of it is in our favor and most of it is just backing up everything we say.
Speaker: So, yeah, I mean, the other thing that Everbright recently started doing is they give a discount for...
Speaker: um people opting into auto pay which is great news so that's 15 off the amount that we tell them um 15 15 off their monthly payment which is great a lot of good stuff in here don't shy away from this um i rec i would recommend even going through the cancellation policy everybody gives them 10 business days to cancel so that's something i go through with all of my homeowners
Speaker: Explain to them, hey, after that, we're going to start making progress.
Speaker: And that's when we're going to start spending money on the projects.
Speaker: So I make it clear that they can't just change their minds the day before the install.
Speaker: And I believe that's another way to retain your customers.
Speaker: Don't make them think that they can cancel at any time.
Speaker: Don't cancel close.
Speaker: And then of course you have the welcome call.
Speaker: In Everbride's case, you have a welcome checklist.
Speaker: Most agreements will have something like that, either a welcome call or a welcome checklist that homeowners have to go through, which is another thing that just adds credibility to everything you're seeing.
Speaker: So yeah, I think that's all I want to go over.
Speaker: I don't want to go read the entire agreement here.
Speaker: Just got done in a close actually.
Speaker: So I went through this entire thing with homeowners just barely
Speaker: I think my brain is fried.
Speaker: I've been going through these a lot.
Speaker: And there's still things that sometimes I'll read through it again.
Speaker: I'll see little things that I could be explaining better.
Speaker: So don't just read it once.
Speaker: I would recommend reading it multiple times.
Speaker: And you don't have to be an expert.
Speaker: Know the ins and outs of every single little thing.
Speaker: But again, it will help you, especially with those analytical buyers.
Speaker: And it will help you
Speaker: separate yourself from competition because I guarantee a lot of just sales focus dealers and companies, they don't, a lot of guys don't even understand or read their agreements.
Speaker: So especially if someone is comparing or maybe sat with another company, if they see you're the professional, that you're actually going through the agreement, you're not shying away from it.
Speaker: You're not just telling them to click through things, then who do you think they're going to go with?
Speaker: Hopefully you.
Speaker: Hey, so let me know if you like more of this stuff.
Speaker: Personally, I, as you can probably tell, I don't, well, I'm not super entertained by customer agreements and all that.
Speaker: So we try to keep it pretty focused on sales, but this is an aspect that I thought we should bring up.
Speaker: So let me know if you like more of this content.
Speaker: Or if you have guests you want to bring on that you want to recommend, always looking for guests and people that are dominating in solar to come share with us all.
Speaker: So let me know if you have any suggestions with that.
Speaker: Thanks for tuning in the podcast today, and we'll see you on the next one.
Speaker: Peace.
Speaker: Hey, solopreneurs, quick question.
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