Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong. I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in the year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
Speaker: I teach you 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? A solopreneur is a new breed of solopro that is willing to do whatever it takes to defeat mastery and you are about to become one.
Speaker: Hey, solarpreneurs. Today, we're going talking about a system you must implement with your teams. If you want to maximize accountability, maximize the production from your team, from your squad, listen up. Today, we're going to share the secrets.
Speaker: Welcome to the show. My name is Taylor Armstrong. We're here to help you close more leads, generate more referrals, and have a much better time in the solar industry, close more deals,
Speaker: Rather, but I meant to say. And um before we get into the podcast, if you have not got your SolarCon tickets, Tony Robbins is officially speaking. It's confirmed now.
Speaker: um No more speculation. Tony Robbins is going to be doing a three-hour workshop at SolarCon live this year. it is free. All you need to do is go to the link, which is in the show notes, grab your tickets, and get your whole hotel walk if you have not.
Speaker: um As I mentioned in previous podcasts, we are throwing out a ton of insane bonuses for those that decided either upgrade their ticket or purchase the hotel block um in the link down below.
Speaker: So go grab your tickets. You're insane if you're missing out on this year's SolarCon. And it kind of reminds me, um you know, it's free tickets this year. I'm thinking, man, what are there what could possibly be the reason for people not going to SolarCon this year?
Speaker: is it because it's too good to be true? um i have had some people reach out, be like, hey, Taylor, how is it actually free this year? And ah they've gotten some funding, but I get it. Maybe it's maybe that's your reason. Maybe you think it's too good to be true.
Speaker: ah But, you know, we have confirmation. It's legit. and go Go get your tickets today. And, ah you know, I feel like I got to overcome this objection every day in solar. ah Solar is too good to be true.
Speaker: There's no way I don't have to pay anything out of pocket to go solar. and So, um you know, I'll tell you the same things I tell the people we work with out here. um Just do it.
Speaker: You're not going to regret it. Go grab your tickets and we'll see you there. That's basically what I tell people when they bring that up. Okay, but let's get into the topic and that is a system you should be implementing within your teams.
Speaker: hey And this is specifically for people that are leading a few guys. um I've mentioned a few of the principles from this before, but today I'm going to dig into the nitty gritty.
Speaker: of exactly how we do our team calls every week. yeah We have what's called a accountability call. This is one of the key systems that we have implemented implemented to keep our team more accountable, to help us grow and to just kick off the week the right way.
Speaker: OK, and so on a previous podcast, I got into few of the details, but today i'm going to walk you through step by step exactly what we do. And hopefully you can go and apply this, ah whether you're running a team or maybe you don't have a team yet.
Speaker: um Consider doing it or at least a version of this. Okay. And I will say we do this on a Zoom call. We do it Sunday or Mondays at 10 a.m. m Hey, if you are running in-person meetings, you could also do this in person.
Speaker: um But our team in San Diego, we've got, um you know, over 100 people on our team here. So we divide it within squads, right? If you have not read Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, go read it. and Amazing book on leadership.
Speaker: But something he talks about is one person can't lead more than about 10 people effectively. hey So you need, once you hit past that 10 mark, you need to divide it up.
Speaker: yeah You need to have different squads. You need to have leaders on these squads and you need to have these leaders holding other people accountable um and leading others and developing leaders.
Speaker: So here's what we do It's 10 a.m. m on Mondays and we put together some slides. You can hit me up, shoot me a message if you want a copy of these slides.
Speaker: We'll happily share that with you if you reach out. But um we have it divided up into six or seven sections. OK, so the agenda goes as follows. We have a value of the week.
Speaker: We have updates and reminders. We have announcements, recognition, numbers and accountability, add goals, a leadership leadership thought and a wrap up.
Speaker: So that's how we do our weekly accountability call. And so I'm going to go through each of these sections, give you a few little tidbits on um exactly how we're covering these. OK, so the first one agenda of the week.
Speaker: um On our team, we have some really cool values. Did I say agenda of the week? I meant value of the week. We have some really good values. We like to think, make up the fabric of our team, make up the DNA of what we're trying to accomplish um here in our office.
Speaker: So we pick one value every week to go through. so just to give you an example, um the value we went over on our most recent call call was building the foundation.
Speaker: And the explanation goes, we believe in celebrating life and creating an atmosphere that is life-giving, empowering, and adventurous. Build the foundation. We believe that in order to scale our impact in longevity as a team, we must always practice loyalty, respect, and honor.
Speaker: So that's an example of one of the values that we go over in each week. We try to remember these values. We go over some examples of how we've seen this in our ah squad, in our team um during the week or in that particular month. So I think it's a good thing just to remember where our roots are at and remember the things that are most important to us, our values. okay So that's the first section.
Speaker: um After that, we go into updates and reminders. So we typically have announcements on incentives, upcoming events. ah We have a big event actually coming up ah next month here at the end of April. um if you're like If you are listening to this March of 2025, we have an event in about a month, which ah you are invited to. We've got the one and only Danny G. He's coming to speak to our team. If you don't know this guy, Danny G, he's...
Speaker: Probably one of the top sales trainers right now. couple million followers followers on Instagram. See if we can get him on a podcast. But he is coming. He's speaking at our um quarterly events.
Speaker: I think we do him twice a year now. It's going be great event. Hit me up if you want some tickets. Might be able to snag a few extra. um But we do announcements like that. We just had a a challenge week um where we were pushing for some Six Flags tickets. So we recognize the people that hit the incentives for that.
Speaker: um We had another incentive where the top closers in our office, the top five, they go on a dinner cruise here in the Bay in San Diego. So just things like that. We go through updates and reminders for those incentives and ah other things that we should be remembering.
Speaker: And we cover a lot of these during our regular correlations. We have two correlations a week right now. um But this is just like an extra reminder and an extra recognition, extra motivation for the people on our squad to push for the incentives. Because ah the more you bring it up and the more we ah mention it specifically to our guys, typically the harder they're going to push for it.
Speaker: Hey, um and then next we go into some recognition. um so that's kind of going along with the announcements. um Again, we recognize guys that are hitting those incentives. um Along with that, we go through some um just reminders of what the standards are for our squad. And our squad, weight it actually is called The Standard.
Speaker: Hey, um shout out to my guy, Javier, who's actually, he's coming on a podcast because episode. So he's going to go through, you know, some more specifics with this, but we have a standard for our team. We have metrics that we're trying to hit. So we go through those metrics.
Speaker: um You know, our, our specific metrics we have for our team is um minimum of a thousand dollars knocked a month, minimum of four deals a month, um daily check-ins at two o'clock checkouts after eight o'clock,
Speaker: attending all meetings, leading chat engagement, maintaining high level of accountability and being coachable. So those are some of the standards that we remind our guys of. And, ah you know, we've had to actually let go a few people or remove them from our chats just because we want the people working within our squad.
Speaker: We want them held to an extra high standard yeah and we want them ah producing more than anyone else in our office here in San Diego. So this is something I'd recommend you do. It's like get your people bought in and don't be afraid if they are not willing to meet your standards. They're not willing to participate in the team and bring energy to it. And then you may you might not want these people on your team, or at least you don't want that negative energy bringing down the other people on your team.
Speaker: um So those are part of the updates and reminders that we go through um along with the announcements. Number four, we have our numbers and accountability. And this part, this is really key for us.
Speaker: um We have our door knocking app that tracks all the door metrics from the week. So we can see how many doors people hit, how many appointments they booked, just all the KPIs. Super important for any leader of a team or really any rep in solar. You need to be tracking your key performance indicators. So we take a screenshot of this. We go through the metrics.
Speaker: And we recognize those that led the leaderboard for doors knocked, for appointment sets, things like that on the week. And then um as I mentioned other in other episodes, we have a spreadsheet where we do green, yellow and red. okay And just a reminder, green, that's all the people that hit our so our metrics, our standard metrics.
Speaker: Okay, and that's at least a deal on the week, at least the 300 doors. If they get deals, then they're in the green. And then we have yellow. Those are for people that hit their door counts, hit their appointments, but they did not get a deal on the week.
Speaker: So it's technically still in the standard, but we know we need to help them tweak a few things, actually get a deal. And then we have the red metrics. So in this spreadsheet, highlight all the people in red. That's people that did not hit neither the door counts. And also they didn't get a deal on the week.
Speaker: And those people are held accountable. um You know, we don't we don't like come down on them, but they see their name bright red on the board. And we found in our squad, that's typically enough for them to start pushing harder. Like people do not want to be in the red on the week. They are in the red multiple weeks.
Speaker: We put them on a performance improvement plan. um So we have a separate group chat for them. We have separate accountability. They need to be checking in with us daily, tracking their numbers. So this has helped our team tremendously. Yeah, I think it's just super powerful for guys to see themselves compared on a scoreboard to their peers.
Speaker: And ah it's almost like calling them out in a more gentle manner, right? It's not like You don't have to come down on them, but usually it's enough just them seeing their name in the red that they know, oh, shoot, I want to like do better. I do not want to see my name up there in front of everybody in the red.
Speaker: I'm to push harder. And we found that to be the case more often than not. And after we go through those numbers, we have a goal board. this is just a monthly board. where we have all the deals from that month um side by side next to the goals.
Speaker: um We do what's called BUD goals. So at the beginning of every month, we have people put, hey, what's the number that you're going to commit to? How many deals are you going to get this month? um How many hours? you know Mostly it's for deals, but you know sometimes we'll put in there, how many doors do you plan on knocking? How many appointments do you plan on setting?
Speaker: especially for newer setters. You may want to focus more on those metrics. um But that's something we're trying to do is just remind guys, hey, you set this blood goal at the beginning of the month. Where are we at on it?
Speaker: Because what gets measured gets improved. And if you don't go through these things weekly, then Yeah, they're likely to get forgotten. um We actually had that happen. Our team, we had a challenge week where we were just grinding the whole week and we skipped our weekly accountability call for that week.
Speaker: And um we actually saw our numbers, believe it or not, they got slightly worse because I think partly because we didn't do our accountability call. So even though the idea was for everyone be pushing harder, we didn't have that extra accountability. So things kind of got lost in the mix.
Speaker: So it just shows me that it's more important than ever be holding yourself accountable, to be holding your team accountable, and to be going through these metrics and looking at them. Because if not, we create this image in our heads that we're working harder than we probably think we are. And it's just super easy to get caught up in the in the grind and forget about the numbers we're trying to hit.
Speaker: And then last couple of things, we go over our quarterly install goal. So we however many installs we want, we want for the quarter and where we're at with those metrics. And then to wrap up, we do a leadership thought.
Speaker: And this is a way we found to get other people in our team involved. um We just had a shout out to my guy, Max. He just had a baby. And two days after he had a kid, they he went out and closed like a 13 kilowatt system out here.
Speaker: So, in today's call, we had him share just what motivates him and um how did he find the, ah you know, motivation to get out there and still be closing deals when he could have easily made excuses. So, this is just kind of like a wrap-up thought. um Sometimes I'll share it or a lot of times we'll get other people involved that had a good week.
Speaker: or that did something notable that past week to lead others or help the team. So that's pretty much it. That is the format of our calls. Hey, and um just to review one more time, it's the value of the week, updates and reminders, announcements, recognition, numbers and accountability um with an accountability board, goals, leadership thoughts and wrap up.
Speaker: Hey, and a few times we've done it more like mastermind style, you know, bouncing ideas off each other. ah So yeah, you can either do these in person. You can do them Zoom. Think even better if you can do them in person. But for us, it does work um as well to just do it ah Monday's Zoom before we have our regular in-person correlations. Hey, so wherever you are at, um whoever you are leading, make sure you have some ah call or some format similar to this to get guys remembering, hey, what are our goals we're trying to hit? What are our metrics?
Speaker: um Why are we buying into these numbers? Get people bought into the numbers. Hey, why do they want to hit those? And then have them look at the metrics weekly, hold themselves accountable.
Speaker: I promise if you do that, even if you're just doing it with yourself, maybe you have an accountability partner and maybe you have a small office. So, get someone else to do a similar format like this.
Speaker: Go over, hey, I want to report my numbers back to you weekly. Here's what I did Here's where I felt shorts. You do a little after action review. That's what they call it in the military when guys go through their operations. On the battlefield, they see what went wrong, what could have been improved. So, do something like that because we are warriors in the solar battle battlefield. If we do not... improve if we don't if we don't learn from our mistakes, we're getting worse, right? There's no neutral in this line of work where they're improving or we're getting worse. So let's make sure we're on a constant lineup and always improving. So I hope that helps.
Speaker: ah We are going to have my co-captain, my co-leader, ah Javier Alvarez. He's coming on the next podcast. He's actually someone that taught me a lot of these systems and it's helped our team with its culture and ah helped our team with accountability.
Speaker: and structure systems. I think he's a master in this stuff. So he's going to come on the next podcast, share some more gold on this, dig a little deeper on the few of the topics we mentioned today. Hope that helps your team. Go and implement it. promise you'll improve and go get your tickets to SolarCon.
Speaker: Send us the receipt. Can't wait to send you some of those bonuses and we'll see you on the next episode. 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. 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 SolarScout. But it's not a door-knocking app. It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market. It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later cancelled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given neighborhood.
Speaker: been working for a lot of teams across the country and now I'm on board too. I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up. But I told them, hey, I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal. 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. That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
Speaker: Okay, back to the show. What's up, solopreneurs? Hope you enjoyed the episode. and Before you run out and start selling more solar yourself, wanted to let you know about an exciting new cheat sheet we created specifically for you in mind.
Speaker: One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start? What episodes should I listen to in the podcast? You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
Speaker: So what we've done, we created the top 10 most downloaded, most listened to, and i would say widely accepted, most useful podcasts that we've done here on Solarpreneur.
Speaker: We put them together all in one sheet. So you can go, you can hit the ground running, especially if you're new, you do not want to not have this sheet. So go download it right now. It's going to be top10.solarpreneurs.com. Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com. Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs. We will have that in the show notes. Go download it right now.
Speaker: And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them. That's going to show you how. So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.
