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 fell.
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 Solarpreneur you might ask?
Speaker: A Solarpreneur is a new breed of Solar Pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.
Speaker: What's going on, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Taylor Armstrong here back with another fabulous episode.
Speaker: We've got a great guest here on today.
Speaker: We always love to feature new products, new softwares we're finding out about here at solopreneurs.
Speaker: So I've got one that I'm stoked for you guys to hear about, and he's going to tell us all about it and kind of his background with everything.
Speaker: So we've got Mr. Joe Jordan on the show.
Speaker: Joe, thanks for coming on with us today.
Speaker: Taylor, it's my pleasure.
Speaker: Thank you for having me.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure, man.
Speaker: And I was telling you before we kind of made the connection, I usually just pretty much delete people's messages they send me.
Speaker: If I feel like they're trying to pitch me something, I'm like, oh, whatever.
Speaker: But when you messaged me, it actually caught my attention.
Speaker: I'm like, wow, I've never heard a product like this.
Speaker: So this actually might be worth hearing out.
Speaker: And so sure enough, I heard them out and pretty freaking awesome what you guys are doing with the product.
Speaker: So before we get into it, do you want us to kind of give people a general, I guess, just a general overview of what your company is and what the product is that you guys do?
Speaker: And then obviously we'll get into a lot more detail here in a little bit.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So Ciro is a sales coaching platform for field sales and door-to-door sales teams.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So how Ciro works, reps record all their conversations with customers through Ciro and they'll surface to you their most coachable moments from their conversations that day.
Speaker: And at the end of the day, in between your own doors, at lunch, whatever it might be for you as a sales leader, you can jump into each moment and respond to them with a role play or piece of advice as easily as you might respond to a text message.
Speaker: Yeah, super awesome.
Speaker: And I never really, I mean, I'm sure most people listen to this podcast.
Speaker: I think most of us have just recorded ourselves on like voice memos or some type of recording app.
Speaker: But once Joe showed me kind of all the features, which we'll get into in more depth here in a little bit, it just made it so much easier to, you know,
Speaker: get transcriptions that are recording, help your team out and yeah, just so much more streamlined than trying to do this on a voice recording app and, you know, listen back to it.
Speaker: So, uh, cool.
Speaker: Anyways, that's what the software is.
Speaker: That's what the, uh, zero software is.
Speaker: And so before we get into that, Joe, do you want to kind of walk us through your background, just like cells in general and, uh, we can hear, um, kind of your background in that whole, in the whole industry.
Speaker: Yeah, I'd love to.
Speaker: So my story in sales starts my freshman summer in college.
Speaker: I got a letter in the mail to sell Cutco knives for vector marketing.
Speaker: And I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but it sounded like something that would look better on my resume than camp counselor.
Speaker: So I tried it.
Speaker: I ended up really liking it and being pretty good at it.
Speaker: After my first summer, I was the only student asked to come run
Speaker: the division headquarters as a sales manager, the following campaign.
Speaker: And we started with one sales rep at the beginning of the summer, ended up hiring over 180 throughout the course of the summer and being one of the top, top offices in the company that year.
Speaker: And it was an amazing experience.
Speaker: I learned so much from that, which I'm happy to talk more about.
Speaker: And then yeah,
Speaker: Next up for me, as I finished up college, I wanted to get really good at building things, creating products.
Speaker: So I did a stint in software engineering and Amazon over on the Alexa team.
Speaker: So, you know, Michael, my, you know, Alexa, wake me up to Michael Jackson.
Speaker: That was us.
Speaker: And when I, when I graduated college, I teamed up with my partner, Jake Cronin, who also got started in Cutco, spent two years at McKinsey.
Speaker: And we both quit our jobs, started working on this thing.
Speaker: And we've been doing that for about the past year or so.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: Did you guys know each other in Cutco then, or you just kind of made that connection after being met each other?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's actually a really funny story.
Speaker: We didn't know each other while we were at Cutco.
Speaker: but we were both building separate competing apps for Cutco sales reps to make phone calls through without sort of knowing about each other.
Speaker: And so Jake saw me on the app store, saw my app, reached out to me, asked if I wanted to work together and working with Jake ended up being the best decision by far that I've made so far in my young business career.
Speaker: He's been an awesome partner and we've done some really great things together.
Speaker: Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: And yeah, what makes it even cooler is you guys have the Cutco background because I think that makes for me that makes it a lot more powerful that you guys have been in sales, you know what people kind of struggle with and all the sales concepts is pretty similar across, you know, all industries so makes it a really powerful as you guys are.
Speaker: you know, trying to get your product launching in the hands of more sales teams, which is awesome.
Speaker: But yeah, I wanted to hear a little bit about more about your Cutco background, Joe.
Speaker: You guys got my mad respect just because to me, that sounds like, I don't know, like a tough product to sell.
Speaker: Maybe you tell me, but like Cutco, is it pretty, pretty rough start?
Speaker: Or how is it just like getting started in Cutco?
Speaker: Yeah, it was an awesome introduction to sales.
Speaker: Once you get in the home doing a demo, the product actually does a pretty decent job of selling itself.
Speaker: The toughest part is actually booking the appointments over the phone.
Speaker: And that's probably what is the most similar to the door-to-door experience.
Speaker: And because of that, we've seen a lot of people graduate from Cutco into door-to-door and do really well.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: The biggest things that I learned from Cutco, the first thing was just that personal growth is not just a means to other ends.
Speaker: It's an end in itself, and it's one of the most noble ends there is.
Speaker: It was a really growth-focused culture, and I think all of direct sales, including D2D, is very focused on growth as well.
Speaker: And it's one of the most rewarding things that you can focus on for yourself.
Speaker: And at the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn here, I graduated from Wharton, which is the best business school in the world.
Speaker: But I would trade the Wharton experience for the Cutco experience if someone made me.
Speaker: The two things I learned at Cutco that I would not have been able to learn anywhere else were risk tolerance
Speaker: and rejection tolerance.
Speaker: And those two things are not optional.
Speaker: Those are requirements.
Speaker: If you want to go out and start your own business.
Speaker: And I think the lack of those two attributes are the number one thing holding Americans back in today's economy.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I agree 100%.
Speaker: And that's interesting.
Speaker: So your Cutco, was it door to door too?
Speaker: Or was it mostly just like phone setting appointments and going to homes?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it was mostly setting appointments over the phone and then doing the appointments in home once I'd set them up.
Speaker: Don't tell my manager.
Speaker: We're not supposed to do this, but I did go door to door a little bit.
Speaker: One of those pushes because I was running well on leads and wanted to try something new.
Speaker: As one might expect, my first time out there, I wasn't too hot, but the push ended up going well for me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: So you, they like encourage you to not go door to door.
Speaker: And then they pretty much told you, no, don't go door to door, just focus on the phone.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You start out with, with people, you know, that you practice with, you call them book appointments and then at each appointment, you know, you, you ask for referrals and then, and then sort of call those guys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: Now what's really cool.
Speaker: Cause I've heard a few people that have that background that are now in the solar industry and are crushing it now.
Speaker: And, um, a lot of things they learned from Cutco they're applying to their solar cells.
Speaker: And I know it's helping them a ton.
Speaker: Matter of fact, we had a guest on, his name was Matt Crowther.
Speaker: I don't know if you know him, but he sold.
Speaker: Cutco for, I think, years too.
Speaker: And he just said the biggest thing for him is the referral principles in Cutco because he was just talking about how in every Cutco presentation, the next thing you had to do was just pretty much go through their whole list of contacts and say, all right, let's see what they could, could they possibly buy and just help the customer get you referrals and really incentivize them for that.
Speaker: So he's getting just, you know, mountains of referrals now in solar.
Speaker: And I think it's just because of that Cutco training, because he knew that every single Cutco presentation, he was walking out with referrals.
Speaker: So yeah, tell me about is that would you agree with that was a pretty focused on referrals?
Speaker: And do you want to tell us a little bit about your referral process when you were in Cutco?
Speaker: Yeah, sure thing.
Speaker: It's definitely very heavily focused on referrals because the number one thing you need as a sales rep to keep your business going is referrals.
Speaker: Like I'd rather have an appointment where it's a no sale, but I get 10 referrals than an appointment where I sell a $1,200 set and get zero referrals.
Speaker: And we let people know that the best way to prep people for referrals up front
Speaker: is to get them tied into your personal story.
Speaker: So the most important thing that I role play with reps at Cutco is their goal sharing at the beginning of the presentation.
Speaker: And so before I have my reps dive into their conversations, I have them say, by the way, before we dive into this, do you mind if I share my goals with you?
Speaker: And after that, we let the rep authentically tell their story
Speaker: and share why they're in this business, why they're excited about the product, why they're sitting down in front of you and what I'm working on and how you can help me towards that.
Speaker: And once you get someone tied into you like that, when you make a friend before you make a sale and they feel like they want to help you, that's the first step to opening the door to having them give you referrals.
Speaker: So that's the first thing.
Speaker: And then the second thing you want to do is just name drop as you go.
Speaker: people that referred you on the way to that person.
Speaker: And it's like, hey, by the way, what so-and-so loved about it was this, what so-and-so loved about the presentation was that.
Speaker: And sort of get them feeling like everyone gives a ton of referrals.
Speaker: And then the last neat trick that I saw a lot of people do at Cutco is when they're asking for referrals, they'll take a binder with everyone's referrals that they wrote down on them there.
Speaker: If you collect them like on a phone or using rep card or something like that,
Speaker: Just go back in and write them down on a piece of paper afterwards.
Speaker: And when you open the binder to get their referrals, just flip through a bunch of pages full of names before you get to that one page that's empty.
Speaker: And you can sort of make a show of it like, oh, I can't find like an open one.
Speaker: Wait a second.
Speaker: Oh, here we go.
Speaker: And those are sort of the big three tips on referrals there.
Speaker: Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker: No, I like that.
Speaker: And I like the personal story.
Speaker: That's something I haven't really tried before.
Speaker: So I think that's cool.
Speaker: And so for like personal story, are you talking more like kind of their business goals or can you give us an example for what you mean by like, say I'm telling you my personal story.
Speaker: What would your story be when you were opening these presentations?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So I would have put myself in the headspace of like 19 year old Joe here.
Speaker: It was something like,
Speaker: You know, I got a letter in the mail for this job and I thought it seemed kind of weird, like selling knives, but I ended up really loving this thing because as an athlete, my favorite thing about this is the harder I work and the better I get, the more money I earn, but more importantly, the more things I learn.
Speaker: And I want to run my own business someday.
Speaker: And what I love about this is it teaches me how to face rejection.
Speaker: It teaches me how to make sales, which is something that's super important everywhere else.
Speaker: And there's opportunities to advance.
Speaker: So my biggest goal with you here today is that you like me, you want to recommend me to a bunch of your friends.
Speaker: and you'd recommend me for the promotion I have coming up.
Speaker: And in order to hit it, my goal is to get to $10,000 in sales by the end of the week.
Speaker: Right now I'm at 5,000.
Speaker: You don't have to buy the other 5,000 just to help me out, by the way, Mrs. Jones.
Speaker: If you do, that would be great.
Speaker: But really, I'm just here to work on my goals and make sure we're friends by the end of this presentation.
Speaker: That's fire.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: It's cool because you're getting them emotionally bought in.
Speaker: And I'm sure they tell you this all the time, but you know, people buy with their emotion and they're justifying it with the logic.
Speaker: So I think especially in solar, we get caught up more in the logic piece of it, just because solar is so logical for people.
Speaker: It's like, look, your pain.
Speaker: 200 bucks a month right now you're only to pay 160 with solar and then so many times especially with newer reps that's all they focus on but then they get canceled they get people shopping out and everything but i think that's the important thing that especially in solar we forget about if you can get these people bought in emotionally
Speaker: And then kind of bought into your cause that, oh, we're trying to get two more this week or whatever.
Speaker: I like that line a lot.
Speaker: And people are a lot more willing to help you out and want to see you succeed.
Speaker: And then, yeah, obviously get more referrals from it too.
Speaker: So that's awesome.
Speaker: Definitely something I'm going to play with that.
Speaker: So yeah, personal story, make the friend and then name drop as you go.
Speaker: And then, yeah, I remember my buddy, Matt Crowder, it was on the podcast.
Speaker: He said a similar thing with the name list where he would just...
Speaker: you know, have a sheet all filled in and then he would just pass in the sheet.
Speaker: And it wasn't even like an option, really.
Speaker: He just said, Okay, so yeah, what we do with everyone is we just help you get like, at least 10 people that could potentially benefit from our product.
Speaker: And so I'll help you and then he would basically just have them go through their contacts and get those 10 people not limited to 10.
Speaker: So yeah, that's been actually helping me a ton with referrals and slower as well.
Speaker: But yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker: And then anything else?
Speaker: How long did you cut go for, by the way, Joe?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So I was a sales rep for about a year and a half and then a sales manager for a campaign and a half.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: What is a campaign?
Speaker: What does that mean?
Speaker: So a campaign is a third of the year.
Speaker: So there's the spring campaign, the fall campaign and the summer campaign.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And so after Cutco, that's when you went and did the whole business school thing and gotten the software stuff after that?
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was sort of doing the business school and Cutco in parallel.
Speaker: I was in both the engineering school and the warden school at Penn.
Speaker: So I was sort of getting the business and the technical side and the sales side all at the same time.
Speaker: So it was really a whirlwind
Speaker: of, of learning.
Speaker: Um, and my last summer going towards the end of college was when I did that software engineering stint at an Amazon, got a chance to write some real production code for a company that has some of the best engineering practices out there.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Incredible.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Um, so I'm curious to know at Cutco where like role play is a huge thing as you're in Cutco is, and would you say that contributed you to you like eventually making zero and everything?
Speaker: Tell me about that.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: So I was driven to start zero by two feelings that I had while I cut go.
Speaker: The first was just an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the amazing experience that I got while I was there.
Speaker: I would not be where I am without my cut go experience.
Speaker: There's no way I could have started this thing.
Speaker: And the second feeling was just frustration that I couldn't replicate that experience for the people I was responsible for coaching.
Speaker: I had a ton of people that I was working with who were perfectly capable of creating awesome experiences, having the success I had, but their results weren't meeting their expectations and I didn't have the time to help them.
Speaker: And even when I could set aside like an hour to sit down with them and figure out what was going wrong,
Speaker: it was really difficult to make that time productive because someone can tell me what's going wrong, but usually they're not right about it.
Speaker: And sometimes reps aren't totally honest with you about what's going wrong.
Speaker: And it's not because they're trying to deceive you.
Speaker: Like when you're struggling, the first person you lie to is yourself.
Speaker: And, you know, we might role play, but the way they role play is not going to be the way they role play with the customer.
Speaker: They might say they're having trouble handling this objection, but really the problems earlier in the conversation because they didn't gain the customer's trust.
Speaker: So I just thought, how awesome would it be if I could be a fly on the wall in these conversations and just listen to your last three or four referral approaches and see why you're not getting referrals.
Speaker: You know, listen to how you're sharing your goals.
Speaker: So I know why you're not getting the customer on your side.
Speaker: And that's sort of where the idea for this thing came from.
Speaker: Just the ability not to jump in and listen to an end.
Speaker: hour-long presentation, but listen to the stuff that I knew reps were struggling with and leave them some feedback on a situation they actually had.
Speaker: Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker: And when you were at Cutco, were you guys kind of doing this whole same old school stuff of just recording it on your phones and doing that?
Speaker: Or did you have any like similar thing at Cutco where you guys recorded yourselves?
Speaker: Yeah, so we tried it a couple of times, but the problem was it was difficult to do at scale because of how long these conversations were.
Speaker: Waiting through a voice memo, even getting your rep to send you a voice memo once they record it actually turns out to be a pretty big problem.
Speaker: And not knowing when they actually had their appointments and when they missed to record.
Speaker: So it was difficult to do as an office system.
Speaker: And so we only ended up using it sparingly.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it makes sense.
Speaker: And that's pretty much the same that I've seen on solar cells teams too.
Speaker: It's just like, I don't know, cells reps just think it's a hassle.
Speaker: They don't want to get their phones out.
Speaker: They forget.
Speaker: And then they have to record like 10 times before they get one that's like an actual conversation, things like that.
Speaker: So it is a big ask and pretty much the only way we've gotten our teams to do it in the past is just like incentivizing say hey if you guys record this day we'll give you like 30 bucks just for recording that's all you need to do.
Speaker: And even that sometimes like pulling teeth to get reps to actually go out and do this just because if it is you know kind of a hassle and it is.
Speaker: something they have to remember and put forth effort to do.
Speaker: So I think that's a big key that you guys have.
Speaker: I mean, you still got to put forth effort with zero and we'll talk about that more, but I think it just makes a lot easier and a lot more streamlined.
Speaker: So there's way less hassle.
Speaker: And then the rep doesn't have to remember to send you their reporting.
Speaker: It just gets sent to the manager automatically, things like that.
Speaker: But yeah, so tell you want to tell us a little bit more about like how it first got started then and then why you guys decided to like focus on the door to door industry and specific for your software Joe.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So we were always excited about door to door from the very beginning we were talking to guys that at Vivint and other companies in the space.
Speaker: And we knew it was time to double down and focus mainly on door to door, especially solar.
Speaker: After talking with Connor Ruggio, they decided at Aptiv they were willing to pay just to try this thing.
Speaker: based on the designs we had, we hadn't even built anything, written a single line of code.
Speaker: And he was like, yeah, this thing is awesome.
Speaker: We want to try this.
Speaker: And that's when we knew it's time to focus on the door-to-door space.
Speaker: And so we launched a pilot with Aptiv this past summer.
Speaker: And since then, we've gotten 40,000 sales conversations in the system.
Speaker: We have over 1,300 reps who have used this thing and over 4,000 coaching comments have been sent through the system.
Speaker: And that's just in the past couple of months here.
Speaker: Yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker: How did you guys first make that connection with, you said his name was Connor from Aptiv?
Speaker: Yeah, Connor Ruggio, one of the presidents of sales over there.
Speaker: We reached out to him over LinkedIn.
Speaker: Turns out Jake and I are pretty good at getting people to read our messages, even though a lot of people get spam.
Speaker: So that's how we made the connection.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: And no, I mean, that's all it takes too, is...
Speaker: I mean, we're going through a similar thing actually right now.
Speaker: I told you a little bit, but we launched our Soul Society kind of training platform.
Speaker: So we're going through a similar thing, just trying to get that big domino, get people to start using it.
Speaker: Because once people can see the benefits and you have some case studies and be like, look, look, look, the results they got helps a ton.
Speaker: So yeah, do you want, do you have any like stats on results that, uh, and any like huge improvements that you saw from people active or did they tell you like, I don't know, some cool stats that you have to report from people that have been using it so far?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Um, so the biggest thing that people are loving about it so far is the time savings for sales leaders.
Speaker: We have guys who are saying they went from spending 20 hours shadowing to spending two hours in zero in a week, getting the same amount of coaching value.
Speaker: My favorite example is Logan Porter.
Speaker: He's a team lead over at Aptiv.
Speaker: He said that since they started using Ciro faithfully, he saw the progression of his rookies pitches and sales increase exponentially.
Speaker: And when you look at the number of accounts sold per day for these reps, you can predict what's going on.
Speaker: almost exactly what day they started recording in zero because their accounts like double or triple.
Speaker: And he loved that.
Speaker: But his favorite part about it was how much time it gave him back.
Speaker: You know, a lot of us who are, who are coaching in this industry also have our own sales to make.
Speaker: And it's really difficult when you feel like you have to make a choice between coaching your reps and
Speaker: And so as an example, Logan, the week two of last summer sold 11 accounts personally.
Speaker: And that's because he was doing a bunch of shadowing.
Speaker: This summer, after a couple of initial shadows, he was mostly coaching through zero and he was able to sell 26 accounts personally that week.
Speaker: So almost doubling his personal sales just because of those time savings there.
Speaker: Now, obviously pest control pitches are much shorter than like a solar closing conversation.
Speaker: They might be anywhere from 10, 15 or 20 minutes, but Waijan, who had like a hundred reps underneath him as a regional, got to the point where he could listen to 20 pitches
Speaker: in 12 minutes.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That's so cool.
Speaker: And yeah, I mean, it's funny because it sounds like it's almost more beneficial probably to like the managers than it is, you know, like the new reps, because obviously it goes both ways, but like all the time-saving aspect of it.
Speaker: And like you're mentioning the ability to be able to focus way more on yourselves and having to go out to people's areas, do more shadowing.
Speaker: And, uh, yeah, I mean, Joe, even, so we started using it means, um, one of our coaching clients here over at, uh, that soul society, we started using it and, um, kid you not, I'd been bugging my, uh, coaching client.
Speaker: His name's men.
Speaker: I'd been bugging them for probably two and a half weeks.
Speaker: And I'm like, Hey man, send me over a recording.
Speaker: Let's just do like a, you know, door approach analysis.
Speaker: Let's see if there's anything we can focus on, help you out.
Speaker: And there's the same old story like, oh, Taylor, I forgot.
Speaker: Oh, Taylor, I didn't get any good recordings today.
Speaker: Oh, Taylor, my phone deleted it.
Speaker: Like all the same stuff you hear from reps over and over.
Speaker: And then right when we got Ciro hooked up for both of us is like, you know, the next hour we already lined up and I was already able to give him feedback.
Speaker: And I know he's seeing, you know, improvements quickly now, just because, you know, it's way better system set up.
Speaker: So, yeah, I think that's the main thing is just the time saving aspect and then being able to focus, especially I can imagine if you're leading a huge team.
Speaker: like I was getting overwhelmed just trying to do this and bug one person to send it to me.
Speaker: So I can't even imagine time saving with like you leading a team of like 20, 30 reps and then trying to bug them all to send in recordings.
Speaker: So I think that's huge.
Speaker: But no, that's cool.
Speaker: And so, yeah, do you want to tell like, maybe just give us a walkthrough more and we can dig a little bit more into the features and then tell us, I don't know how they've been helpful or
Speaker: any uh i guess any more takeaways from the features so i guess first of all records people on the app so i don't know maybe give us like i guess sell us on zero here if you're trying to get like a new client tell us what the features are and how it's beneficial to the teams if you don't mind sure sure um
Speaker: So again, sort of the one sentence overview is Ciro keeps your reps learning by recording all their conversations and surfacing to you the most coachable moments.
Speaker: So you can dive into each one and respond to them like you would a text message.
Speaker: And so what that looks like for guys on the doors, they'll record right through Ciro, either on their iPhone, their Android, or their tablet, any mobile device.
Speaker: And when they're done with the conversation, they can optionally send a moment from it
Speaker: So wherever they felt like they were struggling and it'll go to the coaches inbox.
Speaker: And as a coach, I can go through this inbox, choose which ones I want to dive into based on the message of like what the rep needs help with.
Speaker: And once I open it up, it might be a 10 minute recording, a 15 minute recording, a 60 minute recording.
Speaker: Obviously I don't have time to listen to a ton of these.
Speaker: So what I want to do is get to the point where the rep needs the most help, give them that feedback and move on to the next conversation.
Speaker: And that's helpful, A, because it saves time for me, but B, because a rep can only get one or two takeaways and actually implement them at one time anyway.
Speaker: So when you're spending like an hour diving deep on a reps conversation, a lot of that hour is wasted because they're only going to be able to take away a small portion of those things.
Speaker: So as an example, and this was super common for me, I'm sure it's common for you guys.
Speaker: Imagine you have a rep who the customer is asking questions that are demonstrating they're interested and they're asking questions and the rep is just busy answering the questions, losing control of the conversation and they don't set the appointment.
Speaker: So if a rep flagged that for me, they flagged setting the appointment, I could jump in and listen to them as they're struggling to handle this customer's questions.
Speaker: And the moment I hear him starting to lose the conversation, I can hit audio comment and record how they might have role played it better.
Speaker: So I might...
Speaker: say, hey, next time, just answer this question and then try something like this.
Speaker: But when our technician comes around tomorrow, he'll be able to handle all those questions for you and make sure you're all up to speed to mornings or afternoons work better for you.
Speaker: Then you send that comment, it'll resume the conversation and you can listen for the next moment before you move on to the next one.
Speaker: Um, so that's sort of the, how the coaching flow works.
Speaker: Now, the other value proposition that I think is actually even better for reps is the chance to learn from some of the top people around the company who match my sales style.
Speaker: So if there's a situation that a lot of people are struggling with, maybe it's like the spouse, not home objection or explaining net metering correctly.
Speaker: The moment someone on the team nails it, you can just clip that portion and drop it into GroupMe or the WhatsApp, put it in the training library, and A, recognize them for doing a great job.
Speaker: and incentivize everyone else on the team to try and nail those things so they can get their conversations shared and sort of flex on everyone.
Speaker: But you also educate the other guys.
Speaker: And the moment you give a rep an example of a sales rep who matches their style that's better than them crushing something, you give them a target.
Speaker: And I think a lot of people struggle with superficial whys, like money motivation, things like that.
Speaker: But once a rep gets a vision of who they want to become, what they could be like in two to three months, if they keep learning, then they have intrinsic motivation.
Speaker: And that's a why that can actually withstand the adversity that you face every day out on the doors when it's lonely out there.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: And that's cool because especially if it's like, I don't know, a new year rep or a first year rep or a newer rep, it's like it doesn't necessarily have to be an experienced guy that's getting their clip sent out.
Speaker: You can be like, hey, this is someone's for their first year or two.
Speaker: And then they're seeing that, OK, we got a new rep that's already crushing it.
Speaker: he's already being featured and then i think it's cool for people to be able to see um you know reps in similar situations and be able to um just have that motivation and you know copy what they're saying that's cool i didn't even i didn't even realize that i don't think so it's almost doubles as like a training platform too for the company to be able to see clips and then so once so can you save on there and um everyone that has access to the app they can see kind of the top
Speaker: I don't know, I guess, overcoming objections or whatever that clip might be, and then go on there and access that later too.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: So we'll silo it to your company so that only people in your company are able to access it.
Speaker: There'll be a trending section for the top clips at the time across any category.
Speaker: And then we'll create custom categories for you based on what you think reps should be able to dive into and
Speaker: and focus on.
Speaker: And because Ciro bookmarks all the key places of the conversation and transcribes it, it's really easy to find clips that will match those things.
Speaker: So if you know if there's a rep that's really great at pricing, you just want to populate the training library, just like you would when you're giving some coaching feedback.
Speaker: You open up one of their recordings, we'll bookmark where they went over pricing, where they encountered this icebreaker, where they got the business card smokescreen, and you can jump right to where you know they'll be crushing it.
Speaker: highlight the piece of the transcript, which will also provide for you automatically where they're crossing it and then share it either to your group me, WhatsApp, iMessage and then write to the training library in Cereal.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker: So much, so much time saving right there.
Speaker: And then correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you, so you'll add in like, you can add in your company's presentation or pitch or whatever, and then it'll like automatically kind of categorize it based on kind of what step they're on and things like that too, right?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And that's what makes these moments as easy to respond to as a text message is the ability to jump right to them.
Speaker: And what our conversation engine will do over time.
Speaker: is learn your pitch so it knows this is what pricing looks like for this organization.
Speaker: And obviously reps will differ on how they say certain things, but it'll be robust enough to detect differences across reps and let you know where they're doing the intro pricing, net metering, explaining your company and so forth.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: So this thing is like learning.
Speaker: It's like a, I guess that's why it's AI, right?
Speaker: It's like learning your pitch and becoming smarter as days go on, stuff like that.
Speaker: It's not going to come alive and destroy the planet or anything, is it?
Speaker: I'm not going to make any promises on that one, Taylor.
Speaker: Yeah, no, that's, that's awesome though.
Speaker: So yeah, I mean, in all seriousness, so much time saving and I noticed it too, just, just the transcripts.
Speaker: That's another big thing.
Speaker: Cause like how many times have we have to listen to just like fluff that's going on, just like stuff that's not even part of the presentation where, as I was using it with men, our coaching client, I was able to just skip past all the stuff that's okay.
Speaker: I don't need to listen to hear them talk about their dog or anything.
Speaker: how fluffy their cat was or how fat that cat was.
Speaker: So I don't need to listen to all that.
Speaker: I'm just going to go straight to the meat and the potatoes and give them the feedback he needs and then get out and get out of there.
Speaker: So yeah, that's something I was really impressed with.
Speaker: So yeah, a ton of cool features.
Speaker: And Joe, I know you guys are focused like primarily on companies and that's probably how it's most beneficial if companies can use it and, you know, share all this throughout the entire organization.
Speaker: But, um, do you have any right now, do you have just like individual reps or let's say their companies aren't, I don't know, fully bought in on the, on the idea yet.
Speaker: Do you have any examples of just like reps using it for themselves or ways that just left like a single rep wanted to use it that they could, you know, be able to still get benefits with it too?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: Most of our clients right now started out with a handful of teams or even just one team who started using this thing.
Speaker: We had a meeting, you know, sales demo the other day with the guys at Google Fiber out in Utah.
Speaker: And the reason they set the meeting was because the rep from Aptiv came over and said, hey,
Speaker: like let's try this zero thing and book a meeting with me um so if you're a rep who is excited about using zero to record your pitches being able to digest them faster um and get more access to your coach um let them know and send them to our website book a demo i'm happy to speak to them and get your team on it and uh
Speaker: If your team likes it, then we can talk about moving it up after that.
Speaker: But we're perfectly happy to work with any sales team, large or small.
Speaker: Our mission with this thing, I think direct sales is an amazing opportunity in this country.
Speaker: I think it's one of the most meritocratic industries that exists and is going to equip you with the skills you need to succeed.
Speaker: So, you know, whatever you are, large or small, we'll put together a plan that we can get you on this thing and help you achieve those things.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: And, and no, I think Joe and your team, you guys are super giving and, you know, trying to really trying to get it out.
Speaker: So I think even if you just want to like, check it out and go back to your team, that's how you can experience it and just try it for yourself.
Speaker: And then
Speaker: Um, for sure.
Speaker: Go back to your team.
Speaker: Cause that's how it's going to be most, most beneficial is getting an entire team on it and getting you guys all bought in and helping each other.
Speaker: Um, so yeah, speaking of that, before we kind of start wrapping up here, Joe, um, just, um, to be able to connect with you and get the demo and all that, is it just best to go to your website or where's the best place people can kind of reach out to you and be able to book a demo and everything?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Head to Siro.ai, S-I-R-O.ai, and you can just book a demo with us there.
Speaker: Let us know that you heard of us from Solopreneurs, and we'll get you a discount in there as well.
Speaker: And I'm happy to talk to you and figure out how we can help you.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: So guys, our solopreneurs, go take Joe up on this.
Speaker: If you're not recording yourself right now, it's probably because of those excuses that you're telling yourself like I was.
Speaker: It just takes too much time.
Speaker: It's too much hassle.
Speaker: You have to go back and find the parts that are applicable to you.
Speaker: And what's cool, I was telling you about this, Joe, but we had a guest on, I think it was about a month ago now, about Mikey Lucas.
Speaker: He's consulting a lot of people in solar industry.
Speaker: I'm helping out a ton of people and that was one of his top tips is tops trainings that he did he actually did a training for our team too.
Speaker: And he gave us like a sheet and is like guys I guarantee you if you just start recording yourself you don't have to send it to managers or other people just record yourself and then go through this checklist and give yourself the feedback.
Speaker: And I think that's 90% of the problem.
Speaker: People just aren't willing to record themselves because you don't even have to give your, you don't have to send it to anyone necessarily.
Speaker: But it's like, you know, I was a musician.
Speaker: Like that's what I studied in school and everything.
Speaker: And I think the times when I improved the most is because I was recording myself like crazy and I was going back and just me listening to it.
Speaker: I didn't even have to get feedback.
Speaker: But it's like, because we think we say one thing, we think we're doing it one way.
Speaker: But the, you know, my recording never lies, right?
Speaker: We can go back and listen and that might be completely different to how we thought we were doing it.
Speaker: So that's another thing.
Speaker: Just even if you're not using it with your team, start recording yourself.
Speaker: And Cereal, I think, is the best tool that I've seen.
Speaker: I've never heard anything like this.
Speaker: So appreciate you guys, Joe, for coming up with the, you know, the software.
Speaker: And I think it's going to change the industry.
Speaker: And I think you're already seeing that too.
Speaker: So, um, yeah, I know we've got to wrap up pretty quick, Joe, but, uh, any, um, we always kind of leave with just, uh, any final words of advice or anything that you can leave with the solar industry specifically.
Speaker: Do you feel like could help our, uh, so entrepreneurs out here trying to change the world?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So my biggest thing in sales guys is you have to have a really strong why.
Speaker: Obviously it's not an easy business.
Speaker: And if your whys are superficial, they're not going to be able to withstand the adversity that you're going to face.
Speaker: And the best exercise that I'm aware of to find a great why is to think about if you were able to execute at 100% and fully realize your potential for the next 12 months and truly perform to the maximum of your natural abilities.
Speaker: what would you sell?
Speaker: Like what numbers would you put up?
Speaker: And then take a look at that number and think about what kind of person you'd have to become to hit those numbers.
Speaker: What it would feel like to wake up as that person in the morning, what it would feel like to interact with other people as that person and to fully embody that in your daily life.
Speaker: And that's a reward that is worth going after.
Speaker: And that's a why that can withstand the adversity
Speaker: David Larson, On the doors and any plan to become that that person will include recording yourself on the doors to take ownership over your conversations to perform at your highest ability.
Speaker: And whether you record those things in Ciro or not, make sure you do record them.
Speaker: If you're not, you're burning money and potentially even losing out on faster promotions.
Speaker: The moment I started doing this, I doubled my average order and I could have got promoted way faster had I done it earlier.
Speaker: So whether it's through Ciro or not, record your conversations.
Speaker: If you want to do it through Ciro, head to Ciro.ai, S-I-R-O.ai, and I'm happy to chat.
Speaker: Good luck on the doors, guys.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Fire.
Speaker: Joe, thanks again for coming on.
Speaker: Guys, go check out his software.
Speaker: It's going to change the way you sell.
Speaker: Bring it back to your teams.
Speaker: And yeah, like Joe said, whatever you do, just record yourself, even if you don't get on it.
Speaker: So thanks again for coming on, Joe.
Speaker: And hopefully we get lots of people reaching out.
Speaker: If anything, go give them a shout out and let them know you appreciated everything you shared on the episode today.
Speaker: So Joe, thanks again for coming on, my man.
Speaker: My pleasure.
Speaker: My pleasure.
Speaker: Thank you, Taylor.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Talk soon.
Speaker: Hey, solopreneurs, quick question.
Speaker: What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day?
Speaker: For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level.
Speaker: That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry.
Speaker: And it's called Solcitee.
Speaker: This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give Solar Pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds for, are you ready for it, less than $3.45 a day.
Speaker: Currently, Soul Society is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled.
Speaker: So go to soulciety.co to learn more and join the learning experience now.
Speaker: This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to soulciety.co and join.
Speaker: We'll see you on the inside.
