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How To Know Which Areas To Knock In Solar
104 Plays1 year ago
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The SOLARPRENEUR podcast is here to help you close more deals in the solar industry, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully, have a much better time and situation.
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Transcript
Introduction to Solarpreneur Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
00:00:08
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
00:00:10
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.
00:00:19
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.
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a solopreneur, you might ask?
00:00:33
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.
Finding the Best Areas for Door-to-Door Solar Sales
00:00:41
Speaker
Hey, what's up, solopreneurs?
00:00:42
Speaker
Today, we're going to be talking about how can you find a good area when you are knocking doors for solar?
00:00:47
Speaker
And this is actually a listener question, so much appreciated.
00:00:53
Speaker
It is from our friend Darren Todd McCravey.
00:00:56
Speaker
So we're going to be talking about how to find a good area, how to pick and dominate in an area today on the podcast.
00:01:03
Speaker
Welcome to the show.
00:01:04
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
00:01:05
Speaker
We are here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry.
00:01:13
Speaker
As we are listening to this, or as I'm recording this, we are nearing the end of summer.
00:01:18
Speaker
I can't believe it.
00:01:20
Speaker
It felt like it lasted two days long.
00:01:22
Speaker
So just another reminder to push as hard as you can during the summer months because they are over in the blink of an eye.
00:01:29
Speaker
But hey, we still got a little bit left.
00:01:31
Speaker
And I hope whenever you are listening to this, you aren't letting your foot off the gas.
00:01:36
Speaker
Too many times I think people make the excuse, oh, summer's over.
00:01:40
Speaker
Let's take it easy.
00:01:41
Speaker
Let's just wait until next month to hit our numbers.
00:01:45
Speaker
The time is now.
00:01:46
Speaker
So never forget that.
00:01:48
Speaker
You got to take advantage of every moment we have in solar because let's be honest, things probably aren't going to be in good
00:01:55
Speaker
as good in solar as they are right now.
00:01:58
Speaker
Maybe you're listening to this two years from the time of this recording and solar commissions could be way less.
00:02:04
Speaker
So hope you took advantage of the moment.
00:02:07
Speaker
All right.
00:02:07
Speaker
And so let's jump into the topic again.
Mastering Door-to-Door Sales Techniques
00:02:10
Speaker
We're going to be talking about how to pick and find a good area
00:02:13
Speaker
as you are knocking doors for solar.
00:02:15
Speaker
And we have done, I know I've touched on this topic in other episodes, probably been, I don't know, maybe a year or so since we talked about this on the podcast.
00:02:26
Speaker
So I'm excited to bring up a few new things that I've been doing, some new softwares, new technologies that we have that we can take advantage of to help us be even more effective on the doors.
00:02:38
Speaker
Okay, so I'm going to get into the nitty gritty here.
00:02:42
Speaker
And the first tip with this, when you are finding an area, well, first of all, if you're new, if you're just starting out in solar, you need to get in the reps and you need to figure out how to knock any type of door, right?
00:02:55
Speaker
I remember when I first started in pest control, something that drove our managers crazy was guys that would complain about the area.
00:03:02
Speaker
Oh, this area sucks.
00:03:04
Speaker
No one's interested here.
00:03:05
Speaker
Then almost every time one of our managers would go to that same area,
00:03:10
Speaker
close a bunch of deals, find a bunch of new customers.
00:03:12
Speaker
So there's going to be deals and customers everywhere you go.
00:03:15
Speaker
The first point here is especially if you are new, make sure you learn how to master the doors.
00:03:22
Speaker
If you don't know how to overcome objections well, if you don't have a presentation memorized,
00:03:27
Speaker
If you don't know how to have confidence on the doors, it doesn't matter how strategic you get about finding areas or how strategic you are about knocking doors.
00:03:36
Speaker
You need to put the reps in and you need to master those other aspects of knocking the door.
00:03:42
Speaker
Hey, so if you're new, I would say just put in the reps.
00:03:46
Speaker
For your first 60 days, at least, I would just go all out.
00:03:49
Speaker
It doesn't really matter where.
00:03:51
Speaker
Just put in the reps and make sure you master overcoming the objections.
00:03:56
Speaker
Okay, but if you feel like you have gotten your presentation down, you know how to overcome objections, all right, then let's start to get more strategic about this stuff.
Strategic Demographic Targeting
00:04:06
Speaker
And let's talk about how we can find some good areas.
00:04:08
Speaker
Okay, so if you have had some experience...
00:04:11
Speaker
Knocking doors, you probably know by now what type of person you generally like to approach, what type of income level, what ethnicity.
00:04:21
Speaker
These are all things we should be thinking about.
00:04:23
Speaker
So for me, I did a two-year church mission in Colombia.
00:04:27
Speaker
I speak Spanish, so this is an area that I frequently target is I like talking to the Spanish speakers.
00:04:34
Speaker
And I know we've got lots of Mexican family here in the solar industry.
00:04:39
Speaker
I know lots of friends that I have that are Mexican.
00:04:42
Speaker
They will only target Mexican neighborhoods because they speak the language.
00:04:48
Speaker
They can connect more with those people.
00:04:50
Speaker
It's great.
00:04:51
Speaker
So maybe you want to target whatever your ethnicity you are.
00:04:56
Speaker
But if you're a white guy like me, there's probably areas or maybe ethnicities that you feel like you have more success with than others.
00:05:05
Speaker
And there's some that's, you know, not to get racist or anything, but there are some ethnicities where I know I'm probably going to stay away from these people because they're going to shop 10 out of 10 times.
00:05:19
Speaker
They're very cheap.
00:05:20
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As a general rule, great people, but that's just how their culture is.
00:05:25
Speaker
So keep that in mind.
00:05:26
Speaker
And the best way to figure out the ethnicity of an area is I like to use a website.
00:05:32
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I think it's called citydata.com.
00:05:33
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You can just Google city data.
00:05:35
Speaker
This will show you the general ethnicity for every city you go to, every area.
00:05:42
Speaker
And then there's even websites.
00:05:44
Speaker
I think on that same website, it'll let you click neighborhood by neighborhood.
00:05:48
Speaker
And you can see, you know, what percentage of people are a certain ethnicity.
00:05:52
Speaker
Okay, so that helps.
00:05:53
Speaker
And then also income level.
00:05:55
Speaker
Maybe you know that the extremely wealthy people are going to go get 10 quotes.
00:06:00
Speaker
Maybe they're less likely to sign up the day of, which is generally my experience.
00:06:06
Speaker
And so maybe you want to target a little bit lower income, maybe middle class.
00:06:10
Speaker
So think about that.
00:06:11
Speaker
And even if you are new, pay attention to what people you have the most success with because you want to know that data for later when you can be a little bit more strategic about the knocking.
00:06:24
Speaker
So that's step number one, figure out what demographic income level you like.
Identifying Less Saturated Sales Areas
00:06:30
Speaker
And then number two, if you are in a more saturated area like myself, I'm in San Diego, very saturated solar market.
00:06:39
Speaker
Consider hitting maybe outskirts or little towns that are outside of the city.
00:06:47
Speaker
I've always had a lot of success as I go and target people that are a little bit off the beaten path.
00:06:54
Speaker
Hey, we call this off the beaten path knocking.
00:06:56
Speaker
Shout out to my boy, Lenny Gray.
00:06:58
Speaker
If you haven't read it, go read the book, Door-to-Door Millionaire, more door-to-door millionaire.
00:07:03
Speaker
He has like half a chapter on this off the beaten path knocking.
00:07:08
Speaker
But it's a good idea to target areas where they haven't been beaten to death, right?
00:07:13
Speaker
If you know a certain neighborhood, it's right off the freeway.
00:07:17
Speaker
Looks like it's very convenient.
00:07:19
Speaker
Guess what?
00:07:20
Speaker
It's also very convenient for every single other company in your city.
00:07:24
Speaker
So consider going places where it's not convenient.
00:07:29
Speaker
No one likes to drive two hours to some random town that has one stoplight.
00:07:33
Speaker
But if that's the case, do you think it's been hit up as much?
00:07:36
Speaker
Probably not.
00:07:37
Speaker
So consider going to those areas where they haven't been beaten to death.
00:07:41
Speaker
And then number three, consider what time of day you are knocking.
00:07:45
Speaker
If you are knocking maybe more a middle class area, blue collar, it's likely that people aren't going to be home until four or five o'clock, right?
00:07:54
Speaker
Because they're all working.
00:07:56
Speaker
So maybe during the earlier hours, you're targeting people that are more likely to be home.
00:08:02
Speaker
Maybe white collar people that possibly work from home can talk to you.
00:08:06
Speaker
Maybe retired communities, maybe mobile homes.
00:08:09
Speaker
If you can do those, if you have an installer that does those, people are home, right?
00:08:13
Speaker
And we'll talk more about that in a
Introduction to Solar Scout
00:08:15
Speaker
minute.
00:08:15
Speaker
So some of you already know that I run my own door to door sales team here in San Diego.
00:08:20
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.
00:08:27
Speaker
But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
00:08:31
Speaker
Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout, but it's not a door knocking app.
00:08:36
Speaker
It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market.
00:08:40
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 neighborhood.
00:08:50
Speaker
It's been working for a lot of teams across the country, and now I'm on board too.
00:08:54
Speaker
I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up.
00:08:58
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.
00:09:04
Speaker
And they did.
00:09:05
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.
00:09:14
Speaker
That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
00:09:18
Speaker
Okay, back to the show.
00:09:21
Speaker
But just be conscious of the time of day because I see it time after time where I send reps out to an area.
00:09:28
Speaker
They talk to very few people just because they're going, they're burning through it.
00:09:31
Speaker
It's early afternoon.
00:09:33
Speaker
No one's home.
00:09:33
Speaker
No one's answering the door.
00:09:35
Speaker
So be conscious of the demographic and what time of day you are knocking.
00:09:39
Speaker
Okay.
Targeting Specific Homes and Using Testimonials
00:09:40
Speaker
And then here's the second portion of this.
00:09:43
Speaker
Once you find an area, what do you do?
00:09:45
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:45
Speaker
So you pick down an area, maybe you have a knocking app.
00:09:48
Speaker
or maybe you're just getting assigned areas.
00:09:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:52
Speaker
Which in that case, if you're with a company that's assigning areas, then
00:09:56
Speaker
you're going to have a little bit less control over, you know, the demographics and where you're going.
00:10:00
Speaker
Okay, but once you get assigned an area, once you're in an area, once you pick an area, here's the process that I follow that I think is giving me a lot more tools to have success.
00:10:11
Speaker
Okay, and that is you go through, mark the homes that have solar, and very first thing, your first day knocking the area, go to someone that has solar,
00:10:21
Speaker
Get a positive experience, get a testimonial from that person if you can.
00:10:27
Speaker
And I mentioned in a podcast I did recently, this actually helped me get a deal right off the bat, starting a new area.
00:10:35
Speaker
And that's the power of going and getting a testimonial from someone in that area that has solarity.
00:10:42
Speaker
And you can go listen to that podcast.
00:10:44
Speaker
We can link it.
00:10:45
Speaker
I think it was like, I don't know, five, six, seven episodes ago.
00:10:49
Speaker
But this was an area that there was very few people that had solar.
00:10:52
Speaker
And so even more important, if you're in a city or town or area where there's not much solar, you need to go talk to the people that have it because you're going to face a lot more resistance.
00:11:02
Speaker
People are going to be skeptical.
00:11:04
Speaker
People haven't been hit up as much or heard about solar.
00:11:08
Speaker
They're going to want some social proof that it's legit.
00:11:11
Speaker
Right.
00:11:12
Speaker
because this is a new thing for them.
00:11:13
Speaker
So even more important, even more important if there's not a lot of solar in your particular area.
00:11:18
Speaker
Yes, that's step number one.
00:11:20
Speaker
Talk to them first.
00:11:21
Speaker
And then the second thing, here's where you can get super dialed.
00:11:24
Speaker
And I like to call it almost sniper knocking is you can take this to another level by going and marking off all the homes that will number one, have solar.
00:11:34
Speaker
But then from there, you can mark all the homes that have a pool that have electric vehicles.
00:11:40
Speaker
Maybe they have shops in the back.
00:11:42
Speaker
Maybe you're knocking in Texas or I did a blitz in Idaho.
00:11:46
Speaker
So many of these homes have shops and stuff in the back because that's all signs that they're sucking a lot of power.
00:11:52
Speaker
It's going to be bigger systems.
00:11:53
Speaker
People probably want to save money more.
00:11:56
Speaker
So go mark off all those homes.
00:11:58
Speaker
And then the other thing, as I mentioned earlier, if you can mark off all the people that are above the age of 65, because you know,
00:12:08
Speaker
These people are more likely to be home during the afternoon because they're probably retired.
00:12:11
Speaker
And you might be asking, is there an easy way to do this?
00:12:16
Speaker
Seems like a lot of work to put in all the time.
00:12:18
Speaker
So here's a couple of tips with that.
00:12:20
Speaker
I would not spend hours and hours doing all this.
00:12:24
Speaker
At some point, you just got to get out there and knock the door.
00:12:27
Speaker
So rather than you taking the time to do all this,
00:12:30
Speaker
I would first consider getting, I don't know, a VA assistant, virtual assistant, someone that can just mark all this for you and hopefully using some type of knocking app, something that makes it easy.
00:12:42
Speaker
But the second thing is the easiest way to do this is by taking advantage of a software called SolarScout, which you probably have heard of if you've been a listener of the podcast.
00:12:54
Speaker
because they're one of our sponsors.
00:12:56
Speaker
But SolarScout is the easiest way to get all this data.
Refining Target Areas with Solar Scout Data
00:13:00
Speaker
You can have it.
00:13:02
Speaker
You can literally mark a filter, have it show you all the homes with electric vehicles, the pools.
00:13:07
Speaker
You can have it.
00:13:08
Speaker
You can click on the home.
00:13:09
Speaker
It'll show you the age of the homeowners there.
00:13:12
Speaker
So just insane.
00:13:13
Speaker
It makes it so much easier for you to go and target these homes and for you to have access to this data.
00:13:19
Speaker
So if you aren't using a software or a tool like SolarScout, then I believe there are some of the other knocking apps show, you know, a limited amount of data.
00:13:30
Speaker
But very, very least you can go and, you know, look at the satellite images of the ones with the pools and ones that maybe look like they're sucking more power.
00:13:41
Speaker
if they have shops or things like that in the back, say.
00:13:43
Speaker
So at the very least, do that.
00:13:45
Speaker
But I would definitely recommend go invest in a tool like SolarScout, which I think SolarScout is really the only one that has this amount of data.
00:13:55
Speaker
And it's just going to make it so much easier instead of taking the shotgun approach.
00:14:00
Speaker
take the sniper approach.
00:14:01
Speaker
Okay, do that you're going to have more conversations, because you're not going to be spinning your wheels during the day when nobody's home.
00:14:07
Speaker
But you can go to the people that are most likely to be home.
00:14:11
Speaker
And then bonus, you got the new move ins.
00:14:14
Speaker
Don't count them out.
00:14:15
Speaker
Solar Scout lets you target the new move ins.
00:14:18
Speaker
If you're not using Solar Scout, you can simply get on a Zillow or a Redfin.
00:14:23
Speaker
But what's even cooler about a tool like Solar Scout is you can now overlap the filters, right?
00:14:29
Speaker
So you can target not only it's a new move in,
00:14:33
Speaker
But now you can see, are they a new move in from out of state?
00:14:36
Speaker
Are they a new move in this over the age of 65?
00:14:39
Speaker
And these, they did some, I think, studying of that data.
00:14:45
Speaker
And they found that the people that have moved in from out of state above the age of 65, they're the most likely lay down cells.
00:14:53
Speaker
Because if they move at that age, it's probably going to be their forever home.
00:14:57
Speaker
right?
00:14:57
Speaker
They're not going to bring up the moving objection.
00:14:59
Speaker
And it's likely that they haven't heard about solar in that market if they move from out of state.
00:15:04
Speaker
So that's the power of a tool like SolarScout.
00:15:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:15:08
Speaker
And this wasn't meant to be an episode promoting SolarScout, but I just love the tool so much.
00:15:13
Speaker
So I had to put an old plug for them.
00:15:15
Speaker
Okay.
00:15:16
Speaker
But really, that's the steps I would follow when you're trying to find a new
Summary and Adaptability in Sales Strategies
00:15:21
Speaker
area.
00:15:21
Speaker
So just to recap one more time, figure out the demographic and income level you like.
00:15:27
Speaker
Consider doing the off the beaten path knocking and then make sure you're conscious of the time of day that you were knocking the homes.
00:15:35
Speaker
Then once you pick an area, go to talk to someone, go talk to people that have solar first and then targets.
00:15:42
Speaker
Okay, do the sniper approach and mark off the homes that have, you know, the pools and all the other ones you want.
00:15:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:15:50
Speaker
And
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah, make sure you put the time in, get the conversations in.
00:15:56
Speaker
Sometimes, sometimes I get out there and I don't do any of this.
00:15:59
Speaker
So it's not to say you should be super picky about every door you're knocking all the time.
00:16:04
Speaker
Sometimes I am just going to knock every single door.
00:16:07
Speaker
If it's a street where it looks like tons of people are home, then sometimes I'll just go off and knock that entire street.
00:16:14
Speaker
and throw all this out the window.
00:16:16
Speaker
But especially during times where less people are home, I definitely prefer more of a sniper approach.
00:16:23
Speaker
Okay, so I hope that helps.
00:16:25
Speaker
And thanks again, Darren Todd McCravey.
00:16:28
Speaker
Hopefully I'm saying your name right for the question.
00:16:31
Speaker
Hopefully this helps you be a little more effective as you are choosing areas and as you are knocking your areas.
00:16:37
Speaker
And please, if you have not already, leave us a review for the podcast, share the show.
00:16:43
Speaker
And if you have questions you want answered, just like Darren did, or you have suggestions for guests or topics, would love to hear them.
00:16:51
Speaker
So hit me up.
00:16:52
Speaker
Okay, happy knocking this week.
00:16:55
Speaker
Happy selling.
00:16:56
Speaker
Go crush a lot of deals and we'll see you on the next episode.
Top Podcast Episodes Cheat Sheet Announcement
00:17:00
Speaker
What's up, solopreneurs?
00:17:01
Speaker
Hope you enjoyed the episode.
00:17:03
Speaker
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.
00:17:13
Speaker
One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start?
00:17:20
Speaker
What episodes should I listen to in the podcast?
00:17:23
Speaker
You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
00:17:28
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 Solrepreneur.
00:17:41
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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.
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So go download it right now.
00:17:52
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It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com.
00:17:55
Speaker
Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com.
00:18:01
Speaker
Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs.
00:18:03
Speaker
We will have that in the show notes.
00:18:05
Speaker
Go download it right now.
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And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them.
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That's going to show you how.
00:18:13
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So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.