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How To Gift Your Customers Without Lifting A Finger
77 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 and Sales Journey
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 fell.
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 solarpreneur, you might ask?
00:00:33
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.
The Secret to Standing Out in Solar Sales
00:00:41
Speaker
Hey, what's up, solarpreneurs?
00:00:42
Speaker
Taylor Armstrong here, and today we are going to be talking about a secret gifting process that you can fully automate to send all your customers and help set you apart from every other solar rep in the whole world, if you actually implement it.
00:00:59
Speaker
So we're going to be jamming on that and a whole lot more.
00:01:00
Speaker
Welcome to the podcast.
00:01:02
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.
00:01:10
Speaker
We are free and available on iTunes, Apple, Spotify, wherever you can listen to podcasts.
00:01:16
Speaker
And we are coming at you every Tuesday and Friday and
00:01:19
Speaker
Thank you for being a loyal listener, or if this is your first time, welcome to the show, and you are about to have your mind blown with the content here.
00:01:28
Speaker
So make sure to tune in every Tuesday and Friday.
Personal Update and System Improvements
00:01:32
Speaker
And so recently, some of you may know, actually just welcomed our third kid into the world.
00:01:40
Speaker
So thanks in advance, all of you, congratulations and all that.
00:01:43
Speaker
I'm pretty stressed.
00:01:44
Speaker
I could barely handle two kids.
00:01:45
Speaker
So we have a third one was just born last week.
00:01:49
Speaker
And last week, it got kind of chaotic because I couldn't necessarily go out and knock and sell just because.
00:01:59
Speaker
My wife was supposed to have a baby any day.
00:02:02
Speaker
So I had to kind of like stay close by, couldn't really go to appointments.
00:02:07
Speaker
And as a high producer and someone that's always wants to be moving forward, it can be tough to just like chill out for a second.
00:02:15
Speaker
So I took advantage of this time where I was kind of just sitting around waiting for this baby to come to work on some back end stuff and to improve my systems and processes a little bit.
Investing in Customers
00:02:29
Speaker
And something I struggle with, I'm fascinated with learning how to be more efficient, how to set up better systems.
00:02:36
Speaker
But I struggle with organization.
00:02:39
Speaker
I am definitely ADD, very disorganized at times.
00:02:44
Speaker
And so I use this time to just improve my process a little bit.
00:02:50
Speaker
And I figured out a cool little gifting process, an improvement I made on a gifting process that I've been using off and on for a while now.
00:02:59
Speaker
And I think those of you, especially if you are looking for a way to stand out from other competitors,
00:03:07
Speaker
especially if you do like the idea of giving gifts to your customers, I think you're going to love this.
00:03:12
Speaker
And I already shared this with some of our coaching clients in our program.
00:03:16
Speaker
And if you are interested in getting more coaching on some of these things and help with the implementation part, that's what it's for.
00:03:24
Speaker
The podcast, we're going to share with you all the information.
00:03:27
Speaker
Information is free.
00:03:29
Speaker
But if you need help implementing, that's where I think our coaching program takes it to another level because we help you actually apply step-by-step the stuff that we discuss on the podcast.
00:03:42
Speaker
And it's all the hand-holding, it's all the help, and it really speeds up the process of implementing and improving on the things you hear on the podcast.
00:03:51
Speaker
But you can set this up yourself, and I'm going to walk you through step-by-step
00:03:57
Speaker
And hopefully, whether you follow my exact process or not, I'm sure there's even better ways out there.
00:04:04
Speaker
But hopefully you do give back to your customers.
00:04:07
Speaker
And I think that's a little pre-step, step zero, right?
00:04:11
Speaker
Is we all should be investing a portion of our commissions back into our clients, back into our customers.
00:04:19
Speaker
You think of most other industries, other sales industries, especially like bigger sales, bigger commissions, right?
00:04:26
Speaker
like we enjoy in solar, most of the time they're gifting their customers, right?
00:04:31
Speaker
I have a buddy who recently bought a house.
00:04:35
Speaker
As he bought his house, he had like a huge gift basket from his real estate agent.
00:04:40
Speaker
And I think it's just much more common.
00:04:42
Speaker
And I don't know why we don't do it more in solar because I think it's
00:04:47
Speaker
sets you apart, number one, but number two, it's going to help you get more referrals.
00:04:51
Speaker
So I love gifting my customers.
00:04:54
Speaker
And just on top of that, not even your customers, like you can gift people, maybe leads, prospects, right?
00:05:04
Speaker
Ashton Buswell, one of my friends down here, many of you know Ashton, one of the goats of solar, but he told us a story.
00:05:12
Speaker
He sent us this message in our group app, our little group me.
00:05:18
Speaker
He sent a prospect he couldn't close, and he found out they were huge Lakers fans.
00:05:26
Speaker
So he sent them a custom Lakers oven mitt from Amazon, even though he didn't close them.
00:05:33
Speaker
And then sure enough, today I look at our notifications in the group, in the group me in.
00:05:38
Speaker
He had a picture of him closing that deal with those same people because he set himself apart.
00:05:44
Speaker
He followed up.
00:05:45
Speaker
So that's the power of this stuff.
00:05:47
Speaker
I'd highly recommend...
Using Sendout Cards for Personalization
00:05:49
Speaker
You just think outside the box and think of ways to incentivize, think of ways to gift your customers, follow up, creative ways like that.
00:05:57
Speaker
It's going to help you make more money this year.
00:06:00
Speaker
All right, so let's get into the step-by-step process that I...
00:06:06
Speaker
I won't say I came up with, but I've tweaked over the years for my customers.
00:06:11
Speaker
And so if you've been a longtime listener of the podcast, you may have heard that I used to use a service software called Sendout Cards, which is still a great...
00:06:21
Speaker
great software, great service.
00:06:23
Speaker
Basically what it allows you to do is you go in there, you log in, create an account, and it allows you to send cards that you can make it appear handwritten.
00:06:33
Speaker
You can pick like a handwritten font and lets you send gifts with those cards.
00:06:39
Speaker
So my process for a very long time is I would take a picture with my customer.
00:06:46
Speaker
I would send it to my virtual assistant along with the address.
00:06:51
Speaker
And I would send her the message that I wanted in that card.
00:06:54
Speaker
She would send it out.
00:06:56
Speaker
And it was great.
00:06:57
Speaker
Customers would get a little pack of brownies.
00:06:59
Speaker
They get the card.
00:07:00
Speaker
They get the photo on it.
00:07:03
Speaker
Send out cards.
00:07:04
Speaker
Did the job.
00:07:05
Speaker
People thanked me.
00:07:06
Speaker
Got referrals for it.
00:07:08
Speaker
And I stopped using it for a while.
00:07:11
Speaker
partly because I tried some new gifts out.
00:07:14
Speaker
I bought some Cutco knives, been giving those out for a while too.
00:07:19
Speaker
And so it just became kind of a lot.
00:07:20
Speaker
I had to like worry about going back, giving people a Cutco knife and just like remembering it was great.
00:07:27
Speaker
Sort of, even though I had a virtual assistant that's helping, it kind of became a few extra steps that I had to remember to send out the photo I took with the customer, send out exactly what gift I wanted, and send out
Automating Gifting with Zen Direct
00:07:42
Speaker
the message.
00:07:42
Speaker
So it was a few extra steps.
00:07:44
Speaker
So here's the tweak I made to this.
00:07:47
Speaker
I found a service and we will link all these in the show notes.
00:07:51
Speaker
So don't worry if you can't remember.
00:07:52
Speaker
I know I wouldn't.
00:07:54
Speaker
The service I found is called Zen Direct.
00:08:02
Speaker
And what's so cool about this is it actually allows you to integrate with your CRM with wherever you're storing your customers and it'll automatically send over the information and allow you to actually automate the process.
00:08:17
Speaker
which is really cool because the other ones send out cards.
00:08:20
Speaker
You had to follow these extra steps to do it.
00:08:23
Speaker
Right.
00:08:23
Speaker
And so I'll walk you through the process.
00:08:26
Speaker
And I haven't fully automated it.
00:08:28
Speaker
You'll understand why in a second.
00:08:30
Speaker
But you can technically fully automate it to where you just have your customer in whatever CRM you're using.
00:08:37
Speaker
And then you hit send.
00:08:38
Speaker
It'll automatically send out a gift of your choice in there.
00:08:41
Speaker
So here's what I'm doing currently.
00:08:43
Speaker
Step number one is you need to pick a CRM.
00:08:46
Speaker
If you're not using a CRM, that's Customer Relationship Manager, I believe is what it stands for.
00:08:52
Speaker
And currently I'm using one called CRMX.
00:08:55
Speaker
I will link to that in the show notes.
00:08:57
Speaker
And disclaimer, if you want to support the show, I do make a small commission if you decide to purchase or use any of these tools that I'm using with the links.
00:09:07
Speaker
So it'd be much appreciated if you want to click the links.
00:09:10
Speaker
It helps support the show.
00:09:12
Speaker
But I use CRMX.
00:09:14
Speaker
And it is my friend Brent Attaway.
00:09:18
Speaker
He's been on the show.
00:09:20
Speaker
He spoke at my referral boot camp.
00:09:22
Speaker
But part of this came from him too.
00:09:24
Speaker
He's really good at setting these up.
00:09:25
Speaker
And so once you have a CRM, whatever you're using, I think pretty much... There's a lot of different CRMs out there.
00:09:33
Speaker
High level is really the backbone of the one I use.
00:09:35
Speaker
Some of you've heard of go high level.
00:09:38
Speaker
So this CRMX is Brant Attaway's customization of go high level.
00:09:45
Speaker
So if you're using go high level works with whatever form you're using it.
00:09:49
Speaker
Hey, but there's a lot of different CRMs out there.
00:09:53
Speaker
There's ClickUp, there's Monday.com, there's PipeDrive I was using for a little bit.
00:09:58
Speaker
There's all sorts of these different CRMs.
00:10:01
Speaker
And it should work with basically all of them because what you do, and this is step number two, is assuming you're entering your customers in your CRM, like you all should be doing, because no point in having a CRM if you're not actually putting your customers in there.
00:10:18
Speaker
But once you put it in there, you use another tool called Zapier.
00:10:21
Speaker
We will link to that as well.
00:10:24
Speaker
But Zapier, what it does, it allows you to basically integrate to link these tools together, link softwares together.
00:10:32
Speaker
And so what's really cool is you enter your customer and you set up Zapier and you can YouTube this stuff.
00:10:39
Speaker
It's not super hard, but you set up a Zapier to say, hey, once I enter in my customer data,
00:10:45
Speaker
And once I move it to my customer pipeline, that is you've actually signed them and they're in the process to get installed.
00:10:53
Speaker
You say, take this data, take the name, the address, phone number, whatever, and send it to the other software, which is Zendirect.
00:11:04
Speaker
And then this is how you actually automate it.
00:11:07
Speaker
So now you put the customer, you add it in your pipeline, get sent to Zendirect.
00:11:13
Speaker
And then from there, you can technically automate it to where it just will like send out a gift.
00:11:20
Speaker
Hey, you could say, hey, every time it gets put in this customer pipeline, send out this gift.
00:11:27
Speaker
And so here's the reason I did not fully automate it like that.
00:11:32
Speaker
Um, first of all, it's, um, you know, it's not like it's, you're paying a ton for these services.
00:11:38
Speaker
Hey, really?
00:11:38
Speaker
That's, what's cool.
00:11:39
Speaker
It's super affordable.
00:11:41
Speaker
Um, it's like 10, 15 bucks to send out card brownies and sends out in like two days.
00:11:47
Speaker
Hey, but, um, I didn't want to like, I guess, fully automate it, um, testing it a little, a little bit.
00:11:54
Speaker
Um, so that's part of it.
00:11:55
Speaker
But the second part is, um, as I mentioned before, I like to send actual photos with my customers.
00:12:02
Speaker
Many of you see me on social media.
00:12:04
Speaker
I'm posting photos, videos with customers.
00:12:07
Speaker
And so to my knowledge, there's not really a way to fully automate like sending a photo over to Zendirect from your CRM.
00:12:17
Speaker
And so you do have to take another step.
00:12:20
Speaker
You have to actually go in and you have the address, you have the customer data, but you do have to actually add the photo in the card if you want that in there.
00:12:31
Speaker
So that's the main reason I'm not fully automating it right now is because I do like to add that little personal touch of the card of the photo in the card.
00:12:39
Speaker
Right.
00:12:39
Speaker
But what I've done is we just set up a standard message, which I use.
00:12:46
Speaker
You can just use chat GPT, say, hey, make me a cool thank you card message to send to all my solar clients.
00:12:55
Speaker
And this goes in there.
00:12:57
Speaker
I will probably sometimes customize that a little bit.
00:13:00
Speaker
Hey, because, you know, there's power and making it a little bit heartfelt, right?
00:13:05
Speaker
It's not making the same standard message.
00:13:08
Speaker
But now all we need to do is I still have my virtual assistant, right?
00:13:12
Speaker
She'll go in there and customer will already be in there.
00:13:16
Speaker
She'll just paste the photo.
00:13:18
Speaker
She'll paste the the message in there.
00:13:21
Speaker
Click send should take less than 30 seconds.
00:13:25
Speaker
And a lot less work off my plate.
00:13:29
Speaker
I just now include the, you can add photos in your CRM.
00:13:33
Speaker
Most CRMs should have this too, is to add attachments.
00:13:36
Speaker
So now I just add the attachment of the photo in there.
00:13:40
Speaker
She copies and pastes it into Zendirect, which is the card sending software service and bada beam, bada boom, that's sent.
The Impact of Personalized Gifts on Sales
00:13:49
Speaker
Automatically, you're standing out to your customers.
00:13:52
Speaker
You're getting more referrals and I've just found it.
00:13:56
Speaker
a cool little, you know, extra touch, cool little cherry on top to do over the years.
00:14:00
Speaker
So if you like the idea of sending gifts, but you don't want to be just adding all this extra time, try this out.
00:14:06
Speaker
Okay, I'm testing it.
00:14:08
Speaker
I'm tweaking it, but I'm really liking the power of this.
00:14:12
Speaker
Just started using it last week, actually.
00:14:15
Speaker
And another cool thing is you can just set up campaigns in here.
00:14:19
Speaker
So I mentioned how Ashton Buswell, he did.
00:14:22
Speaker
He sent a gift and a card, or I think just a gift to one of his prospects, right?
00:14:27
Speaker
Well, I had a prospect, someone I met with recently.
00:14:31
Speaker
A week and a half ago, they were going into surgery.
00:14:34
Speaker
Couldn't get them to pull the trigger just because they didn't want to like deal with solar before their surgery.
00:14:39
Speaker
They liked it.
00:14:40
Speaker
And so what I did, I went in there, plugged in the address, sent them out a gift.
00:14:45
Speaker
There's a whole bunch of gifts, gift cards you can send from this Zendirect service.
00:14:50
Speaker
So I sent him a card.
00:14:51
Speaker
Hey, hope you get well soon.
00:14:52
Speaker
Send him a gift to go with it.
00:14:54
Speaker
And he should have it in the mail now.
00:14:56
Speaker
Hopefully hasn't told me yet, but should be in his mailbox any day now.
00:15:01
Speaker
Hey, and it's like, come on, who's doing that?
00:15:04
Speaker
Right.
00:15:04
Speaker
If he's going to go solar somebody, it's going to be the person who sent him like a get well soon card with a gift.
00:15:10
Speaker
Right.
00:15:10
Speaker
This is how you stand out.
00:15:13
Speaker
I guarantee someone knocks their door like doesn't matter.
00:15:16
Speaker
They're going to go with the person that's went above and beyond and was different for him and made him feel good.
00:15:22
Speaker
Right.
00:15:22
Speaker
They're going to go with someone who made them feel that emotion.
00:15:25
Speaker
So that's the power of this.
00:15:27
Speaker
So again, get a CRM.
00:15:29
Speaker
You can use a tool called Zapier to get these things to integrate together.
00:15:33
Speaker
And then Zen Direct.
00:15:35
Speaker
Click the link in the show notes.
00:15:37
Speaker
You're going to be able to like sign up.
00:15:40
Speaker
And all you do, you buy credits on this.
00:15:41
Speaker
You can have it by like 50 credits at a time.
00:15:44
Speaker
But 10, 15 bucks, you got a custom card and a pack of brownies, pack of cookies, whatever you want to send out to your customer.
00:15:53
Speaker
So let me know how it's working for you.
00:15:56
Speaker
Again, if you want help actually integrating this and you're sometimes overwhelmed by the technology, don't worry, I was too.
00:16:03
Speaker
And if I'm being honest, this actually took me like, I ran into some technical issues.
00:16:08
Speaker
I'm not the most tech savvy guy.
00:16:10
Speaker
So I know if I can figure it out, you can too.
00:16:13
Speaker
It took me probably a couple hours to get it working, but I'm like, yeah, I'm going to do something.
00:16:18
Speaker
I'm not out knocking doors.
00:16:19
Speaker
I'm waiting for a baby to come.
00:16:21
Speaker
And finally got it figured out.
00:16:22
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:22
Speaker
But if you want help with this and actually applying it step by step, we do have a few spots open for our coaching group.
00:16:30
Speaker
Hey, you can shoot me an email, taylor at solopreneurs.com or shoot me a DM on the socials.
00:16:37
Speaker
I've been catching up a little bit, new baby.
00:16:40
Speaker
So been a little bit behind.
00:16:42
Speaker
So I apologize if you have not gotten a response, but hit us up.
00:16:45
Speaker
We can potentially get you in the group.
00:16:48
Speaker
And wherever you're at, I hope you go above and beyond for your customers.
00:16:53
Speaker
And last thing, big thank you to our sponsors who are Solar Scouts.
00:17:00
Speaker
They are just speaking of going above and beyond.
00:17:03
Speaker
These guys are changing the game when it comes to customer data, when it comes to the data you can get on your prospects.
00:17:12
Speaker
Talked about it in previous episodes, but just insane the amount of data as far as like expired permits.
00:17:18
Speaker
people that have clicked on ads for solar where you can go and literally knock their door or someone that clicked on an ad yesterday.
00:17:26
Speaker
Just changing the game.
00:17:28
Speaker
And I've already gotten a deal from it.
00:17:30
Speaker
I've been using it like two weeks now.
00:17:32
Speaker
So highly recommend checking them out.
00:17:34
Speaker
They are also in the show notes.
00:17:36
Speaker
If you want to book a demo, they can show you what they got going on over there at SolarScout.com.
00:17:41
Speaker
And then last but not least, thank you to everyone who has left us a review, has shared the podcast.
00:17:46
Speaker
We are on YouTube.
00:17:48
Speaker
So go subscribe to us there if you want to see videos dropping.
00:17:52
Speaker
We're trying to grow the YouTube channel.
00:17:54
Speaker
And let me know if you have suggestions for guests, for topics you want covered.
00:17:59
Speaker
And please go leave us a review if you've not already.
00:18:03
Speaker
It means a lot.
00:18:05
Speaker
And that's how we grow the show.
00:18:07
Speaker
So thanks again.
00:18:07
Speaker
And we'll see you guys on the next episode.
00:18:10
Speaker
Keep crushing.
00:18:10
Speaker
Peace out.
00:18:12
Speaker
What's up, solopreneurs?
00:18:13
Speaker
Hope you enjoyed the episode.
00:18:15
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.
00:18:26
Speaker
One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start?
00:18:33
Speaker
What episodes should I listen to in the podcast?
00:18:36
Speaker
You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
00:18:40
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.
00:18:53
Speaker
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So you can go, you can hit the ground running, especially if you're new, you do not want to not have this sheet.
00:19:02
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So go download it right now.
00:19:04
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It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com.
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Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com.
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Speaker
Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs.
00:19:15
Speaker
We will have that in the show notes.
00:19:17
Speaker
Go download it right now.
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Speaker
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.
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Speaker
So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.