Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail.
Speaker: I teach you how to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
Speaker: What is a solopreneur, you might ask?
Speaker: A solopreneur is a new breed of solopro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery, and you are about to become one.
Speaker: Hey, what's up, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Today, we're going to be going through some live recruiting footage
Speaker: with my latest server at a restaurant, okay, Cheesecake Factory, and just point out a couple lessons learned from it.
Speaker: So welcome to the show.
Speaker: We're here to help you improve your recruiting game in this case, but also sell more solar, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: My name's Taylor Armstrong, and
Speaker: And we are free and available on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, coming at you every Tuesday and Friday.
Speaker: Hopefully you can tune in every new episode we have dropping.
Speaker: And wanted to give a quick thank you to our sponsors.
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Speaker: Allows you to see the expired permits in an area, people that maybe their company went out of business with solar.
Speaker: They were just doing monkey business for whatever reason, didn't go through with their solar.
Speaker: You can then target those people.
Speaker: And then they just recently came out with something that is just taking it even to another level.
Speaker: And that is people that have clicked on a solar ad at some point.
Speaker: Don't ask me how they get this type of data.
Speaker: I think it's some type of like witchcraft or wizardry.
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Speaker: Literally roll up to these people that have clicked on solar ads and knock their doors.
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Speaker: Go ahead, click the link in the show notes of the podcast and you're going to get a 15% discount if you want to try these guys out.
Speaker: But today we're going to be talking about the game of recruiting.
Speaker: And this is something that is a focus for me this year, specifically recruiting, because I am trying to build my team here in San Diego.
Speaker: I am trying to further develop as a leader.
Speaker: You guys know I talk about the latest tips and tricks to selling, but something that I feel like I have not experienced.
Speaker: mastered to near the level that I've focused on sales in my career is just building teams, recruiting.
Speaker: And it's a big focus for me this year, which speaking of, if you want to join a bad to the bone team, hit me up.
Speaker: We've got a few spots available.
Speaker: But you're going to hear some live footage from last Friday.
Speaker: We went to Cheesecake Factory and it's my goal every time to
Speaker: Like they say, if you recruit everywhere you go, you never have to go anywhere to recruit.
Speaker: So I think anyone insular should be trying to build a team.
Speaker: Now, I know there's some people that like being the lone wolf that are like, I recruited all these years.
Speaker: I'm sick of it.
Speaker: I just think there's so much growth that comes when you're recruiting.
Speaker: It forces you to sell more.
Speaker: It forces you to develop as a leader, forces you to think more like a business owner because you have to develop systems to actually take care of those recruits.
Speaker: And so that's what fascinates me about recruiting.
Speaker: And hopefully, hopefully it fascinates you too.
Speaker: Okay, so I'm going to play part of this clip.
Speaker: from the little recruiting chat I had.
Speaker: And then I'm gonna break down a couple things.
Speaker: Hopefully there's some takeaways, some things that you all can apply from this recording.
Speaker: And as always, we're using Ciro, which is the easiest way to get great recordings for your team for whatever you're doing in sales.
Speaker: So definitely check them out too.
Speaker: Okay, but let's play a little chunk of this recording.
Speaker: And apologize in advance.
Speaker: There's a lot of people talking at Cheesecake Factory.
Speaker: Everyone loves their cheesecake.
Speaker: So it's not the greatest sound quality, but hopefully you can get the gist of what's going on here.
Speaker: How long have you been working right now?
Speaker: A year and four months.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Good service.
Speaker: You take the service.
Speaker: Oh, I can.
Speaker: You always been at Mike's restaurants and shoppers.
Speaker: Yeah, it's not my cooler, but I'm at S.C.U.
Speaker: and also.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You live down there, Deer?
Speaker: I live in Deer, Minnesota, so it's like halfway up.
Speaker: It's not bad.
Speaker: It's not bad.
Speaker: It's mostly kind of riding motorcycle anyway, so traffic doesn't really matter.
Speaker: You like the job part of it?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: I mean, she tastes really good.
Speaker: I've worked for a couple different restaurants.
Speaker: I'm involved in garbage.
Speaker: She tastes really good.
Speaker: She's a really good restaurant.
Speaker: Yeah, so I do, we have a bunch of guys that came from like, I do solar panels.
Speaker: My brother used to clean solar panels.
Speaker: Okay, so you can hear again, I know it's kind of muffled, not the greatest quality here, but hopefully you can hear what's going on.
Speaker: Just making small talk, you know, and probably should have been making some small talk throughout the night.
Speaker: Something I'm trying to get better at is a lot of times I'll be at these restaurants and I'll think at the end, oh, this guy's sharp.
Speaker: I should try having a recruiting conversation.
Speaker: And then at the very end, very last second, I have the conversation.
Speaker: I think if I were the server at this restaurant and just putting myself in their shoes, if a guy hasn't really talked to me the whole night and then at the end he starts trying to drum up a conversation.
Speaker: For me, I would definitely sniff out like, OK, this guy's trying to recruit me to do something.
Speaker: I've ran into a lot of network marketing people, a lot of MLMers.
Speaker: that's usually how it goes.
Speaker: So what probably would have been better is if I try to have the conversation throughout the course of the night and not just try to drum it up at the very end.
Speaker: Because I think it could be a little more, you know, maybe organic, a little more natural.
Speaker: If we're friends before the end of the night, right?
Speaker: So a little mistake I made, but let's see what happens next.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, we got a bunch of guys that care for Mike's server jobs like this now.
Speaker: They do really good because we do kind of like explain people on this.
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
Speaker: Yeah, you gotta be able to talk and stuff like this.
Speaker: It's kind of a customer service.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like pretty much the same thing.
Speaker: So it's just going to be like that.
Speaker: Are you selling solar?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm selling it.
Speaker: How do you like that?
Speaker: Yeah, it's good.
Speaker: It's cool because there's like French programs where there's incentives for it so they don't have to pay anything.
Speaker: So people can get solar and they're not like an out-of-pocket cost.
Speaker: It's like reduced to their cost.
Speaker: Okay, so you notice what I'm doing here is I'm trying to get them bought in on the idea of solar.
Speaker: One of the most effective ways to get people excited about solar is instead of just recruiting them to the money, the job, get them excited about the product, what we're actually doing.
Speaker: Because most people...
Speaker: especially in markets where solar isn't as common.
Speaker: Most people have very little knowledge of solar.
Speaker: They probably think it's something you're like going out and charging customers $50,000 for.
Speaker: There's no like finance options.
Speaker: They have to pay a lot of money out of pocket.
Speaker: These people don't know.
Speaker: So we need to make sure they are getting educated on why solar is so awesome.
Speaker: So that's what I was attempting to do there.
Speaker: But another mistake I made is this is just something that I'm not as comfortable with.
Speaker: You can probably hear.
Speaker: So just like we have a presentation in solar,
Speaker: My mistake is I don't have I don't really have a set presentation for recruiting.
Speaker: OK, so something I need to practice personally is I need to have an exact script.
Speaker: What am I going to say?
Speaker: I need to not like overthink it.
Speaker: Just follow the script.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then, yeah, that would just be a lot more effective than winging it, which is basically what I'm doing right now.
Speaker: I have a way I'm trying to present it, organize it in my head, but you can tell it's just not, we don't practice these things.
Speaker: And I think that's a big mistake.
Speaker: If we want to get good at recruiting,
Speaker: Then we need to be having multiple conversations.
Speaker: We need to practice the actual recruiting presentation, not just wing it.
Speaker: So there's another mistake I made.
Speaker: Most people aren't doing that, but it would be much more effective if I knew word for word exactly what I'm saying.
Speaker: The same way we know exactly what we're going to say at the door.
Speaker: Let's see what happens.
Speaker: Otherwise, I wouldn't do sales because it's easy money.
Speaker: I appreciate it.
Speaker: I appreciate it.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: So our company, they do like these opportunities.
Speaker: Are you open to more like work opportunities at all right now?
Speaker: Anything?
Speaker: Yeah, I can give you one.
Speaker: These opportunity calls where they just like go and explain to people and tell them about like what we do or whatever.
Speaker: And then you kind of see if it hurts your interest or whatever.
Speaker: Let's get you in.
Speaker: My name's Taylor.
Speaker: What's your name?
Speaker: Yep, so here what I'm doing, I'm inviting them to the next little baby step.
Speaker: which our company right now, they do these opportunity calls.
Speaker: And definitely if you're at a big organization, if you're managing a big team, if you've already got lots of leads for recruits, I think it's definitely advantageous to set up something like that.
Speaker: We do opportunity calls, right?
Speaker: And it's essentially like a group interview.
Speaker: Okay, you're getting in, you're telling people about the job opportunity.
Speaker: Because if you're trying to grow at scale, right?
Speaker: It's going to be very hard to do if you're doing like individual interviews with dozens and dozens of people.
Speaker: And so what we've done every Wednesday and Saturday, we do an opportunity call where potential recruits, people interested in the opportunity can come.
Speaker: They can hear about the opportunity.
Speaker: They can get their questions answered.
Speaker: and just basically see if it's a good fit for them.
Speaker: And then if it is, we funnel them to an interview after.
Speaker: And so definitely you need to have some type of system in place and some type of next step.
Speaker: And if you're not doing that,
Speaker: What I've done in the past is just like, hey, I can't promise you a job, but if I can get you an interview, would you at least would you show up to it?
Speaker: OK, you might have been doing an interview.
Speaker: But if you are trying to grow a skill, definitely a smart idea to have something like that, something like a opportunity call or a group interview.
Speaker: And we do these, they're Zoom calls, right?
Speaker: So people don't have to show up.
Speaker: In my previous company, I was doing actual group interviews where we'd invite people in.
Speaker: You could do something like this, a Zoom call, but really smart to set up some type of system.
Speaker: Okay, and then I think that's almost it.
Speaker: Yeah, so that's basically the whole call.
Speaker: Just invited them to the opportunity call.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: And so takeaways from that, just invite them to the next small step, whether it's an interview, whether it's a meeting, whether it's an opportunity call.
Speaker: And then the other two mistakes that I make over and over and over is you got to be organized with this stuff.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so right after I talked, had these conversations, which actually had three recruiting conversations that day earlier than that, I was on the doors and ran into a college kid.
Speaker: He was on his way to work in and out, seemed like a sharp kid, invited him to check out the job, invited him to an opportunity call.
Speaker: So the two things I do 100 percent of the time right after that is number one,
Speaker: I get their social media, their Instagram, because I want them to follow me and I want them to see the lifestyle that we're about.
Speaker: They don't get that if you just give them your phone number.
Speaker: And number two, I also get their phone number.
Speaker: And the reason I get both is because I actually did this.
Speaker: I tried to recruit a Uber driver three, four months back.
Speaker: I added him on Instagram, followed him.
Speaker: I shot him a DM, but I realized that he had his Instagram set to private, so he didn't even see my message, never got a response, never could follow up with him because he has to approve my message and wasn't that active, so I never got approved.
Speaker: Maybe that was his way of just ghosting me, right?
Speaker: But...
Speaker: So now I get phone number, I get Instagram and adding them on both, shooting them a text, they have my number.
Speaker: And then you just got to remember to follow up after that.
Speaker: So whatever you invited them to, whether it's interview, whether it's opportunity call, group interview, meeting, make sure you set a reminder to remind them.
Speaker: So that's the second thing I did.
Speaker: I added them, added the phone number.
Speaker: And then right after I left the restaurant, I
Speaker: I said, hey, Siri, remind me to do this.
Speaker: Got my Siri going off right now as I'm saying this.
Speaker: But I set an automatic reminder for the day before the opportunity call, the evening before.
Speaker: And now I know I'm going to follow up.
Speaker: I'm going to shoot them the text the night before and hopefully get them on the call.
Speaker: That's the idea.
Speaker: And you need multiple reminders.
Speaker: Ideally, you automate a lot of this.
Speaker: And that's step number three is actually following up.
Speaker: Okay, so putting them in a spreadsheet.
Speaker: If you're keeping it simple, put them in a spreadsheet, just do the reminder.
Speaker: If you want to take it to another level, you can have an actual CRM.
Speaker: I'm using Go High Level right now, where it has all the automations you can set up in place.
Speaker: You can, you know, do the automatic follow up if they didn't show up to the call.
Speaker: Same thing you do with your customers.
Speaker: So that's like another level.
Speaker: And I'm not doing that right now currently with recruits.
Speaker: But
Speaker: I think you can keep it simple, just create a basic spreadsheet.
Speaker: And this is something I got from my guy, Mike Brand, one of our most popular episodes.
Speaker: If you haven't listened to Mike Brand, this guy, he has recruited armies and armies of people.
Speaker: And he just created a simple spreadsheet that has five or six tabs on
Speaker: Maybe it's seven or eight.
Speaker: You're looking at it right now.
Speaker: But it has a pool brainstorm tab.
Speaker: And he just puts all the people that he can brainstorm that could be potential recruits.
Speaker: It has an invited to opportunity call tab where he puts all the people he invited to the call.
Speaker: It has a follow up with the setup appointments he has with these people.
Speaker: Has a spoken to tab.
Speaker: And then after that, has a follow up daily, follow up weekly.
Speaker: follow up monthly, follow up quarterly and signed.
Speaker: So that was probably like 10 different tabs.
Speaker: OK, but yeah, and then that's how he stays organized with it.
Speaker: That's something I've been trying to utilize, just keeping it simple, but you can get in there.
Speaker: Check it every week and just see, okay, who are the people I need to follow up with?
Speaker: What are the conversations I need to have?
Speaker: Because the higher quality of the recruit, the longer it's going to take probably to get them in and the more follow-ups it's going to take.
Speaker: So if you want to get the heavy hitters, if you were trying to actually get quality people,
Speaker: people that you know for sure would be good at sales, you're probably gonna have to follow up with them a lot.
Speaker: You're gonna have to have multiple conversations.
Speaker: And that's why, to be honest, I haven't gotten many of those people because my follow up has been trash.
Speaker: If I can't get them one time, then I am not the greatest at following up in the future.
Speaker: So make sure you master these steps.
Speaker: Again,
Speaker: Number one, invite them to the next small step, whether it's opportunity call, whether it's group interview, whether it's in-person interview, set a reminder to remind them.
Speaker: And then number three, follow up and set up a system.
Speaker: Use a CRM or a spreadsheet to keep track of all your recruiting leads because you got to treat these like a solar cell.
Speaker: You got to treat it the same way.
Speaker: This is almost like a separate business.
Speaker: You need to treat it as such if you want to actually grow.
Speaker: So these are things I'm personally working on.
Speaker: Hopefully that gets you thinking about how you can be a better recruiter in solar and gets you a little bit more motivated to recruit.
Speaker: Because again, I think is a great way to grow yourself.
Speaker: A great way to become a better leader is if you can show other people the process.
Speaker: So I hope that helps send this to someone that is trying to work on their recruiting game.
Speaker: And let me know if you guys like content like this.
Speaker: If you like learning about recruiting, if you want it more sales focused, if you want it more follow up focused, systems focused, always curious to know what people are thinking.
Speaker: So with that being said, thank you for tuning in today.
Speaker: Go check out our sponsor Solar Scout if you haven't already.
Speaker: And please leave us a review, share the episode, and we will see you on the next one.
Speaker: Peace out.
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?
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Speaker: We'll see you on the inside.
