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: All right, what's going on, everybody?
Speaker: We are here with someone who is an expert on call centers, on age leads.
Speaker: We're going to be diving into all that stuff, the topic that I don't talk about very often.
Speaker: So we got the one, the only Peter Roth coming on the show.
Speaker: He runs SolarWise.
Speaker: Thanks for coming on the show with us today, Peter.
Speaker: Thank you for having me, man.
Speaker: It's been a long time.
Speaker: I know we ran into each other at SolarCon, and that was a really fun time, and we talked back and forth about getting together on this podcast, so it's nice to finally be here.
Speaker: Thank you for having me.
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
Speaker: And you looked pretty, I mean, we ran into each other, I think, last day, last night at SolarCon.
Speaker: And you look like you had a good time, man.
Speaker: You looked pretty partied out by the end.
Speaker: No, actually, you know what?
Speaker: That's actually not true.
Speaker: Everyone else was.
Speaker: So I looked like guilty by association, honestly.
Speaker: I will say this.
Speaker: Usually I'm the one who's causing it wreaking all the havoc and everyone else is guilty by association.
Speaker: But I will honestly say this time I was, I was being a good Utah boy, even though I'm from Denver, I was being a good Utah boy.
Speaker: So I was keeping it nice and clean for everybody.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When in Utah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: Well, it was a good time at solar con and that's what I like.
Speaker: Cause we get to see people from all different backgrounds.
Speaker: You know, I was telling you before we started, I'm a door to door guy.
Speaker: I haven't done a ton with like call center age leads.
Speaker: You know, I've gotten a little bit into CRM trying to get better at the follow up game.
Speaker: So I think it's a lot we could talk about.
Speaker: And I'm sure you've seen a lot of people have no idea about any of these things.
Speaker: And so I think it'll be cool to just like talk about that and maybe even apply it to people who maybe aren't necessarily going to do age leads or anything.
Speaker: But, you know, I think there's follow up strategies, maybe things we can talk about just for the door to door guys that
Speaker: can help in that aspect.
Speaker: I'm sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, um, yeah, we'll start with that.
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: We were talking beforehand and, uh,
Speaker: Peter's one request was, hey, just your first question.
Speaker: Just don't ask me my background and my whole story because I don't want to give people a meat and potatoes.
Speaker: So I'm like, I like that.
Speaker: So I've got to thank him for that because that's usually the question I do ask first.
Speaker: And then I'm like, okay, but I can see there's probably people that were just like, get to the point.
Speaker: Let's hear some nuggets here.
Speaker: So we'll talk about that a little bit later.
Speaker: But yeah, my first question, Peter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So coming from a door to door background, do you think it's important for people to know like age leads, call centers?
Speaker: Like, why should people care about that?
Speaker: If I'm like a door to door guy, do you think this is something that most people should care about and want to learn and learn about?
Speaker: or what what's the scoop on that no no no move on next question i'm kidding no but no my honest answer is no the honest answer is absolutely no it is not necessary i'm not here to i'm not here to proselytize i'm not here to like try to convert anybody i mean a lot of people know me as kind of like you know the big virtual guy and i still am and i love that uh but i'm i've never been one to try to like convert people over to my
Speaker: It's like you live your own, I'm 40 years old.
Speaker: It's like, you know, just live your own life.
Speaker: Do whatever makes you happy.
Speaker: I'm not the one who's going to sit here and try to like preach about how virtual is so much better and how you get unlimited growth potential and, you know, time, freedom, blah, blah.
Speaker: Yeah, we've all heard it, right?
Speaker: It's like, great.
Speaker: If you want it, you want it.
Speaker: You'll come talk to me.
Speaker: If you don't, you don't live your life, but, you know, be married.
Speaker: And it's the same thing with call centers and age leads.
Speaker: That's a very niche thing.
Speaker: As I was telling you off camera here, it's like I'm stepping out a little bit from dealing directly with individual solar pros just because of the
Speaker: mental health, you know, happiness, let's put it that way, because of happiness and keeping stress down.
Speaker: And I just much prefer dealing with company owners anyway, and so that's what we were talking about.
Speaker: So I would say that, you know, if you said, as a company owner, you know, should I care about age leads and call centers?
Speaker: And I'd be like, well, then possibly yes.
Speaker: I mean, that's definitely something that, you know, I think should be explored.
Speaker: So maybe I'll answer that question if that's okay.
Speaker: yeah all right okay so yeah i think it's i'm just gonna ask like first off we got people here that maybe this is their first time hearing about these things call centers age leads so um maybe you want to give just like the background of that so age lead correct me if i'm wrong wrong is just like someone that was interested at one time but then time gone by and they've kind of gotten a little bit cold so it's basically just looping back in talking to them yeah
Speaker: Yeah, I think, yeah, that's a good like basic definition of an age lead.
Speaker: I think if I were to like, you know, go into just a little bit more nuance, then you'll kind of the true Peter Roth will kind of step out, which is, I don't bullshit anybody.
Speaker: I'm like, if anything, I under, you know, I'm constantly, you know, under promising and over delivering.
Speaker: And I try to like talk people out of stuff, you know, it's like, and if you still want to buy it, then great, we can be friends.
Speaker: But
Speaker: the last thing you're ever going to hear me do is try to hype anything up ever because I just don't do that.
Speaker: I'm the weird guy who was actually trying to turn people away.
Speaker: You're not going to like it.
Speaker: If you still want it, then you come back.
Speaker: Age leads, like you mentioned, that is the classic definition of what an age lead is.
Speaker: But I think the more new, the more realistic version of it is to add a little stink to it.
Speaker: You have to because it's not that pretty of a picture.
Speaker: I wish I could tell you that if you bought a batch of 1,000 age leads, that all 1,000 of them were exactly seven to 30 days old, like the advertisement proclaims, and that everybody there said yes.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: I did inquire about Solar Taylor, and it was exactly eight days ago, and I'm so glad you called me.
Speaker: I can't wait to express my desire for learning more about solar.
Speaker: It's like, you know how often that happens?
Speaker: About 0.1 times out of every thousand calls.
Speaker: The other 800 calls are gonna be people going, I don't know what you're talking about, I never inquired about solar.
Speaker: They're lying.
Speaker: Or, it's been two years, why are you bugging me now?
Speaker: The problem is that I'm not the source of this data, and no one, anyone that you're buying age leads from on the internet, it's like if you just did a Google search right now for age solar leads, there's only like,
Speaker: seven or eight companies that even exist doing this sort of thing, like on a pretty high level.
Speaker: And all of us are brokers.
Speaker: Like every single one of us are just distributors of these age leads.
Speaker: None of us are the originators of the age leads.
Speaker: That's important to know because when you're asking questions of an age lead provider, AKA broker, they're not gonna know a lot of the answers to your questions because they're not the originator of the leads.
Speaker: Like they're just a distributor.
Speaker: So it's like, I always joke around.
Speaker: It's like, you know, you can't go over to the Coca-Cola factory, knock on their door and say, hey, here's a dollar.
Speaker: I'd like to buy a can of Coke.
Speaker: They'd be like, yeah, go to 7-Eleven.
Speaker: You know, like, I can't help you here.
Speaker: right so like we're like the distributor so we're like restaurant depot right we distribute the cans of coke to 7-eleven and then 7-eleven sells it to you right and so that's kind of like what we do right we're the distributor but we don't we didn't make the cans of coke so i don't know if a bug got in your can i have no idea you know and these you know these marketing agencies that are huge you know like madison avenue size companies they're big they're really kind of shrouded in secrecy and they don't
Speaker: they don't disclose a lot of stuff.
Speaker: So I'm dead convinced that even though you're buying, even if you buy a batch of 1000 aged leads, there's a good chance 20% of them are just junk.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Maybe even a little bit higher.
Speaker: Now, the good thing about us, which is what's so incredibly unique about what we do, one major competitive advantage, is that we replace all that data.
Speaker: So if you buy a batch of leads from us, we will replace wrong names, wrong numbers, disconnected phone numbers, renters, anyone who already has solar, and anyone who lives in an apartment.
Speaker: So you just give us your list of all that junk and we'll just replace it for you.
Speaker: No questions asked.
Speaker: So that's really nice because now we kind of take the sting out of that ugly side of age leads.
Speaker: I hope that it's a very long answer to your question.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: Well, yeah, that's what I was going to ask is like, how do you know if they're legit or not?
Speaker: But yeah, sounds like, yeah, if you guys have kind of a guarantee or replace them.
Speaker: So the way you know that is just the people you sold it to come back and say, okay, hey, Peter, there's 100 people that were like... There's that.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And I also run a call center too.
Speaker: So I'm dealing with my own data as well.
Speaker: So I'm constantly playing with my own data and testing it out.
Speaker: And I see it all the time.
Speaker: Now, I will say this.
Speaker: I always tell my clients, it's like,
Speaker: don't focus too much on the bad stories that you get here.
Speaker: You know, this guy said he's never inquired about solar and this guy, wrong name and wrong number.
Speaker: And this guy doesn't even live there anymore.
Speaker: And then this guy's dead.
Speaker: You know, it's like, yeah, that's the nature of age leads.
Speaker: Like you bought stuff that's a hundred, that's six months old.
Speaker: Like, yeah, the data gets corrupted over time.
Speaker: That's why we replaced the bad stuff, but the data gets corrupted over time.
Speaker: So I always remind people, it's like, don't fixate on the weird, wacky stories.
Speaker: Cause there's plenty of them.
Speaker: Like there's going to be a lot of great stories to tell at the local bar later.
Speaker: But what you should be focusing on is just the ROI.
Speaker: Like all you need to be focusing on at the end of, once you've exhausted that batch, it's like, did I make sales out of it?
Speaker: Yes or no.
Speaker: And am I happy with the amount of time and effort that it took me to get to that point?
Speaker: Yes or no.
Speaker: And if you can answer yes to those, to those questions, keep going.
Speaker: If not, try something else or keep learning, right?
Speaker: Or just keep learning.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: Well, another question I hear quite a bit, especially from door to door guys that are questioning, you know, like online lead providers or sometimes age leads or call centers.
Speaker: A lot of these people, they'll ask, OK, well, Peter, like if your leads are so good, if this is so effective.
Speaker: Why are you not just taking all these leads yourself and selling them instead of selling them to other people or other companies?
Speaker: And so what's, I don't know, I'm sure you've gotten asked that before, but like, what's your response to that?
Speaker: Do you, do you also sell the leads or are you just doing purely like the call center, send them to other companies or what's your response when people ask you that?
Speaker: So obviously we sell age leads and I run a call center where we book appointments for my clients.
Speaker: And I guess if your question is, Peter, why aren't you just closing these deals yourself?
Speaker: Is that basically the question?
Speaker: Like if you have access to this giant mountain of gold, why aren't you just sitting there rolling around in it closing deals?
Speaker: Because I don't like running sales teams.
Speaker: I know I'm a great salesperson and I have run sales teams.
Speaker: I've done all of that.
Speaker: I just don't like chasing babies.
Speaker: Like I said, I'm 48.
Speaker: I just don't want to hurt cats anymore.
Speaker: I like low stress.
Speaker: This is very low stress.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: With these leads, do you get them for all... They're in certain markets or when you buy them from these age lead providers,
Speaker: They just like dump your lists and they're all over the place.
Speaker: You're defined.
Speaker: Do you buy them like by market or how does that work?
Speaker: Usually.
Speaker: The yes to all of the above, it just kind of depends on where we're at and what areas are hotter than others and what areas are more in demand and what areas we're running low on inventory, so on and so forth.
Speaker: So it's yes to both.
Speaker: It just kind of depends on what's really moving well at the time.
Speaker: And then sometimes we'll get one big client who just wipes out an entire oddball area.
Speaker: I got a guy in Michigan who just wiped out Michigan.
Speaker: So it's just, and then I have to go, you know, find, you know, find data in Michigan.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Well, I will say I've never done the age leads approach myself.
Speaker: I've done online leads.
Speaker: I have like, you know, ran my own Facebook ads.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: just like posts on yeah, gotten leads online and all that, but I've never tried this one.
Speaker: So like, I don't know, do you know what's the success rate versus online leads or if someone maybe it's their first time they're here in this podcast and like, okay, Peter, I've heard about these online lead companies.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: I know you're saying you don't like try to convince people one way or another, but like for you, why would what's the pros and cons one versus the other?
Speaker: Would you generally do both?
Speaker: Or why would someone get like age leads versus just doing online ads or?
Speaker: I actually don't recommend people do both in the beginning.
Speaker: I recommend you find one thing and get really good at that first.
Speaker: I don't care if it's agents leads or exclusive ads or door knocking or cold mailers or cold calling.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: Just pick something and get really goddamn good at it because the worst mistake you can make is to over diversify yourself into too many different channels, too many different techniques and not become good at any one of them.
Speaker: So like I always tell people like you may not think that cold calling works, but it works.
Speaker: You may not think that age leads work, but they work like, and you may not think the door knocking works.
Speaker: And obviously Taylor Armstrong can tell us the door knocking works.
Speaker: So it's like clearly any one of these things works, but none of them are easy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Is door knocking easy?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I mean, none of them are easy.
Speaker: They all have their share of pain.
Speaker: It just depends what kind of pain you like putting up with.
Speaker: Like embrace the suck, I guess is the reality of it.
Speaker: But like everything sucks to some extent.
Speaker: It's just which one sucks less to you.
Speaker: And which one do you happen to enjoy the most?
Speaker: But my advice to people is pick whatever one that you think sounds good to you, that sounds tolerable to you, I suppose, and then get really good at that first before you try venturing off into something else.
Speaker: Because it's no different than starting a new business.
Speaker: Running one business is hard enough.
Speaker: two is damn near impossible.
Speaker: There's not a lot of successful business owners out there who run multiple businesses.
Speaker: Most of them end up just kind of doing average of both.
Speaker: It's really the people that focus just on one thing do the best.
Speaker: And I always joke around.
Speaker: It's like, I can't even make my one wife happy and try giving me two.
Speaker: Nah, I'm good.
Speaker: I'm good.
Speaker: I'll just work on the one for now.
Speaker: So same thing.
Speaker: It's like stop spreading yourself so thin.
Speaker: Get really goddamn good at one thing.
Speaker: I don't care what it is.
Speaker: Then move on to the next thing because that other thing is now on autopilot.
Speaker: Don't stop until it's on autopilot and until it's a cash printing machine for you.
Speaker: Then move on to something else.
Speaker: So does it have to be age leads?
Speaker: No, it doesn't.
Speaker: But here's the one thing I would say.
Speaker: is like what we all know is that you definitely do better when you have a mentor, right?
Speaker: I think that's indisputable truth.
Speaker: Like no matter what the hell it is that you're doing, if you can find a mentor who can help skip you to the head of the line, we all know that's by far gonna be the best formula for success.
Speaker: So if you can find a company that does the thing that you wanna do, whether it's age leads, cold calling, mailers, whatever,
Speaker: and they have a person on their team, whether it's the owner or a sales mentor or someone who's willing to like be your mentor and give you the proper guidance to be successful at that thing, that's the company you should work with.
Speaker: As opposed to just a company that you call and you get brushed off of some sales rep and he's going to spend 10 minutes with you and then just leave you to the wolves.
Speaker: It's like, that's not good.
Speaker: And they're probably going to charge you more for it too.
Speaker: That's the funny thing.
Speaker: So that's what we do.
Speaker: Like I absolutely, you know, I give a shit about my clients.
Speaker: I actually spend a lot of time with them and I provide them with a lot of consulting and a lot of one-on-one mentorship.
Speaker: So yes, if you can get a mentor, that's the way to go.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I think that applies to in really any part of, well, yeah, really any business, anything you're doing.
Speaker: That's pretty much the same advice I give people when they're looking for door-to-door companies to work for.
Speaker: It's like, hey, I care less about the name of the company, but who are the people you want to follow?
Speaker: Who are the mentors you want to have?
Speaker: If you are someone looking for good door-to-door too.
Speaker: So yeah, I think that applies in so many things, but also to your other point, I've been with a company
Speaker: Well, yeah, I think you know Brent Attaway pretty well.
Speaker: Mutual friends, you know.
Speaker: I don't know if you know our story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Hopefully he's listening to this at some point.
Speaker: Oh, he will.
Speaker: He will.
Speaker: He'll get a kicker.
Speaker: I love giving friends shit.
Speaker: I always do.
Speaker: Brent's a funny guy.
Speaker: But yeah, so I was working with him in San Diego.
Speaker: Brent was one of the owners of the dealer.
Speaker: I was running the team for him.
Speaker: And I think that's one of the things that maybe held us back a little bit is because Brent was trying to do all these online leads and stuff like that.
Speaker: And then we had some door to door people that were like, okay, you know, I'm just gonna wait and
Speaker: wait till a good online lead shows up.
Speaker: I'll go to that.
Speaker: I'm not going to knock doors today.
Speaker: And so I think exactly what you're saying.
Speaker: If people are maybe trying to start door to door, but then trying to do this, you just got to like figure out a way to structure them, get a good, get a good system set up.
Speaker: Don't create these entitled door to door reps that are just waiting for online leads.
Speaker: Make it maybe some sort of like bonus structure.
Speaker: If they're also closing deals, just knocking doors and all that.
Speaker: Because, yeah, I think a lot of companies get held back by trying to like have their eggs in 20 baskets and then just don't end up getting great results in anything.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's hard enough for like company owners to sort of like focus on one thing.
Speaker: Can you imagine how hard it is for a 20 something year old kid who's just on the doors?
Speaker: It's like, no, shit.
Speaker: Of course it's hard for him.
Speaker: It's hard enough for his dad.
Speaker: You know, it's hard.
Speaker: It's hard.
Speaker: It's hard not to shape, not to have shiny new object syndrome.
Speaker: That's what it is.
Speaker: Oh, I just got a call from this company.
Speaker: They do this fancy thing.
Speaker: I'm totally going to try it out.
Speaker: If I'm only risking five grand to try it, I'm sure it's going to work.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: How many times did you say that?
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: It's tough.
Speaker: Well, yeah.
Speaker: And like, I've been at this since 2016 and I didn't have any like follow-up system, CRM.
Speaker: I didn't set up any of that until probably, I don't know, three, four years ago, maybe.
Speaker: And even now I'm just starting to get a better system in place to like keep track of the leads, try to follow up better.
Speaker: Um, so I guess that's another question I had.
Speaker: If I'm like a door to door rep listening to this, um, do you like suggest that people like have systems like fall basically like keep track of their own age leads and then follow up with them?
Speaker: Do you think that's something that like a day one rep should be doing is like keeping all their leads and then try to like have a system to follow up with them?
Speaker: Hell yeah, man.
Speaker: Regardless of what you're doing, regardless if it's age leads or whether you're doing age leads or not, even if you're just on doors, I a thousand percent think you need to have some sort of CR management tool.
Speaker: I mean, as Brent will say, the fortune is in the follow-up, right?
Speaker: I mean, hi, Brent.
Speaker: But he's right.
Speaker: I mean, he didn't invent that.
Speaker: I don't think he would claim that he invented that.
Speaker: I mean, it's no joke.
Speaker: I mean, we're not closing every single deal at the door.
Speaker: So we do have to rely on follow ups.
Speaker: And everyone is terrible at it.
Speaker: I don't care who you are.
Speaker: It's like, even guys in the virtual space are terrible at it.
Speaker: And I know because I trained like half of them in the solar industry.
Speaker: And they will all admit like, yeah, Peter's right.
Speaker: I suck at it.
Speaker: Even with all of the tools at their disposal, even with all the automations and AI and all the fanciest shit in the world.
Speaker: In a sense, I actually think it's bad for us because it's made us all complacent and lazy because we think that the AI is just going to fix everything and make our bed and brush our teeth for us, right?
Speaker: So like we just stopped doing anything.
Speaker: It's made us kind of lazy.
Speaker: You know, back in the day, like when before AI and automations came around, it's like you really did have to manually kind of, you know, manage everything yourself and it forced you to become much more organized.
Speaker: And nowadays people just think that AI is going to take care of it.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: But nonetheless, to answer your question, a thousand percent, even if you're just on the doors, even if you're 21 years old, you 100% need something.
Speaker: And it doesn't have to be terribly fancy.
Speaker: You could even just use a spreadsheet, to be quite honest with you.
Speaker: Like, you can literally use a spreadsheet.
Speaker: No one is saying don't use this, but just get decent enough at how to use it, but use Google Sheets, it's free.
Speaker: And as long as you're sorting them, as long as you've got them categorized by hot leads and warm leads and cold leads, or even just warm and hot leads, that's it.
Speaker: Just two categories, warm and hot leads.
Speaker: If you just did that with a Google Sheet, you'd be ahead of 90% of your competitors.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I tell people all the time, like I didn't keep, I didn't follow up with a single lead.
Speaker: You know, I just had all my leads written on like in a notepad and all that.
Speaker: I didn't, I didn't really like would throw them away because I came from pest control where it's like you sign them or you just onto the next one.
Speaker: And so I just thought that's how it was with solar.
Speaker: I'm like, Oh, this is just door to door sales.
Speaker: You either sign them now or you never talk to them again, never follow up with them.
Speaker: And that's one of my regrets in solar is that for the first three, four years, probably I didn't like follow up and I don't even have the majority of those leads.
Speaker: I don't think, you know, I go back to some of the old neighborhoods and half the people I talked to have solar.
Speaker: So that's going to be one of the most frustrating things.
Speaker: There's no better lesson learned than a hard lesson learned.
Speaker: My wife is probably right now just kicking herself going, that fucking asshole.
Speaker: He's like, he's not lying.
Speaker: Every single lesson I've in life, it's only because I fucked it up so bad.
Speaker: I'm like, oh, that's how you don't do that ever again.
Speaker: Lesson learned.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah, but I want to get into some maybe tangible stuff for like someone that's new to this.
Speaker: What are some little things?
Speaker: So say I've got my own leads.
Speaker: Maybe I did a lot better.
Speaker: I kept track of my leads from two years ago.
Speaker: I have my own list of, I guess, personal age leads, you could say.
Speaker: So what are maybe like some basic things you could do to like, I don't know, get back in touch with these people?
Speaker: Is it just like you can use ChatGPT, make some messages or what are some strategies maybe you could give like someone that's new to this?
Speaker: If they just wanted to start contacting their own age leads.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure, man.
Speaker: Yeah, if you have your own kind of database of leads that you've already been sort of just collecting over the time, well, then you're already ahead of the curve.
Speaker: I mean, congratulations, buddy.
Speaker: You're already doing better than most people because most people don't even do that, right?
Speaker: So if you're doing that, Jesus, just pick up the phone.
Speaker: And what you should do is honestly find a good reason to call.
Speaker: Don't just be like, hey, I'm just following up.
Speaker: That's the worst is, you know, I'm just following up.
Speaker: But do have a good reason.
Speaker: I like to have some sort of a promotion.
Speaker: I always like to provide value, right?
Speaker: Like there has to be a reason for my call, not just I'm following up bullshit because who cares about that.
Speaker: So always provide some sort of value, some sort of a reason why they should listen to you.
Speaker: And the fact of the matter is like you have to think of it as kind of like a cold call, which is no different than door knocking, right?
Speaker: Like you're always the first five seconds that comes out of your mouth is earning you the privilege for the next five seconds, right?
Speaker: And then the next 30 seconds and then the next minute.
Speaker: So that's all you're doing is like you're just trying to sell them on listening to you for 10 more seconds.
Speaker: And so that starts with giving them a good pitch and a good pitch starts with a good, some sort of value and some sort of reason why they should keep listening to you.
Speaker: So give them something, whether it's something for free, some sort of a promotion, some sort of a sale, something like that.
Speaker: And then even better, if you can pair it with some sort of urgency.
Speaker: This expires next week.
Speaker: This is going away.
Speaker: There's a limited amount of permits.
Speaker: End of summer sale, beginning of summer sale, something like that, right?
Speaker: So now throw in some urgency.
Speaker: Now throw in some pain, right?
Speaker: Like, did you realize that, you know, if the course of the next 25 years, you're probably going to be spending $75,000 living here.
Speaker: You don't have to do that.
Speaker: Why do that to yourself?
Speaker: I'm glad I'm here.
Speaker: I can maybe help you out.
Speaker: Throw in some pain.
Speaker: Promotion, value, urgency, pain.
Speaker: Hit all the major points and then of course trust.
Speaker: Now here's why you should listen to me.
Speaker: We're a local company.
Speaker: We've got four and a half stars on Google.
Speaker: We've been around here for the last seven years.
Speaker: Got a ton of great reviews.
Speaker: I'm happy to share that page with you.
Speaker: Throw in some trust.
Speaker: Now throw in some testimonials or some social proof.
Speaker: Your neighbor, Bob Wentzler with us last year.
Speaker: He's super happy.
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: If you can combine all of those into one pitch, into one 30-second
Speaker: blurb, I mean, Jesus, now you're really winning.
Speaker: So some of you already know that I run my own door to door sales team here in San Diego.
Speaker: And as we are gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results.
Speaker: But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
Speaker: Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout.
Speaker: But it's not a door knocking app.
Speaker: It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market.
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.
Speaker: It's been working for a lot of teams across the country, and now I'm on board too.
Speaker: I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up.
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.
Speaker: And they did.
Speaker: So go to solarscout.app forward slash Taylor and book a demo with them and you'll get 10% off your first month when you sign up.
Speaker: That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
Speaker: Okay, back to the show.
Speaker: Definitely think about trying to hit all those points.
Speaker: Don't just come out, hey, I'm just following up.
Speaker: That's the worst.
Speaker: It might work once in a while, but it's definitely not very effective.
Speaker: So yeah, that would be my tip for people.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So yeah, pretty similar to knocking a door, it sounds like.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: A little different.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And well, what about if someone wanted to set up their own, maybe like mini call center, have someone else do these calls?
Speaker: Because my thing is as a door to door guy, like, okay, well, I'm already really good at knocking doors.
Speaker: I know if I go out for a couple hours, I should be able to get a lead or two.
Speaker: And so in my head, that's sometimes like my argument.
Speaker: It's like, oh, okay, this is a new thing.
Speaker: I don't know if it's going to be as effective as knocking a door.
Speaker: so would you suggest someone like hiring getting their own i don't know uh call mini call center set up and having them make calls for you or uh yeah yeah for sure yeah no i'll answer your question let me let me start by telling you a couple stories of some other companies that i work with just so you can kind of wrap around your mind what can be done with a system like this so
Speaker: You don't need to be glued to the doors.
Speaker: If you like it, great, keep doing it.
Speaker: Some of the companies that I work with do a hybrid of both.
Speaker: I don't think really any of them honestly don't do doors anymore.
Speaker: I think most of the companies that I work with
Speaker: do a hybrid model.
Speaker: They do some doors and they do some call center booked appointments using our age leads.
Speaker: Now, let me just be clear, you don't have to use age leads to run a call center and to book appointments.
Speaker: You can absolutely cold call.
Speaker: That's totally fine.
Speaker: Slightly lower results, but also the data costs less.
Speaker: So it's kind of a little bit of a wash.
Speaker: I just personally have found that I really do prefer aged leaves.
Speaker: I run a call center and we don't cold call anymore.
Speaker: We have, we just don't really do it anymore.
Speaker: We don't do it for solar, we do it for roofing.
Speaker: So if you're in the room,
Speaker: roofing space, cold calling is totally fine.
Speaker: In fact, cold calling is probably way more effective because of the certain parameters that go into play for a potential roofing lead.
Speaker: We're just targeting older homes that have a potentially bad roof now.
Speaker: There's no such thing as an aged roof lead.
Speaker: That you would just cold call and just people with older homes and be like, hey, we're doing free inspections.
Speaker: We'd love to come out and check, see if maybe, hopefully you don't have any damage and hopefully we'll need to help you at all.
Speaker: We can go about our merry way.
Speaker: So roofing is different than solar.
Speaker: Solar, you almost want to have some sort of intent beforehand.
Speaker: And that's either done when you're cold calling.
Speaker: And let's be honest, there's no urgency.
Speaker: No one needs solar.
Speaker: Everyone needs a roof.
Speaker: Everyone needs windows.
Speaker: Everyone needs HVAC, but nobody needs solar.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's why the no-show rates are so bad in solar.
Speaker: Which is why we don't cold call for solar.
Speaker: For solar, we only call age leads, whereas for roofing, we can totally cold call.
Speaker: So that was kind of my point here.
Speaker: That's the big distinction.
Speaker: So, you know, I think...
Speaker: As a smaller operator or even as a larger operator, and let's say you've already got door teams going, that's great.
Speaker: Because like I said, all my largest clients, they're hybrid.
Speaker: They do both.
Speaker: I don't know that any one of them are done with doors entirely.
Speaker: I don't think so.
Speaker: Maybe I have one or two, but the rest are hybrid.
Speaker: And they have a very, very active call center team.
Speaker: teams.
Speaker: So they're usually not usually they're either just probably 50 50.
Speaker: They may have their call center there in house where they literally have them in the office.
Speaker: They have like a separate room just for their agents right there in the office.
Speaker: Or they do like a virtual call center where their agents are probably in Mexico or somewhere like that.
Speaker: And both work very, very effectively.
Speaker: And then I give them the proper guidance as to what types of leads that they're probably going to want to buy.
Speaker: And if you're running in Mexico or even overseas, which I don't recommend overseas.
Speaker: In fact, I would definitely tell you no.
Speaker: No India, no Pakistan, no Bangladesh, no Egypt, none of that stuff.
Speaker: It's really the human ear.
Speaker: If no Philippines, the American ears just don't like the accents.
Speaker: We know it's a cold call.
Speaker: But when you hear a Spanish accent, you don't even hear it, right?
Speaker: Do you even notice this?
Speaker: No, you don't even notice it.
Speaker: It could be your next door neighbor.
Speaker: You don't even notice it.
Speaker: Especially in California.
Speaker: Yeah, especially in California.
Speaker: So, you know, the big solar markets for sure.
Speaker: So, you know, those guys, you know, if you're doing lower dollar per hour wages overseas or, you know, nearshore,
Speaker: Then you should probably be doing cheaper data so that you're not burning through good quality leads with lower quality appointment setters versus if you're doing your team in house and you have American setters working right there in your office, then I think you should get them better quality data.
Speaker: Number one, because you don't want to lose them.
Speaker: If you feed them really, really cheap penny data, you might lose them because they'll just get annoyed.
Speaker: They'll be like, dude, I've been calling for hours and I can't get a hold of anybody.
Speaker: And you're going to lose them.
Speaker: It's like, what's the point of that?
Speaker: It's hard to find American talent to do that sort of a job and do it well.
Speaker: So you need to really nurture them when you do.
Speaker: You don't want to lose them.
Speaker: Because finding good talent is by far the number one most important part of the whole thing.
Speaker: It's the human element.
Speaker: I don't think anyone would deny that or be surprised when I say that.
Speaker: It's the human element.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: training them giving them proper incentives keeping them excited keep it just overall keeping morale high that's that's everything yeah so if you're if you were gonna do this yourself like for me i got a small team i got my guys we're all going door to door but i'm just thinking for myself like i could take no none of my team is doing this so i could potentially take all their old leads and just say hey guys let's like plug this in
Speaker: get someone to call through them um like do something with that data these people that we didn't follow up with um so have you set that up for people or like would you recommend in for someone in a situation like me like what would it be beneficial for me to call through them first and kind of get the hang of things or could i could i immediately be like you know what i'm just want to outsource this i want to find someone right out of the bat and not even mess with this
Speaker: You could, but I wouldn't advise you.
Speaker: I like the idea of you doing it a little bit yourself.
Speaker: And it doesn't have to be very long.
Speaker: I mean, even if you did it for like two weeks, that would be fine enough.
Speaker: You'll learn very, very quickly what to do and what not to do, especially like with me, because that's what I do is I give people the proper guy.
Speaker: And I don't charge anything, by the way, for that.
Speaker: It's like if you're a customer of mine, I just help you.
Speaker: So yeah, with proper guidance and mentorship, the learning curve should be pretty quick.
Speaker: And yes, I would do that for yourself.
Speaker: And to answer your question, how would I do it as a small team?
Speaker: It's not very expensive.
Speaker: That's the good thing.
Speaker: It's really not that big of a deal.
Speaker: The hardest part is really just the talent.
Speaker: That really is the hardest part is finding good setters.
Speaker: That's really the hardest thing.
Speaker: But I mean, I guess not really, you know, with Facebook groups and stuff like that, you can probably put several posts up.
Speaker: I guess local, if you were wanting to find local centers, that might be a little more challenging, right, who are within a reasonable drive of you.
Speaker: That, I suppose, could be challenging.
Speaker: But if they're virtual, no, that's super easy.
Speaker: Now you've got a million people to choose from.
Speaker: Here's what I would do.
Speaker: I mean, it's really simple, very simple set of instructions.
Speaker: Go out and get a dialer.
Speaker: You don't have to get the fanciest.
Speaker: I would actually urge you not to start with a super complex one like Vichy Dial.
Speaker: I wouldn't start with that first, even though that's what we use, but I would never recommend someone to start with that.
Speaker: It's just way too complicated and you pretty much have to hire a manager just to manage the damn software.
Speaker: So it's like a full-time job just running the software.
Speaker: So that's why I wouldn't recommend that first.
Speaker: I'd recommend something that doesn't require a human being to manage it.
Speaker: So something like call tools or ready mode.
Speaker: Those are two really common ones.
Speaker: Those are probably the two most common ones I think that people use who are getting into.
Speaker: the call center space.
Speaker: Because it's just virtual software, you can run it from anywhere.
Speaker: Anyone at home can start, you just pay for the seat.
Speaker: I think an average seat on one of those softwares, I don't own them, so don't quote me, but I think it's probably like 150 bucks per agent a month.
Speaker: to run it.
Speaker: So nothing terribly expensive.
Speaker: Then you got to load it up with data.
Speaker: And so for that, you can come to me, you can come to whoever, load it up with data.
Speaker: I definitely prefer age leads over cold calling.
Speaker: You just get a much higher level of intent.
Speaker: Like I mentioned, no one needs solar.
Speaker: So trying to convince someone off of a phone call to go solar is pretty, can be painful.
Speaker: And you're going to just get a really bad, really bad sit rate.
Speaker: The no-shows will just be through the roof.
Speaker: Yeah, anyone who's honest will tell you that no-shows in the solar space are just abysmal.
Speaker: It's really bad.
Speaker: But with Agilead, it's a little better.
Speaker: It's still there.
Speaker: It's still a thing.
Speaker: It's still a problem, but it's better because at least in theory, those people did sign up for information about solar a little while ago.
Speaker: So as long as you're talking to them, then you should be having somewhat of a more warm conversation.
Speaker: So there you go.
Speaker: Pick a software, hire one, start with just one agent.
Speaker: Don't go crazy.
Speaker: Start with one.
Speaker: Two is fine.
Speaker: Don't put, I wouldn't even do, I wouldn't do more than two.
Speaker: Give them a decent script.
Speaker: You don't have to overthink the script.
Speaker: If you're a customer of mine, I'll give you our script for free anyway.
Speaker: And ours is constantly evolving.
Speaker: You actually get a lifetime subscription to it because we're constantly evolving it.
Speaker: So if you're a customer of mine, you'll get my evolved script and then you'll get lifetime updates for it.
Speaker: And it's not complicated.
Speaker: And then you just get them to set appointments.
Speaker: And then that's the easy part.
Speaker: I think that's actually the easy part.
Speaker: Now, the hard part is getting them to sit.
Speaker: That's the hard part.
Speaker: And getting them to sit requires what you can think of it as a confirmation call.
Speaker: Like most people think of it as like 24 hours before the appointment, call Bob and Mary and say, hey, Bob and Mary, just making sure that tomorrow at two o'clock still works for you, right?
Speaker: Yes, Peter, it does.
Speaker: Okay, great.
Speaker: We'll see you then.
Speaker: That's the classic definition of a confirmation call, but that's not what I recommend people do.
Speaker: I recommend you turn it into like a little discovery call.
Speaker: And don't even do it 24 hours before the appointment.
Speaker: Do it right when the appointment was set.
Speaker: So call them like as quickly as humanly possible.
Speaker: Don't wait.
Speaker: Don't dilly-dally.
Speaker: So try to call them within five or 10 minutes of that appointment being set and just make up some BS story like, oh, you know what?
Speaker: I see you guys on my schedule for tomorrow at two o'clock.
Speaker: I just had someone reschedule their call right now and I saw that you guys just booked an appointment.
Speaker: So I figured maybe you have a few minutes to chat right now.
Speaker: Do you got a couple of minutes for me to ask you a couple of quick questions?
Speaker: Then just go straight into it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So now you're striking while the iron is hot.
Speaker: You're getting an opportunity to talk to them before they've had a chance to get corrupted BS information from their neighbor who went solar and got ripped off by Blue Raven and who oversold them for $7 a watt.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And now think solar is a scam because he got scammed.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And so that's what you don't want to happen.
Speaker: The more time that passes, the more bad things can possibly happen.
Speaker: So obviously don't be the guy selling at $7 a watt.
Speaker: But
Speaker: you know, treat your customers well and you'll be fine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you're saying when someone, so if you have a call center set up, you're saying they say, okay, Hey Peter, we booked an appointment.
Speaker: And then you yourself would like call them as soon as possible.
Speaker: Right after that, if you hear the call center set an appointment with them.
Speaker: The person who's been assigned, the person who that appointment was assigned to, or maybe whatever, however you want to treat these appointments, but let's say it's assigned to you, right, Taylor.
Speaker: Then, Taylor, you'll get a notification of the appointment.
Speaker: My company will automatically send you a notification saying, hey, Taylor, you have an appointment with Bob and Sue.
Speaker: Tomorrow, two o'clock, here's their phone number.
Speaker: And they'll be able to say, try to call them ASAP.
Speaker: You just click that number right on your text message, you know, boom, it'll just try calling them.
Speaker: And you can do it while you're walking from door to door.
Speaker: You can literally just take a break between the doors, take five minutes just to have a quick discovery call with them.
Speaker: Boom, now you got yourself a good quality appointment set up for tomorrow.
Speaker: That easy.
Speaker: Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker: So yeah, that's what I would do.
Speaker: Now, to answer your question about what kind of data should I buy, because that's important.
Speaker: And I'll talk with you, if this is something that you decide you want to do, I'll go into more detail with you to kind of show you.
Speaker: You, Taylor, or you audience people.
Speaker: I'll show you exactly what type of leads that you should consider because there's not always a right and a wrong answer.
Speaker: There's a lot of nuances that go into play.
Speaker: Because there's leads that cost as much as $4 a record and there's leads that cost as little as $0.05 a record.
Speaker: So, obviously, there's a world of difference between a five cent record and a four dollar record, right?
Speaker: And so we need to kind of figure out what those big differences are and how we treat them differently.
Speaker: So, you know, if I have a call center out of Philippines where I'm paying them three dollars an hour, I probably don't want to send them anything other than five cent records.
Speaker: But if I, like I mentioned earlier, but if I've got guys right here in my office who are all American and I'm paying them good wages, I don't want to send them five cent records because they're going to get really annoyed at the quality of the data.
Speaker: They're going to want good quality stuff because they got bills to pay.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So send them the good quality data and we'll talk about that.
Speaker: But that's.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, so how much how much do you expect to pay these people if you're getting someone in the US to do this?
Speaker: How much do you set up like commission structure for them or how do you typically recommend people set up the pay structure for it?
Speaker: Yeah, this was not my revelation or my idea.
Speaker: This was actually a friend of mine who came up with this compensation plan, which I really liked.
Speaker: His compensation plan that he did was he did $50 for a booked appointment.
Speaker: A qualified appointment, not just any appointment, right?
Speaker: You don't want to pay for just every single appointment booked because then they'll just book garbage appointments for you.
Speaker: So an appointment that passes a quality control test, we'll call it, right?
Speaker: You listen to it, it sounds good.
Speaker: It sounds like a reasonable enough appointment.
Speaker: They'll probably show up to it.
Speaker: That's 50 bucks.
Speaker: If they sit, if they actually show up for the appointment, if they're actually there, when you go to the door, they get another $200 on top of that just for the appearance.
Speaker: Now they get an additional $200.
Speaker: So now they made 50 plus 200.
Speaker: Now they're at 250.
Speaker: Now, if the deal closes, they get a bonus on top of that.
Speaker: That you can make up.
Speaker: That's entirely however your company wants to structure.
Speaker: I've seen it for $1,000.
Speaker: I've seen it for $500.
Speaker: I've seen it for $0.10, you know, a lot.
Speaker: I've seen it, so whatever you're comfortable with.
Speaker: But commonly, I've seen $1,000, $500,
Speaker: 10 cents a lot.
Speaker: That's a common thing that I see, but you can do whatever you want.
Speaker: That's a really good structural way of doing it because now you've got your call, your setters, agents, whatever you want to call them.
Speaker: Now you've got them really deeply involved in the entire process and they care.
Speaker: It's like they're invested.
Speaker: into the result.
Speaker: They're invested into the success of this particular.
Speaker: They don't just treat it like this just disposable phone call.
Speaker: Now it's like each call has this real value to it to them.
Speaker: It's like this real potential value because this call, not only going to make me 50 bucks, it could make me 250 bucks and it could make me $1,250.
Speaker: I'm going to take this each call very seriously.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And when you say sits, so you're meaning you actually do set them up for in in-person appointments or do you have some clients that are doing virtual?
Speaker: Some do virtual.
Speaker: Some, not most.
Speaker: Most are in person.
Speaker: Most of my clients are in person.
Speaker: I have a few that are virtual, but not many.
Speaker: Most of them are in person.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then when people find these, when you're trying to hire someone to call,
Speaker: Do you have any recommendation on where to find these people?
Speaker: Do you just go to like, I don't know, Upwork, look on sites like that?
Speaker: How do you find these call agents?
Speaker: So if you're looking, it depends if you're looking for local or if you're looking for overseas.
Speaker: So if you're looking for overseas, I recommend, well, the answer to both is Facebook groups.
Speaker: I'm sure there's more effective ways.
Speaker: Honestly, I'm not my own recruiter.
Speaker: I've got a guy who does my recruiting for me so he could speak to this way more than I can.
Speaker: I've done very little recruiting and I've always just, and I know he actually goes to Facebook groups too, so I do know that.
Speaker: But there are Facebook groups for call center, literally for call center stuff, and there's lots of them.
Speaker: I remember one of my old call center managers actually gave me a list of all of the Facebook call center groups.
Speaker: It was damn near over 100.
Speaker: There was over 100 groups for call center agents on Facebook.
Speaker: That's how many there are.
Speaker: Now, obviously, you don't need to join all of them.
Speaker: You just join the top five or 10.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's all you need.
Speaker: Yeah, you create a good funnel.
Speaker: That's what I would do.
Speaker: I wouldn't just put a post in there because then your inbox will explode.
Speaker: It'll absolutely explode.
Speaker: You'll get spammed to death.
Speaker: So do not do that.
Speaker: Create just like a simple funnel, just a simple website, whatever you got to do, just keep it away from your personal contact information and literally say, do not message me directly.
Speaker: All direct messages will be ignored.
Speaker: click here to apply.
Speaker: Send them to an actual funnel page where they can submit.
Speaker: Ask them to send in a call recording.
Speaker: Give them the sample of what you want them to read.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be your actual script.
Speaker: I wouldn't recommend that because you don't want to give away your script.
Speaker: But just anything, literally instructions out of a toy manual, whatever, a calculator instructions, literally anything.
Speaker: Just have them read it.
Speaker: Say, hey, take a minute or two to practice this.
Speaker: I want you to sound really natural.
Speaker: and I want to hear what you sound like when you read it.
Speaker: I want you to be very casual.
Speaker: I don't want you to sound super professional and robotic.
Speaker: Just be super casual and send me, upload your call recording here.
Speaker: Put in your personal contact information if we're interested, we'll reach out to you.
Speaker: And then you do group interviews.
Speaker: Because if you do it this way, you'll get a lot of candidates.
Speaker: In the beginning, maybe you won't, so maybe you don't need to do a group interview.
Speaker: But you'll find that once you do this a few times, and if you set up just even a halfway decent funnel.
Speaker: And when I say funnel, this is not like a marketing funnel.
Speaker: I'm not talking like Russell Brunson style funnel.
Speaker: That's not what I mean.
Speaker: I mean just like a landing page, a basic, basic landing page.
Speaker: I should have just said that.
Speaker: not funnel, landing page.
Speaker: So just a basic landing page, nothing fancy.
Speaker: But if you've set it up correctly and you post a handful of times in these big groups, you will get a lot of potential candidates.
Speaker: But you need to weed them out because you'll get so many, you'll end up wasting way too much time trying to find the needle in the haystack.
Speaker: And trust me, it is absolutely searching for a needle in the haystack.
Speaker: There are very, very few good candidates.
Speaker: You can absolutely interview 10 and you'll be lucky if you hire one.
Speaker: That's how slim pickings it is.
Speaker: Okay, so is this a pretty high turnover thing too then?
Speaker: It sounds like it's pretty tough to find them.
Speaker: So you're hiring one and then it's not working out and then you have to do this whole process again?
Speaker: Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker: That is, I guess, the quickest answer to your question is yes.
Speaker: Because you need to be slow to hire and very quick to fire, right?
Speaker: Like that's the old adage and that definitely doesn't change here.
Speaker: But here you need to be even quicker to fire.
Speaker: Like here, I mean, that is no, like you do not take that lightly.
Speaker: If someone is not performing to your standards, they absolutely have got to go immediately.
Speaker: You don't sit there and keep training them.
Speaker: You don't sit, you just, no, they go.
Speaker: There is absolutely intrinsic talent in these people.
Speaker: They have intrinsic talent or they don't.
Speaker: If they have intrinsic talent, they can learn any script or get good at anything.
Speaker: It doesn't make a difference, but they have to have that intrinsic ability to just talk and communicate with people.
Speaker: That's really the most important thing.
Speaker: What you'll learn is once you'll have your own personal metrics, once you've learned that, okay,
Speaker: Bill, my superstar setter, he can book four appointments a day.
Speaker: Steve, my average appointment setter, he's booking two to three a day.
Speaker: All right, so let's use Steve as the benchmark for two to three.
Speaker: And now I know that like, hey, if you're not booking at least one and a half appointments a day, I'm not going to keep you on the team.
Speaker: Like the bare minimum is one and a half appointments a day just to stay on the team.
Speaker: And honestly, like that's really damn low.
Speaker: Like even, you know, if they're not, if they're booking one and a half appointments, that's really bad.
Speaker: But I would say probably two appointments is the bare minimum just to even keep your job.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And you said that, so you're not even paying them like a base, it's all commission, you're just paying them per appointment.
Speaker: No, no, that depends on the country because countries have different traditions.
Speaker: Like Mexico, you cannot get away with that.
Speaker: You can't get away with commission only in Mexico.
Speaker: It's a cultural thing.
Speaker: They don't like that stuff.
Speaker: They really want their base pay.
Speaker: They want predictability and security much more than they care about the potential for big bucks later.
Speaker: They don't care about, they think of all that as a scam.
Speaker: They think of that some crazy American gringo trying to scam them and that they're never going to see a penny out of that.
Speaker: So they're like, yeah, screw you.
Speaker: I want my base pay.
Speaker: Just pay me more base pay.
Speaker: But then you go overseas, they might be interested in that.
Speaker: So it just depends.
Speaker: But here in the US, I think it kind of can go both directions.
Speaker: I think if you put a gun to my head and say, Peter, just pick one, I would say you have to pay a base pay.
Speaker: I think a base pay is pretty important.
Speaker: People want that degree of security.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be a lot.
Speaker: It can absolutely not be much at all.
Speaker: But they want some degree of security because you are going to have bad days.
Speaker: You are going to even have bad weeks where the data sucks for like a whole week in a row and they're just not booking appointment day after day.
Speaker: And they're like, shit, I'm not going to put food on the table this week.
Speaker: You don't want that happening.
Speaker: So yeah, OK, makes sense.
Speaker: I know we're running short on time here, Peter, but last couple questions.
Speaker: If someone wants to get started with this, but maybe they don't have a lot of money to spend right now, maybe like, should I spend $1,000 on ads, $1,000 on data?
Speaker: What's the typical investment to get these age leads?
Speaker: What do you expect to spend to get all this started?
Speaker: That's a really good question, honestly.
Speaker: And I like your challenge of $1,000.
Speaker: I like that challenge a lot because that's a...
Speaker: That's a lot of challenge.
Speaker: I think that's a common challenge that a lot of people are facing.
Speaker: It's like they literally, it's like I have a thousand bucks.
Speaker: What should I do with this thousand bucks that isn't going to burn it up?
Speaker: Let me tell you what I wouldn't do.
Speaker: And you kind of put me on the spot, but it's good.
Speaker: It's a good challenge because it's making me think like what I would do.
Speaker: What I wouldn't do is I wouldn't run ads.
Speaker: That's not even a possibility.
Speaker: That's not even within the realm of possibility.
Speaker: Forget that.
Speaker: That's literally not even possible.
Speaker: You're going to need...
Speaker: five times that amount just to even start getting your toes wet in running ads.
Speaker: Call center booked appointments, I would say nope.
Speaker: That ain't gonna work.
Speaker: That's also too expensive.
Speaker: I would say go door knocking for sure.
Speaker: Buy a $1,000 pair of shoes and go door knocking.
Speaker: Yeah, I know that's not very much money to work.
Speaker: Buy a $1,000 shoes and go door knocking.
Speaker: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker: But no, if you said, oh, I live in Alaska, and I can't, there is no door knocking to be had, so I got to do something else.
Speaker: Okay, fine.
Speaker: Then I would definitely, without question, I would say Agileads.
Speaker: Agileads, 1,000% are the way to go.
Speaker: And what I would tell you is get the best ones you can afford.
Speaker: And the fact of the matter is that anyone can afford them, right?
Speaker: Because you h ave a thousand bucks.
Speaker: So I'll still tell you to spend that thousand dollars and get the best quality leads for that thousand dollars.
Speaker: So get not the freshest, I realize I just contradicted myself, I get the best quality and now I'm telling you not to.
Speaker: Don't get the seven to thirties, get the 30 to 90 day age, the second oldest ones, they're not being aggressively as attacked right now.
Speaker: And that's where I would start.
Speaker: I would start there and just literally call them through a spreadsheet.
Speaker: Just put them into a spreadsheet and just with your cell phone, just start calling them one by one.
Speaker: Every day, make 100 calls.
Speaker: That's what I would do.
Speaker: You will absolutely close deals.
Speaker: Is it easy?
Speaker: No, it's not easy.
Speaker: But nothing is when you only have a thousand bucks.
Speaker: Everything's going to be hard.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Makes sense.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: And then last question or two, Peter.
Speaker: So if you had, I don't know how much, I guess it depends on the quality, but I don't know how many age leads you could get, but what's like the conversion rates when someone starts working with you, what do you typically tell them the conversion?
Speaker: If you buy a list of, I don't know, what are these lists typically come in?
Speaker: A thousand age leads or how many?
Speaker: Minimum order.
Speaker: So my minimum order is 499 bucks.
Speaker: Now, I kind of don't recommend only spending 499 bucks.
Speaker: It's fine if you just want to test the waters, no big deal.
Speaker: I know some people just want to try it out just to see what it's like.
Speaker: But I do have to remind people, it's like, hey, there is a normal cost per acquisition in the world of solar, especially if you're in marketing, right, if you're spending money on marketing efforts.
Speaker: Not door to door, I get that, it's different.
Speaker: But if you're using traditional, any sort of marketing efforts, there is going to be a cost per acquisition associated with that.
Speaker: And I think if you talk to most solar companies, they would tell you that they sometimes go up to $2,500 CPA.
Speaker: They're spending up to $2,500 to get one deal.
Speaker: And even door to door teams, your owners, the owners of the company, they are spending that.
Speaker: Between spiffs and training and all that stuff, they are spending that.
Speaker: Maybe you're not, maybe you as the door to door guy or not, but the owner of your company sure is.
Speaker: I was shocked when I looked at the books of an owner of one of these companies who runs door-to-door teams.
Speaker: I was shocked at how much they spend.
Speaker: It's not cheap.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So, that's my only advice is just be mindful of the fact that if you're only going to spend $500 on a small batch to try out, you may not get a deal out of it.
Speaker: It's not enough.
Speaker: That's like saying, hey, I want to spend $500 on Facebook ads.
Speaker: You're like, okay, well, you might not get any deals out of it.
Speaker: That's not enough.
Speaker: You need a little bit more, you know?
Speaker: So I'm just, but I'm, I'm always, you know, as I told you, I'm really honest with people.
Speaker: I usually turn people away before I, you know, take their money anyway.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Well, yeah.
Speaker: And I'm sure it depends on the market too, right?
Speaker: Like if I'm buying, I'm,
Speaker: Generally, when we talk about California, I know like online lead companies always say cost acquisition is a lot harder.
Speaker: Leads are more expensive.
Speaker: So it's sort of the same thing with the age leads.
Speaker: Depends on the market.
Speaker: Depends on where you're getting them.
Speaker: Actually, no.
Speaker: Actually, no.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: It's the same.
Speaker: Everywhere in the country, it's the same.
Speaker: But performance does vary market to market.
Speaker: Like California, Arizona, Nevada is very difficult.
Speaker: Very saturated markets, they're difficult.
Speaker: The price per lead is exactly the same.
Speaker: We don't change the price based on the part of the country that you're in, but the performance will vary.
Speaker: So my advice is try to find, well, my advice is do sell in your backyard.
Speaker: Don't try to sell virtual at first.
Speaker: Even though I love virtual, I wouldn't start there.
Speaker: You need to make money first.
Speaker: You need a predictable source of income first.
Speaker: then you can start venturing into things that are a little bit more risky.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Well, Peter, it's been a cool having you on and I feel like we just scratched the surface.
Speaker: There's so many different, you know, like ways we, yeah, I learned a ton and I hope everyone else learned a ton listening to this podcast today.
Speaker: But if people want to potentially work with you more or learn more about this, maybe get into some of your trainings or whatever, where could you point them?
Speaker: What's the best way to connect with you and actually get into more of this?
Speaker: I've got a lot of videos on YouTube, so you can go to SolarWise, pull up SolarWise Peter Roth on YouTube.
Speaker: You'll find a lot of my videos.
Speaker: A lot of free, tons of free training content.
Speaker: But if you want to go straight to like, you know, the different services we offer, just go to get solar wise dot com and then you'll see a pull down.
Speaker: It's it'll be obvious.
Speaker: But get solar wise dot com.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: OK, well, yeah.
Speaker: And me listening to this, I mean, I came I got ideas just as you were talking, but I'm thinking like specifically as door to door guys.
Speaker: Here in California, we get daylight savings time.
Speaker: Winter, it's getting dark at like 5, 530.
Speaker: And then all of a sudden, most of us aren't knocking, you know, maybe like an hour or two into the dark.
Speaker: But it's like we still got hours where we could be.
Speaker: maybe calling people, calling referrals, calling old leads.
Speaker: So is that something you like coach guys on to like what you would you say that's a pretty good practice, just like calling through your old list of your own, like, you know, age leads and figuring out a script for maybe you your team?
Speaker: Is that something you've coached guys on to Peter?
Speaker: Yeah, I don't do that now really.
Speaker: I don't make myself available as a paid coach type thing.
Speaker: I'm already overworked as is.
Speaker: I think I mentioned in the beginning, I'm trying to reduce my stress.
Speaker: So yeah, I don't really do a lot of paid coaching much anymore.
Speaker: But if you come on as my client for any one of the services that we offer, you're going to get the coaching anyway.
Speaker: And I love to do it.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: Well, Peter, thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker: And guys, reach out for Peter if you want to get some of these things set up.
Speaker: But at the very least, we should all be keeping track of our leads.
Speaker: We should all be keeping track of our own age leads.
Speaker: Because, I mean, they're probably going to go slower eventually.
Speaker: So why not with us, right?
Speaker: If we can keep track of them, if we can keep calling them.
Speaker: So hopefully you took some things from that.
Speaker: Go check out Peter's YouTube if you want more resources.
Speaker: I know you're active on Facebook.
Speaker: You still on a lot of the Facebook groups and all that, Peter?
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: So reach out to him there.
Speaker: And yeah, hopefully we can do a follow up episode in the future, Peter.
Speaker: But thanks for coming on, man.
Speaker: We learned a ton and appreciate you.
Speaker: Thank you for having me, too.
Speaker: I appreciate it, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Take care.
Speaker: Bye bye.
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