Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
Speaker: I teach you how to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
Speaker: What is a solarpreneur, you might ask?
Speaker: A solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery, and you are about to become one.
Speaker: What's up, solarpreneurs?
Speaker: Taylor Armstrong, here to help you close more deals, generate more referrals, and make your life better as a solar sales professional.
Speaker: Let's jump into it today.
Speaker: It's just me on the mic here, and I have some exciting stuff to share with you.
Speaker: But before we do that, I just want to thank any of you that have shared the podcast or have left a review.
Speaker: I really appreciate it.
Speaker: That is what has kept the podcast going.
Speaker: I've mentioned it in previous episodes, but there's been times where I've gotten busy selling.
Speaker: I'm trying to lead my own team, grow my office, and it's not always easy to keep a podcast going.
Speaker: And we're not really running ads, anything like that.
Speaker: This is just to add value and help you guys crush it.
Speaker: So I just wanted to give a shout out to a few new reviews up on the show.
Speaker: We got someone, Sue Garet.
Speaker: It's a cool name if that's your real name.
Speaker: But he says, the podcast that I look forward to more than any other podcast.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: Then one that actually scared me for a second.
Speaker: I was like, what the?
Speaker: This one is from Game Changer.
Speaker: And, oh, actually, so the name, I don't know if this is the name or the name of the review, but it says product is awful.
Speaker: But then right under that, it says this podcast has completely changed the way I do door-to-door.
Speaker: Absolutely awesome content.
Speaker: Keep it up.
Speaker: So love to hear that.
Speaker: I thought I was talking about the podcast when it says product is awful.
Speaker: So I'm glad that wasn't the actual review.
Speaker: But glad we could add some value.
Speaker: A couple other ones that are recent and really appreciate it.
Speaker: Again, if you have found value in this show,
Speaker: Go share it with someone.
Speaker: Go help with all the people who have left me comments and reviews.
Speaker: I know it's for sure going to help someone in some way, especially for those guys that are just getting going in this great industry of ours.
Speaker: So let's jump into the episode.
Speaker: We've got some exciting stuff, actually sort of an exciting announcement at the end.
Speaker: So you're going to want to listen to the end of the show and we're announcing something noteworthy, something groundbreaking, not going on to miss out.
Speaker: So keep listening or I guess you can skip the end, but keep listening though.
Speaker: Before we get into that though, I just want to talk about...
Speaker: Well, the title of this episode is called an underground training program.
Speaker: That's a must for sales.
Speaker: Pretty exciting stuff.
Speaker: Everyone's probably thinking, what is an what's what's this underground training program?
Speaker: So before I tell you what it is, you're probably not going to be expecting it.
Speaker: But before I get into that, I just want to tell a quick story.
Speaker: When I first got into sales, I was devouring every book, every program I could get my hands on.
Speaker: I wanted to be the best guy out there, even though I started out sucking really bad in sales and it went on for a long time.
Speaker: I thought if guys are dominating this, there's got to be some sort of way to get better.
Speaker: And I was doing pest control out in North Carolina.
Speaker: I remember me and my buddy Bonzo was his nickname.
Speaker: We drove out from Utah, North Carolina, just the two of us in the car.
Speaker: We had a super long ride, obviously, like 30 hours or something like that.
Speaker: But in this ride, I got an Audible book.
Speaker: I think it was Zig Ziglar's Secrets of Closing the Cell.
Speaker: And this is like, I think it was like a 20-hour, 25-hour book, something like that.
Speaker: So what I did, I'm like, all right, Bonds.
Speaker: I'm going to listen to this book the whole way out there.
Speaker: Might as well get better at sales while we're driving.
Speaker: And when we get out there, we're going to be like sales pros.
Speaker: We're going to sell so much pest control.
Speaker: We're going to be, you know, the best in the industry, even though there's only like three of us out there.
Speaker: Just my buddy started a pest control company.
Speaker: But I'm thinking, all right, it's a small company.
Speaker: It's a startup that my buddy started.
Speaker: So we got to have some type of training.
Speaker: Zig Ziglar, he's going to train us, even if no one else can.
Speaker: So we get on this ride, we're switching off driving, and every time I drove, I would turn on this Zig Ziglar, Secrets of Closing the Sale.
Speaker: And good book, good book.
Speaker: Obviously an older book, Zig Ziglar, passed away a while back now.
Speaker: But we listened to this book for so long.
Speaker: Zig Ziglar's just talking in his southern accent he has.
Speaker: And we get going, and my buddy Bonzo, he eventually gets to the point where he goes, Taylor, if I have to listen to Zig talk one more time, I'm literally going to rip my hair out.
Speaker: I can't go any longer.
Speaker: So if you want to make it on this ride, we're not listening to Zig anymore.
Speaker: This was probably like 15 hours into the book.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: That's my story on Zig Ziglar.
Speaker: We listened to this guy for so long.
Speaker: My buddy wanted to blow his brains out.
Speaker: And we learned some good stuff.
Speaker: But, yeah, it can get to be long if you listen to Zig Ziglar for 20 hours straight.
Speaker: But the point of that is, are you using your commute time as learning opportunities?
Speaker: Are you really doing whatever it takes to learn every day, to improve, to be reading books, to be going through programs?
Speaker: If you're not doing that and you're not seeing the type of success that you want, then you've got to start to look and question and start to ask yourself why you aren't putting in the time to train every day.
Speaker: All the greats are doing it.
Speaker: Anyone you look at that's been great in any industry, sure, there's guys that have natural talent.
Speaker: But the very best are guys that have a little bit of natural talent and then are also training or also putting in the time or also putting in the effort.
Speaker: Right now I'm doing this, uh, knock star program.
Speaker: I think I talked about it in the previous episode.
Speaker: But my boy Danny Pesce, I know he suggests investing 10 to 20% of whatever you make back into personal development, back into training, back into mentors, back into something that can help you improve.
Speaker: So I thought that was a great tip.
Speaker: If you're not doing that, start doing it.
Speaker: Just take 10%.
Speaker: I mean, we're in solar.
Speaker: We should be making tons of money.
Speaker: So you want to be improving, take that money, invest it in the, you know, training programs books.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But now I want to talk about this underground training program at the moment you probably all been waiting for.
Speaker: And this is actually something that's way cheaper than you would think too.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So here's what I'm going to recommend.
Speaker: I actually read this in a book.
Speaker: It's called Sell It Like Sir Hunt.
Speaker: I think that's how you say his last name.
Speaker: But it's by Ryan Sir Hunt.
Speaker: He wrote this book.
Speaker: He's the guy that does the million-dollar listing.
Speaker: He sells real estate in New York.
Speaker: He's one of the top real estate brokers in the world is what he claims.
Speaker: Um, good book though.
Speaker: Definitely recommend it.
Speaker: But what he suggests in this book was actually something I hadn't really heard before.
Speaker: And his background is he is, he was actually trying to be an actor before he got into real estate.
Speaker: He was going, I think he was in all like the drama clubs, you know, the kids we all picked on in high school, gave wedgies and, you know, flush them down the toilet, all that.
Speaker: He was one of those kids.
Speaker: At least that's how he explains himself.
Speaker: And the reason he got into real estate was because he was making no money trying to get into acting in New York.
Speaker: So what does he do?
Speaker: He gets into real estate instead.
Speaker: And in this book, he talks about...
Speaker: really just his acting background and then his secret weapon that he goes on and on about in the book is an improv class so that's what this training program is i read this in the book i'm like what the heck improv class isn't that like my first thought was if any of you watched the office um michael scott he goes and takes improv classes and he's he's the guy he's pointing the air guns at people and
Speaker: pretending to shoot people and they're all like i don't know just like these weird people in this class acting out scenes that's what i thought in improv classes i'm like what why would that why how is that going to help me in sales what's the point of all that so i started digging deep into it i'm like all right well if this guy says it top real estate guy in the world supposedly maybe it's worth checking out
Speaker: So I do a little bit of research.
Speaker: I go do some Google searches on it.
Speaker: I'm in San Diego.
Speaker: And luckily, even during COVID, they had some improv classes.
Speaker: And I start reading some reviews.
Speaker: And there's like reviews of people that are entrepreneurs, business owners, salespeople.
Speaker: I'm like, huh, okay.
Speaker: I mean, this isn't just some geeky, nerdy acting drama class.
Speaker: There's actually entrepreneurs and people trying to improve their presentation skills that are taking these classes.
Speaker: I'm like, all right, well, it's worth a try.
Speaker: And then it was actually only like, I think 150 bucks or something for
Speaker: for maybe like seven classes.
Speaker: Nothing too bad.
Speaker: Maybe it's a little more.
Speaker: Might have been 300 actually.
Speaker: But nothing too bad, especially in solar, right?
Speaker: That's pocket change for hopefully all of us.
Speaker: Hopefully you're making 300 bucks at this point.
Speaker: So I decided to take this class and I was surprised.
Speaker: There are there actually a lot of principles that help a ton in cells.
Speaker: I went through level one, so I'm no expert.
Speaker: But when I got there, I was surprised to see it wasn't just people interested in like, I don't know, learning acting or learning to be funny.
Speaker: um the reviews were right it was entrepreneurs there were several people that were like business owners trying to improve their presentation skills and then fast forward i've actually heard from other you know sales people podcasters things like that that these improv classes are one of the best things they could have taken to improve their presentation skills
Speaker: So I took it and I did see an improvement in my results.
Speaker: I did see an improvement in my confidence.
Speaker: And the biggest thing, you're getting up in front of people.
Speaker: It's something that makes you uncomfortable, right?
Speaker: We've all heard do something uncomfortable every day.
Speaker: You should be doing it.
Speaker: But it's something once you get out of your comfort zone, you're going to make improvements.
Speaker: Anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Speaker: So if you put yourself out of your regular comfort zone, it's going to force you in uncomfortable situations.
Speaker: And what do we do in cells?
Speaker: We get in uncomfortable situations.
Speaker: It's not easy to ask for the cell.
Speaker: It's not easy to go door to door.
Speaker: It's not easy to go interrupt someone's day and, you know, annoy people out knocking on their door.
Speaker: That's what we're doing in improv.
Speaker: It's not easy to get up in front of people and act like a fool and act out these scenes.
Speaker: I felt super uncomfortable doing it.
Speaker: At first, I'm no actor.
Speaker: I consider myself a huge introvert.
Speaker: I have to work super hard to put myself out there to connect even in social settings.
Speaker: I have to like take breaks.
Speaker: I'm definitely not a person that can go to parties and then just want to keep it up, keep socializing.
Speaker: I have to go take breaks.
Speaker: So that's the point of these things, especially if you're an introvert like me, you need to be putting yourself in uncomfortable situations.
Speaker: And that's what this class did is it made it uncomfortable and you're up there, they're throwing out scenes, you have to act out.
Speaker: And of course this was level one, so I know it gets progressively harder, but yeah, it makes you think on your feet.
Speaker: It makes you just think on the spot.
Speaker: They say, okay, you're on the bus.
Speaker: Your wife just had a baby, and the guy next to you, he's 72 years old.
Speaker: They give you all these scenarios, and you have to basically put yourself in those scenarios and just think on your feet.
Speaker: Think, what are you going to say?
Speaker: What are you going to say?
Speaker: You don't know what your partner is going to say, and then you have to go off, play off of what they're saying.
Speaker: So basically the same thing we do as we're knocking doors.
Speaker: If you're knocking doors, you have a pitch.
Speaker: People are saying things.
Speaker: People are not going to let you just say your pitch word for word and then say, all right, where do I sign?
Speaker: They're throwing out objections.
Speaker: They're throwing out distractions.
Speaker: They're throwing out different scenario.
Speaker: They're throwing out that they just had a baby, whatever.
Speaker: There's a million different things that can happen on the doors.
Speaker: And even when you're in the house, you never know what's going to happen.
Speaker: So that's the same thing you're doing in these classes.
Speaker: You're training yourself for those situations and you're making it uncomfortable.
Speaker: Like Grant Cardone says, if you lift, if you're trying to lift 300 pounds, then you should train to lift 400 pounds.
Speaker: That way on competition day, 300 pounds will seem easy, right?
Speaker: It's the same thing where you're doing with this training.
Speaker: You're making it seem easy in the presentation.
Speaker: You're making it seem easier as you're knocking doors.
Speaker: So I'm not going to get super detailed into, you know, there's a ton of exercises they ever go through.
Speaker: You go in my class, there's, I think, about 10 people.
Speaker: You're interacting with each other.
Speaker: They were like two-hour classes, so they weren't short classes.
Speaker: But if you're looking for something unique, unique training, and again, it's inexpensive, it's not an expensive program, I want to suggest that you go out and take an improv class.
Speaker: There might not be any in your area.
Speaker: I'm in San Diego, so there was.
Speaker: But the point of all this is look for things that can make you uncomfortable.
Speaker: Look for these types of classes.
Speaker: I think they're in pretty much any major cities.
Speaker: I'm sure a lot of universities have them.
Speaker: But do them.
Speaker: And then a lot of people, again, Danny Pesce, the guy from Knockstar, the program, he's one of the top alarm guys.
Speaker: Guess what?
Speaker: One of his secrets was improv.
Speaker: He takes improv classes, and he's a super funny guy.
Speaker: So go try it.
Speaker: Don't knock it before you try it.
Speaker: Pun intended.
Speaker: But go out and try it.
Speaker: It's a secret weapon.
Speaker: It's something that helped me really just feel way more comfortable in my presentation and feel more comfortable on the doors.
Speaker: And it's something that you're going to be uncomfortable with.
Speaker: It's going to help you improve.
Speaker: So that's my rant.
Speaker: Well, not really a rant, but that is my tip.
Speaker: Go out and take an improv course.
Speaker: See what it does.
Speaker: I'd love to hear your feedback.
Speaker: If you actually go take one, let me know what you thought.
Speaker: Did it actually help you?
Speaker: It's not going to make it worse, but it will help 100%.
Speaker: Go out and take it.
Speaker: Let me know what you think.
Speaker: And we'll catch you on the next episode.
Speaker: Hey SolarPrinters, quick question.
Speaker: What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day?
Speaker: For the last three years I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite solar professionals
Speaker: and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level.
Speaker: That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new solar learning community exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry.
Speaker: And it's called Sol Society.
Speaker: This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give Solar Pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds for, are you ready for it?
Speaker: Less than $3.45 a day.
Speaker: Currently Soul Society is closed to the public and membership is by invitation only.
Speaker: But solopreneurs can go to soulciety.co to learn more and have the option to join a waitlist when a membership becomes available in your area.
Speaker: Again, th is is exclusively for Solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now.
Speaker: Thanks again for listening.
Speaker: We'll catch you again in the next episode.
