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A Call for Ethics in Solar Sales
40 Plays4 years ago
SOLARCON April 21st - 23rd, 2022
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Transcript
Introduction to Solarpreneur Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
00:00:08
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
00:00:10
Speaker
I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
00:00:19
Speaker
I teach you how to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a solarpreneur, you might ask?
00:00:33
Speaker
A solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery, and you are about to become one.
Preview of Michael O'Donnell Episode
00:00:41
Speaker
What's up, solarpreneurs?
00:00:42
Speaker
Taylor Armstrong back with another episode, as usual, here to help you sell more solar, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better experience in the solar industry.
00:00:54
Speaker
Thanks for listening today, and thanks for making us the first listen of every day.
00:00:59
Speaker
at least every Tuesday and Friday, because that's when the new episodes drop.
00:01:04
Speaker
So today, it's going to be a quick one, but we're going to give a little preview for our next guest.
00:01:09
Speaker
You've heard him before.
00:01:11
Speaker
This is actually his third time coming on, and he dropped some heat.
00:01:15
Speaker
Let me tell you, you don't want to miss the next episode coming out on Tuesday.
00:01:20
Speaker
So if you haven't heard the previous two, his name is Michael O'Donnell.
00:01:25
Speaker
People know him as the GOAT of the solar industry.
00:01:28
Speaker
Every single year at Door to Door Con, he's up getting multiple Golden Door Awards.
00:01:34
Speaker
This year he got one, but last year he got, I think, two, maybe even three.
00:01:40
Speaker
But this guy is a machine, and it's really cool to hear his progression because if you go listen to the first episode we did with him, he actually, I don't think he'd done a lot of podcasts at that point, and he was just starting to kind of get big.
00:01:57
Speaker
Sam Taggart heard about him, had him on his podcast.
00:02:00
Speaker
I had him on the Soulpreneur podcast, and
00:02:03
Speaker
And he's growing a lot because I can tell because from the first episode we had, he was just on Zoom.
00:02:10
Speaker
I could tell he was trying to figure out the technology.
00:02:13
Speaker
He was one of those people that was holding the Zoom up.
00:02:15
Speaker
You could see like half his face.
00:02:17
Speaker
So I don't even know if he knew how to work technology super well back then.
00:02:22
Speaker
And he hadn't done a lot of speaking, but now the guy is a powerhouse.
00:02:27
Speaker
And not to take anything away from the previous episodes because they were fantastic.
00:02:32
Speaker
He still was selling at an extremely high level back then.
00:02:35
Speaker
But the difference from now and then is now he has trained so many teams, so many reps.
00:02:42
Speaker
He's put in the repetition to just not only become a great performer, but also a great trainer.
00:02:50
Speaker
Which that's how I feel about the podcast too.
00:02:52
Speaker
Because I'll be honest, you go back and listen to some of the first episodes of the Solar Printer podcast, they weren't great.
00:02:59
Speaker
And I sounded like an idiot on a lot of them.
00:03:03
Speaker
Now I know I still do at times, but hopefully...
00:03:06
Speaker
Hopefully, at this point, the podcast's quality has gone way up versus the beginning episodes.
00:03:13
Speaker
And that's the goal.
00:03:15
Speaker
I know it's not always a continuous improvement, but that's all we can do is try to improve a little by little every time we do something.
Michael O'Donnell's Sales and Training Achievements
00:03:24
Speaker
Anyways, not to get on tangents, but that is what Michael O'Donnell has done.
00:03:29
Speaker
So this episode is really cool because he comes on and he shares basically how he's transitioned from not only producing at a high level himself, but now he is also training at a high level.
00:03:41
Speaker
And what was really cool at Door2DoorCon is he actually had, I think, six Golden Door winners up on that stage, more than anyone else, as far as I know.
00:03:54
Speaker
So it's cool.
00:03:55
Speaker
He is now training an extremely high level.
00:03:58
Speaker
And that's what he shares about.
00:04:01
Speaker
He has his book coming out.
00:04:02
Speaker
He has his online training program.
00:04:07
Speaker
All those things he's going to describe in detail in the podcast.
00:04:11
Speaker
So make sure you don't miss out on the next episode.
Discussion on Solar Ethics
00:04:15
Speaker
Okay, so that's the preview.
00:04:16
Speaker
But before we wrap this episode up, the other thing that we talked about in the podcast with Michael O'Donnell is just basically the ethics of solar.
00:04:27
Speaker
And Michael, he's going to tell the story in the podcast.
00:04:31
Speaker
But the thing that happened at Door-to-DoorCon is we had a little scuffle.
00:04:35
Speaker
Mike almost got into it with someone on the stage there.
00:04:42
Speaker
He was on a solar panel there speaking.
00:04:45
Speaker
And someone asked this question.
00:04:48
Speaker
And I'm going to keep it a little more vague seen here, the full story in next episode.
00:04:54
Speaker
But basically someone asked to the panel, hey, what do you guys think on what do you think about people poaching permits?
00:05:03
Speaker
Which if you don't know, that's going and it's public records.
00:05:08
Speaker
You can go find out.
00:05:10
Speaker
who pulled a solar permit and then you can go and go to those people and basically undercut the deal.
00:05:18
Speaker
You can say, hey, I see you guys got a solar permit, got it.
00:05:23
Speaker
So it's not technically illegal that I know of, but it is kind of a dirtbag move.
00:05:29
Speaker
I mean, let's be real.
00:05:30
Speaker
The other company puts in all the work and they went and got a permit, spend money on the job, and then you're trying to convince the customer to cancel.
00:05:39
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:39
Speaker
And so I don't have problems with switching over customers, but what I think is unethical here is actually having your guys go out and see who pulled the permit.
00:05:50
Speaker
Right?
00:05:50
Speaker
So if you're, if you're actually trying to find out who got a permit and undercut them, then that's one thing versus just like knocking on someone's door and they saying, Oh, we're in the process of getting solar.
00:06:03
Speaker
Uh, this is what we've done.
00:06:06
Speaker
And then you just, um,
00:06:12
Speaker
Sorry, I did a little pause in the episode because we have some screaming children in the background.
00:06:17
Speaker
So I apologize if you've got some background noise coming through, some background screaming.
00:06:23
Speaker
But what I was saying is we all just need to be careful about the ethics of solar.
00:06:30
Speaker
There are so many people that I hear from now.
00:06:32
Speaker
It's been going all over these Facebook groups.
00:06:35
Speaker
Hey, this company did this.
00:06:37
Speaker
This company came and misrepresented, said they were trying to be us and told them we could get a better deal.
00:06:46
Speaker
So many things like that going on.
00:06:49
Speaker
And what I'm nervous about at the end of the day is if we don't represent solar at a high level, if we all don't keep our standards high in the industry, I'm nervous there's going to be regulations that get hammered down on us.
00:07:03
Speaker
Because one of the best things about solar is we can go make extremely high commissions, especially here in California.
00:07:09
Speaker
We can sell the systems super high, make great commissions, and still cut people's bills in half.
00:07:17
Speaker
And I know in other markets, maybe there's less savings, but there still is a lot of flexibility on what we can charge customers,
Importance of Ethics and Product Knowledge
00:07:25
Speaker
right?
00:07:25
Speaker
What we can offer them.
00:07:28
Speaker
So this is me just making a call.
00:07:30
Speaker
Please have high ethics.
00:07:32
Speaker
Do not be one of those people that go and poach his permits.
00:07:36
Speaker
Do not be one of those people that misrepresents, that says you're warning.
00:07:40
Speaker
And this comes back to also knowing your product.
00:07:44
Speaker
I saw a post in one of the solar Facebook groups the other day.
00:07:49
Speaker
of a guy, um, someone was, they were just talking about if it's necessary to really know your products and know like the warranties and all that.
00:07:59
Speaker
And there were a few people on there saying, no, it serves no value to know more than you need.
00:08:05
Speaker
All you need to know is that panels get stuck on the roof, produce energy, and you can go out and sell a deal.
00:08:11
Speaker
And that is true.
00:08:13
Speaker
When I got in, that's all I knew I got and sell a deal.
00:08:17
Speaker
But what happened with me is because of that, I was lying to my customers without even knowing it because all I knew was the bare minimum.
00:08:26
Speaker
So please, please take the time to educate yourself on your markets, on the equipment you're using, on the exact type of warranties.
00:08:36
Speaker
One mistake I made is I didn't know that your lights went out.
00:08:42
Speaker
I thought if you had solar and it was daytime,
00:08:46
Speaker
that the solar was going to run your house even if the power was out.
00:08:50
Speaker
It wasn't true.
00:08:52
Speaker
Power kicks off even if you have solar, unless you have a battery.
00:08:56
Speaker
I was going around telling people this, and guess what?
00:08:58
Speaker
A couple years down the road, when few customers had power outages, I was the first person they called and said, Taylor, what the F is going on?
00:09:07
Speaker
Why is my power out?
00:09:08
Speaker
I'm like, uh, it is.
00:09:11
Speaker
Okay, I knew at that point.
00:09:14
Speaker
So I told them.
00:09:15
Speaker
I said, look, if I told you guys that, I'm really sorry.
00:09:20
Speaker
But I was new at the time and I didn't know.
00:09:24
Speaker
That's all I could say.
00:09:25
Speaker
So learn from my mistakes.
00:09:27
Speaker
Get knowledgeable.
00:09:29
Speaker
And when you do have the knowledge, make sure you have high ethics with it.
00:09:34
Speaker
Okay, don't go around poaching permits.
00:09:37
Speaker
Don't go around, I don't know, running people's credit without them knowing.
00:09:44
Speaker
Don't go around telling people they're going to get full offsets when it's only a 50% offset.
00:09:50
Speaker
These are all common things that I hear, unfortunately.
00:09:53
Speaker
It's sad.
00:09:54
Speaker
And if you know of people doing this or companies...
00:09:58
Speaker
We've got to stand up to these guys because we do not want this industry getting way more regulated.
00:10:04
Speaker
Already it's happening in California.
00:10:07
Speaker
We have to sign a consumer protection guide.
00:10:11
Speaker
We still sell plenty of deals, but it's an extra step and it's an extra thing that homeowners have to go through in order to get solar.
00:10:20
Speaker
So if you don't want this happening in other markets, you don't want more regulation, then make sure you keep your standards high.
00:10:29
Speaker
We got to stand up against this.
00:10:31
Speaker
We got to fight the evil.
00:10:32
Speaker
So make sure you're doing it.
00:10:34
Speaker
Do not contribute to the unethical stuff that's going on.
00:10:38
Speaker
Okay, so just a little rant.
00:10:40
Speaker
Make sure we put a stop to this.
00:10:43
Speaker
You're going to hear more what, you know, the little scuffle that Michael O'Donnell got in on stage.
00:10:48
Speaker
It wasn't huge, but end of the day, make sure you have high ethics.
00:10:52
Speaker
So if you know of someone that is misrepresenting to their customers, if they're doing shady stuff, send them this podcast.
00:11:01
Speaker
Hope it can help them in some way.
00:11:03
Speaker
And then I did a podcast about a year ago.
00:11:06
Speaker
on lies that I have told in sales.
00:11:09
Speaker
I went through some of the things that I've told customers that wasn't true.
00:11:13
Speaker
Some of it I knew, some of it I didn't.
00:11:15
Speaker
So I've done some stuff that I'm not proud of.
00:11:17
Speaker
Learned some lessons.
00:11:19
Speaker
If you want to hear what that was about, go on this.
00:11:22
Speaker
I think it's called lies I've told in solar.
00:11:25
Speaker
So you can go hear that if you want to hear more juicy details on stuff I missed up on.
00:11:30
Speaker
So go listen to that.
00:11:32
Speaker
And again, make sure you don't miss out on next episode.
Teaser for Next Episode
00:11:37
Speaker
Michael O'Donnell, Mr. Goat, he's going to be dropping some fire.
00:11:41
Speaker
So we will see you on the next podcast.
Announcement of Solcitee Community
00:11:45
Speaker
Hey Solarpreneurs, quick question.
00:11:47
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.
00:11:57
Speaker
For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level.
00:12:09
Speaker
That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry.
00:12:20
Speaker
And it's called Solcitee.
00:12:22
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, less than $3.45 a day.
00:12:41
Speaker
Currently, SoulCity is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled.
00:12:47
Speaker
So go to SoulCity.co to learn more and join the learning experience now.
00:12:55
Speaker
This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to SoulCity.co and join.
00:13:02
Speaker
We'll see you on the inside.