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 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: What's up, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Today we are going to be talking about how I was able to get three appointments right off the bat, fresh off my Christmas vacation, and how you can do it too.
Speaker: Usually when you come back from vacation, you
Speaker: at least for me, I'm slow to get things rolling.
Speaker: You're a little bit just still in vacation mode.
Speaker: But I was able to come back from my little Christmas holiday break, almost two weeks I was gone, I think, maybe 10-12 days, and hit the ground running a lot more than I typically do.
Speaker: So I'm going to share with you the secret.
Speaker: If you are new to the podcast, we're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals.
Speaker: and have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong and appreciate you making the podcast the first listen of every Tuesday and Friday where we are bringing the heat, bringing the fire, bringing the content and here to help you as much as possible.
Speaker: So this episode, it's going to be a little bit shorter, but just some thoughts I had on some things that, like I said, helped me hit the ground running a lot more than typical.
Speaker: And so just right off the bat, I think what helped me a lot more this time is just having an organized CRM.
Speaker: So the CRM I'm currently using is CRMX, my friend Brent Attaway.
Speaker: If you want to check his CRM out, it's a great tool.
Speaker: If you're unfamiliar with what it is, it's a version of high level, which a lot of people in solar are using right now.
Speaker: But what's really cool about it is it puts all your leads and your appointments in separate pipelines.
Speaker: So it's just imagine a bunch of columns going down of different stages of where leads are at.
Speaker: So for example, you've set an appointment, you put it in your pipeline, and it shows up as appointment set.
Speaker: And then once you keep that appointment, you move it to appointment kept.
Speaker: If you close that deal, it goes to your install pipeline so you can keep track of it there.
Speaker: And I got to say, this is the most organized I've ever been in my solar career.
Speaker: And that's because I'm in there almost daily, still improving, but just checking up on my leads.
Speaker: And so what happened this last time when I got back from my Christmas vacation, I had six or seven people that no showed their appointments because of the holidays.
Speaker: And this probably happened to you.
Speaker: If you're like me during the month of December, there was probably at least seven or eight people that you set up appointments that no showed that said, you know what, we're too busy this month.
Speaker: Come back next month.
Speaker: We'll brush you off.
Speaker: So what I did, I organized these people right when I got back.
Speaker: I followed up with five or six of them, instantly got three appointments out of it.
Speaker: And the following day, two days after I got back from my vacation, I was in a home closing the deal, which was awesome.
Speaker: Usually it takes me a week to get rolling.
Speaker: And I've had a lot of weeks where I have pulled zeros coming back from vacation.
Speaker: But I got back on a Wednesday, did all this that day, and then was in a home closing a deal that Thursday, I believe.
Speaker: So if you're listening to this month of January, or really whatever month, maybe you're listening to this later down the road, the challenge I want to give you is start to organize your leads, organize your pipeline.
Speaker: You can go the cheap route.
Speaker: You can do this pen and paper and just put down the leads you're getting, the appointments that no-showed, maybe your company has something.
Speaker: But if you have no system in place, no process, hit me up.
Speaker: I can help you get set up on CRMX, which is this platform I'm currently using.
Speaker: And it just helps tremendously to organize all these leads, keep track of them.
Speaker: Okay, so that's the first thing I did.
Speaker: And then just a couple other random thoughts I had to round out this show.
Speaker: I've been getting more and more referrals, which is something I've been talking a lot more in the show about.
Speaker: But something I'm noticing that's helping me is just doing a pipeline review every Friday.
Speaker: So I have my virtual assistant.
Speaker: She goes in and shout out to Angelica.
Speaker: She's the one that edits all these podcasts.
Speaker: But she goes in every Friday.
Speaker: She looks at my pending installs, looks at where they're at.
Speaker: Maybe they're in waiting for a permit.
Speaker: maybe they're on hold because of HOA, maybe they're getting roof work done and she's been sending them emails every Friday of what's going on, giving them an update and just staying in touch with them.
Speaker: So maybe you have project managers at your company that do this but I think for me it's been just even better.
Speaker: We do have some project managers doing similar things
Speaker: But as much as I can monitor that progress, as much as I can have the customer me be front of their mind, it's helping me get a lot more referrals.
Speaker: And so if you are not doing a pipeline review, that's another thing I would invite you to do.
Speaker: I know guys that call every single...
Speaker: progressing account, every single account, every Friday, they use that as an opportunity to talk to their, their customers, and then also ask for referrals.
Speaker: So that's probably the best option.
Speaker: But if you want to take the lazy way, and maybe not quite as effective, then you can do like me.
Speaker: And that's sending out an email or outsourcing it having someone else do it.
Speaker: Maybe it's a cousin, whatever, but I got a virtual assistant that helps me with all this.
Speaker: And that's something we can talk about more.
Speaker: We have done episodes on how you can get your own virtual assistants.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then last thing, just to end out this podcast, and I know this is kind of all over the place today, but one of the best investments that I'm realizing that we made over the past couple months is a printer and a laminator.
Speaker: And here's why.
Speaker: Hopefully you all have slicks that you're using in your sales as you're out there, whether you're in person appointments or whether you're knocking doors.
Speaker: Hopefully you have some type of slick to hand customers.
Speaker: But what I'm realizing, the reason why this is such a good investment is because every single news article that comes out here in San Diego about rates increasing, which happens all the time.
Speaker: out here.
Speaker: But anything that deals with solar, with rates increasing, with utility in general, guess who's printing that out and laminating it the very next day?
Speaker: This guy right here.
Speaker: And I've noticed it's been getting me a lot more time at the doors.
Speaker: It's been helping me just be perceived as an expert.
Speaker: And I feel more like a newsman out there, like the newspaper guy.
Speaker: It's almost like extra, extra, read all about it.
Speaker: Did you see the rates are doubling this month?
Speaker: And I'm passing them the slick right as it happened.
Speaker: Literally is the article that came out the previous day.
Speaker: And the reason I think it's such a good investment, the printer and the laminator costs like, I don't know, 150 bucks for both of those is because you take the procrastination out of the equation.
Speaker: I know you can go to like a print shop, you can go UPS store, whatever.
Speaker: But who's got time for that?
Speaker: If you have it here, you can print it out.
Speaker: Boom, it's ready to go the next day.
Speaker: And so if you're managing a team, if you're a company owner, maybe get one of these bad boys, put them in the office, but be ready to print off slicks on the fly.
Speaker: Give them your team.
Speaker: It's been helping so much.
Speaker: So that's another just random thought that I thought would share with my peeps here on the Solar Printer podcast.
Speaker: So I know we're all over the place today, but just some things that have been helping.
Speaker: Again, if you don't have a CRM or a way to organize your leads and follow up with them, do that.
Speaker: And we're going to be doing future episodes much more in depth with that very topic.
Speaker: And then number two, get someone to send updates or you yourself call your customers every week.
Speaker: Give them the updates.
Speaker: It's going to help with referrals and help you stay at the top of your mind of your customers, reduce cancellations.
Speaker: And number three, get yourself a printer and a laminator and print out
Speaker: News articles, print out things you can use on the doors, print out bills of customers with solar installed so they can see that there's a negative balance in their account.
Speaker: All that stuff helps so much.
Speaker: And so I hope that was helpful today.
Speaker: Don't miss out on the next episode because we're going to have an expert.
Speaker: His name's Adam Kramer.
Speaker: He's going to come on and talk about systems and how you can better utilize a CRM.
Speaker: and set up automations to talk with your customers, with your leads, with anyone really automatically and how you can use it to double your sales and increase referrals and just crush it more in solar.
Speaker: So tune in for next episode.
Speaker: Can't wait to hear some of the future guests we have coming on the show.
Speaker: So keep tuning in every Tuesday, Friday.
Speaker: We'll keep showing up for you and appreciate the shares, appreciate the feedback.
Speaker: Please, if you have not, continue to do that.
Speaker: And then last thing, we are still having a few openings for our Blitz here in California, which if you don't have plans to sell in California before the deadline of April 15th for Net Metering 3.0, we'll book your calendars, make a plan to come out here.
Speaker: So hit me up, send me a DM, or shoot me an email, taylorsolapreneurs.com if you want to possibly get in on that.
Speaker: And number two, we've got SolarCon and DoorToDoorCon coming right around the corner.
Speaker: If you're going to DoorToDoorCon, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker: That's coming up in a couple weeks here, January 19th through the 21st.
Speaker: Yours truly will be there.
Speaker: So we'd love to organize a little meetup, little hangout, go grab some lunch, dinner, whatever.
Speaker: Shoot me an email.
Speaker: We'd love to do something organized if we have some interest in that.
Speaker: So we'd love to hear from y'all.
Speaker: That's it for the podcast today.
Speaker: We'll see you guys on the next one.
Speaker: Keep crushing.
Speaker: Peace out.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong and that's it for today.
Speaker: Hey Solarpreneurs, are you sick and tired of spinning your wheels every month and not seeing your sales increase?
Speaker: Well so was I and the truth is I was never able to improve it until I figured out what was going wrong.
Speaker: So that's why I'm excited to announce for a limited time we are doing a free sales diagnostic.
Speaker: We'll break down your sales process, figure out the holes in your business and see how we can help you improve.
Speaker: So at now we have six bucks for this month.
Speaker: So book a call now.
Speaker: Don't miss out.
Speaker: What you're going to do is send an email to taylor at solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: That's taylor at solarpreneurs with an S dot com.
Speaker: I'll send you out a calendar link and we will figure out the time that works best.
Speaker: So shoot that email and let's increase your sales.
