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: Taylor Armstrong here.
Speaker: Today, we're going to talk about why recording yourself is a must in today's sales environments, and also we're going to demo an exciting new software that you should be using to record yourselves.
Speaker: More on that later.
Speaker: Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker: If you are a newcomer, appreciate you tuning in.
Speaker: And if you are new, we are all about helping you generate more leads, close more deals and get more referrals and make it a blast to be in this awesome solar industry.
Speaker: Hope we can accomplish that for you today.
Speaker: Just got back from an appointment myself and
Speaker: I don't know if this has happened to you guys.
Speaker: I'm sure it has.
Speaker: But confirm with the wife.
Speaker: And I'm like, hey, her name was, I think, Mary Jane.
Speaker: I'm like, hey, Mary Jane, I'm on my way.
Speaker: Husband's going to be there, right?
Speaker: Make sure both decision makers are there.
Speaker: She's like, yeah, yeah, come on over, Taylor.
Speaker: I show up.
Speaker: Sure enough, guess what?
Speaker: Her husband's not home yet.
Speaker: She opens the door, comes outside, and he's like, can you just show me what you got?
Speaker: And I'm like, well, I mean, I want to make sure we answer both you and your husband's questions.
Speaker: So she calls up her husband, and sure enough, her husband's, you know, like, go kick rocks, tells me to get out of there.
Speaker: says not interested.
Speaker: That's like, come on guys.
Speaker: That's the beauty of this industry though.
Speaker: I mean, you'd see it all, you deal with all, you can confirm things 20 times and you still get people like that.
Speaker: So test your patience, but Hey, happens to the best of us, right?
Speaker: Just got to move on, go to that next door and push hard.
Speaker: So sorry, a little side story there, but just fresh on my mind.
Speaker: Anyway, so today's topic, before we jump into that, just wanted to let you know, shoot me a message if you guys have any topic suggestions, if you have things you're struggling with, if you have things you want us to talk about, guests you want us to bring on the show.
Speaker: We're always looking for new people and we're always looking for different topics because I'm going to share what's working for me.
Speaker: I'm going to share struggles that I'm going through, but really it's about you.
Speaker: We're here to serve our solopreneur audience and we want to know what you guys think.
Speaker: We want to know what you're struggling with and how we can serve you better.
Speaker: So let us know, give us some feedback.
Speaker: And again, appreciate all the reviews we got coming in too.
Speaker: That's how we...
Speaker: I'm getting more exposure on the show, but more importantly, if you can share this on social media, if you can send it to someone that's struggling, that's really helping us grow as well.
Speaker: So appreciate all the shares, all the tags on social media.
Speaker: You guys are awesome.
Speaker: So today's topic, the reason why I'm talking about this, if you haven't figured out the structure of the podcast yet,
Speaker: For right now, it's basically every two episodes, I'm coming at you with things that are helping me with topics that I think are valuable, with specific things that are helping me have success that week.
Speaker: So it goes every... I do two episodes, bringing some fire for you, and then we have a guest episode.
Speaker: So next week's guest is someone named Joe...
Speaker: Okay, I'm drawing a blank on his last name.
Speaker: But Joe, he created a software where you can record yourselves and use it with your teams.
Speaker: And it's super, super dope.
Speaker: You're not going to want to miss out.
Speaker: We're going to get into the nitty gritty of it.
Speaker: But just to give you a little preview for next episode, you're not going to want to miss out because he's going to go through all the features of the recording software.
Speaker: And trust me, it's going to make it so much easier to record yourself and
Speaker: and give reps feedback because it transcribes the recordings, it puts them into bite-sized pieces, and it breaks down where reps are struggling to
Speaker: and tags in it so you can give specific feedback and also makes it easier for you to give yourself feedback.
Speaker: So don't miss out on next episode.
Speaker: But today just wanted to really reiterate why it's important that you're recording yourselves.
Speaker: I know we've talked about that in some recent episodes.
Speaker: If you haven't listened to the Mikey Lucas podcast, go listen to that.
Speaker: It's something that he swears by.
Speaker: It's something that he's used with his team to have massive improvements just recording yourself.
Speaker: Because when you record yourself, that's where you really see your weaknesses.
Speaker: That's where you see your chinks in your armor, so to speak.
Speaker: Sometimes we think we're so awesome.
Speaker: We think we're saying everything super clear.
Speaker: We're explaining it, how the customer would understand.
Speaker: But then we go back and listen.
Speaker: It's completely different than we thought.
Speaker: And I've talked about it.
Speaker: I go back and listen to my podcast and sometimes I think I sound freaking awesome too.
Speaker: And it's way different at times than I thought.
Speaker: So it happens to everyone.
Speaker: If you haven't recorded yourself, if you're not recording yourself, go and do it.
Speaker: Even if you're a super experienced rep.
Speaker: It's still important to record yourselves.
Speaker: I go on streaks where I'm closing deals and things are going great and I forget that I should record myself.
Speaker: But I always get some nuggets when I go back and listen to any recording that I make no matter how on fire I feel.
Speaker: So I want to invite you to start recording yourselves.
Speaker: Again, this software that we're going to talk about on the next episode is going to make it 10 times easier to do that.
Speaker: But just wanted to get into a few reasons why you should do it more often if you're not doing it.
Speaker: And then leave it at that and hopefully leave you on a cliffhanger.
Speaker: So you go check out the next podcast.
Speaker: Hey, but really, um, number one, recording yourself is because you sound much different than you think.
Speaker: So talked about that a little bit, but, um, I always compare it to just learning a musical instrument.
Speaker: Hey, and many, you know, that's what I studied in my university.
Speaker: I was studying percussion drums, playing it.
Speaker: Sometimes I would think I was playing my drums right on the beat and
Speaker: I was grooving.
Speaker: I was hitting all the fills and rudiments and all that.
Speaker: If any of you know the drums, that's how you're throwing down some grooves.
Speaker: You're throwing in some fills.
Speaker: You're trying to stay on the beat.
Speaker: But many times I will go back and listen to myself.
Speaker: I would be off the beat.
Speaker: My feels wouldn't be how I thought they were.
Speaker: And it just wasn't near as good.
Speaker: So really, it's the same thing in sales.
Speaker: I know I talked about that just barely.
Speaker: But when you record yourself, you can experience it from a different perspective.
Speaker: And that's why even more important than like sending it to your manager or anything is giving yourself feedback.
Speaker: Because I guarantee you, if you give yourself the feedback first rather than sending it out to just a manager for outside feedback, what's it going to do?
Speaker: It's going to force you to think, what could I have done better?
Speaker: It's going to force you to evaluate yourself and think, did that make sense what I was saying?
Speaker: Did that make sense how I was explaining it?
Speaker: Would I buy from myself a
Speaker: And again, we talked about it in the Mikey Lucas episode, but he has a rubric that he uses for himself, basically a little scoring sheet.
Speaker: And if you didn't do that, I want you to go hit up Mikey and or send me a message.
Speaker: I can help you out.
Speaker: Get that sheet from him because that's what you're going to want to do.
Speaker: You're going to give yourself a self-evaluation process.
Speaker: Before you even send it to any manager or any company owner or whatever.
Speaker: And if you are a team, if you're leading a team right now, if you're a company owner, make sure you have your reps think.
Speaker: Because so many times we're just we just want to get feedback.
Speaker: Hey, what could I have done better?
Speaker: Coach, coach me.
Speaker: And we're not helping our reps think for themselves.
Speaker: I do it too.
Speaker: I run a coaching program right now.
Speaker: We got guys in there and I have to catch myself all the time from just giving too much feedback and not having the rep think for themselves.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm thinking back to like Yoda or something, all the star Wars fans.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: How many times did Yoda give the direct, you know, specific thing to do versus coaching Luke Skywalker into what he thinks he should do?
Speaker: He made his Jedis think, and that's what we should be doing as team leaders.
Speaker: That's what we should be doing when we coach our reps.
Speaker: So make sure you develop a rubric.
Speaker: Hit me up for that or hit Nike Lucas up.
Speaker: And then coach yourself before you get outside feedback.
Speaker: And then number two is try to get some video in there.
Speaker: And the software we're talking about for next time is only audio.
Speaker: But get some video because you're going to want to analyze your body language.
Speaker: You're going to want to analyze how confident you look.
Speaker: you're going to want to analyze how the interaction went with the customer.
Speaker: Were they moving around?
Speaker: A lot of different things you can see in video.
Speaker: And so we went to a, talked about this a lot too.
Speaker: So sorry, keep drawing from this, but Danny Pesci, Taylor McCarthy's event, the Noxstar event down in Key West, Florida.
Speaker: I was at that.
Speaker: And a lot of the different coaching moments, a lot of the teachings they went through was from Taylor McCarthy's own interactions on the doors.
Speaker: That was a big thing in this presentation.
Speaker: He kept pulling up videos of him on the actual doors and going through, this is why I do this, this is why I say this.
Speaker: Super valuable to have that video content.
Speaker: And if you don't have live video content, a view on the doors, a view in presentations,
Speaker: Highly recommend it because people can learn from that.
Speaker: That's one of the reasons why this Knox Star program is so unique.
Speaker: They have hours and hours of footage of live action of them on the doors of them closing deals in real time.
Speaker: So use that and then get recordings from your top reps.
Speaker: This is super invaluable for trainings, for onboarding new people.
Speaker: If you can get recordings of your reps, video and audio, then they can hear that.
Speaker: It's going to help them develop their own presentation and just take elements from people that are most like their selling style and put it in their own presentations.
Speaker: And so that's another cool feature about the software we're going to be talking about on next episode is that it has the ability to store all these different recordings and then reps can go listen to ones that are featured, ones that they feel like is most similar to their selling style.
Speaker: So regardless if you use the software or not that we're going to be talking about, it's called Ciro, by the way, S-I-R-O.
Speaker: Regardless if you use that, these are things you should be doing.
Speaker: Get your own content, get your own recordings, and get your own video content and make sure you have it in a place that reps are actually going to see and use.
Speaker: If you need help with that, hit us up.
Speaker: We have got a whole training platform that companies are using and they're able to track, they're able to put their own content on there.
Speaker: They're able to see who's actually going on and logging into it, going through it, and they're able to test the reps on it.
Speaker: So if you need a solution for that, that's the next step.
Speaker: Get your recordings in one place and then we can help you put that in a training platform where people are really going to maximize the value they get from it.
Speaker: So make sure you're doing that.
Speaker: Okay, so three things.
Speaker: Get a rubric, score yourself, record yourself.
Speaker: And hey, if you got to do an incentive, we did incentives like that all the time where, let's be honest, it's tough to get reps sometimes to record themselves out there.
Speaker: But if you're a leading team, throw in a little incentive.
Speaker: We like to do the ones where you throw something random in your door presentation.
Speaker: We would do like, I don't know, may the force be with you.
Speaker: I guess I'm on a Star Wars kick today.
Speaker: But have them say something random in it and then give, I don't know, 20 bucks to whoever does that.
Speaker: That's a way to get people to record themselves.
Speaker: Make sure people are doing it and then make sure they're grading themselves before they send it to you.
Speaker: And then another thing is have them condense it down, especially if you're leading a bigger team.
Speaker: You don't want to be going through hours and hours of these recordings as much as you love your reps, right?
Speaker: Have them condense it down.
Speaker: This is what I do.
Speaker: I actually have a fitness coach right now and I have to send in videos of the specific workouts, but he always says, Taylor, please trim it down.
Speaker: I don't want to watch 10 minutes of you warming up or whatever.
Speaker: So I go, I trim down the video to the specific exercise, to the reps he wants me to do.
Speaker: And then I send it to him.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And so something that software, the serial software makes way easier as well.
Speaker: But if you're going to do anything, coach your reps to send in a condensed version, the meat and potatoes of it, then it's going to help you be able to listen and give feedback to as many of these as possible.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So most important things, get a rubric, take examples from it, use them in trainings.
Speaker: And then just be a good example.
Speaker: Do it yourself.
Speaker: If you're asking people for these recordings, make sure you're recording yourself as well.
Speaker: So hopefully we've convinced you, you need to be recording yourself.
Speaker: You need to be giving yourself feedback.
Speaker: And also getting outside feedback.
Speaker: But more importantly, give yourself feedback.
Speaker: And then tune in for next episode because we're going to be demoing the software that's going to make it just 10 times easier.
Speaker: So much easier.
Speaker: So don't miss out.
Speaker: We'll see you on the next one.
Speaker: And shoot me some feedback.
Speaker: Let us know if you want us to cover specific topics or bring on specific guests.
Speaker: So keep crushing.
Speaker: Hope you close some deals this week.
Speaker: And we will see you on the next one.
Speaker: Hey, solopreneurs, quick question.
Speaker: What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day.
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.
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.
Speaker: And it's called Solcitee.
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.
Speaker: Currently, SoulCity is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled.
Speaker: So go to SoulCity.co to learn more and join the learning experience now.
Speaker: This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to SoulCity.co and join.
Speaker: We'll see you on the inside.
