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 back with another episode here to make your life as a solar professional more profitable, easier to do, and more enjoyable.
Speaker: So if I can do even a fraction of that, you're welcome.
Speaker: Just kidding.
Speaker: But really, that's what we're aiming to do.
Speaker: And hopefully we make it a lot easier for you to close more deals, get more referrals and have success in this awesome industry.
Speaker: Today I want to basically tell a little story, something that happened to me recently that I think a lot of you, the listeners, can learn some lessons from, a big mistake I made.
Speaker: So I'm going to go through that story, but first, before I get to that, just wanted to give a shout out to my boys over at Noxstar University.
Speaker: If you haven't checked out Noxstar, it is a six-week program I'm going through right now.
Speaker: and they do it's really cool they have a competition for six weeks they put you in a seating round then they do weekly trainings so if you're looking for some extra training for you or your team great resource those guys have over there
Speaker: I'm going through it and also just wanted to throw out a little teaser.
Speaker: We are also working on something super exciting that has to do with training.
Speaker: I can't spill the details yet, but is going to be releasing very soon here and I'm super stoked when it does to go over more details, but can't say anything.
Speaker: I want to.
Speaker: Anyway, just a couple quick shout outs for those that are looking for more trainings.
Speaker: Go check out Noxstar.
Speaker: So the story I have, what's going on is this is basically just to illustrate to you guys what can go wrong with an account.
Speaker: The title of this episode is called How I Made Negative $563 on a Solar Install.
Speaker: And I'm in San Diego, so especially people that are familiar with the California market, you're probably thinking like, what?
Speaker: How do you make negative dollars on an account?
Speaker: Like people out here are making.
Speaker: a thousand two thousand a kilowatt ridiculous amounts I mean guys are making twenty thirty grand on single counts even I've heard
Speaker: So how can someone go to making ridiculous money to making negative on an account?
Speaker: I couldn't believe it when it happened to me and I don't think I'm the first person that it's happened to.
Speaker: So I want to go through the mistakes I made with this particular account and hopefully help you guys avoid these same mistakes.
Speaker: So here's what happened.
Speaker: First of all, this was back about seven months ago.
Speaker: I get an online lead.
Speaker: Which, if you're not running online leads, why not?
Speaker: You should be running online leads.
Speaker: You should be knocking.
Speaker: You should be getting leads from all sources.
Speaker: Okay, that's for another episode, though.
Speaker: I was running online leads, though.
Speaker: I get a lead.
Speaker: It's a solid lead.
Speaker: I go set it up for next day appointment.
Speaker: I go.
Speaker: We're sitting outside.
Speaker: I find out it's actually a home that hasn't been moved into yet.
Speaker: The dude had been renting it out and he was going to move in with his family in the next few months is what he told me at the time.
Speaker: Okay, unfortunately it didn't work out exactly how this guy was saying.
Speaker: But I ended up closing the deal, closed it a little bit higher, so I thought I was going to make an awesome commission on it.
Speaker: But here's the kicker with this account.
Speaker: This guy, before he moved in, he was doing a ton of remodeling on the house, and he wanted to get a new roof along with his solar.
Speaker: And at the time, I had just started working for the dealer that I'm with now.
Speaker: I wasn't super familiar with their processes and their roofers.
Speaker: I didn't know exactly how you did a deal with a roof over there.
Speaker: This is the first deal, first roof solar combo I'd done.
Speaker: with the new dealer so I call our office and I kind of ask them how to do this and I'm in the heat of the moment which you guys should all try to close deals as quick you know quick as possible don't want to leave them hanging don't want to leave loose threads so I'm like alright I'm just gonna get this closed but tell me about what to price of that so we can be good to throw a roof in there
Speaker: Because here we just, even if we don't have to necessarily add a roof into the financing, just price it high enough and we can pay for a roof with the commission.
Speaker: This is what we do a lot of times.
Speaker: Just price it high, make so much that you can pay for a roof with it.
Speaker: So I price it pretty high thinking, okay, I'll be good.
Speaker: I can pay for a roof with this and I can figure out the details later, right?
Speaker: And we were working with a roofer, his name was Juan, and he got us really good prices on roofs.
Speaker: So especially knowing about this guy, I'm like, okay, yeah, Juan's going to hook us up with an awesome deal.
Speaker: I'm going to have plenty in the commission to pay for all this.
Speaker: We'll be good to go.
Speaker: So fast forward several months down the road, Juan does the roof.
Speaker: and then the installer goes to install up there and they put up the system they actually do the install but the first problem that we encounter with this account is I get a call from the customer actually after they had already installed the solar they didn't do a full installation which I'll get to in a second
Speaker: They did a personal install and I get a call from the customer and the customer says, hey, Taylor, I see that you didn't put gutters on with my roof.
Speaker: You guys need to come finish up the gutters.
Speaker: And I'm like, okay, yeah, I'll look into that.
Speaker: So I call Juan, our roofer, and he says, oh, I don't do gutters.
Speaker: The gutters that they had up there, they're rotting.
Speaker: They're just causing all sorts of problems when I was trying to do their new roof, so I had to take them off.
Speaker: So yeah, they're in the dumpster now.
Speaker: We can't use those gutters.
Speaker: And I don't do gutters.
Speaker: That's a separate thing.
Speaker: So I'm like, okay.
Speaker: So I actually don't know.
Speaker: Maybe some of you listeners can tell me, is that normally included with roofs?
Speaker: Because I actually don't even know.
Speaker: But I took Quan's word with it.
Speaker: I'm like, okay.
Speaker: So I called a customer in, say, Mr. His name was, he was like Middle Eastern, so he had a tricky name.
Speaker: So I just call him Z. I'm like, hey, Z. They actually didn't do your gutters because that's not included, so that's going to be separate.
Speaker: Do you want to pay for it?
Speaker: And at that point, when the customer heard me even say that he was going to have to pay for something, this guy flipped the lid.
Speaker: He's like, are you kidding me?
Speaker: That is included with a roofing project.
Speaker: That is part of the project.
Speaker: I am not, throwing some expletives in there.
Speaker: I am not paying for a roof.
Speaker: I'm not paying extra to put gutters in with my project.
Speaker: Just super furious, not listening to me.
Speaker: Wouldn't have anything to do with it.
Speaker: And the good news is that he had solar on his roof.
Speaker: But what ended up happening is we did a partial install on his home.
Speaker: And with his other projects he was doing, he was adding like a wall around his property.
Speaker: And I don't know the full details on this, but the wall that he was building somehow interfered with us being able to put just the box for the inverter down by his electric panel.
Speaker: So we couldn't finish the installation because we were waiting for his other contractors to finish this wall.
Speaker: So the good news is he already had solar up there.
Speaker: So in my head, I'm thinking, okay, well, he can't cancel or anything.
Speaker: He has solar up there, so he can't cancel the project or say he doesn't want it anymore, even though that's actually what he's threatening to do, saying I'm going to cancel if you guys don't finish this.
Speaker: So it's coming from all that, but then the issue we ran into is we couldn't complete this installation.
Speaker: He needed to finish the other wall.
Speaker: So what happened is he started using this as leverage basically.
Speaker: He knew that he needed to finish the wall.
Speaker: So his side now was, oh, I'm not going to finish the wall until you guys come get my gutters or come fix my gutters.
Speaker: So we're just locked in, essentially a stalemate.
Speaker: I mean, we had leverage against him because the solar is up there.
Speaker: But his leverage was, I'm not putting this wall in until you guys, or I'm not repairing this wall, whatever needed to be done, until you guys come and put the gutters up.
Speaker: So it turned into just a big nightmare.
Speaker: the other issue is we'd already actually paid one to do the roof so one is paid he's happy he's taking care of in the meantime our you know dealer is fronted all this money to pay one and rather than just being locked into the stalemate our office made the decision text to just go ahead and pay for these
Speaker: gutters so we hire another contractor we pay the gutters they come up and do it that's that and then I didn't really think anything of it until I see in my bank account I see finally after six seven months finally I'm getting paid on this account about freaking time it's been so long been months and months and months which we all hate waiting for installs we all hate waiting to get paid on installs sucks
Speaker: have to wait but finally I see it come in commission for Z and then I look at it and this time it says 300 I think it says 300 something I'm like oh my gosh 300 bucks that's it so you're probably asking wait didn't you say you got paid a negative amount on this account so yeah it gets worse
Speaker: what happened was I got paid 300 first but then I as time goes on about two weeks after I got paid this 300 bucks we get another message from the customer saying hey you guys forgot to do you didn't do the back part of my gutters you only did the front you need to come back and do it and our team
Speaker: schedules this and by the way I didn't really at this point I didn't really know what was going on behind the scenes so I'm lack of communication and I'll get to the mistakes after this but definitely like communication our team just goes ahead and schedules the back gutters to be done not really thinking much of it and we get this customer taken care of but guess what we get a bill from the contractor
Speaker: We paid, I think, $1,500 for the gutters, which again, I thought all this was included.
Speaker: I thought all this was paid.
Speaker: I'm like, okay, $300, this is ridiculous.
Speaker: But then it gets worse.
Speaker: We end up owing extra money on the account.
Speaker: And yeah, that's why I say negative $500, whatever it was.
Speaker: 563 is because what happened was after we paid this contract to do the back cutters yeah I am being now charged back money plus some and this isn't even all that we owed on it I mean luckily our office is kind enough to front some of the money but there's faults on both sides
Speaker: Okay, so moral of the story, there were a ton of mistakes made, and I'm going to break down a few of them.
Speaker: And if you have a story like this, I'd love to hear it.
Speaker: Shoot me a message on Facebook, Instagram, whatever.
Speaker: Shoot me a message.
Speaker: Let me know if you've had anything like this happen to you before.
Speaker: But first of all, number one, know how much a roof is going to cost you, all right?
Speaker: Like I mentioned in the beginning, I had no idea that the roof was going to be...
Speaker: well as much as it was this one was more than I was thinking we were using Juan our roofer okay and here's the second mistake made is make sure you're working with quality contractors hey because Juan he was a great guy but what we find out later we actually found out Juan wasn't even licensed okay that's why we're getting such good prices on his roofs this guy wasn't even licensed
Speaker: Maybe you're fine working without a licensed roofer.
Speaker: Probably not in most of...
Speaker: most cases but if you are or whatever the case may be make sure that customer is in some type an agreement with the roofer can you whatever you do whether it's you working independently or your company or your office make sure you're setting these things in place what's the agreement what's the standard of quality they need to work what can they do can they can what can't they do because in our case one he just ripped off these gutters through in the dumpster
Speaker: But if we would have had that set in place, what can you work on?
Speaker: What can't you work on?
Speaker: If we would have had that agreement set in place between him and the customer, then it wouldn't cause an issue.
Speaker: Because guess what?
Speaker: That would have been Juan's issue.
Speaker: He would have been dealing with the angry customer saying, you didn't do my gutters.
Speaker: But what did we do?
Speaker: We just paid it directly out of our profits.
Speaker: And so we had to deal with all these issues because the whole time, I mean, basically the customer hired us to do the work.
Speaker: We just outsourced it, right?
Speaker: So set some type of agreement in place.
Speaker: What is your roofer going to do?
Speaker: What are the expectations?
Speaker: You can't just rip off the gutters and then get blamed for it, right?
Speaker: Have that in place.
Speaker: Have it in place what's going to happen.
Speaker: Okay, and the fourth mistake that was made, make sure your communication is super clear.
Speaker: Again, I mentioned that we had a lot of things being paid for, a lot of things being scheduled that weren't clear, and a lot of it's my fault because after six, seven months of the same account, for me, it got to the point where I'm just like, whatever, just do whatever.
Speaker: I'm not going to look at it if it gets installed.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Out here where I'm at, I mean, I'm used to a month, one to two month installs.
Speaker: So after that, it starts getting...
Speaker: Pretty, what's the word, redundant?
Speaker: Yeah, pretty redundant.
Speaker: You just have to sit and look at these accounts that aren't going through.
Speaker: So make sure you have communication and don't be like me.
Speaker: Be patient with it and always look at what's going on.
Speaker: Because I didn't really look at the updates that were happening with this deal because I just got so tired of it.
Speaker: But it's important to go back and see what happened with it, see what updates were left by your team.
Speaker: We use Asana personally, just like a, yeah, you know, project management.
Speaker: I mean, use it for a lot of things.
Speaker: But in Asana, our team members would basically go and leave comments, hey, we talked to this contractor, this happened, this went down, and I didn't really look much at what was paid, what happened.
Speaker: So you need to be looking at your team communication whatever you're using.
Speaker: Make sure you're in the loop and make sure your team isn't scheduling stuff without your permission.
Speaker: And I think I did give them permission, but again, I was just sick and tired of it.
Speaker: So look at what's happening and then you as the independent contractor, which most of you should be, I highly recommend you being an independent contractor.
Speaker: We're solopreneurs, right?
Speaker: We're building our own businesses, so we're taking control of all this.
Speaker: But if it's not you, have an assistant or have someone that's keeping track of all this stuff because you can't just authorize everything and not know what's been paid, what hasn't been paid.
Speaker: Okay, and message me.
Speaker: I know some people have made like spreadsheets to keep track of adders on deals and extra costs because the last thing you want to happen is go negative on a deal like this.
Speaker: And then the last thing is just figure out a resolution with everything.
Speaker: I talked about how we're in a stalemate with this customer.
Speaker: Things didn't really come to a resolution, but figure out a solution on both sides.
Speaker: I was sick of talking to the customer too.
Speaker: I didn't want to hear from them.
Speaker: but yeah you need to be willing to have those tough conversations with your customers admit when you've made mistakes and then come to a resolution okay so those are just a couple things i've learned and still working on being better with complicated accounts you got to pull out all the guns you got to have be ready for the long fight okay because there's some complicated accounts out here whether they need main panel upgrades whether they need
Speaker: roof work and a lot of people especially out here now are adding in AC units they're adding in maybe even paint jobs before I talked to guys at companies doing all sorts of things and in insulation so point is keep track of all this stuff okay depending on how your office is set up
Speaker: It's very likely that you got to keep track of this.
Speaker: And even if your company is organized, even if you have project managers that are on top of everything, I would suggest still just being in the loop, okay?
Speaker: Because that's another thing.
Speaker: I know for me, I've been hit with adders and things that our back office has done that weren't right either, where if I would have been keeping track, then things like that wouldn't have happened.
Speaker: Okay, so just wanted to share the story.
Speaker: Let me know if something like that's happened to you.
Speaker: Would love to hear it.
Speaker: Love to learn from other people's mistakes.
Speaker: But don't get hit with a negative commission.
Speaker: It is the worst feeling in the world.
Speaker: And it's definitely a momentum killer.
Speaker: So let me know what you thought of this.
Speaker: Let me know if you liked hearing from the mistake.
Speaker: And with that, learn from it.
Speaker: Let's move forward and let's crush it this month.
Speaker: Peace, solopreneurs.
Speaker: Hey, solopreneurs, quick question.
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