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How To Generate Solar Leads (Untold Truths On Quality And Consistency)
50 Plays6 years ago
Hey Solarpreneurs! Welcome to the new and improved podcast for solar professionals called "The Solarpreneur"
In this episode you'll learn the secrets on how to increase your lead quality and consistency like the top 1% of solar marketers, how to seperate yourself from other advertisers online, how to work smarter with lead gen and save youre time, and so much more...
As mentioned in the episode outro we have a special training package for you listeners BUT the solarpreneurs.com website is still under construction. Stay tuned in the future episodes next week for when the site is live and how you can get your Solarpreneur training package.
Oh, and to qualify for this exclusive training all we ask is that you leave us a review on Itunes or subscribe to us on Youtube to help support us and our mission to impact more solar professionals like you.
For more information on the Solar Spartan System visit solarspartansystem.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Solar Industry Challenges
00:00:00
Speaker
On this episode of the Solarpreneur Podcast, we're going to address the two main concerns when it comes to lead gen.
00:00:06
Speaker
One, how to do it, how to create hundreds of leads every single month on demand, but number two, what a lot of you guys are going through right now, and I know this because you tell me it all the time, I get a lot of leads, but none of them wanna sit down with me, none of them wanna talk to me, and none of them wanna be sold solar.
00:00:24
Speaker
So, if that sounds like you, stick around for this episode of the Solarpreneur Podcast coming right up.
00:00:28
Speaker
What do you call an underground group of solar professionals on a mission to create a more sustainable world?
00:00:34
Speaker
We call ourselves solopreneurs.
00:00:36
Speaker
And while some might call us crazy, foolish, and dissatisfied with the status quo, we're the ones taking action to create a better future for ourselves and the world.
00:00:46
Speaker
Solopreneur is dedicated to give you, the solar professional, the tools, skills, technology, and mentorship to take the industry by storm and sell more solar with less effort.
00:00:58
Speaker
We are solopreneurs, and this is our story.
Meet James Swidorski and Podcast Goals
00:01:09
Speaker
What is good?
00:01:11
Speaker
Solarpreneurs, welcome to the show.
00:01:13
Speaker
If you guys are new, Solarpreneur is all about giving you top-tier sales and marketing strategies to help you scale up your income and your life in the solar industry specifically.
00:01:24
Speaker
My name is James Swidorski.
00:01:25
Speaker
I'm one of the co-hosts on the show.
00:01:27
Speaker
In today's episode, we want to talk about how to create consistent lead flow, right?
00:01:31
Speaker
Not just getting leads, but make it consistent at
00:01:34
Speaker
every single day so that you'd never go another day without a high quality appointment to sit down and have the ability to close and help move forward with solar.
00:01:43
Speaker
So I wanna identify some of those problems coming up.
00:01:46
Speaker
You're gonna have to excuse me, I have some notes here because I have a lot of good stuff to talk to you about today.
00:01:51
Speaker
And I'm not superhuman, I can't memorize a 30, 40 minute video here and I wanna make this as valuable for you as possible.
James's Solar Industry Experience
00:01:58
Speaker
So one of the problems that we have in the industry, right,
00:02:02
Speaker
And I've been in the industry for three years through various companies, right?
00:02:06
Speaker
Scaling up companies, having different clients, consulting, and then personally selling over a million dollars in commissions myself in my first 18 months of the industry.
00:02:15
Speaker
And I would say that I have arguably one of the best views and standpoints of the industry because I've been both in the field, right?
00:02:21
Speaker
In the trenches, like a lot of you guys, both as a business owner and starting out as a sales rep, but I've also had the privilege of working with hundreds of different companies and thousands of reps and
00:02:32
Speaker
across all different markets and can tell you that there are some common problems going on right now, especially when it comes to lead
Challenges in Lead Generation
00:02:39
Speaker
gen.
00:02:39
Speaker
So one of those main problems, right, is a lot of people do know how to generate leads in theory, right?
00:02:45
Speaker
We know that door knocking works.
00:02:47
Speaker
We know that running Facebook ads work.
00:02:49
Speaker
We know how to generate leads.
00:02:52
Speaker
And I always say it's like going to the gym, right?
00:02:54
Speaker
Everybody knows how to get in shape, right?
00:02:57
Speaker
Just stop eating crappy food.
00:02:59
Speaker
Start working out.
00:03:01
Speaker
You can choose the Atkins diet.
00:03:03
Speaker
You can do keto, right?
00:03:04
Speaker
You can do so many different types of diets and they're all going to work, guys.
00:03:08
Speaker
That's the thing.
00:03:09
Speaker
They all produce results, but the problem lies in consistency.
00:03:13
Speaker
And everybody knows right now in the industry that leads are everything.
00:03:18
Speaker
If you don't have leads to go and...
00:03:21
Speaker
sell to, then you don't have the ability to sharpen your sales skills.
00:03:25
Speaker
If you don't have leads to go to, you don't have the opportunity to actually close some
Finding the Right Customers
00:03:29
Speaker
deals.
00:03:29
Speaker
But the problem with the industry right now that most people are not talking about is efficiency, right?
00:03:36
Speaker
We can generate hundreds and hundreds of leads and
00:03:39
Speaker
If a gun was pointed to your head tomorrow and told you that you had to go generate 15, 20 leads a day for the next week, I guarantee that you would figure out how to do it because it's not rocket science.
00:03:49
Speaker
Everybody knows how to get in front of customers, but what people don't know how to do is get in front of the right customers, customers that are gonna buy from you and allow you to have 70, 80, 90% close rates and allow you to be a more efficient sales professional, whether you own your own business or you're a sales rep right now.
00:04:08
Speaker
Because I know a lot of you, right?
00:04:09
Speaker
Maybe you invest in some sort of lead gen program and you're getting hundreds of leads and that's cool, right?
00:04:13
Speaker
You fixed one problem.
00:04:15
Speaker
But the main problem right now is when you get hundreds of leads, you're now going to be inefficient because you got to follow up with all these leads, right?
00:04:24
Speaker
We know that you got to call them up within five, 10 minutes, right?
00:04:27
Speaker
The faster you can follow up with a lead that comes in.
00:04:30
Speaker
the better.
00:04:30
Speaker
And then you've got to go drive out to those appointments.
00:04:33
Speaker
You've got to use your team's resources, your team's time to follow up with these.
00:04:37
Speaker
And it's all a mess, right?
00:04:39
Speaker
And we take it because what's better, right?
00:04:42
Speaker
No leads or a ton of leads and keeps us busy.
00:04:46
Speaker
We're going to feel better about having a lot of leads, but what's happening right now, the epidemic in the industry is we're suffering from lows closing ratios.
00:04:55
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:56
Speaker
We're banking in all these leads, but we're closing like 1 in 20, 1 in 25.
00:05:00
Speaker
Maybe we're sitting down with even less.
00:05:02
Speaker
We get 100 leads.
00:05:03
Speaker
We sit down with 10, 15 appointments.
00:05:06
Speaker
Half of them fail credit.
00:05:08
Speaker
This is the kind of crap that I know you guys are going through.
00:05:11
Speaker
And I know if you're saying right now, James, I can't generate hundreds of leads.
00:05:14
Speaker
I'll show you how to do that later in this episode.
00:05:16
Speaker
That's not the topic of this episode, really.
00:05:19
Speaker
I want to talk about how to create high-quality, consistent leads.
Importance of Sales Fundamentals
00:05:22
Speaker
So...
00:05:23
Speaker
The problem with this, what is the problem?
00:05:25
Speaker
The problem is we're hiding from the core truth, which is our fundamentals are messed up.
00:05:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:31
Speaker
And what do I mean by fundamentals, right?
00:05:33
Speaker
I mean sales, our sales skills are messed up.
00:05:36
Speaker
And I also mean our communication skills, what we'll talk about, right?
00:05:39
Speaker
So the way to increase quality of leads and consistency really comes down to this.
00:05:45
Speaker
Understanding the concept that you might want consistent lead flow.
00:05:49
Speaker
Who doesn't want consistent lead flow?
00:05:51
Speaker
But 99.9% of solar professionals, you guys watching this video, don't want to put in consistent work towards leads.
00:06:00
Speaker
Okay?
00:06:02
Speaker
You might be saying, James, I put a ton of work in.
00:06:04
Speaker
I'm in the car.
00:06:05
Speaker
I'm going to appointments all the time.
00:06:07
Speaker
What are you talking about?
00:06:08
Speaker
Going to appointments.
00:06:10
Speaker
Going driving to an appointment right sitting on these Facebook groups chatting with other solar professionals That's not action towards lead flow The way to understand this is very simple When you put value into something you get value out So if you put value write your time energy and resources into towards lead generation You're gonna get leads back out very simple yet
00:06:36
Speaker
A lot of us expect leads to just somehow appear on our calendar without having to do anything, right?
00:06:42
Speaker
We think we could just fire up a Facebook ad, send out a few campaigns and all of a sudden, boom, our pipeline is stacked.
00:06:49
Speaker
When you know this too, if you've tried Facebook advertising, it's a skill, right?
00:06:54
Speaker
It's a hardcore skill.
00:06:55
Speaker
It's something that I know guys who spend years and years just mastering Facebook ads and that's all they do.
00:07:01
Speaker
And to think that you could just throw a couple thousand dollars at it and get leads, yeah, you might get some leads, but they're gonna be inefficient leads.
00:07:08
Speaker
They're not gonna end up turning into deals.
00:07:10
Speaker
They're gonna make you think that you're being efficient, right?
00:07:13
Speaker
That you're being effective, but you're really just being busy and unproductive.
00:07:17
Speaker
It's an old quote from Tim Ferriss that I love, right?
00:07:19
Speaker
Efficiency and productivity are not the same thing, right?
00:07:23
Speaker
Being busy is the ultimate form of laziness, okay?
00:07:27
Speaker
So I want to show you how you can boost up the quality of those, and it comes down to lead gen, right?
00:07:33
Speaker
and the core principle of it, right?
00:07:34
Speaker
When we talk about lead generation, what is it, right?
00:07:38
Speaker
We know that it's, all right, it's blasting out some message, it's attracting customers to me that we could convert into sales, right?
00:07:45
Speaker
And that's probably what your definition of lead gen is.
00:07:48
Speaker
My definition, which is pretty different, is lead generation is nothing more than an amplified version of what you currently are doing with sales.
00:07:58
Speaker
Lead generation is sales.
00:08:00
Speaker
So the reason I talk about it and the reason that a lot of you struggle with Facebook ads, you struggle with online lead generation is because you struggle with the principles of sales.
00:08:10
Speaker
Okay.
00:08:11
Speaker
If you can't door knock, if you can't knock on somebody's door and sell them on the idea of solar and close them on an appointment,
Role of Copywriting in Sales
00:08:18
Speaker
what makes you think that you're going to be able to generate leads online with Facebook that are high quality, right?
00:08:24
Speaker
I know a lot of you hardcore door knocking guys right now are thinking, well, yeah, that's why I door knock, right?
00:08:29
Speaker
It's high quality.
00:08:31
Speaker
It's a sniper approach.
00:08:32
Speaker
I know they have the house.
00:08:33
Speaker
I know they're the right type of person and they convert, right?
00:08:37
Speaker
But I want to tell you that you can do the same thing online.
00:08:40
Speaker
You could do the same thing with Facebook ads.
00:08:42
Speaker
And the only reason you wouldn't be able to is if your sales skills are rusty, right?
00:08:47
Speaker
We know that what drives a Facebook ad, excuse me,
00:08:51
Speaker
And what drives online lead generation is your ability to write words that sell.
00:08:56
Speaker
Copywriting is what we call this.
00:08:58
Speaker
Copywriting is what converts that customer, what attracts them, what gets their attention, and what allows them to become a high-quality lead or just some other lead that you've got out there that's going to waste your time.
00:09:10
Speaker
You want to get the high-quality leads, and the way that you do that is mastering
Mindset and Self-Belief in Sales
00:09:14
Speaker
sales.
00:09:14
Speaker
Okay?
00:09:15
Speaker
I know a lot of solar professionals are thinking, well, dude, I already know how to sell.
00:09:19
Speaker
I just need leads to get in front of.
00:09:21
Speaker
But the reason you can't get leads to talk to you is because you don't know how to sell, right?
00:09:26
Speaker
It seems very counterintuitive, but it's the truth with this.
00:09:30
Speaker
The only thing that marketing is going to do, online lead generation is going to do, is it's going to magnify, put a magnifying glass on the holes in your sales process.
00:09:40
Speaker
So if you're needy and desperate in your sales, you're going to come off needy and desperate in your lead generation as well.
00:09:46
Speaker
I actually just got a mailer the other day of somebody inviting me over to a solar party, right?
00:09:53
Speaker
It was an advertising from a local solar company.
00:09:57
Speaker
and they were offering, I think it was like a $15 Starbucks gift card, right, to show up to this open house solar party, right?
00:10:04
Speaker
And immediately I can see that marketing message and here's what I could tell about that person.
00:10:09
Speaker
One, I know they're not closing a lot of deals.
00:10:12
Speaker
Okay, because they're coming off as needy and desperate.
00:10:15
Speaker
We know the margins in the industry are ridiculous, right?
00:10:18
Speaker
We're getting three, four, $5,000 in a sale if you own a company or more.
00:10:22
Speaker
As a sales rep, you got 15 to two grand, right?
00:10:25
Speaker
And they're only willing to shell out $15 to acquire a lead that could turn into $2,000, right?
00:10:32
Speaker
That's a 200x ROI, okay?
00:10:36
Speaker
That is ludicrous.
00:10:37
Speaker
In any other industry, a 3, 4x return on your investment would be amazing, right?
00:10:43
Speaker
In solar, we can afford to spend way more on leads and acquiring a customer, and this person is so scarcity-minded, right?
00:10:51
Speaker
They're so limited in their thinking.
00:10:53
Speaker
You know they're not closing a lot of deals and living in abundance, so they're only willing to shell out just a little bit
00:10:59
Speaker
just test it see if it works right and no homeowner on their freaking earth right in their right mind is gonna show up to an event for a $15 Starbucks gift card right it's honestly the truth and I could tell this person doesn't know how to sell solar because that's how they're marketing it's a direct reflection so get back to our topic at hand here if you are having a hard time with lead generation take an honest look at your sales process and
00:11:27
Speaker
If you can't close a customer, right?
00:11:29
Speaker
If you can't go generate leads without paid advertising, you're not in a position mentally and you're not in a position tactically
Impact of Marketing on Sales
00:11:37
Speaker
with your skills to go and do online Facebook ads at this point.
00:11:40
Speaker
Okay.
00:11:41
Speaker
You've got to nail in the fundamentals.
00:11:43
Speaker
So what are those core principles of sales?
00:11:45
Speaker
Let's talk about those real briefly.
00:11:47
Speaker
This isn't going to be the topic at hand, but I'm going to talk about sales in the context of lead generation and what
00:11:54
Speaker
sales skills are most important for Facebook advertising or YouTube ads or Google ads or whatever you're doing or email marketing, whatever your method of choice is, these are the principles that need to be in place.
00:12:06
Speaker
One is gonna be communication with people.
00:12:09
Speaker
You need to understand people at a deep, deep level.
00:12:13
Speaker
This is why sales is so key for turning into a master marketer, right?
00:12:18
Speaker
Because if you understand human psychology, what makes them buy, what emotions make them tick with solar, right?
00:12:24
Speaker
What logistics, what logical sense do they need to know to make a decision, right?
00:12:29
Speaker
How to create urgency with a homeowner.
00:12:32
Speaker
If you can't get a homeowner to sign on the spot in front of them at the kitchen table, how are you going to get homeowners to make a decision to get an appointment with you online?
00:12:42
Speaker
right and feel the need to do that right now compared to just waiting.
00:12:46
Speaker
You can't right.
00:12:47
Speaker
You have to understand people.
00:12:49
Speaker
You've got to understand how to read body language, right?
00:12:52
Speaker
Tonality, how to simplify your message.
00:12:55
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:57
Speaker
A lot of you guys overcomplicate a message with sales and you start talking all the fluff and the technical terms, excuse me.
00:13:03
Speaker
You got to be able to simplify, make it easy at a fourth grade communication level, right?
00:13:10
Speaker
Next is if you don't understand these skills, right?
00:13:13
Speaker
Communication, psychology, what in the hell makes you think you can communicate with people at scale?
00:13:18
Speaker
If I can't communicate with somebody across the table, I can't communicate with hundreds of people.
00:13:25
Speaker
around the world, right?
00:13:26
Speaker
Online.
00:13:26
Speaker
And the only reason it would work is it's
Continuous Sales Training
00:13:29
Speaker
basically just inefficient, right?
00:13:31
Speaker
Numbers, of course, are going to work in your favor.
00:13:33
Speaker
If I go blast out a message to 2,000 people or 200,000 people in an audience of 200,000 people, of course, I'm going to get some people that come in, right?
00:13:43
Speaker
But let me ask you this.
00:13:44
Speaker
Would you rather have one in 10,000 homeowners take action, get an appointment with you?
00:13:49
Speaker
Or would you have that
00:13:50
Speaker
rather have one in 1000 or one in 100, right?
00:13:54
Speaker
If you can choose to be more efficient with your lead gen, right?
00:13:57
Speaker
And not have to put up with just crazy numbers.
00:14:01
Speaker
Wouldn't you rather do that?
00:14:02
Speaker
I would rather have all of the odds in my favor.
00:14:04
Speaker
I'd rather stack the deck in my favor and have everything working for me, right?
00:14:09
Speaker
Why would I want to have to put up with one in a hundred leads generated as converted when I can have one in 10.
00:14:15
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:16
Speaker
I'm here to tell you that the alternative is possible and it comes down to sales communication.
00:14:22
Speaker
Next is self belief and your view of the world, right?
00:14:26
Speaker
And before you turn this off, this has everything to do with lead generation because if you don't believe in your product, solar,
00:14:32
Speaker
If you think sales is slimy, right?
00:14:34
Speaker
If you think sales, if you get kind of like, I don't know about sales, right?
00:14:38
Speaker
That's going to show up in your marketing every single time.
00:14:41
Speaker
It's going to affect your ability to generate leads.
00:14:43
Speaker
If you think that marketing itself is kind of gimmicky, like you're setting up those old clickbait ads, right?
00:14:49
Speaker
Hey, click here and you're never going to want to miss this, right?
00:14:52
Speaker
If you feel gross about that, when you do that, you're not going to be able to send the right message, right?
00:14:57
Speaker
You're not gonna be able to send a message that converts high quality people and you're only gonna attract buyers that also feel gross about it.
00:15:04
Speaker
And it's not gonna be a good scenario with converting those leads.
00:15:08
Speaker
And then if you're satisfied with where you're at in your life and your sales currently,
00:15:13
Speaker
you're not gonna take the time to develop those lead generation skills.
00:15:17
Speaker
You're not gonna take the time to go out and consistently generate leads every single day if you have no reason to, if you don't know what your purpose is, if you don't know why you're in solar, right?
00:15:28
Speaker
If you don't have a alternative goal, right?
00:15:32
Speaker
Besides making money, why are you in this industry?
00:15:35
Speaker
These are the questions you have to ask because if your belief system is messed up, your sales will be messed up.
00:15:41
Speaker
That's the core principle of sales.
00:15:42
Speaker
That's what separates
00:15:44
Speaker
Top 1% guys from everyone else is the top 1% view themselves differently.
00:15:49
Speaker
That's simply it.
00:15:51
Speaker
They have different habits, different rituals, different beliefs, different motivations.
00:15:55
Speaker
The reason they have that is they view themselves a certain way compared to the other 90% which suck.
00:16:00
Speaker
They view themselves as that.
00:16:03
Speaker
Marketing is just going to amplify that.
00:16:05
Speaker
If you're a top 1% sales closer right now,
00:16:08
Speaker
and you do marketing, you're gonna be the top 1% marketer.
00:16:12
Speaker
Everybody's gonna know it.
00:16:13
Speaker
The only difference is hundreds of thousands of people now know you're the guy for solar.
00:16:18
Speaker
Get the point?
00:16:19
Speaker
So we're going to take a break here in a minute, and I'm going to talk about some of the tactics to actually creating the consistent lead flow.
00:16:26
Speaker
I just wanted to cover some of the mindsets, the beliefs, and the methodology around this, realizing that one sales is everything.
00:16:33
Speaker
If your communication skills aren't set up, your self-belief and your mindset and your view of the world is not set up correctly, trying to go do Facebook ads or some lead generation is just going to amplify that message.
00:16:44
Speaker
You're just going to be
00:16:45
Speaker
less efficient.
00:16:45
Speaker
You're going to waste more of your time going to low quality leads.
Introduction to Solar Spartan System
00:16:49
Speaker
You're going to waste your team's resources by following up with these leads and you don't have to put up with it.
00:16:54
Speaker
It can be changed if you focus and dial in your sales first.
00:16:59
Speaker
Let's get to the break and we'll get back to the episode.
00:17:03
Speaker
Hey listeners, it's James Swiderski here.
00:17:05
Speaker
I promise we'll be right back to this fire content you're enjoying, but I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you about the number one training platform that I trust my own clients as well as my own solar team with, and it's called the Solar Spartan System.
00:17:19
Speaker
Now the Solar Spartan System is not your traditional course.
00:17:22
Speaker
It's a solar sales transformation experience that's combined over 11,000 hours of research on today's top sales and marketing professionals and condensed their strategies into one streamlined system that practically forces you
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's right.
00:17:38
Speaker
Forces you to have success in reaching your goals.
00:17:42
Speaker
And the best part is, guys, it's designed specifically for solar.
00:17:46
Speaker
And it's been tested on over 800 solar professionals to date.
00:17:50
Speaker
Now, you might be saying, James, that's cool, but...
00:17:53
Speaker
How does it force me to have success?
00:17:55
Speaker
And this is where it gets pretty ninja, my friends, so listen up.
00:17:58
Speaker
So here's what makes the Solar Spartan system so effective, okay?
00:18:02
Speaker
It's the combination of applying the minimum amount of inputs, right?
00:18:07
Speaker
Minimum effective dose of what it takes to get you to that next level.
00:18:11
Speaker
Combining that with the power of social accountability and then top-notch strategies used by today's solar professionals, solopreneurs, right?
00:18:21
Speaker
So what does this mean for you?
00:18:22
Speaker
No more watching 15-hour courses.
00:18:25
Speaker
No more banging your head trying to figure out how to apply Grant Cardone's strategies over here and Dan Lok's strategies over here to solar specifically.
00:18:33
Speaker
And no more guesswork.
00:18:36
Speaker
The Solar Spartan system is 100% action oriented, meaning you won't be given more content to study than what you need to actually reach your next four deals, 10 deals, 16, 20 deals, whatever your goal is, there's a milestone for it within the system.
00:18:52
Speaker
And to give you guys an idea of what you can expect out of this, I've taken some of my lowest producing reps and clients from closing one to maybe struggling to get that third or fourth deal a month, all the way to closing 18 to 20 deals a month in less than 90 days.
Consistency in Lead Generation
00:19:09
Speaker
It's that good.
00:19:10
Speaker
That's why I want to go ahead and offer you guys, solopreneur listeners, a special discount on the Solar Spartan System.
00:19:16
Speaker
You guys head on over to solarspartansystem.com.
00:19:19
Speaker
You could try it out for 30 days.
00:19:21
Speaker
Again, guys, don't put your success on hold.
00:19:24
Speaker
This is something I would not promote on the podcast if I didn't fully believe in it.
00:19:28
Speaker
It's something I trust my clients, but as well, my own solar company, my own reps, they go through this exact same training.
00:19:37
Speaker
So again, head over to solarspartansystem.com to get started and my team and I will see you inside.
00:19:43
Speaker
Let's get back to the show.
00:19:46
Speaker
All right.
00:19:47
Speaker
Welcome back, solopreneurs.
00:19:48
Speaker
My name is James Swarovski.
00:19:49
Speaker
If you're just tuning in here, this is the solopreneur podcast, solopreneur channel, wherever you're watching this.
00:19:55
Speaker
And solopreneur is dedicated to one thing.
00:19:57
Speaker
The reason I started that is to help solar professionals.
00:20:02
Speaker
Create the life of their dreams through sales marketing strategies that have been proven and tested on the industry and take the guesswork out of this industry and help you achieve your goals and the ability and the potential that got you in the industry in the first place.
00:20:17
Speaker
I know a lot of you guys understand the potential of solar, right?
00:20:20
Speaker
That's why you got into it.
00:20:21
Speaker
You know the potential money that it can make, the potential impact, and it's unlike any other career choice you could be in, but all you need, right, is a few golden nuggets, sales strategies, marketing, and if I could provide those golden nuggets to you to help you get to the next career, that makes my life, right?
00:20:39
Speaker
That makes my purpose, and that fulfills me as a person, and it's why I get up in the morning to do this for you guys.
00:20:45
Speaker
So if it sounds like you, let's get kicking into the episode a little bit further here with some of the tactics on how to create consistent lead gen, right?
00:20:53
Speaker
We talked about sales principles and how they affect your marketing and your lead gen.
00:20:57
Speaker
We talked about consistency and some of the mindsets that need to be there.
00:21:00
Speaker
But what are the tactics?
00:21:02
Speaker
How do you create leads on demand and how do you do it high quality and efficiently, right?
00:21:06
Speaker
Not keeping yourself busy, right?
00:21:09
Speaker
making yourself efficient where you generate three, four leads and you could close half of those, right?
00:21:15
Speaker
These are numbers that would be game changing for you because you wouldn't have to follow up with all of these leads in the pipeline.
00:21:20
Speaker
You wouldn't have to waste your resources.
00:21:22
Speaker
You could focus in on the most important thing at that time and create revenue right off the bat.
00:21:28
Speaker
So the next thing I want to talk about here is.
00:21:31
Speaker
And it's a huge mistake that a lot of guys make and it's prioritizing lead generation, right?
00:21:37
Speaker
You might be saying, James, I care all about lead generation.
00:21:40
Speaker
But if I were to give you this scenario, what would you do?
00:21:42
Speaker
And I want you to answer honestly and think about it with yourself.
00:21:46
Speaker
If you had three appointments this evening,
00:21:49
Speaker
So you had one at four o'clock, six o'clock, and eight o'clock, okay?
00:21:54
Speaker
And you had to drive a considerable amount of time to those appointments like a lot of you guys do that aren't selling virtually over the phone.
00:22:03
Speaker
If you had to choose between going to that appointment or going to knock doors or going to work on your Facebook ads or going to study some copywriting and work on your lead generation or going to blast out an email, which one would you do?
00:22:18
Speaker
Most of you, nine out of 10 of you would choose the alternative.
00:22:21
Speaker
You would say, let's go to the appointment because I could close that, right?
00:22:25
Speaker
And that's immediate cash in my hand.
00:22:27
Speaker
And that's the problem.
00:22:29
Speaker
Most solar professionals will prioritize anything other than lead generation first, okay?
00:22:36
Speaker
And like we talked about, you want consistent leads, but you're not willing to take consistent action to get them.
00:22:42
Speaker
If you're willing to drop everything, right, for an appointment and not go to generate leads like you know you're supposed to, guess what happens a week from now?
00:22:51
Speaker
your pipeline is low and you don't have those appointments and you get this roller coaster, right?
00:22:56
Speaker
We've heard about the solar coaster where we get ups, huge ups, huge wins, and then huge downs.
00:23:02
Speaker
And the cure to the solar coaster is to do consistent lead generation activities every single day, right?
00:23:09
Speaker
Six days a week if you don't work Sundays, seven days a week if you work every single day.
00:23:14
Speaker
Regardless, if you're working and selling solar on a day,
00:23:17
Speaker
You got to be doing lead generation on that day as well.
00:23:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:20
Speaker
Because if you could get high quality, even just five high quality leads every single day, right?
00:23:26
Speaker
Not the low quality crap.
00:23:27
Speaker
I'm talking about stuff that four out of five will sit down with you.
00:23:30
Speaker
That's a lead.
00:23:31
Speaker
My definition of a lead is somebody who is interested in solar.
00:23:35
Speaker
Not somebody who just wants to check it out, right?
00:23:37
Speaker
Where they be curious about it and they like to listen to a sales pitch for entertainment, right?
00:23:43
Speaker
That's what a lot of you guys are doing.
00:23:44
Speaker
You're going to those people and they're wasting your time and you know better than that and you're worthy of more than that, right?
00:23:50
Speaker
Be a solar consultant of worth and actually change the way that you do business.
00:23:55
Speaker
Get high quality people in front of you because you're a high quality solar rep and that's how you operate.
00:24:00
Speaker
That's the level of thinking as solopreneurs are doing.
00:24:03
Speaker
So the way to fix this is simple.
00:24:06
Speaker
Take action towards filling your pipeline every day.
00:24:09
Speaker
It doesn't have to be all day.
00:24:11
Speaker
I like to do one, two hours a day, maximum, right?
00:24:14
Speaker
I'll do two hours a day of organic lead generation.
00:24:16
Speaker
This is me out there networking.
00:24:18
Speaker
This is me being online with social media, maybe producing a piece of content.
00:24:22
Speaker
advertising that this is working on my Facebook ads, optimizing them, split testing them, making sure that I'm not just letting them sit there.
00:24:30
Speaker
I'm in continually improving them, checking my statistics, right?
00:24:34
Speaker
Making sure that that is going to be the best message for my marketplace.
00:24:38
Speaker
And then I look at the quality, right?
00:24:40
Speaker
Maybe I go back to those leads that are coming in from my campaigns.
00:24:43
Speaker
I look, all right,
00:24:44
Speaker
Cool, we sat down with 20, 30% of these guys this week.
00:24:48
Speaker
What can we do to make this 50%, 75%?
00:24:51
Speaker
I'm not just happy with just getting more leads on top of it.
00:24:54
Speaker
We'll do that, but I also wanna get the conversion rates higher.
00:24:57
Speaker
That's what a lot of you advertisers out there are skipping on.
00:25:00
Speaker
You think that every lead is equal, right?
00:25:03
Speaker
Every lead's a lead.
00:25:04
Speaker
I'm willing to pay 10, 20, 30 times more for a lead that's gonna sit down with me and not waste my time in my team's pipeline, right?
00:25:14
Speaker
I'll pay two, $300 for a lead.
00:25:18
Speaker
That's gonna turn into a deal compared to $301 leads.
00:25:23
Speaker
Get my point?
00:25:24
Speaker
You want high quality.
00:25:26
Speaker
So prioritize lead generation every single day.
00:25:29
Speaker
Don't sacrifice this time.
00:25:30
Speaker
This time
Effective Use of Paid Advertising
00:25:31
Speaker
is sacred.
00:25:31
Speaker
It should be the most important thing on your calendar.
00:25:34
Speaker
That means if a homeowner wants to meet during your lead generation time, boom, you reschedule the appointment because your lead generation time is more important
00:25:42
Speaker
Then that meeting with that homeowner, that homeowner can wait, right?
00:25:46
Speaker
They can reschedule.
00:25:47
Speaker
And by doing that, it's going to show that you're a higher status sales professional because you're not willing to drop everything to go and fulfill that customer's needs, right?
00:25:56
Speaker
You're willing to put your...
00:25:59
Speaker
customers, your sales, right?
00:26:00
Speaker
More leads in the pipeline ahead of everything else.
00:26:03
Speaker
Because if it comes down to it, you're going to go help one homeowner when you have the ability to go get 10 more homeowners to help, which one's going to be the better option, right?
00:26:12
Speaker
I'm going to take the 10 every single time.
00:26:15
Speaker
Okay, number two is obviously use paid advertising.
00:26:19
Speaker
Paid advertising is amazing, right?
00:26:21
Speaker
Whatever platform you're doing it on, Google, YouTube, you're doing like Yahoo banner ads, you're doing Facebook ads, right?
00:26:28
Speaker
You're doing email marketing, it all works, okay?
00:26:31
Speaker
If you have the sales principles set up like we talked about, you understand basic human psychology, you understand communication skills, it will work.
00:26:39
Speaker
But only after you've honed in those skills and you have a system in place for sharpening your sales skills.
00:26:47
Speaker
So if you're like a 20, 30 year old sales veteran right now and you haven't sales trained, trained on your sales skills in that long, I got news for you.
00:26:55
Speaker
Like there's a lot of stuff that's changing.
00:26:57
Speaker
The market's changing.
00:26:58
Speaker
And as long as buyers are evolving and changing in this marketplace and industry is changing,
00:27:03
Speaker
so does your sales skills you need to be training every single day role playing that's why i talked about the spartan system right it's truly the number one sales training platform for reps for companies and keeping everybody sharp right my guys are able to close 80 90 of their deals because they train their asses off every single day one two hours a day dedicated towards their craft the last episode we talked about closing right
00:27:29
Speaker
Closing is the number one thing you need to be doing as a consultant, as a sales rep.
00:27:34
Speaker
And if you're not training at that and you think you could just show up and wing it, you're gravely mistaken.
00:27:38
Speaker
And my guys and my team are going to come and eat your lunch because they strategize, they train their asses off every single day.
00:27:47
Speaker
That's the bottom line.
00:27:48
Speaker
That's the truth.
00:27:49
Speaker
So use paid advertising.
00:27:51
Speaker
I absolutely promote it.
00:27:52
Speaker
I show you how to do that in the Spartan system.
00:27:54
Speaker
But after you've honed your sales skills, I always say the rule of thumb is this.
00:27:58
Speaker
If you can't make 100 grand a year without paid advertising and commissions, right?
00:28:04
Speaker
That's about a million, a million point two in revenue for the company.
00:28:08
Speaker
If your sales reps can't do that, they shouldn't be using paid advertising.
00:28:12
Speaker
You should not be investing in Facebook ads if you're not on track to make 100K in commissions.
00:28:17
Speaker
You don't have to wait a whole year, right?
00:28:18
Speaker
Maybe go two, three months.
00:28:20
Speaker
It's usually what I have my guys wait for before we feed them leads.
00:28:23
Speaker
And once they're on track to make that 100,000, which is usually four to six sales a month, then we could talk about paid
Organic Prospecting Methods
00:28:29
Speaker
advertising.
00:28:29
Speaker
But until then, you're just going to show all of the holes and the flaws in your sales cycle and your communication skills by, boom, slapping paid advertising on it.
00:28:39
Speaker
And the way you do that is master organic prospecting.
00:28:41
Speaker
We have a lot of content on Solopreneur, so I'm not going to talk about that.
00:28:44
Speaker
But organic prospecting methods are the tried and true methods that work.
00:28:48
Speaker
They're consistent.
00:28:49
Speaker
They're reliable.
00:28:50
Speaker
They're not as scalable like paid advertising, but they're going to give you the skills you need to just smash the competition and not sound like every other Joe Blow on Facebook right now.
00:29:00
Speaker
Those are door knocking, networking, social media.
00:29:05
Speaker
Social media is...
00:29:07
Speaker
Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, talking with people, networking with them, right?
00:29:11
Speaker
Even before you go there, you should understand networking.
00:29:14
Speaker
You should be able to go to a live event, shake someone's hand, actually talk to them, add value to them, have proper communication skills, right?
00:29:22
Speaker
Communication skills are everything in marketing, sales, lead gen.
00:29:26
Speaker
And I know a lot of people from my generation and younger, right?
00:29:29
Speaker
They lack those communication skills and it's sad because that's what's holding them back from literally everything they want to achieve.
00:29:36
Speaker
And it might be holding you back as well.
00:29:38
Speaker
Own in your craft door knocking, networking, then talk about paid advertising.
00:29:42
Speaker
Guys, this is my philosophy and methodology that we've been using for years with lead gen that I've used to scale up three eight figure solar companies that used to become a millionaire at 20 years old in this industry.
Engagement and Community Building
00:29:55
Speaker
And they work, guys, if you follow, if you're consistent with your lead generation, if you do activities every single day, if you sharpen your sales skills, if you sharpen your Facebook skills, any of your lead generation skills, then you will become a true master.
00:30:10
Speaker
Guys, if you enjoyed this content,
00:30:12
Speaker
and this type of content we're going to create more videos like this for you as well for you guys over on youtube whatever audience you're at please go over to itunes if you're listening to the podcast leave us a five-star review if you're on youtube give us a like thumbs up comment down below what kind of content you would like to see in the future what i can help you out with what are some of the strategies what yes you would like to see on the show we are dedicated towards making the solarpreneur channel and podcast
00:30:40
Speaker
a true movement to give you the tools, strategies that you need to kick some ass in this industry and make your goals a reality.
00:30:47
Speaker
Guys, I'll catch you in the next episode.
00:30:49
Speaker
And until next time, keep crushing it.
00:30:51
Speaker
Wow.
00:30:51
Speaker
What another value packed episode of the solarpreneur guys.
00:30:55
Speaker
If you couldn't tell, we spent a lot of time and energy to put these episodes out to hopefully give you just one strategy, one golden nugget.
00:31:02
Speaker
That's going to launch your solar career to the next level.
00:31:05
Speaker
And we do it all for free.
00:31:07
Speaker
And if you found any value in this episode or it's helped you in any way, all I ask in return is that you just take 30 seconds of your time and leave us a review on iTunes so that we can help more solopreneurs like you to change the world.
00:31:20
Speaker
And as a gift for leaving us a review, we have a special training package exclusive for solopreneur listeners over at solopreneurs.com.
00:31:29
Speaker
Remember, you need to leave us a review on iTunes to qualify for the training package.
00:31:33
Speaker
So take care of that now and we'll see you on the next episode.