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: Hey, what's going on solopreneurs?
Speaker: Today we're going to be going over some live footage of a referral ask, and specifically how to overcome some of the objections that you might be coming to face with as you are asking for referrals.
Speaker: So hopefully it's a value and hopefully everyone is asking for referrals when you are selling.
Speaker: It's the easiest way to get new business so everyone should be asking for them.
Speaker: Okay welcome to the show my name is Taylor Armstrong we're here to help you close more deals generate more leads and referrals and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: And whether you are first time listener or repeat listener, thank you for joining us.
Speaker: We are free and available on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, coming at you every Tuesday and Friday with fresh new content.
Speaker: And it has been a little bit since we've gotten some new feedback, some new reviews.
Speaker: So would appreciate it if you have not already.
Speaker: Go leave us a review over on Apple, Spotify.
Speaker: We are posting most of these podcasts as video now as well to YouTube.
Speaker: So you can leave comments there.
Speaker: But would always appreciate your review.
Speaker: Maybe that's why we haven't had any new reviews because maybe everyone's watching them on YouTube.
Speaker: So if that's the case, let us know that too.
Speaker: Then we'll focus more on YouTube.
Speaker: But then the other ask I had before we jump into the content here is if you are someone that is not with a company currently, if you are looking for a home or a place to sell, please shoot us an email or shoot me a message.
Speaker: And we will actually put...
Speaker: An application should be live, but in the comments or in the show notes, you should see an application to come work with our team.
Speaker: We are here in San Diego.
Speaker: We are crushing tons of deals.
Speaker: There's guys making life-changing money, hundreds of thousands in their first year.
Speaker: So go click on the form.
Speaker: You can submit an application there.
Speaker: But even if you are in a different market, different state than California, you
Speaker: We can connect you with some of the top people or some of the top teams.
Speaker: I actually did a call recently with someone in Houston and he's brand new to solar.
Speaker: Didn't really know where to go.
Speaker: Doesn't have a team currently.
Speaker: So it just got me thinking, man, I wonder how many people are listening to this that need to are searching for a team, searching for a home and are just searching for, you know, answers and the knowledge they need to have success in this industry because it's not easy alone.
Speaker: So hit me up whether you are in California or open to coming to California or if not, let us know either way and we can connect you with other top teams and other top leaders in the industry.
Speaker: Okay, so let's jump into this show.
Speaker: All right, so just a little background on this before we play some live content, some live footage.
Speaker: This lady, she's older, 85 years old.
Speaker: I ended up closing this deal.
Speaker: She did actually reach out to me to cancel, unfortunately.
Speaker: So working on seeing if we can save her, but old people can be tough.
Speaker: Her main reason for canceling is that she thinks she could die within a year.
Speaker: Pretty morbid.
Speaker: And then the other thing is the home is being transferred to her sister when she passes away and her sister doesn't want her to do it.
Speaker: A little bit tougher thing to overcome, but that's besides the point.
Speaker: So what happened?
Speaker: Closer.
Speaker: And I was in this home for a very long time, like three plus hours, probably spent more time than I should have.
Speaker: But by the time we got to the end, I'm like, OK, you know what?
Speaker: Since I've been in here this long, there's no way I'm leaving this home without getting multiple referrals to.
Speaker: So I go in my referral ask and we've gone over this in several episodes in the show.
Speaker: I believe you should be seeding the referral throughout your process, right?
Speaker: If you get to the end of the cell, if you close them, and then this is the first time they're hearing about referrals, it's almost too late for that.
Speaker: So the same way you frame the deal and you tell them what's going to happen in the appointments, you tell them that you're going to submit applications, you're going to get the process started.
Speaker: You need to also seed that referral process that you're going to ask them for referrals before you leave the home.
Speaker: and that you're a referral-based business.
Speaker: Okay, so you're going to hear what goes on.
Speaker: You're going to hear a few objections.
Speaker: You're going to hear a few stalls where she can't really think of people and just some different ways that's helped me a little bit with this.
Speaker: Okay, I mean, last thing I feel like this, so they do a referral program actually, we actually mostly work word of mouth.
Speaker: So that's why obviously trying to do a really good job.
Speaker: But yeah, what they do is if you have family, neighbors, whatever, it's
Speaker: insurance.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so they, they have a skit just like, I know you can maybe talk to your brothers out here.
Speaker: Do they have a lake houses out here?
Speaker: My brothers?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Why does it live in Montana?
Speaker: Okay, so you hear the ask.
Speaker: I bring up that we work word of mouth.
Speaker: At this point, you should be reminding them.
Speaker: And I didn't see this as much as I should have.
Speaker: It could have done a better job.
Speaker: But you want to be reminding them, hey, remember how I mentioned how we work mostly word of mouth?
Speaker: Yeah, so like I said earlier, today they have us get a few different people that may be able to benefit.
Speaker: What's really cool is they give you $500, however you want to do it.
Speaker: I personally do 500 and then I as they as people get more give more referrals, I'll increase it and then I get them excited about a vacation.
Speaker: Got this from my friend Matt Crowther.
Speaker: You can listen to his episode.
Speaker: We can also include that in the show notes.
Speaker: So some of you already know that I run my own door to door sales team here in San Diego.
Speaker: And as we are gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results.
Speaker: But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
Speaker: Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout, but it's not a door knocking app.
Speaker: It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market.
Speaker: It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later canceled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given neighborhood.
Speaker: It's been working for a lot of teams across the country, and now I'm on board too.
Speaker: I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up.
Speaker: But I told them, hey, if I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal.
Speaker: And they did.
Speaker: So go to solarscout.app forward slash Taylor and book a demo with them, and you'll get 10% off your first month when you sign up.
Speaker: That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
Speaker: Okay, back to the show.
Speaker: But yeah, and then you hear me start bringing up her brothers.
Speaker: So this is what's cool.
Speaker: If you built great rapport with somebody, you should already know the potential people that they might want to refer.
Speaker: Okay, we'd already talked about her brothers.
Speaker: I didn't know where they lived, so had to figure that out.
Speaker: And then she also mentioned she had a sister.
Speaker: So you start with the people that maybe they'd already brought up and you start seeding the people that maybe she could refer.
Speaker: The other one that lives here is, in fact, he's just moving right now from one apartment to the next.
Speaker: He doesn't even own a bed, so.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, maybe.
Speaker: Do you have any other, like, I don't know.
Speaker: I don't think my sister has solar on her place now.
Speaker: I think about it.
Speaker: I don't think she has it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Whether she would be a good place, a good candidate for it, I don't know because she has a lot of trees.
Speaker: They've taken a lot out, but they h ave a lot of trees, so I don't know how much.
Speaker: sun they actually get.
Speaker: I have to check with her.
Speaker: Maybe the front part of their house gets more sun.
Speaker: It probably does.
Speaker: I have to check with her.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You can check with her.
Speaker: What they have is there to just put like
Speaker: with it then we get on get in touch get them some info and then they do some other things where we keep like a running list for you if you ever got to like 10 people that end up doing them then they actually have a way you can get maybe you don't like travel you do much vacationing you're not around anymore do you like
Speaker: Okay, and then right here, this lady is 85, so you got to read the crowd.
Speaker: So I probably shouldn't even brought that up.
Speaker: But for this lady, come to find out, she didn't even care about vacations at 85.
Speaker: She's not really going on trips.
Speaker: So you got to customize it to the people you're selling to.
Speaker: If they don't like to vacation, then maybe you give them something else.
Speaker: So I just told her, hey, it's like a $3,000 trip, or we can put that towards other things.
Speaker: and started you heard me mentioned she was complaining about insurance earlier so you heard me mention that we could cover some of her insurance so you got to play to the crowd and really see what they like what they enjoy and hopefully
Speaker: The idea is trying to get them excited and bought in about potential referral bonuses.
Speaker: And this lady, I'm going to skip to another section because she did go off on like a five minute tangent about how, why she doesn't like going on vacations anymore.
Speaker: So I'll skip over some of that.
Speaker: Probably don't want to hear five minutes of that explanation, but this is where we end up.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, anyway, so yeah, they do a vacation, but yeah, if you don't really vacation, then it's like a $3,000 check they would just write you if you didn't.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause I've not like ran up once, but we keep track and you always talk to more neighbors, whatever.
Speaker: Um, so yeah, we just get like a list started for you.
Speaker: Maybe like three to four people that you think are potential.
Speaker: I don't know that I know that many people anymore.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or you got, you know, my vacation would be to, uh, have to fly first class.
Speaker: Okay, now she's going back to explaining about why she's not traveling.
Speaker: But yeah, and then you need to start priming on this lady.
Speaker: She talked about her yoga class.
Speaker: So I bring that up.
Speaker: And then she starts thinking of a few more people.
Speaker: Eventually, we have her go through her phone book.
Speaker: Let me see if I can find that section.
Speaker: I'm not sure I can sometime know.
Speaker: for the contact set aside.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: That's what helps a lot of people.
Speaker: Some of these people right there are dead.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So you'll get that.
Speaker: Holder people, they're going to pull up their contact list and there's going to be a lot of dead people, sadly.
Speaker: So, but the point of this is it did help jogger memory.
Speaker: Eventually we ended up getting three people.
Speaker: from this and the whole thing we went through probably 20 minutes and just thinking of all the people we could potentially get that she could refer.
Speaker: So not everyone is going to give you 20, 30 minutes to like go through their contacts and talk.
Speaker: But if you get people that are just really talkative that you've spent a ton of time with, you can see they got no hurries.
Speaker: They're down to just hang out and talk all day.
Speaker: Make sure you milk them for referrals.
Speaker: Because you could potentially get three, four, five.
Speaker: I've had people give me 10 to 15 referrals just right off the bat like this.
Speaker: And you got to be assumptive with it.
Speaker: But in this, you don't ask for the same concepts as setting an appointment or closing a deal.
Speaker: Typically, it's best to just roll with it, be assumptive.
Speaker: I don't ask for permission.
Speaker: I will say, hey, is it okay if I get the phone number?
Speaker: And I think there's a few audio clips of this.
Speaker: But instead of asking, hey, what's, can you have a, can you give me the phone number?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I just asked for the name first and then immediately, okay, what's the best phone number for her?
Speaker: And I'm not asking permission for the number.
Speaker: I'm telling her, yeah, ask, tell them what to do.
Speaker: Don't ask for permission.
Speaker: more likely to get it if you do it that way.
Speaker: And then it's best to just pre-handle their concerns.
Speaker: Because what are people worried about?
Speaker: They're worried that you're going to bug their friends, that you're going to make them look bad.
Speaker: So let them know before you do that, ask for the phone number before you do that little assumptive, ask for the number.
Speaker: Make sure they know, hey, we're going to make sure that you talk to them first, that they know what's going on.
Speaker: before we get in touch with them, because that's the best way to do it.
Speaker: You want to make sure that people know you're going to call them and most likely that they will answer if you do it that way.
Speaker: Okay, so hopefully that helps.
Speaker: A few things as you're doing your referral ask.
Speaker: Okay, so let me know what's working for you as you go ask for referrals, especially as we're coming up on the holiday season at the time I'm recording this.
Speaker: You want to be coasting in the holidays, getting referrals, especially around Christmas, New Year's.
Speaker: I find it gets a little bit tougher to set up appointments with people.
Speaker: So how great would it be to have a pipeline stacked full of referrals?
Speaker: So start getting in the habit.
Speaker: Ask for referrals now.
Speaker: Don't leave appointments.
Speaker: Don't leave a deal.
Speaker: without doing a referral ask.
Speaker: I promise it's going to make your job easier.
Speaker: It's going to make you sit in more solid appointments and it's going to make you make more money than you ever thought possible.
Speaker: Okay, so tune in next episode.
Speaker: We've got a very exciting guest, actually one of our sponsors of the podcast, SolarScout.
Speaker: the founder shoddy he has agreed to come do an episode talk about what's new with them talk about the most effective ways to prospect for new customers whether you use their software or not solar scout in my opinion it's the most ninja easiest way to go out and prospect new clients new leads
Speaker: and gives you just all sorts of insane homeowner data.
Speaker: So check them out if you haven't, but whether or not you use them, even if you're not planning on using them, make sure you tune in the next episode.
Speaker: We're going to have Shadi on.
Speaker: He's going to go through ways you can be more effective prospecting and ways you can use data to your advantage, whether you use their software or not.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Hope you enjoyed the episode and we'll see you on the next one.
Speaker: Hey, Solarpreneurs, 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 Solciety.
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
Speaker: by the industry's brightest minds for, are you ready for it, less than $3.45 a day.
Speaker: Currently, Soul Society is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled.
Speaker: So go to soulcidity.co to learn more and join the learning experience now.
Speaker: This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to soulcidity.co and join.
Speaker: We'll see you on the inside.
