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 fail.
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 up, solarpreneurs?
Speaker: Today, we're going to be talking about what to do when your potential customer fails credit.
Speaker: Should you freak out?
Speaker: Should you quit solar?
Speaker: Should you just give up?
Speaker: We're going to talk about it, maybe.
Speaker: So welcome to the podcast.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: Hope you're doing awesome.
Speaker: We are recording this right at the start of November.
Speaker: We just had a time change here.
Speaker: If you do have daylight savings, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker: It was dark at like five o'clock in San Diego where I'm at.
Speaker: So going to be a little bit of an adjustment.
Speaker: knocking more in the darkness, more in the dark.
Speaker: So we'll probably do an episode on that.
Speaker: Done a few episodes in the past.
Speaker: But hopefully you're adjusting or whenever you are listening to this, I hope you're closing lots of deals.
Speaker: I hope you're growing your solar business.
Speaker: And I hope you are constantly improving because we all know, we should all know,
Speaker: that if you're not improving in this business, then you're probably getting worse.
Speaker: There's not really a neutral.
Speaker: So always be looking to get better.
Speaker: And so today we're going to be talking about the credit fails.
Speaker: We all hate them, especially people that are selling in lower income areas.
Speaker: You deal a lot with these, right?
Speaker: It's like, what do you do?
Speaker: Sometimes you have people that are so interested that just fell credit left and right.
Speaker: And it comes with the territory.
Speaker: You got to understand if you're knocking in lower income, then it's just something you're going to have to deal with.
Speaker: And it can be a trade off.
Speaker: Sometimes you can get customers that are just easier sales.
Speaker: are less likely to maybe, you know, want to do more research, get quotes and all that.
Speaker: But a trade off is you might have more failed credits.
Speaker: So understand that.
Speaker: But I'm going to walk you through a few things that you probably haven't thought about as much.
Speaker: Probably haven't considered things I've learned over the years and really just the steps that I follow when I have a failed credit or I should say try to follow.
Speaker: OK, because a few of these things I have not done great about, but I wish I had.
Speaker: So stay tuned till the end if you want to hear the biggest mistake that I've made when it comes to felt credit.
Speaker: But number one is just figure out all your options beforehand.
Speaker: And what I mean by that is know if the customer is going to pass credits as early as possible.
Speaker: When I first started in solar, I remember so many presentations I would make.
Speaker: Two hours plus in the home, build all this rapport.
Speaker: They wanted to do it.
Speaker: We'd fill out the credit application.
Speaker: Boom, they'd fail.
Speaker: And it got super frustrating because I started to add up all this time and it got to be hours and hours and hours that I was spending in the home.
Speaker: And a lot of times with no fruit to show for it.
Speaker: So don't be like me.
Speaker: Something that I teach all of our closers now is if there is any doubt that they may not pass credit,
Speaker: then you need to get to the credit application as soon as possible.
Speaker: And I would even say do this as you're setting the appointment, right?
Speaker: It's like if you were knocking doors, if you're cold calling, whatever, this should almost be part of the appointment setting process.
Speaker: Again, more than ever, if you are knocking in lower income areas or homes where it just looks like these people don't look like the most responsible homeowners, I would say if you get people that are more like hoarders,
Speaker: If the house is not up kept super well, then end of the day, they're just more likely to have bad credit.
Speaker: So especially those people, be skeptical when you're setting appointments.
Speaker: Ask them about their credit.
Speaker: If there's any doubt at all, then run it as soon as possible.
Speaker: And then even if there's not in the home, it might be a good idea.
Speaker: This is something I asked in the fact finding as we're going through.
Speaker: Hey, what questions do you have about solar?
Speaker: Have you guys looked at solar before?
Speaker: Do you plan to use more power?
Speaker: All the questions that we've talked about before as you're gathering information.
Speaker: Part of the qualification, you know, you should ask them, hey, what's the condition of your roof?
Speaker: Then you should ask them, hey, how do you guys feel about your credit?
Speaker: Part of this is since there's no out-of-pocket costs, one thing they do verify is credit.
Speaker: Do you guys know where that falls for you?
Speaker: Would you say you got good credit?
Speaker: And if they're like, I don't know, or yeah, it's pretty good.
Speaker: Last time I think it's okay.
Speaker: If you get answers like that, then consider just running it right off the bat because you don't want to spend your time.
Speaker: You don't want to be like me and spend two hours and haven't felt credit.
Speaker: Yes, that's the first, I would say, point before anything.
Speaker: Just know if you're going to be wasting your time or not.
Speaker: Know what their credit score is.
Speaker: approximately is.
Speaker: And so the second thing is know your options.
Speaker: So what options does your company have?
Speaker: What finances do you have?
Speaker: What lenders do you have?
Speaker: It's important to know all about these and understand what are the qualifications?
Speaker: Is it going to be a hard inquiry?
Speaker: Do they accept co-applicants for the application?
Speaker: All these different things.
Speaker: And I would recommend making a cheat sheet.
Speaker: It's actually something that our company did that I thought was extremely useful is they made a cheat sheet and shoot me a message if you want and send over an example of this.
Speaker: And it actually applies in most markets.
Speaker: A few of our...
Speaker: Options that we have out here in California where I'm currently selling is we've got Sunnova, we've got Goodleap, Lightreach, Everbright, Enfin, Sunrun, and all of them have, most of them are similar, I will say, but there's a few varying options.
Speaker: option, a few varying, I guess, qualifications.
Speaker: Most of them are 650.
Speaker: Anyone that's been in solar knows that 650 is generally like the cutoff, right?
Speaker: Anything under 650 starts getting a little tricky, getting people approved, but just...
Speaker: Not to bore you with all the details, but an option we have is NFIN.
Speaker: They do approve 620, but it's important to know the other stipulations that come with that.
Speaker: Because in the NFIN example, one of our lenders, they have a lower credit qualification, but there's more stipulations when it comes to debt to income.
Speaker: I don't have the exact stipulations in front of me, so you can look them up if you're curious.
Speaker: But there are things like that, so it's not always...
Speaker: as it seems on paper.
Speaker: Sometimes some of these lenders have
Speaker: potentially lower credit qualifications, but then there's other things they're looking at that could make it tougher.
Speaker: So just know exactly what they're looking at.
Speaker: And another thing is a lot of them are changing constantly for those people that use Everbright.
Speaker: And depending on when you're listening to this, because they could change, but Everbright at the time of this recording, they require a 700 credit score.
Speaker: And then there's some stipulations like that.
Speaker: I think if it's under 700,
Speaker: There's more like debt to income qualifications.
Speaker: Again, don't have the exact stipulations in front of me.
Speaker: But yeah, a lot of these things are fluctuating, are changing.
Speaker: So make sure you have the most up-to-date information and hopefully whatever your company...
Speaker: you're selling with, whatever company you're at is updating you on, hey, this has changed.
Speaker: This credit qualification has changed.
Speaker: These things have changed with this lender.
Speaker: So long story short, it is very helpful to have a cheat sheet and know the different varying qualifications that each of these lenders have.
Speaker: And then something that's very useful for us is we have a whole closers chat.
Speaker: So I would recommend that if you are managing a team, if you are a company owner, I would consider just having a closers chat with everybody.
Speaker: What's extremely useful is we've got varying degrees of experience on our team of closers.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And some people, maybe they sell one thing more than the other.
Speaker: So for us, when we don't know something, first thing we do, we just post it in the closers chat.
Speaker: Say, hey, does anyone know what's the deal with this one?
Speaker: Do they have different qualifications?
Speaker: Do they accept the co-op case?
Speaker: That's another thing that's useful too, on top of having a cheat sheet.
Speaker: is get people in a group.
Speaker: That way it's not all the questions just going to one manager.
Speaker: You can collaborate together and work towards solutions.
Speaker: So that's step number two.
Speaker: Know things like that.
Speaker: And yeah, just a few other things is like the co-op can need to be on title because that's something that varies depending on the lender too, is the hard credit check.
Speaker: Do you need the full social?
Speaker: Which this actually is saying a few times.
Speaker: Sometimes I get those older folks that are skeptical folks.
Speaker: that is sold as they are in it.
Speaker: It has happened, I would say.
Speaker: I would say probably a couple times a year it happens to me, where for whatever reason they're sold, but they absolutely refuse to give their social.
Speaker: Like they've had fraud happen, just the potential risk of there being fraud or like a data breach, whatever.
Speaker: They will not give their full social.
Speaker: So it has seen me in the past to have options where that I know of, I think all of them, possibly Sun Nova.
Speaker: I think you might be able to get away with just date of birth with Sun Nova.
Speaker: Sometimes they require the social as well.
Speaker: But just know, are there options where maybe you don't need a full social to run the credit?
Speaker: Or are there options where you only need the last four?
Speaker: Because some people can be sticklers about this and they literally will choose to pay way more to the utility than have their identity stolen as much as they trust you.
Speaker: It can happen.
Speaker: So no things like that.
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: Okay, and going on to point three, what should you do?
Speaker: Customer fails credit.
Speaker: So what are the exact steps you should follow right after that?
Speaker: So here's what I do.
Speaker: Here's what I recommend.
Speaker: The first thing is don't panic.
Speaker: The last thing you want to do is be like, oh, you guys fell credit.
Speaker: Let's see if we might have some other options.
Speaker: It's going to be tough.
Speaker: You don't want people feeling bad about it.
Speaker: I guess I've literally had people, this is again a mistake I made in the past, where I would act like disappointed and I'd be like, oh, bummer, you guys fell.
Speaker: Let's see if there's maybe some other options.
Speaker: And people would get like so disappointed by that
Speaker: that they would almost throw, they'd be like, oh, you know what, let's not do it.
Speaker: Or I would say what's more common is you show disappointment, then you go to another one and they fell.
Speaker: And it's like each time they fell on application, it's just knocking off a chink of their armor and they're getting more and more demotivated to go continue going slower.
Speaker: So last thing you want to do is get them thinking, I'm not going to be able to do this.
Speaker: You don't want to bring the negativity.
Speaker: So act as calm as possible.
Speaker: Act like this happens all the time.
Speaker: Okay, so some word tracks you can use is, oh, that was actually, they're like the toughest ones to qualify for.
Speaker: Hardly anyone qualifies for them.
Speaker: So it'll kick us straight over to the next one and just make it no big deal.
Speaker: Make it seem like this happens all the time.
Speaker: Make it seem like, hey, this is why we work with a bunch of different options because most people don't pass the first time.
Speaker: whatever you can say to make them feel like, okay, it's not a big deal, just on the next application.
Speaker: And you can say things, oh, it actually kicked us to this different lender.
Speaker: Not a big deal.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Oh, they might even be better, whatever.
Speaker: So you can almost make them feel like it may be a better option.
Speaker: Maybe it was meant to be.
Speaker: Yes, that's the first thing.
Speaker: Don't freak out.
Speaker: And then after that, yeah, it's like transition to the next application.
Speaker: If you have another one, you're confident that you think they could get approved for,
Speaker: I would immediately just go to the next application, see if they pass with that.
Speaker: Gets a little bit trickier.
Speaker: They fail all the options, but there are things you can do Experian boost.
Speaker: Hey, and this has saved a lot of deals for us.
Speaker: I would say recently is everyone should be going Experian.
Speaker: They have the boost option.
Speaker: All you do, I believe you can do it on the Experian app or just Experian.com.
Speaker: I think is the website.
Speaker: Just have the customer create an account takes like less than five minutes and then they can just boost the credit score.
Speaker: It can sometimes boost it.
Speaker: We've seen it go up as much as I've heard 30, 40 points in some cases.
Speaker: More common is 10 to 20 points.
Speaker: So it's usually not going to be like a massive, massive boost.
Speaker: But this has made the difference between a deal and a fell credit.
Speaker: So make sure you exhaust all your options.
Speaker: Definitely try the Experian Boost.
Speaker: And then from there, you can try a co-applicant.
Speaker: And this is where it comes in handy knowing does it have to be on title?
Speaker: Can it be anybody?
Speaker: Hey, maybe you can put yourself on the application.
Speaker: Just kidding.
Speaker: I would never do that.
Speaker: Would not put yourself on an application.
Speaker: But yeah, look for maybe a relative, aunt, uncle, cousin, whatever.
Speaker: Look for someone to put on the application that would be willing.
Speaker: And especially if they don't have to be on the title, then you could put anyone really on there.
Speaker: And then if that doesn't work, I would say the next two options are number one.
Speaker: There are some failed credit options, or rather options where they accept basically anybody.
Speaker: So depending on what market you're in, if you go search on a lot of these Facebook groups, you probably can find an option where they may accept essentially any credit score here in California.
Speaker: PACE programs where it will go on the property tax.
Speaker: That's another option.
Speaker: I believe it's in California, Florida.
Speaker: So you could potentially look into that or you could search some of these Facebook groups, have some other low credit options.
Speaker: But just a word of caution, generally the low credit options, they're not great.
Speaker: Most of the time, they usually pay very little.
Speaker: If you are doing an option like PACE where it's on the property taxes,
Speaker: There's way more paperwork, way more steps you got to complete.
Speaker: You're going to send an income and can kind of be a headache.
Speaker: So just be prepared for that.
Speaker: Prep your potential customers for that.
Speaker: And then just make sure it's legit.
Speaker: Hey, I had a we had a funding option.
Speaker: It's called LA Solar, not to call anyone out, but they were accepting, I think at the time, anybody, like any felt credit, we could go run them through this LA credit power purchase agreement.
Speaker: And it seemed great.
Speaker: They had great terms, their contracts and everything.
Speaker: But it ended up turning into a disaster.
Speaker: We had some very low quality installs happen over time.
Speaker: Then we started not getting paid on a bunch of them.
Speaker: And it just turned out to be not worth it for anyone.
Speaker: The process got delayed by months and months and months.
Speaker: It was just a terrible experience for the customer and for us.
Speaker: And ended up not getting paid on a bunch of them as time went on.
Speaker: So make sure it is legit.
Speaker: Make sure you vet whatever low credit PPA option.
Speaker: Yeah, just don't fall into the trap.
Speaker: You're going through all this work, all this hassle for the customer to have a terrible experience and for you to not get paid and have a terrible experience as well.
Speaker: Hey, so those are the main three points.
Speaker: And then last, I would say, I deal with this.
Speaker: And this is the thing I mentioned at the beginning, probably one of the biggest mistakes I've made.
Speaker: if not the biggest mistakes when I made when it comes to fell credit.
Speaker: Your worst, your last resort, right?
Speaker: Let's say you can't get them approved.
Speaker: So whatever reason, there's no co-op, can't, you can't do credit repair, which that's another thing I forgot to mention.
Speaker: There's several credit repair programs.
Speaker: where you can potentially have them sign something saying you'll pay for it.
Speaker: And then they would just have to go solar with you no matter what or pay you back for it.
Speaker: You could do something like that.
Speaker: But let's say everything fails.
Speaker: You can't get improved.
Speaker: It's failed credit.
Speaker: I would say probably the most important thing here is be organized.
Speaker: Keep track of these failed credits.
Speaker: Because I look back over time, I've had dozens and dozens and dozens of failed credit.
Speaker: And I've done a terrible job staying organized because I've gone back to neighborhoods where someone fell credit.
Speaker: I sat with them, didn't go through and they got sore on their roof.
Speaker: So someone obviously found a way to get them approved.
Speaker: Maybe they got their credit better.
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: So make sure you are, I would recommend having like a CRM, putting a tag on these people.
Speaker: Most CRMs allow you to put like a note or a tag, right?
Speaker: That's a felt credit.
Speaker: And then have like a scheduled date when you're going to follow up.
Speaker: Because if not, someone's going to close that deal eventually.
Speaker: And most of these people, they wanted to go solar really bad.
Speaker: They just need a way to get approved.
Speaker: So make sure you're staying organized.
Speaker: And then something I heard from a buddy of mine that I thought was a good idea.
Speaker: Even if you aren't organized, maybe you,
Speaker: didn't keep track of them.
Speaker: You should be getting an email, right?
Speaker: You see your own credit through Everbright, whatever lender you're using.
Speaker: You can go and search if it was Everbright, search Everbright Feldcredit.
Speaker: And you could see if you don't delete your emails, I do not.
Speaker: terrible with email organization, but you should be able to see all the ones that fell credit over time.
Speaker: So even if you weren't organized, this is something you can do today.
Speaker: And I would challenge you if you've been in solar for a while, then you probably can go get a deal this week.
Speaker: If you follow this, go search in your inbox, the financer fell credit.
Speaker: you should see a list of probably a bunch of people that fell credit over time.
Speaker: Follow up with those people.
Speaker: Shoot them a call.
Speaker: Especially if it's been over a year, things could have drastically changed in a year.
Speaker: So give them a call.
Speaker: Hey, Mr. Customer, we met a while back.
Speaker: We've actually got some different options.
Speaker: I know last time we weren't able to get you approved because of their credits.
Speaker: By the way, how's its credit going better?
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: Spark a conversation with them.
Speaker: Get in front of them.
Speaker: It could be a lay down sale.
Speaker: Okay, so I hope those things helped you.
Speaker: Again, just to recap, make sure you know all your options as far as what lenders you have, what the qualifications are.
Speaker: Make sure you are not wasting your time.
Speaker: Make sure you're asking your clients, hey, what is your credit score?
Speaker: Ask them that early and often as much as possible.
Speaker: Hey, and then the third thing, just know what you're going to do after the customer fails credit.
Speaker: Don't freak out.
Speaker: Go through all your options.
Speaker: Try credit repairer.
Speaker: I'm looking to...
Speaker: some maybe low credit approval options.
Speaker: And worst case scenario, don't forget to follow up.
Speaker: So I hope that helps.
Speaker: Hope you close a bunch of deals this week.
Speaker: Hope you grow your solar business.
Speaker: Please, if you have not already, leave us a review.
Speaker: If you're interested in applying to join any of our teams and become a top solarpreneur dog, then click the link in the show notes.
Speaker: You can fill out an application.
Speaker: Someone on our team will reach out to you.
Speaker: But either way, hope you have a ton of success and we'll see you on the next podcast.
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