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 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, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Today, we're going to be talking about one thing that will kill your deal almost every single time.
Speaker: And I've made this mistake many times before.
Speaker: I got some live footage of a deal that I actually just switched over.
Speaker: And they told me exactly why they did not go with the first company they met with.
Speaker: So we're going to be diving in some live footage and hopefully you can take some lessons from it.
Speaker: 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 hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: Hope you're doing awesome and closing lots of deals whenever you're listening to this.
Speaker: Currently, we are in the summer grinds
Speaker: And I hope all of you are taking advantage of these long summer days.
Speaker: Have your guys just grinding, closing lots of deals because this is when it's money making season for solar.
Speaker: So make sure you push hard these last months if you are selling in the summer and leave everything on the table because you don't want to get to the winter and wish you would have pushed harder in the summer.
Speaker: Take it from me.
Speaker: Okay, so we're going to jump straight into the content.
Speaker: Nothing too much else to talk about besides the meat and potatoes today.
Speaker: And so just a little background on what happened on this account that I recently installed.
Speaker: So I went there.
Speaker: It was a person that had moved in.
Speaker: Fairly recent in the house, I think four or five months back.
Speaker: So I personally am a big fan of hitting newer move ins.
Speaker: A lot of times they have not been, you know, hit up as much about solar.
Speaker: So it's a strategy for us out here and can work well.
Speaker: And so what happened, I go to this deal.
Speaker: I start signing them.
Speaker: They're resistant.
Speaker: They don't want to do it.
Speaker: I finally get out why they don't want to do it.
Speaker: And it's because they signed up pretty quick with the last company.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm just going to play some live footage, probably best explain it from their perspective.
Speaker: So I'm going to pull up the footage here I got on this account and let's hear what happened.
Speaker: Let's hear what this rep did wrong and some lessons we can take from it.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: So, yeah, I guess.
Speaker: So, yes, I don't realize you guys have been through that far with this.
Speaker: I'm wondering what stopped you guys from just like following through and going with what they were doing.
Speaker: So, I mean, the first time you approached me out in the garage, I didn't even know what they were doing.
Speaker: Yeah, it hadn't gone through.
Speaker: And then he came by one day while I was in the garage.
Speaker: Hey, Jeremy, I just dropped behind nowhere and
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So you just got exhausted.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: You got exhausted.
Speaker: You just, you know, testing us and testing us.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: You kept texting us.
Speaker: I go, listen.
Speaker: I go, we're not here right now.
Speaker: We'll let you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's like, stop.
Speaker: Yeah, he did.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, we don't like that.
Speaker: That's not something that I want.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, so you can pretty much hear what happened here.
Speaker: Wasn't going to say, but yes, the company was Sunrun.
Speaker: And I feel bad for this rep.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: I swiped the deal from him.
Speaker: But obviously this rep, Sunrun rep had gone there.
Speaker: Probably thought he got a lay down account.
Speaker: They were excited about it, but several things apparently go wrong and it was too much in the end to recover from.
Speaker: And I feel bad because I empathize with this rep.
Speaker: I've been there before, especially when I was newer to closing.
Speaker: There were times where I had to come back, re-sign deals, and maybe re-signed it under someone that wasn't on the title.
Speaker: That's happened before.
Speaker: So there's so many things that happen.
Speaker: And even still to this day where I've been doing it for years and years and years, there's still times where I do have to go back.
Speaker: So let's just talk about a few things that maybe could have prevented, maybe could have done different, some lessons that we all should learn from this.
Speaker: Lesson number one, you hear them just complain that he had to come back.
Speaker: He was here for two hours.
Speaker: Just be conscious of time and pay attention to body language.
Speaker: If people are getting bored, if they're not present in it, you got to keep them engaged.
Speaker: So I get the feeling that this rep, he was just dragging it out, going through every single step, which is good.
Speaker: But you got to know, hey, I'm losing the audience here.
Speaker: And this guy, the husband specifically, was definitely a much quicker presentation to the point.
Speaker: And my mistake was I didn't even know they had met with Sunrun until I was actually going to close him.
Speaker: I almost did close him, but then she started opening up why she didn't.
Speaker: sign why she didn't want to do it right then, which that was my mistake because really I should have found this out at the very beginning of the appointment, right?
Speaker: And tailored my presentation to that, but I did not.
Speaker: So that's a mistake I made.
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 SolarScout.
Speaker: 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, I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show.
Speaker: You need to give my listeners a great deal, 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: Um, but this rep, um, I get the feeling that he was not reading the room.
Speaker: He was just going on and on and on, um, wanted to cover all the bases, all the steps, which is great.
Speaker: But Hey, if you're losing your audience, you gotta like do something, right?
Speaker: You gotta pick it up.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: You got to, yeah, just read the room, be a human being.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Because if you get them exhausted, then it's tough to recover from that.
Speaker: So I know it's a balance because you need to cover all the steps too, but you know, maybe condense some things, ask questions, make sure they have understanding, then move on to the next one.
Speaker: Because you don't want to just frustrate them that you're taking forever and ever and ever.
Speaker: And they're probably just not going to do it.
Speaker: So I'm actually surprised that this Sunrung rep got as far as he did.
Speaker: Because from how the husband was talking, I'm shocked that they even signed with his attitude about it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But then the lesson here is get your docs right the first time.
Speaker: So that's a big lesson to be learned.
Speaker: You heard that the Sunrun rep had to go back.
Speaker: He was there another two hours figuring out a credit issue.
Speaker: So if you are new to closing or however long you've been doing this, just do not leave the house without clearing all holds on accounts.
Speaker: Hey, it gets, trust me, it just makes your life harder, makes it more complicated.
Speaker: If you have to go back, if you have to pester him for things, people, it's just going to delay everything.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I see this with rookie sales reps with people that are newer to closing all the time where they just leave threads undone, right?
Speaker: They leave things undone.
Speaker: Maybe they signed the, the agreement, but they're missing the utility agreements.
Speaker: Um, here we have the net meter agreement that needs to be signed most of the time.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Maybe they're missing the full utility bill, which is another thing, another common thing that I see reps just don't get at the point of sale.
Speaker: So do not leave until you can get everything gathered.
Speaker: No stipulations.
Speaker: OK, and then so that's lesson number one.
Speaker: Number two, don't pester your deals.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's like this guy, he did some good.
Speaker: I like that he brought him crumble cookies.
Speaker: That is nice.
Speaker: But you don't want to pester your deals.
Speaker: You don't want to feel like you're coming at them over and over and over.
Speaker: And that's segue into lesson three is be the needed, not the needy.
Speaker: If people feel like you're needy, if they sense that commission breath, then it's just going to make your job way harder.
Speaker: It's going to turn them off.
Speaker: And probably you're going to get the same result that happened to this Sunrun rep, unfortunately.
Speaker: They're going to be like, you know what, let's just pause the whole thing.
Speaker: We're not ready to do this.
Speaker: We want to think about it longer.
Speaker: And they won't do it.
Speaker: So if you want to learn more about that specific, you know, be the needed, not the needy.
Speaker: One of the top books I recommend to all my newer closers and anyone that is in our coaching group is Pitch Anything by Warren Klaff.
Speaker: He also has another book came out more recently called Flip the Script.
Speaker: I think pitch anything is better.
Speaker: But it's all about controlling the frame, right?
Speaker: And that same concept being the needed, not the needy.
Speaker: Because again, when they can sense that commission breath, when they can sense that you're just doing everything, you're showing up at their house unannounced, you're texting them at all hours, long paragraphs.
Speaker: Who wants that, right?
Speaker: So make sure you learn that lesson.
Speaker: So those are the main lessons, main takeaways that I got from listening to this.
Speaker: It just, you know, kind of hurt me and made me empathize with the Sunrun rep because, again, I have been there before.
Speaker: But hopefully you can avoid some of those mistakes and
Speaker: not have to be needy like that.
Speaker: And really, the way I got this deal is I just tried to be the opposite of what the Sunrun rep did.
Speaker: I didn't push them.
Speaker: I should have asked their experience beforehand.
Speaker: I would have definitely presented to them a little bit differently.
Speaker: Once I heard this, I'm like, okay,
Speaker: well, if I'm going to get this deal, I can't be like that guy.
Speaker: I can't shove this down their throats.
Speaker: And I did come back the next day and they signed.
Speaker: I will admit this rarely happens.
Speaker: Usually if you come back the next day, they're not signing.
Speaker: But in this case, I knew, hey, this is probably my best shot.
Speaker: I got to be different from this guy.
Speaker: They're wanting to crunch their own numbers.
Speaker: So let them do that and I'll come back.
Speaker: came back sure enough they signed up and less than two weeks later that thing is glass on the roof installed and they're super happy didn't have to come back because a smooth process gave them one update got their install scheduled and it is installed so if you want to have an experience like that come to sunny southern california
Speaker: have in many cases, two to three week installs that we're having right now, hit me up.
Speaker: We have some openings on our team.
Speaker: You can shoot me a DM on Instagram or shoot me an email at taylor at solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: I'll send you the application if you're looking to join a
Speaker: team that's on fire right now.
Speaker: But either way, I hope you took something from this episode and especially send this to if you're running a team, send this to your newer closers, send this if you're the rep that signed this with Sunrun.
Speaker: I am sorry, but a lesson learned.
Speaker: So let's all be better.
Speaker: Let's all be professionals in this industry.
Speaker: And let's get all our docs.
Speaker: Let's get all our stipulations in the first time.
Speaker: So we don't have to be like this guy.
Speaker: Okay, so tune into the next episode.
Speaker: We got some exciting, exciting guests coming up soon.
Speaker: And hopefully you were able to listen to Jordan Stupar on the last podcast.
Speaker: I thought that was absolute fire just on following up better and how to be a top 1% sales rep.
Speaker: So make sure you listen to that if you did not already.
Speaker: And other than that, we'll see you on the next one.
Speaker: Crush some deals this week.
Speaker: See you next time.
Speaker: What's up, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Hope you enjoyed the episode.
Speaker: Before you run out and start selling more solar yourself, wanted to let you know about an exciting new cheat sheet we created specifically for you in mind.
Speaker: One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start?
Speaker: What episodes should I listen to in the podcast?
Speaker: You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
Speaker: So what we've done, we created the top 10 most downloaded, most listened to, and I would say widely accepted, most useful podcasts that we've done here on Solarpreneur.
Speaker: We put them together all in one sheet.
Speaker: So you can go, you can hit the ground running, especially if you're new and you do not want to not have this sheet.
Speaker: So go download it right now.
Speaker: It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs.
Speaker: We will have that in the show notes.
Speaker: Go download it right now.
Speaker: And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them.
Speaker: That's going to show you how.
Speaker: So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.
