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99: Building Your Digital Door Knocking Team - Aaron Wolverton
67 Plays5 years ago
Building a team takes a village. Learn the basics of building your digital door-to-door solar dream team by listening to this podcast.
Where you can find Aaron:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/aaronwolverton
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronwolverton
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/a.wolve/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU2QtZw1SxD_4jHYSUv6ZYA
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Transcript
Introduction and Special Announcement
00:00:01
Speaker
What's up, Solarpreneurs?
00:00:02
Speaker
Wanted to make a quick announcement before we dive into this episode.
00:00:06
Speaker
We are nearing, if you haven't noticed, the 100th episode of the Solarpreneur podcast.
00:00:13
Speaker
Can you believe that?
00:00:14
Speaker
It's been crazy.
00:00:16
Speaker
So we want to do something a little special.
00:00:19
Speaker
If you're not part of the Solarpreneur Facebook group, go hop in that because we will be doing a giveaway for the 100th episode.
00:00:28
Speaker
So go join the group.
00:00:30
Speaker
You're going to get all the details, and then you can celebrate with us.
00:00:34
Speaker
We're going to keep the podcast rolling, but we want to celebrate our listeners and basically just let you know that we appreciate all the feedback we've been getting.
00:00:46
Speaker
So go join the group, and with that being said, let's jump
Introducing the Guest: Aaron Wolverton
00:00:50
Speaker
into the episode.
00:00:50
Speaker
We've got Aaron Wolverton.
00:00:52
Speaker
He is a Tube Comic Club Award winner, master marketer,
00:00:57
Speaker
Take notes.
00:00:58
Speaker
Let's get in the episode.
00:00:59
Speaker
What do you call an underground group of solar professionals on a mission to create a more sustainable world?
00:01:05
Speaker
We call ourselves solopreneurs.
00:01:08
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.
00:01:17
Speaker
What's going on Solarpreneurs?
00:01:18
Speaker
Your host Taylor Armstrong here and super excited for another episode today.
00:01:42
Speaker
Because for the second time in the Solar Printerer podcast history, we have a Two Comma Club Award winner on the show.
00:01:51
Speaker
And for those of you who don't know, that's someone who has made, done in revenue more than a million dollars through a sales funnel.
00:02:00
Speaker
In this case, we're talking solar.
00:02:02
Speaker
So today we've got on Aaron Wolferton.
00:02:05
Speaker
Is that how you say your last name, Aaron?
00:02:06
Speaker
It is, yeah.
00:02:07
Speaker
Okay.
Aaron's Journey to Solar Sales
00:02:09
Speaker
So welcome to the show.
00:02:10
Speaker
Thanks for coming on, man.
00:02:12
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:02:13
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
00:02:13
Speaker
It's pretty cool that we're, uh, this is finally coming to fruition.
00:02:16
Speaker
I know we met back at the ClickFunnels event when I, when I, when I won that two comma club and then, and it never ended up working out.
00:02:24
Speaker
So I'm glad we were able to jump on today, man.
00:02:25
Speaker
I'm excited.
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:27
Speaker
It's going to be a good time.
00:02:28
Speaker
And yeah, funny story.
00:02:29
Speaker
When we first met, it was at, um, Funnel Hacking Live in Nashville, uh, I think in February, but, um,
00:02:37
Speaker
Aaron, he's the digital marketing director for Pure Energy Solar.
00:02:42
Speaker
Is that the official title?
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's PE Solar now.
00:02:47
Speaker
Long story short, we're based in Arizona, but when we branched into Orlando in our Tampa branch, there was already another Pure Energy, and then they just didn't like that much.
00:02:56
Speaker
So we switched to PE Solar, but it still stands for Pure Energy.
00:03:00
Speaker
Okay, gotcha.
00:03:02
Speaker
So the funny part of it was when I met Aaron at Funnel Hiking Live, I actually had some friends that were working in Arizona and they worked for Pure Energy Solar.
00:03:12
Speaker
So I went up and talked to them and I'm like, hey, man.
00:03:14
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard a little bit about the market down there.
00:03:17
Speaker
I've got some buddies working for Pure Energy down there.
00:03:21
Speaker
And he just, he's like, oh, cool.
00:03:23
Speaker
How long they been working for him?
00:03:24
Speaker
Didn't say anything and just kind of went along with it.
00:03:27
Speaker
And I'm just telling him about my buddies.
00:03:29
Speaker
And then finally, probably after like, I don't know, maybe two, three minutes, you're like, hey, man, that's actually the same company I work for.
00:03:35
Speaker
It's a dollar though.
00:03:39
Speaker
I remember you were talking about, you're like, yeah, I like how they do their pitch, man.
00:03:42
Speaker
They do like a model home pitch essentially where,
00:03:45
Speaker
they're selecting the homeowner and they'll cover the upfront cost if, you know, they want like in return, like a yard sign and a before and after bill and a testimonial.
00:03:52
Speaker
And I was like, Oh, cool.
00:03:54
Speaker
And then you finally kind of spilled the beans.
00:03:55
Speaker
I was just, I don't even know why I did that.
00:03:57
Speaker
It was no real reason.
00:03:58
Speaker
I just, I don't know.
00:04:00
Speaker
It was funny.
00:04:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:02
Speaker
So he's played along with it, but yeah, it's funny.
00:04:04
Speaker
I think just a couple of weeks before we met up, I had, uh, Corey Vanderpool, just someone who I used to work with.
00:04:11
Speaker
And he's the one that I had on the podcast that was telling me all this stuff.
00:04:16
Speaker
And I was, I was telling you about it and I'm like, you need to check this company out.
00:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:04:21
Speaker
He's, he's closed plenty of deals for me, man.
00:04:23
Speaker
I don't know if he's still with us.
00:04:24
Speaker
I know, um,
00:04:26
Speaker
just cause this whole COVID thing, I know we lost a couple of people.
00:04:28
Speaker
I know he's gained a few as well, but he might've left actually, but a super good dude, nothing but good things to say about him.
00:04:34
Speaker
And he's closed deals for me.
00:04:36
Speaker
And my online deals that we'll talk about in a minute here from online leads, that's really all I do is generate online leads.
00:04:43
Speaker
So I'm essentially an appointment setter, but he's closed a bunch of my deals.
00:04:46
Speaker
So yeah, Corey's awesome.
00:04:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:50
Speaker
He's a good guy.
00:04:51
Speaker
But yeah, so you guys definitely got a good system you got going there.
00:04:54
Speaker
And I love the pitch that I heard from him.
00:04:56
Speaker
And now we're going to hear about what you're doing with the digital marketing side of it, which I'm super stoked to hear about that.
00:05:02
Speaker
Anyone that's won that award, pretty prestigious award and definitely have learned a thing or two, I'm sure.
00:05:09
Speaker
So we'll get, we'll get into all that.
00:05:11
Speaker
But first of all, tell us kind of how you got into the industry, Aaron, and how
00:05:16
Speaker
How you got into digital marketing?
00:05:18
Speaker
I think you're starting off knocking doors, but how'd you kind of get into all that?
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:23
Speaker
So a whole quick backstory.
00:05:24
Speaker
I went to school for graphic and web design and I've always like, I've always really liked like building websites and things that are cool and graphic design.
00:05:34
Speaker
So I did that.
00:05:35
Speaker
And then shortly out of school, I just realized that, you know, I was probably way too entitled of a 21 year old out of college, but I just wasn't making any money in graphic design and web development.
00:05:44
Speaker
So I shortly realized that my brother was doing sales and just crushing it.
00:05:49
Speaker
And I was like, man, like maybe I should do sales.
00:05:51
Speaker
And so I started to get into sales more and then I started to do more graphic design on the side.
00:05:56
Speaker
Um,
00:05:58
Speaker
And I did everything from, you know, business to business to door to door.
00:06:02
Speaker
I mean, I've done a lot of different sales and I lived in a lot of different places.
00:06:05
Speaker
I've sold sales all over the South of the United States.
00:06:08
Speaker
I've done business to business sales in downtown Chicago and the Sun-Times building where they, you know, the Sun-Times newspaper is like the biggest
Transition to Digital Marketing
00:06:15
Speaker
newspaper in Chicago.
00:06:17
Speaker
And then I actually moved out here, but I started doing door to door.
00:06:21
Speaker
probably about 10 years ago my my brother that was really good at sales he was a manager for uh charter cable okay they're called spectrum now similar to a comcast gotcha yeah or a cox yeah and um they were essentially just selling cable phone you know the old triple play and so i started knocking on him and i started to make quite a bit of money doing it i was like man i can do this like a couple hours a day and sell these triple plays to like homeowners and
00:06:48
Speaker
and makes, you know, pretty good money.
00:06:50
Speaker
And it was, it was pretty easy.
00:06:51
Speaker
Like I've always been pretty decent at like talking to people.
00:06:54
Speaker
So door to door, I don't want to say it's come easy to me, but it's, I never had to like really go through, like, you know, there's some people that get into door to door and they just really struggle and it takes them a while.
00:07:05
Speaker
But I also have a lot of respect for that story as well, man, for people that aren't super extroverted and they like really just put in the work and grind.
00:07:14
Speaker
And I've seen a lot of success stories out of that too.
00:07:16
Speaker
But at first it came, I've had plenty of hard years and months, but at first it came pretty easy to me.
00:07:21
Speaker
I started making some pretty good money selling cable.
00:07:24
Speaker
And then I've done everything from cable internet phone sales to like encyclopedias and study guides door to door.
00:07:31
Speaker
That was like a summer job selling like encyclopedias a while back.
00:07:35
Speaker
And then when I was, I went back to doing cable after a few years, cause I kind of around a little bit sales.
00:07:42
Speaker
But when I came back to cable, I moved back to my hometown in Bay city, Michigan from Chicago.
00:07:49
Speaker
And I was doing cable again.
00:07:51
Speaker
And then I had a family friend.
00:07:52
Speaker
His name was Casey Mosier that worked for Pure Energy here in Arizona.
00:07:57
Speaker
And he knows Cory Vanderpool real well, but he had started to show me like some of his checks.
00:08:01
Speaker
And I'm just like, man, are you kidding me?
00:08:02
Speaker
Like this is a weekly check.
00:08:04
Speaker
And he's like, yeah.
00:08:05
Speaker
And he's a manager, you know, but still, and he gets overrides because he's brought some of the team in.
00:08:09
Speaker
But I mean, I'm just seeing like, you know, five, 10, 20, $30,000 checks and I couldn't believe it.
00:08:13
Speaker
So yeah.
00:08:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:16
Speaker
So PE, Pure Energy, they actually flew me out to Arizona like three years ago, right around this time.
00:08:23
Speaker
Paid for everything, paid for the hotel, paid for my car, paid for the flight.
00:08:27
Speaker
And yeah, I just like knocked doors for a week and I ended up closing two deals.
00:08:31
Speaker
And I just wanted to kind of see the lay of the land and see the territory.
00:08:34
Speaker
And I just, I fell in love with Arizona, man.
00:08:36
Speaker
Like I live in Scottsdale now, but I just, man, because I'm used to having three feet of snow in the winter.
00:08:43
Speaker
So at that point, yeah, like right about three years ago, I was just looking for a change.
00:08:47
Speaker
So I actually decided pretty much on a whim after I closed a couple of sales here in Arizona to move to Arizona.
00:08:53
Speaker
Casey and my other buddy, Tim, was the only two people I knew.
00:08:56
Speaker
And obviously, like I've grown a lot.
00:08:57
Speaker
I have a lot of cool friend groups here now and built a great life for myself here.
00:09:01
Speaker
But yeah, it was about three years ago I moved here just on a whim to sell solar door-to-door.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:07
Speaker
Well, that's pretty good, man.
00:09:09
Speaker
You came out for a week and you closed two deals.
00:09:11
Speaker
Most people come up their week and just kind of mess around and check it out and everything.
00:09:15
Speaker
So they're glad that they flew you out for that week.
00:09:19
Speaker
Two deals.
00:09:20
Speaker
It's pretty good.
00:09:20
Speaker
It was probably more like two weeks.
00:09:22
Speaker
But yeah, I was the first couple of days, it started off a little bit slow.
00:09:25
Speaker
And then I kind of just started to understand it and get the pitch down and get it dialed in.
00:09:29
Speaker
And yeah, so it was probably more like two weeks, but a couple of deals closed and I was like, hell man, I'll move.
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
00:09:36
Speaker
And yeah, the fact that you sold encyclopedias too, that shows you've been in the industry for a while, man.
00:09:43
Speaker
I didn't even know people still bought those things or even made encyclopedias.
00:09:49
Speaker
That was pretty brutal, man.
00:09:51
Speaker
But I always tell people like the door-to-door jobs that I've had was almost like
Initial Challenges and Mentorship in Marketing
00:09:56
Speaker
the sales schooling that I never had, right?
00:09:58
Speaker
Like you put your teeth on the doors for like a summer, like a year.
00:10:01
Speaker
It's, you know, it's the equivalent of getting like a bachelor's in sales, which probably- Yeah, I've heard that.
00:10:06
Speaker
because it doesn't really make sense to get a bachelor in sales or a degree.
00:10:09
Speaker
But, you know, like it's essentially if you're knocking doors for a while, it's like the equivalent of getting a degree in sales.
00:10:14
Speaker
I mean, it's a really good, you just learn so much about yourself and human psychology and sales.
00:10:19
Speaker
I mean, it was great, even though a lot of it was a struggle.
00:10:22
Speaker
Oh yeah, definitely a huge learning experience.
00:10:25
Speaker
That's crazy.
00:10:25
Speaker
The encyclopedias, they even sell those things door to door to, you know, I can't imagine.
00:10:30
Speaker
Probably not anymore.
00:10:31
Speaker
The company I worked for is a company called Southwestern and they have like a whole culture where what they do is they take students from colleges, you go recruit on college campuses and they'll take kids out for a summer.
00:10:43
Speaker
And then the kids sell for like three months and they're able to make like, you know, 10, 20 grand in a summer if they work hard, but it's literally like,
00:10:50
Speaker
12-hour days Monday through Saturday I mean their photos really really like work hard for three or four months probably similar to like pest control stuff you know I know you got hard for certain summers and things but yeah when when I was doing it they started to transition to like online study guides and you know college prep tests and more online stuff but yeah it was probably almost like right around 10 years ago when I was doing that wow that's awesome
00:11:13
Speaker
That's cool.
00:11:13
Speaker
Well, yeah, you definitely have been through it.
00:11:15
Speaker
And I always like to hear marketing guys like you that have knocked doors and everything and that have gone through that.
00:11:21
Speaker
Because I think you guys know how to relate to, especially if you're passing off leads, the other sales guys, you guys know the experience, you know, the process.
00:11:29
Speaker
You're not just talking the talk.
00:11:31
Speaker
You've actually been through it.
00:11:32
Speaker
So I definitely respect that.
00:11:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:35
Speaker
Now that you've, uh,
00:11:36
Speaker
kind of transitioned, how did you, how long were you knocking doors in solar before you started kind of transitioning full time and just more marketing stuff?
00:11:44
Speaker
I was knocking doors for about a year and a half in solar until I transitioned to marketing.
00:11:48
Speaker
So just back a little bit, I've actually been in Arizona for almost four years now.
00:11:53
Speaker
I said three, but it's been like three and a half, four.
00:11:56
Speaker
So I was probably knocking doors for like a year and a half, almost two years before switching to online marketing.
00:12:01
Speaker
And I've been doing the online marketing for about two years, almost to the day.
00:12:05
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:07
Speaker
So I hit my two year mark on like May 17th or something.
00:12:11
Speaker
So like a week ago.
00:12:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:14
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:12:15
Speaker
And so I know you're doing like graphic design and everything.
00:12:18
Speaker
Had you done much online marketing before you started doing solar lead gen or how did that?
00:12:24
Speaker
No, man.
00:12:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:26
Speaker
Not at all.
00:12:27
Speaker
So I actually, I had a bunch of friends that's,
00:12:31
Speaker
were doing marketing, but not, not solar lead gen or anything like that, but they were doing everything from like, you know, having their own companies to like lead gen to affiliate marketing to profitable Facebook groups, which I've kind of talked a little bit like offline here, but, um,
00:12:46
Speaker
I just had a bunch of like, I kind of fell into a social circle of online marketers here in Scottsdale.
00:12:51
Speaker
They're just a really big community of marketing guys here and girls in the Scottsdale area and Phoenix area.
00:12:58
Speaker
So I kind of fell into the social circle friend group of some marketers and they're like, man, like, why don't I kind of had the idea to do it.
00:13:05
Speaker
And they're like, man, you could probably start doing solar lead gen.
00:13:08
Speaker
And then I started to get the idea for that, but I had no prior experience to marketing before, before making the switch.
00:13:15
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:16
Speaker
So that's cool.
00:13:16
Speaker
So you just kind of got to know these people, just ran into them and then I just started networking and they kind of put the, planted the seed in your mind and that's where it all started.
00:13:26
Speaker
Yeah, and my numbers were kind of, at this point, man, it was, again, like, probably a little over two years ago, my numbers, like, for door knocking kind of started to tank as well.
00:13:37
Speaker
So it was, like, almost perfect timing, but I was just sick of knocking doors, man.
00:13:40
Speaker
I've done it forever, and not that I'm, like, above it or better than it, but that'll always hold a special place in my heart, you know, knocking doors.
00:13:48
Speaker
And I'll probably still go out and knock doors every now and then, you know, depending.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:13:53
Speaker
I love it, man.
00:13:53
Speaker
But I was just kind of sick of it at that point.
00:13:55
Speaker
I feel like I have kind of paid my dues.
00:13:58
Speaker
And my numbers started
Strategies for Successful Marketing Campaigns
00:13:59
Speaker
to tank.
00:13:59
Speaker
So the owner of my company, his name is Eric Cullen.
00:14:03
Speaker
What's going on?
00:14:04
Speaker
You're usually one of our top guys.
00:14:06
Speaker
Your numbers have been slipping the last couple of months.
00:14:08
Speaker
What's going on?
00:14:08
Speaker
And I'm just like, man, I'm just sick of knocking doors.
00:14:11
Speaker
It's hot Arizona sun and da-da-da-da.
00:14:14
Speaker
just don't know if I want to do it and he was just like not not all that sympathetic he was just pretty much like he's a very pragmatic guy he's like okay well like what do you want to do and then I was well I've been like talking to some of my buddies and like I can't believe you guys aren't doing like online like I'd love to like generate leads for you guys online and a light bulb like went off with him and he was like man like I've been wanting to do this but I've been wanting to make the transition to online because we're relying way too heavily on knocking doors but he's like
00:14:43
Speaker
for one, I don't have the time to do it.
00:14:45
Speaker
And I haven't really trusted anybody enough to do it.
00:14:48
Speaker
So we kind of like sat there and like the wheel started to turn and like he paused and he was like,
00:14:54
Speaker
do you want to do it?
00:14:55
Speaker
And I was like, I was like, yeah, man, that's what I'm kind of getting at here.
00:14:59
Speaker
So he was like, cool, write up a business plan, like get it to me by the end of the week.
00:15:03
Speaker
Like what you want to start off with, like ad spend, how you want to do that platform and just give me, you know, a loose business plan and we'll go from there.
00:15:12
Speaker
So I got on the business plan and I was like, I think we should start off with like,
00:15:15
Speaker
you know, a couple hundred bucks a month, nothing crazy.
00:15:17
Speaker
I'm going to pretty much run Facebook ads.
00:15:19
Speaker
And once we master that, we can go on to like Google AdWords and YouTube and things.
00:15:23
Speaker
But, and just pretty much wrote them up this business plan.
00:15:26
Speaker
And then we, we started doing it.
00:15:28
Speaker
Wow, that's awesome.
00:15:30
Speaker
And that's cool.
00:15:30
Speaker
You had, it seems like the pieces just kind of fell in place perfectly because I've talked to so many guys where it's like their managers or whatever, or their company owners aren't open at all.
00:15:41
Speaker
Like they're just pure door knocking.
00:15:43
Speaker
No, we're not going to do anything like that.
00:15:45
Speaker
So that's cool that he was, you know, open to that.
00:15:49
Speaker
And then also that it just kind of came about the perfect time.
00:15:52
Speaker
Cause the other thing that happens is most guys, when they get sick of knocking, they're just kind of done.
00:15:56
Speaker
They're out of the industry and,
00:15:58
Speaker
That's that, but it's cool that you guys kind of worked up a strategy and you're like, it wasn't like, okay, either you keep knocking or else just go find something else to do, which is usually the case.
00:16:08
Speaker
But it sounds like he was kind of working with you and figuring out a solution to have you still add value to that company.
00:16:15
Speaker
So that's pretty cool.
00:16:16
Speaker
I agree.
00:16:17
Speaker
I like that.
00:16:18
Speaker
And I never would have got there probably though if I wasn't like pretty good at knocking doors, you know, if I was just like some that like didn't pull my weight and didn't pull numbers, like you probably never would have offered it up to me.
00:16:27
Speaker
So like, I definitely like put in some work to get there, but it was a lot of things did kind of fall into place.
00:16:32
Speaker
But yeah, I think that's one of the issues, man, with certain companies is they're just very one track minded and it's nothing against them, man.
00:16:40
Speaker
But yeah,
00:16:41
Speaker
I wasn't really lucky that we were a little bit open-minded.
00:16:43
Speaker
And I think nowadays, especially with everything that's, you know, hit in the last couple of months with everybody getting less and less sales because COVID obviously.
00:16:50
Speaker
And I think it's almost forced a lot of probably those same business owners to be like, man, we should maybe like take a look at this online thing, you know?
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, I know.
00:17:00
Speaker
If they weren't thinking about it before, they should definitely be thinking about it now.
00:17:04
Speaker
Especially, I might have heard in Southern California.
00:17:07
Speaker
There was a couple weeks, probably about a month, where you couldn't even really think about knocking on a door.
00:17:15
Speaker
All the big door knockers out here, even they shut down.
00:17:18
Speaker
You know when Vivint shuts down, they're like the door knocking kings.
00:17:22
Speaker
You know that stuff is getting pretty serious.
00:17:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:26
Speaker
I didn't realize you were in Southern Cali.
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:17:30
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's funny.
00:17:30
Speaker
All these, and so many people are trying to learn the digital marketing stuff.
00:17:36
Speaker
I saw once COVID kind of hit, I saw all these, you know, junky ads going up and people that didn't really know what they're doing.
00:17:42
Speaker
And even some guys I knew that had never done like digital marketing before I started seeing some of their ads.
00:17:49
Speaker
And I'm like, I'm like, dude, this is, I don't think this stuff is going to work.
00:17:54
Speaker
100% free solar.
00:17:55
Speaker
Your company will pay you to go.
00:17:57
Speaker
It's like, dude,
00:17:58
Speaker
I know.
00:17:59
Speaker
Like if you're telling free solar and then your closer gets in the house and they realize it's a loan, like how do you think that close is going to work out?
00:18:06
Speaker
Like you've got to be good at it.
00:18:06
Speaker
You've got to be like taxable.
00:18:08
Speaker
I know.
00:18:08
Speaker
And then these people saying like, you know, $2,000 cash back or...
00:18:13
Speaker
your first year of electricity free.
00:18:16
Speaker
And then it's like people get in the homes and they're on like a medical discount, a low income discount.
00:18:22
Speaker
And then they got to drop the price to basically as low as they can sell it.
00:18:25
Speaker
And they're like, okay, yeah.
00:18:26
Speaker
Also, they said they would give me my year free of electricity and my $2,000 cash back.
00:18:32
Speaker
Oh, there goes my commission.
00:18:34
Speaker
I know.
00:18:35
Speaker
Like, dude, I wasn't going to make anything on the deal.
Lead Engagement and Management Techniques
00:18:38
Speaker
Yeah, we are actually doing 12 months free solar, which we'll get into when we kind of talk about our offer in a little bit.
00:18:45
Speaker
But we are actually doing that.
00:18:47
Speaker
And I think that's potentially a good deal and a good offer.
00:18:51
Speaker
But it's just got to be structured the right way.
00:18:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's good.
00:18:56
Speaker
Cool.
00:18:57
Speaker
And so I wanted to ask you, a lot of guys get into digital marketing and, you know, like I was kind of saying, don't really know what they're doing and then just kind of fizzle out.
00:19:07
Speaker
So I know there's adjustments to be made.
00:19:09
Speaker
And so where you were just kind of getting started, how did that process go from you starting out with your company and then
00:19:16
Speaker
What did you have to go through to kind of learn the ropes and get to where you've obviously mastered it more today?
00:19:22
Speaker
What were some of the stuff you, things you needed to go through?
00:19:26
Speaker
Yeah, I'll tell you how I did it.
00:19:28
Speaker
And then if I could go back, how I would do it over.
00:19:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:32
Speaker
The way that I started was, and I was pretty lucky in the sense that our company does a lot of numbers.
00:19:37
Speaker
We're one of the bigger companies in Phoenix, as far as like solar ownerships go, we don't offer a lease, but we sell a lot of deals for like the number of sales reps that we have, like we do pretty well.
00:19:46
Speaker
So our owner had like some ad budget tucked away where he was cool with like,
00:19:51
Speaker
I don't mind if we spend a couple months figuring this out.
00:19:53
Speaker
If we have to throw away a grand, two grand, you know, five grand, like that's okay.
00:19:57
Speaker
Like, let's try to get some sales.
00:19:58
Speaker
But if we have to spend a little money to figure this out, then cool.
00:20:03
Speaker
So, and that's exactly what happened.
00:20:05
Speaker
I did spend like the first six months, like struggling pretty hard where we'd get like a sale here and there, but it's nothing like a system that I have now.
00:20:13
Speaker
Like now we have a predictable way to
00:20:16
Speaker
in a profitable way where we can get customers, right?
00:20:18
Speaker
Like I have the numbers pretty dialed in and of course things come and go like COVID that kind of skews your numbers a little bit, but now I have a predictable, profitable system that's dialed in where I kind of know my numbers.
00:20:29
Speaker
Like I have to,
00:20:30
Speaker
get this many, you know, link clicks and get this many leads to get this many sales or whatever.
00:20:35
Speaker
So back then we just really struggled through it and we were getting sales here and there and I was making enough to survive off of living, but it's nothing was, nothing was really dialed in.
00:20:44
Speaker
And I didn't know like why we were getting our sales and how I can scale it up and get more.
00:20:48
Speaker
Right.
00:20:49
Speaker
Uh,
00:20:50
Speaker
So what I would have done early on is, you know, my owner was paying the ad budget.
00:20:53
Speaker
I had a little bit of savings tucked away.
00:20:55
Speaker
I would have paid for like coaching and mentorship.
00:20:57
Speaker
Like if I could have shaved like six months or a year off my learning curve by paying somebody 3K to teach me, like I would have did that in an instant.
00:21:05
Speaker
For sure.
00:21:06
Speaker
I think like, I think a lot of us, especially me, like still to this day, I think we have a lot of pride where we're just like, oh, I'll just figure it out myself, you know?
00:21:14
Speaker
And it's just like,
00:21:15
Speaker
I had a lot of pride where I was just like, no, like why would I pay anybody?
00:21:18
Speaker
Like I'll just, I'll just figure this out myself.
00:21:21
Speaker
And it really like was a long and hard road, right.
00:21:25
Speaker
Where, you know, pride sometimes can get in the way where we don't want to like hire a coach or a mentor.
00:21:31
Speaker
Like we don't want to buy like a coaching program, but man, yeah.
00:21:34
Speaker
If I could have something that like shaved like six months or a year off my learning curve, like I would have did that in a second.
00:21:39
Speaker
For sure.
00:21:40
Speaker
No, I think that's so important.
00:21:41
Speaker
And yeah, so many guys, they're trying to figure it out themselves.
00:21:45
Speaker
Basically, you got those two options.
00:21:46
Speaker
You can either spend a bunch of money.
00:21:48
Speaker
I think either way, like you said, you're spending money to get things started.
00:21:52
Speaker
You got to be willing to drop some money on ads.
00:21:55
Speaker
Um, but for you, luckily you had the company backing you and all that.
00:22:00
Speaker
Um, but most guys, it's like, they're going to have to drop a lot of money to learn this unless they are willing to, like you mentioned, hire a coach, hire a mentor.
00:22:09
Speaker
And what's cool is there's so many guys out there.
00:22:11
Speaker
Like you've mastered it.
00:22:12
Speaker
There's a lot of guys that are doing it successfully, I think in every market.
00:22:16
Speaker
So people don't really have to guess anymore.
00:22:18
Speaker
It's just like, why wouldn't you just go to the people that are having success with it?
00:22:22
Speaker
Give them some money and then, I don't know, buy their programs.
00:22:25
Speaker
And then it's going to fast forward the process and help you that much more.
00:22:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:30
Speaker
I'm all for like learning stuff on your own.
00:22:33
Speaker
Like it doesn't have to be some soup.
00:22:34
Speaker
Like if somebody say doesn't wants to get into this and doesn't have the money for coaching, like that's cool too.
00:22:39
Speaker
Like start spending like five bucks a day.
00:22:41
Speaker
Like you don't have to start spending, you know, like, like right now, uh, again, a little bit skewed because the whole COVID thing, but, um, you know, like in the, in the dead of summer, if COVID wasn't here, we'd be spending like 10 grand a month on ads.
Advertising Strategies and Platform Insights
00:22:53
Speaker
Uh,
00:22:54
Speaker
yeah and then but we what we started out literally spending like five bucks a day as a company and when i when i've worked with like a few other companies that's that's what we'll start we'll start out like five bucks a day and then we'll just throw a bunch of stuff at the wall see what kind of sticks and then take the take the you know say we have like um like the description of the ad and then like the image or the video and then like the headline of the ad you know you throw a bunch of stuff at the wall see what sticks and then you take that winning image and then you put that with like
00:23:21
Speaker
three more variations of headlines, right?
00:23:23
Speaker
And then you take that winning headline and the winning image and put that with three more like descriptions, just split testing essentially.
00:23:30
Speaker
But it doesn't have to be some super expensive thing.
00:23:32
Speaker
Like reps can start out pretty small.
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:35
Speaker
And no, I think that's probably what you've learned too from going to, you know, funnel hacking.
00:23:39
Speaker
My always marketing conferences is really, I don't think anyone has, there's not like one answer in marketing.
00:23:45
Speaker
That's basically what I take from all these conferences is that's what every marketer does is they're just throwing stuff out there.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:52
Speaker
I mean, they're doing the funnel hacking, the Russell Brunson stuff, but really at the end of the day, I think it's being creative and testing all the things.
00:24:01
Speaker
It's just testing like crazy and seeing what works.
00:24:05
Speaker
And then I think that's probably what's worked for you guys too.
00:24:08
Speaker
So how much for you, speaking of that, how much for you was kind of, was like seeing ads in the area?
00:24:14
Speaker
Were you kind of starting going off of that or were you throwing out all your own ideas or how did that work in the beginning for you?
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:22
Speaker
So, so coming from like a design and web background, I also knew like videography pretty well.
00:24:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:28
Speaker
I'm pretty good with video.
00:24:29
Speaker
So what I started doing is actually like completely different than what every other marketer is doing.
00:24:34
Speaker
Cause most marketers are using like a stock image ad with, um, just like a basic, just their copywriting.
00:24:43
Speaker
It's just like a basic, like, um,
00:24:46
Speaker
how am I trying to say this?
00:24:47
Speaker
Like just a lot of the ads I see out there, like you said, like nothing against them, but they're like a stock, a stock photo that you've seen like a hundred other times.
00:24:55
Speaker
Um, and it's sometimes just a little bit cheesy, like, Hey, we'll pay you to go solar kind of thing.
00:25:00
Speaker
And there are some really good solar marketers out there, but, um, I just kind of wanted to do what other people weren't doing to kind of, you know, see if I could separate myself.
00:25:08
Speaker
So I started doing video, um,
00:25:13
Speaker
Hey, Solarpreneurs, real quick.
00:25:15
Speaker
If you've been in the solar industry any amount of time, you know that in order to take it to the next level, you need to always be recruiting.
00:25:22
Speaker
What is it?
00:25:22
Speaker
ABR, always be recruiting.
00:25:25
Speaker
So if you need help with recruiting, I wanted to share with you something that helped me take my recruiting skills to the next level.
00:25:33
Speaker
We literally went from an office of less than 10 reps to 25 to 30 reps in less than three months.
00:25:42
Speaker
And we did this with reps that continue to sell with us.
00:25:46
Speaker
Two or three of them went on to become managers.
00:25:48
Speaker
Several of them were top producers in our office.
00:25:52
Speaker
And there are multiple reps that are still with us to this day, more than a year later.
00:25:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:25:59
Speaker
So what is it that helped me?
00:26:01
Speaker
I took up the services of Ryan Holman with Sells Recruiting University.
00:26:08
Speaker
He helped me develop a system to take my recruiting game to the next level.
00:26:12
Speaker
And he really helped me follow up with the recruits, schedule group interviews with them, get a huge pool of applicants coming in day after day.
00:26:23
Speaker
I wanted to share with you guys his link.
00:26:25
Speaker
If you are looking to take your recruiting skills to the next level, go to Calendly.com slash sru forward slash solarpreneur.
00:26:36
Speaker
Once again, that's Calendly.com slash sru slash solarpreneur.
00:26:44
Speaker
SRU is Sales Repriting University.
00:26:46
Speaker
Ryan will help you take it to the next level.
00:26:56
Speaker
So I started shooting videos and essentially the way I started doing it was more like they all had a call to action.
00:27:01
Speaker
Like every single video had a call to action.
00:27:03
Speaker
Like, you know, click the link at the end of the video.
00:27:05
Speaker
It's like click the link to, you know, pre-qualify and learn more.
00:27:07
Speaker
Like they all had a call to action, but like every one of the videos had a little bit more of like a little different educational piece in it.
00:27:14
Speaker
Like one video, like, you know, the truth between ownerships versus lease and the pros and cons and three solar pitfalls you want to avoid or like, you know, five frequently asked questions, you know?
00:27:24
Speaker
Uh,
00:27:25
Speaker
it was like educating people, but also the problem with that method is it wasn't very
Creative Content and Copywriting in Ads
00:27:32
Speaker
scalable.
00:27:32
Speaker
Cause I was just constantly having to make content.
00:27:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:27:36
Speaker
Constantly having to make videos.
00:27:37
Speaker
So then I, then I did like simplify and I start now, now I'm doing like more image ads with like some video.
00:27:44
Speaker
Uh,
00:27:45
Speaker
Okay.
00:27:46
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely pumping out a ton of video.
00:27:50
Speaker
And do you guys use, I know in the beginning you're using Facebook, are you guys doing pretty much all Facebook ads still now or do you use any other platforms in your marketing?
00:27:59
Speaker
What does that look like?
00:28:01
Speaker
Yeah, man, we do, um, we do a little bit of YouTube, but Facebook's King man.
00:28:06
Speaker
Like if you're doing solar ads, man, don't, don't waste your money on Google unless your company knows what they're doing.
00:28:11
Speaker
Or if you pay somebody that knows what you're doing, like you can, you can spend a lot of money on Google AdWords really quick.
00:28:17
Speaker
Um, and YouTube, YouTube is good too, but, um, Facebook's just King man.
00:28:23
Speaker
I mean, there's,
00:28:24
Speaker
you know, a third of our world's population is on there.
00:28:27
Speaker
They own Instagram, they own WhatsApp.
00:28:30
Speaker
I mean, they're just crushing it.
00:28:31
Speaker
And yeah, Facebook's king, man.
00:28:34
Speaker
So, so I, I really only do Facebook.
00:28:37
Speaker
I really only do Facebook.
00:28:38
Speaker
We do have a guy that does some of our YouTube and I'll dabble a little bit in YouTube just to learn.
00:28:42
Speaker
But yeah, Facebook is, Facebook's all you really need.
00:28:45
Speaker
I mean, you can, you can, you can make a great living and you could have a whole marketing team just running Facebook ads for your solar companies.
00:28:51
Speaker
And it, it,
00:28:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:54
Speaker
Make sure everyone's well fed.
00:28:55
Speaker
I mean, Facebook's all you really need.
00:28:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure.
00:28:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:59
Speaker
And so tell me about your guys' process and I'm sure it's changed a little bit, but I guess now versus what you're doing before, what's kind of the process once you receive a lead, you guys have it going to like your CRM and then the sales reps are contacting them or what's your role in that?
00:29:17
Speaker
And how do you guys kind of like, you know, handle the leads from once you get it to actually booking an appointment with that person?
00:29:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's the awesome thing about solar lead gen or any kind of lead gen that you're already kind of
00:29:32
Speaker
going into an already existing sales process, right?
00:29:36
Speaker
So a lot of my friends have been marketing for five or 10 years.
00:29:40
Speaker
And I'm not saying this to like brag, but it just kind of the reality just because we're talking about it.
00:29:44
Speaker
Like some of my friends have been in marketing for the last five or 10 years.
00:29:47
Speaker
And then I step in and like two years later, like I just blow it up and I'm like making more money than them.
00:29:52
Speaker
And they're like, dude, like what are you doing?
00:29:53
Speaker
Like how are you doing this?
00:29:55
Speaker
And I always tell them, I'm like, what you guys are doing is you guys started your own company from the ground up.
00:30:00
Speaker
The only thing I did is I I'm just putting these leads into an already existing, already successful sales process.
00:30:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:08
Speaker
Our company figured out, man.
00:30:09
Speaker
So that's the difference.
00:30:11
Speaker
I'm not like reinventing the wheel and I'm not starting up a company from scratch.
00:30:14
Speaker
What you guys are doing like that would be way harder.
00:30:16
Speaker
So I had to do, there's definitely been some struggles, but I didn't like, it wasn't all that hard for me.
00:30:21
Speaker
Like I was just like, it was a lot of hard work, but I really enjoyed it.
00:30:24
Speaker
It was like purposeful, like meaningful work.
00:30:27
Speaker
That like joy, but yeah, so so essentially what we're doing is Whether that's a video ad
Systems for Managing Leads and Scaling Efforts
00:30:33
Speaker
or just like an image ad or even a gift You know, there's a bunch of different ads you can do on Facebook, which will we'll kind of get into and working but Once that lead comes in it kicks them into the back end CRM that we use it's called high level or go high level I'm using that right now to you.
00:30:50
Speaker
It's a good one
00:30:51
Speaker
Dude, it's amazing.
00:30:52
Speaker
You can, you can, I started out using Infusionsoft and I know like funnels, like Russell always busts on Infusionsoft.
00:30:58
Speaker
They call it Confusionsoft.
00:31:00
Speaker
It's so hard to do anything in that.
00:31:02
Speaker
And that's what I started, started out using my first year.
00:31:05
Speaker
And now what I do is, um,
00:31:07
Speaker
I use a mix between ClickFunnels and HighLevel where there's this company called Zapier, which connects different platforms, right?
00:31:15
Speaker
You don't have to know how to code to connect these.
00:31:17
Speaker
You can almost connect any two platforms.
00:31:20
Speaker
So right now I'm using ClickFunnels just for the landing page.
00:31:23
Speaker
I could do the landing pages in HighLevel, but I want to keep winning the ClickFunnels awards.
00:31:27
Speaker
So that's the only reason we're using ClickFunnels.
00:31:31
Speaker
There's literally no other reason.
00:31:33
Speaker
I could build out the landing page in high level the same way, but I just want to keep my name on ClickFunnels.
00:31:39
Speaker
All about the community.
00:31:41
Speaker
Everyone loves that ClickFunnels community.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:46
Speaker
So if somebody, so say, okay, so Facebook ad that lead, they click on the ad, right?
00:31:52
Speaker
It brings them over to a ClickFunnels landing page and it's like, it educates them about our product a little bit.
00:31:57
Speaker
And then it's like, Hey, fill out this, you know, short 20 second form.
00:32:00
Speaker
So if they fill out the form, obviously it kicks that into high level.
00:32:04
Speaker
And then I have a whole, a whole SMS and email sequence set up in high level to kind of get these people going.
00:32:10
Speaker
So as soon as their info comes in, I have, I have a trigger set up to where it shoots them out and automatic,
00:32:16
Speaker
Text message saying like, hey, this is, you know, thanks for filling out our prequalification form.
00:32:21
Speaker
This is Christina or Allison.
00:32:22
Speaker
I have like two assistants that call my leads now and like set appointments for me.
00:32:25
Speaker
So it's like whoever, whoever the lead gets assigned to if it's like Allison, it's like, hey, this is Allison.
00:32:31
Speaker
You just fill out the form.
00:32:32
Speaker
You know, when's a good time for a quick five minute call to see if this program is a fit for you guys or not.
00:32:37
Speaker
And then about probably 60% of the leads respond and they're either like call me now or call me tomorrow at seven or I decided I'm not interested.
00:32:46
Speaker
Whatever the case is, like about 60% of people respond to those texts and about 40% of people don't.
00:32:51
Speaker
Okay.
00:32:53
Speaker
So if the people respond to the text, it stops the sequence.
00:32:56
Speaker
But if they don't respond, the sequence keeps going.
00:32:58
Speaker
And there's like a 60-day text sequence that will text them like every couple days.
00:33:03
Speaker
Like in the first week, it texts them like almost every day.
00:33:06
Speaker
And then after the first week and month, it kind of gets more spread out.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:12
Speaker
And then they're also like calling in between.
00:33:15
Speaker
And they're trying to call to like get ahold of this lead in between.
00:33:17
Speaker
But when I first started doing it, cause I could see like if somebody is listening to this and they're, they're wanting to do, you know, Facebook marketing, like I'm doing, I could, I could see them being like, Oh man, that's really hard.
00:33:28
Speaker
Like there's no way I could have like two assistants.
00:33:30
Speaker
Like I started out calling the leads.
00:33:32
Speaker
Like if a lead came in, like I would call that lead.
00:33:35
Speaker
As you know, in high level, it's really easy to set up those triggers.
00:33:38
Speaker
Um,
00:33:41
Speaker
I'm actually, uh, it hasn't, it hasn't, it's not quite completed yet, but I have a Facebook group where I'm going to be teaching, um, you know, Facebook companies and Facebook reps this exact system where I'm going to hand them over the high level followup where like it's all, it's all built out for them.
Future Plans and Lessons on Action
00:33:56
Speaker
So, but yeah, so it kicks them out like an auto SMS and then my girls will be like calling in between to try to like catch them on the phone.
00:34:03
Speaker
And then there's emails that are automatic as well.
00:34:06
Speaker
Um, yeah.
00:34:07
Speaker
And that's, that's pretty much how that works.
00:34:08
Speaker
And then it's, it's just the same thing.
00:34:10
Speaker
Like from there, it's like, if you get them on the phone, it's the same thing as like being on the doors.
00:34:13
Speaker
You're just trying to set up an appointment and then a closer on that sale and close the appointment.
00:34:17
Speaker
So there's like the appointment setter and then the closer, just like your typical solar, you know, matchup.
00:34:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:22
Speaker
No, but yeah, that, I love that CRM makes it a lot more simple.
00:34:27
Speaker
And for you, for all the sequences and everything, um, did you kind of write all those yourselves or, um,
00:34:35
Speaker
Did you write that whole 60 day follow up and plug it in or how did you come up with all those things that you're, you're sending people?
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah, it was a little bit of, it was a little bit of like me and then it was a little bit of looking at what other companies are doing and what some of my friends are doing.
00:34:52
Speaker
So yeah, I kind of adopted a model of other marketers and what my friends were doing.
00:34:57
Speaker
And one of my friends in particular had this really good follow-up that was getting just tons of engagement, tons of responses.
00:35:04
Speaker
And I was like, dude, let me see what you're doing.
00:35:06
Speaker
And he showed me and I was like, man, you're almost stalking them.
00:35:10
Speaker
You're texting them so often.
00:35:12
Speaker
And I thought it was really, I was like, man, that's got to be so annoying to these leads.
00:35:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:18
Speaker
He was like, it works, dude.
00:35:19
Speaker
He's like, I get very few people that like get mad at me.
00:35:22
Speaker
They just don't, if they're, you know, they just don't respond if they don't want to respond, but we get, we get a lot of leads from it.
00:35:28
Speaker
So I kind of implemented more of like in marketing, they call it like a high touch strategy.
00:35:32
Speaker
You know, you're just kind of multiple touch points where we are texting them like more than I thought would be
00:35:39
Speaker
worthwhile but it's working really well so yeah to answer the question it's kind of a culmination of like things i found other marketers doing some of my friends and like some of the stuff that i've i've come up with in the past
00:35:49
Speaker
Yeah, okay.
00:35:50
Speaker
Yeah, I'm always surprised how many successful marketers are following up way more than I thought.
00:35:58
Speaker
And you'd think it gets annoying, but you look at guys like Grant Cardone, like, I don't know, Russell Brunson.
00:36:04
Speaker
Like Grant Cardone, I've unsubscribed from his list probably like five or six times now, but somehow I still get texts from him like every other day.
00:36:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:14
Speaker
all this stuff.
00:36:15
Speaker
So I don't know, maybe I'm not doing it all the way, but it's crazy.
00:36:18
Speaker
All these, you know, multiple different lists too.
00:36:21
Speaker
Like if you try to unsubscribe from a ClickFunnels list, it'll show you like 10 lists that you're like, subscribe from all of them.
00:36:30
Speaker
I know.
00:36:31
Speaker
So yeah, I guess until people get mad, you might as well hit them up with it.
00:36:35
Speaker
But yeah, how much would you say?
00:36:38
Speaker
So the ones that don't respond immediately, how often are you getting people that maybe reply like 10 days later?
00:36:45
Speaker
What's kind of the ratio on that?
00:36:46
Speaker
Like people that?
00:36:48
Speaker
That's a great question.
00:36:49
Speaker
I don't have an exact number.
00:36:50
Speaker
I would say there's probably like 30% of our, probably like 20 to 30% of our leads that we just like never get a hold of.
00:37:00
Speaker
They, they put in their info and for whatever reason they just like, maybe it was someone like trying to funnel hack me.
00:37:05
Speaker
Maybe somebody was just giving me like a courtesy click where there's like, I'll just see what this is and had no intention on responding, but like that still blows my mind to this day.
00:37:14
Speaker
When we send them like a text, like two minutes after the form gets filled out.
00:37:19
Speaker
And then they just, it's so weird.
00:37:21
Speaker
And they just never respond.
00:37:22
Speaker
I'm like, what's going through this person's head?
00:37:24
Speaker
Like, why would they even fill out a form?
00:37:26
Speaker
And like, sometimes as a marketer, you almost get like mad about it.
00:37:28
Speaker
You're like, oh, they filled out my form.
00:37:30
Speaker
Like some people, it's funny, man.
00:37:33
Speaker
Like as fast as we follow up, like some people still don't respond.
00:37:36
Speaker
But to answer your question, like some people like,
00:37:39
Speaker
five days later, 10 days later, it's like, oh my God, I'm so sorry.
00:37:42
Speaker
I've been dealing with like, you know, working nights and dealing with two kids and I meant to respond.
00:37:46
Speaker
And those are usually the responses that we get is like, hey, so sorry, meant to get back to you sooner.
00:37:52
Speaker
We don't really get the responses that are like, stop texting me, damn it.
00:37:55
Speaker
Like, we don't really get that.
00:37:56
Speaker
It's more people that are like, sorry, man, I've been really busy.
00:37:59
Speaker
Like I'm meaning to get ahold of you guys.
00:38:00
Speaker
I'm glad you kept following up kind of thing.
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's good.
00:38:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:05
Speaker
I have a,
00:38:06
Speaker
man, you, you follow up like that.
00:38:08
Speaker
Like you, there's just, it's, it's not hard to do because everything's pretty much automated, right?
00:38:12
Speaker
It's not like a hard thing to do as a marketer.
00:38:14
Speaker
You just put that all into high level or like, you know, when I sell my program, I'll just be giving that to people.
00:38:18
Speaker
But, um, it's really easy to like make that followup is, is automated and,
00:38:24
Speaker
in as it is um it's pretty easy but you have to man like you have to stand out from the other marketers you got to think people once they start looking at solar ads then they're going to start getting retargeted by other solar companies and they're going to be putting in their info to other ads right it's going to be like the fortunes and the follow-up man whoever follows up the most is going to win 90 of the time yeah yeah and like you said doing it quick too because i think that's the other number one mistake is and it's happened to me too if you're not following up quick
00:38:51
Speaker
There's probably 10 other companies that now they're getting targeted by.
00:38:54
Speaker
So the person that's, and they're going to follow up with them quick.
00:38:58
Speaker
So it's like, if you're not calling them right away or at least getting some sort of text, ask them when's a good time to call.
00:39:04
Speaker
I think that's like money down the drain.
00:39:05
Speaker
It's your pain, you know, paying for that lead.
00:39:08
Speaker
And then.
00:39:09
Speaker
And even if you can't help you.
00:39:11
Speaker
For sure.
00:39:12
Speaker
It's a waste.
00:39:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:12
Speaker
And even if you can't call people right away, like if you're just a marketer that's like starting out, at least get like an automatic text sequence going and try to schedule a call.
00:39:20
Speaker
Like we still do that.
00:39:21
Speaker
We still try to just be like, Hey, when's a good time?
00:39:23
Speaker
But like once, once my girls get a free second, then they'll call them, but they're, they're not calling every lead within like a minute.
00:39:29
Speaker
So you don't have to be like on every lead, you know, as long as you got like some auto sequence going, uh, you know, that's, yeah, that's, that's, that's plenty to start, man.
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:37
Speaker
How long were you doing this Aaron before you started getting some appointment centers and getting them trained up?
00:39:42
Speaker
How long were you doing it by yourself?
00:39:44
Speaker
I did it.
00:39:45
Speaker
I was doing it myself for probably the first six months.
00:39:48
Speaker
Um, and then I called like a VA or a virtual assistant from Upwork.
00:39:54
Speaker
Okay.
00:39:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:55
Speaker
It's a website.
00:39:55
Speaker
You can hire appointment centers, telemarketers, salespeople, graphic designers, programmers, whatever.
00:40:00
Speaker
Like Upwork's really good.
00:40:03
Speaker
But so that's, that's one way to do it.
00:40:04
Speaker
But then I would, I would try to almost go like, if you know somebody, um, cause we can kind of talk about like, if we want to, the difference between like paying somebody hourly or paying them commission.
00:40:16
Speaker
I pay one of my girls hourly and I pay the other one commission, which we can talk about those pros and cons if necessary.
00:40:20
Speaker
But I was doing it for like six months, but then like after six months I started to figure it out.
00:40:26
Speaker
And then the problem was, is I needed to kind of outsource that task because like once you start making sales,
00:40:32
Speaker
the best thing to do is start outsourcing those like $10 an hour jobs and then start outsourcing the $20 an hour jobs and just keep like reinventing yourself and outsourcing jobs once you start making sales.
00:40:45
Speaker
So after six months, I was just so busy because I was like back to back to back calls.
00:40:49
Speaker
But then I still had to like place the ads.
00:40:51
Speaker
I still had to manage the ads.
00:40:52
Speaker
I still had to build the funnels.
00:40:53
Speaker
I still had to like do the whole backend CRM and it was just like way too much shit going on.
00:40:59
Speaker
man, I have to hire somebody or this is never going to scale.
00:41:02
Speaker
So, but yeah, you a hundred percent don't have to hire somebody at first.
00:41:05
Speaker
Like I started off doing the sales, the sales calls, but like once you start to get sales and it's like, okay, cool.
00:41:11
Speaker
I have some money that I can reinvest into this business and hire somebody now.
00:41:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:15
Speaker
And I mean, especially like you mentioned, when you're starting out with a low ad budget, it's not like you're going to be getting a thousand leads a day or anything.
00:41:23
Speaker
If you're just running small amounts of leads, it's super easy to get that going up first.
00:41:28
Speaker
But yeah, I do get asked that quite a bit, like how to hire appointment setters.
00:41:32
Speaker
Cause I've had guys try to hire like, you know, appointment setters from the Philippines or India, stuff like that.
00:41:38
Speaker
And yeah,
00:41:39
Speaker
I've heard Nick's things about it.
00:41:42
Speaker
I've got a buddy that's using like an Indian appointment setter.
00:41:46
Speaker
But his name's still Joe though.
00:41:47
Speaker
He goes by Joe.
00:41:50
Speaker
Yeah, he goes by Mike actually.
00:41:54
Speaker
But it's funny.
00:41:54
Speaker
A lot of people are just like, oh, he just must be like an Indian from California, but he's like overseas and everything.
00:42:01
Speaker
But I know it does affect that.
00:42:04
Speaker
You know, some people are like, Oh, this seems like a scam.
00:42:06
Speaker
There's like an Indian colon.
00:42:09
Speaker
There's the thick accent, but yeah.
00:42:11
Speaker
How did you find your appointment setters?
00:42:13
Speaker
And like, what would you suggest for people that are trying to take that next step into, I know you mentioned Upwork, but where do you find the ones you're using right now?
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:24
Speaker
So again, I have two girls right now.
00:42:26
Speaker
The first girl I found, her name's Christina.
00:42:28
Speaker
I found her off Upwork and,
00:42:30
Speaker
he charged like 25 bucks an hour and she would not do any sort of commission.
00:42:35
Speaker
Like at first I was like, Hey, like I'll just give you like 5% off a sale or a couple, you know, a couple hundred bucks per sale.
00:42:40
Speaker
I can't like, I need to, I need to have something like, you know, that, that I know the income will be coming in.
00:42:46
Speaker
Like I have to do hourly.
00:42:47
Speaker
She's like, but I won't let you down.
00:42:49
Speaker
So come on, 25 is a lot.
00:42:50
Speaker
And, um, so I decided to hire her and, um,
00:42:55
Speaker
again, she was off Upwork and then she ended up doing like really well.
00:42:58
Speaker
And now it's funny because if I would have ended up giving her like, you know, 5% of a sale, 10% of a sale or a couple hundred bucks per sale, she would have ended up making way more money.
00:43:07
Speaker
Right.
00:43:09
Speaker
Commission.
00:43:10
Speaker
Where at first I never thought that would have been possible.
00:43:12
Speaker
I'm like, man, I'm going to be paying her way too much hourly.
00:43:15
Speaker
You got to think the qualification calls only last 10, 15, 20 minutes tops, right?
00:43:19
Speaker
You're not going to have a bunch in a day.
00:43:20
Speaker
Like,
00:43:21
Speaker
I only pay her like eight hours a week.
00:43:23
Speaker
So the most I really ever pay her per week is like 200 bucks, 300 tops.
00:43:28
Speaker
And that's usually like 10 appointments set where I'm probably getting two, three sales out of it.
00:43:32
Speaker
So, um,
00:43:34
Speaker
So yeah, does she know that?
00:43:36
Speaker
Does she know that she would have made more?
00:43:38
Speaker
I told her, I was like, you'd be making way more money if you wanted to do straight commission.
00:43:41
Speaker
She was like, I know, but I like the hourly.
00:43:43
Speaker
I just, I know it's always guaranteed.
00:43:45
Speaker
And, but yeah, she knows like every time we get a sale, I screenshot it to her.
00:43:48
Speaker
Cause we all have like a group B feed, right?
00:43:50
Speaker
Like most solar companies have some kind of feed or something.
00:43:53
Speaker
It's like, Oh, another sale for Aaron.
00:43:55
Speaker
And I send that to her or another sale for Aaron and Christina.
00:43:58
Speaker
And I always send that to her.
00:43:59
Speaker
She's like, Oh, another one.
00:44:00
Speaker
And I've like kind of joked with her about it, but she, she likes the hourly.
00:44:03
Speaker
That's what she's used to.
00:44:04
Speaker
And that's, that's fine.
00:44:06
Speaker
And plus now I don't, now I don't really mention too much about it.
00:44:09
Speaker
Cause like, I almost don't really want her to want to switch to commission now.
00:44:15
Speaker
And then, then my second girl, she was actually one of the appointment setters for, for PE here in Arizona.
00:44:21
Speaker
So she already knew what she was doing.
00:44:22
Speaker
She already knew solar and she's doing commission.
00:44:25
Speaker
So we're giving her about, I think like a hundred, I think about, uh,
00:44:31
Speaker
75 per kilowatt off a sale okay so yeah our our comp structure is 250 up front and then if we hit 21 sales in a quarter up to 250 on the back end for kilowatt okay yeah and then so there was there was one there was one quarter last year i hit 21 tier which was like a huge life-changing quarter for me to hit that awesome
00:44:54
Speaker
Yeah, I did like, I think I did like 60, 64 sales for the company last year.
00:44:59
Speaker
And with APS in Arizona, like for guys that are in Arizona, I mean, we can pretty much take people's bills almost down to zero now.
00:45:07
Speaker
So we're slanking.
00:45:07
Speaker
big systems.
00:45:08
Speaker
I mean, dude, there was a, there was some systems last year where it's like 14, 15.
00:45:12
Speaker
My biggest system last year was like 23 kilowatts.
00:45:14
Speaker
I mean, yeah, that was like a huge house.
00:45:18
Speaker
And that's the other great thing about, uh, you know, digital door knocking or online marketing is you can get to some of these homeowners that you would have never knocked their door because their houses are too spread apart, you know, in the country, hundreds of
00:45:31
Speaker
the acres of land to knock that door.
00:45:33
Speaker
So some of my biggest sales were from online leads.
00:45:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:37
Speaker
But back to your question, man, you can hire virtual assistants from, from Upwork, from Fiverr.
00:45:42
Speaker
You can hire people from the Philippines, man.
00:45:44
Speaker
A lot of those people are really good.
00:45:45
Speaker
I would just, and I hate to make it like a race thing, but it is a little bit tougher with the accents for sure.
00:45:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:52
Speaker
I would also suggest like if somebody is going to hire somebody, I would suggest hiring a girl, but like a girl that's like a killer though.
00:45:58
Speaker
Like if like both my girls are killers, they're really good at what they do.
00:46:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:03
Speaker
You know, they, they know solar, they know sales, but they also like don't take shit from leads that are trying to give them a hit.
00:46:09
Speaker
That's a big thing.
00:46:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:10
Speaker
Like obviously.
00:46:11
Speaker
So I think, I think just on that automatic text, like a lot of people are, and I don't really have much proof of this, but like people are just much more receptive.
00:46:19
Speaker
They're like, Oh, Hey Christina, like you can call me now or whatever.
00:46:21
Speaker
Right.
00:46:22
Speaker
Where it's a little bit less threatening than a guy, I think.
00:46:25
Speaker
But, um, but again, I've had guys that have set appointments for me, like not a big deal.
00:46:29
Speaker
You can totally go with the guy.
00:46:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:46:32
Speaker
But yeah, I would start on one of those.
00:46:34
Speaker
Like if I would start with your, with your direct network, right?
00:46:38
Speaker
Like, is there anybody in the same company that could, that could do this for you?
00:46:42
Speaker
I actually could, you know, I've set up things for companies and people where there's like an automatic ringer where it'll like ring to three of the door knockers and whoever's out on the doors and is not on a door and answers at first gets that appointment kind of thing if they said it right.
00:46:56
Speaker
That's cool.
00:46:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's really cool.
00:46:59
Speaker
So there's multiple things they can do.
00:47:00
Speaker
I would just to kind of wrap this question up because I've been I've been ranting.
00:47:04
Speaker
I would I would look in your like immediate network first, see if there's anybody that could take it on.
00:47:09
Speaker
Obviously, like if you already have a relationship with somebody, that's probably better.
00:47:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:14
Speaker
That would probably be the most solid people.
00:47:17
Speaker
But yeah, the cheapest people are going to be the people overseas.
00:47:19
Speaker
And it's not that they're bad, man.
00:47:21
Speaker
A lot of those people are really good because you got to think if you hire somebody from the Philippines, if they don't have that strong of an accent, like that's completely fine.
00:47:29
Speaker
Other than like the time difference, you know, that can be a little tough, but a lot of these people like,
00:47:33
Speaker
will work really, really hard for you because they're the only ones sometimes bringing their families money.
00:47:39
Speaker
You know what I'm saying?
00:47:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:40
Speaker
They're willing, they're willing to work really, really hard.
00:47:44
Speaker
And not that I would ever want to like, I want to pay somebody for their time like that they deserve.
00:47:48
Speaker
I would never like try to overwork somebody.
00:47:50
Speaker
But, but a lot of these, a lot of these people like in the Philippines are like willing to work really, really hard and they take the job really, really seriously.
00:47:57
Speaker
So I've had guys that, that, that have those kinds of people and do really, really well too.
00:48:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:03
Speaker
There's just multiple ways you can approach it.
00:48:05
Speaker
I guess there's no best way.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:08
Speaker
Okay.
00:48:08
Speaker
No, that's good feedback.
00:48:10
Speaker
And yeah, I guess the other question I had with that is how do you handle with your leads coming in?
00:48:17
Speaker
How do you handle like who takes which lead and like, are they kind of on just on call all the time?
00:48:22
Speaker
Like what if the leads coming in at eight in the morning, you guys just call them as soon as possible after that, or what do you do with that situation?
00:48:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:31
Speaker
So in marketing, it's called like a round robin system.
00:48:35
Speaker
So if a lead comes in, Christina gets one lead and the next lead goes to Allison and the next lead goes to Christina and it just, it just alternates.
00:48:44
Speaker
And then like high level, it assigns it to whoever's profile, right?
00:48:47
Speaker
It'll assign it to Christina.
00:48:49
Speaker
Then it'll assign the next one to Allison.
00:48:50
Speaker
So they don't like see each other's leads.
00:48:52
Speaker
And then also like every time a new lead comes in, I have a trigger set up in high level to send an SMS out to whoever owns that lead.
00:49:00
Speaker
So if a lead comes in and it's Allison, it'll say like, hey, new lead came in, like call them as soon as you can, right?
00:49:06
Speaker
And then also too, I have another trigger set up for if a lead replies.
00:49:09
Speaker
So if a lead sends us back like their first reply, if they're like, hey, call me at seven tonight.
00:49:14
Speaker
There's also an SMS trigger that my girl will get when a lead comes in, when a lead replies, and also when a lead like responds to an email or tries to call us.
00:49:24
Speaker
So it's all like SMS notifications, so they'll see them.
00:49:28
Speaker
But I don't, if it's like too early, I only go between like 8 and 9 p.m., 8 a.m.
00:49:34
Speaker
and 9 p.m.
00:49:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:49:37
Speaker
So if somebody comes in at like 3 in the morning, which we get a lot of leads from like night shifters and things like that, what we do is we have like this first text that says like,
00:49:46
Speaker
It's supposed to sound like it's automated.
00:49:49
Speaker
It's supposed to say like, hey, thanks for filling out a pre-qualification form.
00:49:51
Speaker
Someone from our company will reach out to you soon.
00:49:53
Speaker
So if it's like between the hours of 9.01 at night and 7.59 in the morning, it'll send them just that one text.
00:50:01
Speaker
Okay.
00:50:02
Speaker
And then at eight in the morning, it's still automated, but it sounds like a person.
00:50:05
Speaker
And it's like, Hey, this is Alison.
00:50:07
Speaker
You know, I saw that you filled out our form recently.
00:50:09
Speaker
When's a good time for a call?
00:50:10
Speaker
So it's essentially, they're getting, they're getting two texts, right?
00:50:13
Speaker
Okay.
00:50:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:14
Speaker
But if they do it in the day, when like, when the systems during like our work hours between like 8am and 9pm, they'll get both of those texts right in a row.
00:50:23
Speaker
It's like, Hey, we just received your request.
00:50:25
Speaker
And then like two minutes later, it's like, Hey, this is Alison.
00:50:26
Speaker
When's a good time for a call?
00:50:28
Speaker
Okay.
00:50:28
Speaker
Makes sense.
00:50:29
Speaker
And then the one that's working hourly, you're just basically counting when she's on the phone calling.
00:50:34
Speaker
So she'll just kind of keep track of how many minutes she's calling people.
00:50:40
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:50:41
Speaker
And that's all tracked as well in high levels.
00:50:44
Speaker
So I can, I can, if I wanted to, I don't micromanage in the slightest, but like I can listen to her calls and I could, you know, I can see exactly like her call volume time for sure.
00:50:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:56
Speaker
Okay.
00:50:56
Speaker
That's cool.
00:50:58
Speaker
Cool.
00:50:59
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:51:00
Speaker
That's a nice little, it's pretty well oiled at this point.
00:51:03
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's awesome.
00:51:04
Speaker
And yeah, I wanted to ask you more questions on that since I'm using the same CRM.
00:51:08
Speaker
So it's cool to hear how you're using it.
00:51:11
Speaker
Anytime you got questions, let me know.
00:51:13
Speaker
I'm pretty good at it.
00:51:14
Speaker
So I'll help you anytime.
00:51:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:51:16
Speaker
I appreciate it.
00:51:18
Speaker
Cool.
00:51:18
Speaker
Um, well anyways, I know we've been going a while here, so I don't want to keep you all day, but the last couple of things I wanted to ask you is just as far as ads with people starting out, um, what would you suggest for maybe some of their first ads?
00:51:31
Speaker
Um,
00:51:32
Speaker
I think we talked a little bit about how much you were kind of going off other people's, but would you suggest people starting with video ads or if someone's just new wanting to get into this, what would you just start from the get go?
00:51:45
Speaker
Yeah, I would just start off with image ads and there's a couple different ways that they can do it.
00:51:51
Speaker
So if they're going to be running the ads from their company, you know, they can either run the ads from their company, like if their owner gives them the okay and if they're running ads from their company, like I do with PE, right?
00:52:03
Speaker
Or they could start like a kind of like a community page, right?
00:52:08
Speaker
Where it's just like, yeah.
00:52:10
Speaker
You know, I've seen you've seen a ton of these ads online where it's like it's almost like a third party looking page where they don't really represent a solar company where it just the savvy homeowner or like
00:52:22
Speaker
Scottsdale, Arizona happenings like just just like a community page that that doesn't look like a company so they could run it from either one But um, I would I would start out with some image ads.
00:52:32
Speaker
Let's assume for this scenario They're gonna run it from a company page.
00:52:35
Speaker
I would start out with some like image ads It is Facebook.
00:52:39
Speaker
So if you can have like faces in the picture, that's better if you have if you have any kind of pictures of like
00:52:46
Speaker
homeowners standing out in front of a house, you know, like we do these image ads where it's like we have a sign that we give homeowners to put in their yard where it's like, you know, new solar home, new solar powered home.
00:52:56
Speaker
And then sometimes we'll get picked up to the home in front of the home.
00:53:00
Speaker
Things like that with like actual people's faces in it can work really well.
00:53:04
Speaker
or even like I've done I've done even like selfie shots with like a PE solar truck in the background where it's just like I'm just like hey whatever and like nice and they know I work for the company and just just things like that like anything where you can bring like a human element and a human emotion to it like that's that's better than just like a drone shot of some panels where they're just like there's not a whole lot of like emotion in it right yeah okay
00:53:28
Speaker
Yeah, but those work too, man.
00:53:29
Speaker
Like drone shots work.
00:53:30
Speaker
I mean, anything like that, like a picture of panels, I just, I just would try to stay away from like all the stock images or all the Google images that like every other company has used, you know?
00:53:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:41
Speaker
Okay.
00:53:42
Speaker
And then how often, um,
00:53:44
Speaker
So for your ads, how often are you making adjustments or how many different sets are you running?
00:53:49
Speaker
Because that was one of my issues too.
00:53:51
Speaker
When I started trying to run my ads, probably like a lot of people, I just thought you could use one and then it's going to work forever.
00:53:58
Speaker
And I didn't ever need to touch it again.
00:54:01
Speaker
So this goldmine of leads coming in for the rest of eternity.
00:54:04
Speaker
But as you know, the ads start decaying.
00:54:07
Speaker
Eventually a lot of people see it and stop clicking on it.
00:54:11
Speaker
So what have you seen?
00:54:13
Speaker
Um, like as far as how often you need to make those adjustments and change the sets up.
00:54:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:18
Speaker
Good question, man.
00:54:19
Speaker
It really just depends on like not to get too like nerdy and technical, but there's, there's something in like Facebook, uh, called like frequency.
00:54:27
Speaker
So it's like how many times your audience has seen this ad.
00:54:30
Speaker
Right.
00:54:31
Speaker
So if you get like above a two frequency, it's probably time to change your creative, but I've, I've,
00:54:36
Speaker
On retargeting ads, I went as high as like four times frequency where people in that audience have seen it up to four times.
00:54:43
Speaker
And a lot of these people just might have like scrolled past it four times, right?
00:54:46
Speaker
But it's been put in front of your audience like say four times if the frequency is four, right?
00:54:52
Speaker
As long as you're getting leads from that, it doesn't really matter how high that frequency is as long as you're getting leads.
00:54:59
Speaker
And then I've also had ads that the frequency has been like 1%.
00:55:04
Speaker
I have where my audience has only seen it like 1.5 times.
00:55:07
Speaker
So, um, and then, and they stopped working.
00:55:10
Speaker
So it really, really just depends.
00:55:12
Speaker
Uh, I try to do is I try to shoot for evergreen ads, which evergreen in marketing just means like it's up for a long time.
00:55:19
Speaker
Right.
00:55:19
Speaker
So what I do is, um, like I said, I'll try to do different things.
00:55:23
Speaker
Like I'll, I'll start an ad with like three variations of the headline, three picture variations, and maybe three variations of the description.
00:55:31
Speaker
And then I'll run like I'll start the ad with like the same headline in the same description but three different pictures Mm-hmm
00:55:39
Speaker
Then whatever picture does the best, I do like three different headlines and the same description in the picture that's winning, right?
00:55:45
Speaker
And then whatever one wins out of that, and you kind of narrow it down.
00:55:48
Speaker
And then from there, like whatever the winning category is out of the best picture, the best headline and best description, that's the one that I start like spending more money on because that's the one that the audience, that the market told me is doing the best, right?
00:56:00
Speaker
Like funny with like Facebook ads, a lot of times like I'll shoot a video or do an image ad or I'm like,
00:56:05
Speaker
this is gonna crush it and it just like flops.
00:56:08
Speaker
And then there's been ads where I'm just like, this isn't great, but I'm gonna like try and see if it works and it like ends up being one of my best ads.
00:56:15
Speaker
So you just never know.
00:56:16
Speaker
That's one of the things, that's one of like the pieces of wisdom I've learned in marketing.
00:56:20
Speaker
It's just like, you don't decide, the market decides.
00:56:24
Speaker
And I was listening to one of Russell Brunson's podcasts the other day.
00:56:27
Speaker
Maybe you heard it too, but he talked about how he hired the Harmon brothers.
00:56:31
Speaker
Just, you know, the big video production guys.
00:56:34
Speaker
He spent like a hundred grand, some crazy amount of money to do this big production ad.
00:56:40
Speaker
And he said it did good.
00:56:41
Speaker
But then like the next month or something, they did an ad where they just had their guys do it like basically for free.
00:56:47
Speaker
and that ad ended up doing better than the one they they just spent 100 grand on so i'm like it's crazy that you can spend 100 grand all this production and then there's people shooting selfie videos that you know i'm going on that real quick you're absolutely right and uh i used to do like these high production like videos where my friend where my camera was either like on a tripod i would like drive out to an install and like set up my tripod like
00:57:13
Speaker
Or have like come out with me like hold my gimbal and like follow me around like the around the house where the installs are.
00:57:19
Speaker
Yeah
00:57:20
Speaker
And dude, then one of my marketing friends was like, dude, just, I would just try like a selfie picture and a selfie video and see how that works.
00:57:26
Speaker
And it's literally just like my camera on a selfie stick.
00:57:28
Speaker
It's like, Hey, what's up local homeowners?
00:57:30
Speaker
And I literally just give them the same pitch on the doors.
00:57:32
Speaker
It's like, Hey, we're covering your upfront costs.
00:57:34
Speaker
We want a couple of things in return.
00:57:35
Speaker
This is how it works.
00:57:36
Speaker
You know, like selfie videos crush it for me.
00:57:39
Speaker
Right?
00:57:39
Speaker
Like it's crazy.
00:57:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:41
Speaker
It's really funny.
00:57:43
Speaker
Selfie pictures too.
00:57:45
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of people are a lot of people in marketing when I tell them like video does really well.
00:57:50
Speaker
They're just like, Oh, that sucks.
00:57:51
Speaker
Like we're not good at video.
00:57:52
Speaker
But it's like, for the people that really want to set themselves apart, like they're gonna have to start doing some video eventually, period.
00:57:58
Speaker
Yeah, image ads are man.
00:58:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's huge.
00:58:03
Speaker
Cool.
00:58:04
Speaker
Well, last little question and then probably about wrap up here.
00:58:07
Speaker
But as far as like the copy goes there and how did you get started with doing your own copy?
00:58:12
Speaker
And I guess today how much of it is, you know, looking at what other people are doing or coming up with your own copy.
00:58:20
Speaker
And for people are new and marketing copies, just, you know, the words that you're writing with the ad or with the image and all that.
00:58:28
Speaker
So what's your take on that?
00:58:30
Speaker
And what are you doing to kind of change the copy up and everything?
00:58:33
Speaker
Yeah, I'll grab something super fast.
00:58:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:58:43
Speaker
So, I mean, I just like at this point, I just kind of like live and breathe marketing.
00:58:48
Speaker
Right.
00:58:48
Speaker
But like you don't have to, like, it's not, it's not where I started.
00:58:52
Speaker
I wasn't even like into marketing when I started, but like, if you looked down at my table, there's like books and marketing books and Russell, traffic secrets, his new book and like, it's an expert secrets.
00:59:04
Speaker
Got the trilogy.
00:59:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:06
Speaker
So this one's a free plus shipping, um, copywriting secrets.
00:59:10
Speaker
And it's like,
00:59:11
Speaker
It's part of like the ClickFunnels crew.
00:59:12
Speaker
Jim Edwards is friends with Russell.
00:59:14
Speaker
He spoke at Funnel Hacking Live where I met you.
00:59:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:17
Speaker
And just a free plus shipping, man.
00:59:19
Speaker
And there's just like tons of like bulleted, like plug in formulas where you can just like kind of plug right into this.
00:59:25
Speaker
So I would, I would buy a book like this, like a basic copywriting book where you don't reinvent the wheel and you can just kind of plug your solar like pitch or your, the things that you already know about solar into like formulas that already, that already work.
00:59:40
Speaker
Right.
00:59:41
Speaker
We're just like super simple.
00:59:43
Speaker
Are you tired of X?
00:59:44
Speaker
Would you like to X?
00:59:44
Speaker
Have you ever wanted to X?
00:59:46
Speaker
Right.
00:59:46
Speaker
Where you can just do a lot of this stuff.
00:59:48
Speaker
It's free plus shipping.
00:59:49
Speaker
I mean, I would do something like this, man.
00:59:51
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:53
Speaker
What I would say is, and the only last thing I'll say is like with copy, um,
01:00:00
Speaker
I always thought it was like good when I first started to be like super clever and like try all these different things that like didn't work that well.
01:00:06
Speaker
So you always want to be clear over clever, right?
01:00:10
Speaker
Like you want the homeowner to like know what your offer is or what you're offering.
01:00:16
Speaker
You don't want them to have like, you don't want to leave that creative burden on them, right?
01:00:20
Speaker
Yeah, especially like if they landing page and they don't know what it's about, like they'll just bounce, right?
01:00:25
Speaker
You gotta, you gotta relieve the creative burden from people.
01:00:27
Speaker
So clear over clever was big for me.
01:00:30
Speaker
And essentially, like I just, I just give them a similar pitch that was like on the doors, right?
01:00:34
Speaker
It's like, we're covering your upfront costs.
01:00:36
Speaker
We want like a yard sign and testimonial in return.
01:00:39
Speaker
You know, pretty much like the intro who I am, what we're doing, what we want in return.
01:00:44
Speaker
And then the clothes, I mean, it's, it's pretty simple, man.
01:00:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:47
Speaker
Okay.
01:00:47
Speaker
No, it's awesome.
01:00:48
Speaker
I actually just got, got that book a couple months ago.
01:00:50
Speaker
Haven't dived into it yet though.
01:00:52
Speaker
So thanks for.
01:00:53
Speaker
Copywriting secrets.
01:00:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:56
Speaker
And that's not like the best copy book of all time, but it's just like a pretty easy, like plug and play, like starter book, I think.
01:01:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:04
Speaker
Okay, cool.
01:01:05
Speaker
Well, we will link to that.
01:01:07
Speaker
And then, well, yeah, I'm sure you've done a lot of, you know, checking out like funnel hacking, like Russell says.
01:01:13
Speaker
So I don't know if you use it, Aaron, but I like the, it's like a Google plugin you can get just on the dashboard.
01:01:20
Speaker
It's fill your funnel and maybe you've used it, but it's cool.
01:01:24
Speaker
You can just take screenshots of other people's ads.
01:01:27
Speaker
And like Russell says, just go like a bunch of solar pages and you start seeing solar ads like crazy.
01:01:34
Speaker
So,
01:01:35
Speaker
You're not trying to, you know, 100% copy people's ads, but it's cool to use something like that just to get ideas, especially for guys that are newer in the market.
01:01:44
Speaker
You can also set this aside so I can show you guys.
01:01:47
Speaker
Oh, heck yeah.
01:01:48
Speaker
You see?
01:01:49
Speaker
There it is.
01:01:50
Speaker
This is my owner because he paid most of the budget.
01:01:52
Speaker
I pay some of the budget now just the way our comp structure works, but pretty cool, man.
01:01:56
Speaker
This is our first mil.
01:01:57
Speaker
We're halfway to the 10 mil one, so got a little bit of work to do.
01:02:01
Speaker
We're at about 10 mil.
01:02:02
Speaker
It's a little online, so.
01:02:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
01:02:06
Speaker
That's the dream.
01:02:07
Speaker
Hopefully we all can be sitting with one of those.
01:02:09
Speaker
Yeah, definitely, man.
01:02:11
Speaker
But yeah, just a wrap, man.
01:02:13
Speaker
I would just start slow, man.
01:02:15
Speaker
I mean, people can start with not that much money and just test it.
01:02:19
Speaker
I think the biggest thing for me is a lot of times like I either don't know what to do so I get decision fatigue or like I overthink it and then nothing gets done, right?
01:02:27
Speaker
Right.
01:02:27
Speaker
The biggest thing is just like dive in like who cares?
01:02:31
Speaker
Go waste $100.
01:02:32
Speaker
Like who cares?
01:02:33
Speaker
Like I always try to make ads like perfect before I spend like 30 bucks online.
01:02:36
Speaker
It's like go spend 50 bucks and see what you get out of it, right?
01:02:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:40
Speaker
Well, and the truth is with this industry, like you should have money.
01:02:44
Speaker
Like if you don't have money, go knock some doors and close a couple of solar deals.
01:02:48
Speaker
Cause anyone that's in the solar industry, you should be able to go, you know, make a couple grand this week.
01:02:53
Speaker
Easy.
01:02:53
Speaker
Just go hit some doors and then take that money and do what Aaron's talking about.
01:02:57
Speaker
Go spend a couple hundred and see what you can do with the ads.
01:03:00
Speaker
So that's the beauty of the industry.
01:03:02
Speaker
There's no shortage of money.
01:03:03
Speaker
Everyone should be making money in solar.
01:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, for sure, man.
01:03:08
Speaker
I've kind of launched that.
01:03:09
Speaker
I haven't invited a ton of people yet.
01:03:10
Speaker
I'll invite you, but I have a group called Solar Leads Mastery that I'm working on where eventually I'm going to have a course where I'll sell to people.
01:03:17
Speaker
But my plan is in the next month is to get that up and running.
01:03:23
Speaker
It's called Solar Leads Mastery.
01:03:24
Speaker
And I think it says like digital lead gen for selling solar or something like that.
01:03:29
Speaker
But yeah.
01:03:30
Speaker
Solar Leads Mastery is the group.
01:03:31
Speaker
Solar Leads Mastery is going to be the course.
01:03:34
Speaker
And I'm just going to give it a free value.
01:03:36
Speaker
Once I get it up and running, I'm going to probably do like one or two lives every week where I'm just giving away like a ton of value.
01:03:42
Speaker
It's like, hey, how we spent $89,000 in 2019 to make almost 4 million kind of stuff where I'm just giving away a ton of stuff for free.
01:03:49
Speaker
Eventually, if you want to buy the course, they can.
01:03:51
Speaker
But
01:03:51
Speaker
Obviously it's not just going to be a free group similar to yours where we're on delivering value.
01:03:55
Speaker
Other people are delivering value and it's really going to be on solar lead gen.
01:03:59
Speaker
So sweet.
01:04:01
Speaker
Awesome.
01:04:02
Speaker
Well, we will link.
01:04:03
Speaker
Yeah, we'll definitely link to all that.
01:04:05
Speaker
And yeah, anywhere else that people can find you on social media or anything and connect with you after the show here.
01:04:12
Speaker
My Facebook is just Aaron Wolverton.
01:04:14
Speaker
Okay.
01:04:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:15
Speaker
Aaron Wolverton.
01:04:17
Speaker
And then my Instagram is just a.wolves.
01:04:19
Speaker
So a.w-o-l-d-e.
01:04:22
Speaker
I do a lot of photography and stuff too.
01:04:24
Speaker
So that's most of my Instagram.
01:04:25
Speaker
Like my Instagram has very little to do with solar, but yeah, if anybody has questions, man, I'm always happy to help.
01:04:31
Speaker
Like I, like I said, I wish I would have had somebody that I could have lots of questions off when I first started, right?
01:04:36
Speaker
Whether it's like a paid thing or not, like it doesn't have to be paid.
01:04:39
Speaker
I'm like,
01:04:40
Speaker
I really enjoy helping people, man.
01:04:41
Speaker
And I like, I don't, I think there's a lot of money to be made in this industry.
01:04:45
Speaker
Um, and other, whether it's like paid or not, like I'm, I'm super down to like help people free, man.
01:04:50
Speaker
Like if you guys got questions, if you got anything about lead gen, just hit me up on Facebook, Aaron Wolverton, man.
01:04:54
Speaker
And I'll, I'll, I'll get
Overcoming Perfectionism and Embracing Action
01:04:55
Speaker
back to you guys for sure.
01:04:55
Speaker
If you got any questions.
01:04:57
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:04:57
Speaker
Cool.
01:04:58
Speaker
So if you're listening to this, hopefully you made it to the end, but definitely at least shoot Aaron.
01:05:02
Speaker
I thank you for coming on the show.
01:05:04
Speaker
Cause yeah, you've dropped some golden nuggets and I mean, even for me, a ton of stuff that I'm going to go out and apply.
01:05:09
Speaker
So grateful for having you on the show.
01:05:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's been awesome.
01:05:14
Speaker
So before we say goodbye here, any final words of wisdom that you want to drop on people for people getting started here?
01:05:23
Speaker
I would just say like try to leave perfectionism out the window and just try to go get your hands dirty.
01:05:28
Speaker
It sounds like such cliche and like obvious thing, but you'd be surprised how much I still like struggle with this where it's like, you know, I'm making good money and we're doing well and I still wait to like release an ad because it's not perfect or at least landing page because it's not perfect.
01:05:44
Speaker
go out there man and do your thing just assimilar on the doors I mean it's you know being successful online is going to take some hard work obviously but it can be done I think the biggest thing for people to realize it's like I'm not special like nobody doing online lead gen that's that's successful is special I came from where all you guys came knocking doors man I just put in hard work and I seeked out the right training whether that was like paid or unpaid and I just
01:06:09
Speaker
you know, found the right resources to plug into, but like anybody can do this, man.
01:06:12
Speaker
It's not, it's really not that hard.
01:06:14
Speaker
Like once you have the backend CRM set up, which like in my course, once I launch it, I'm going to give people all that, but like build it on your own.
01:06:21
Speaker
It's not that hard, but like solar marketing is really not, it kind of sounds like,
01:06:26
Speaker
trite to say this, but it's really not that hard once you know kind of the right systems and processes.
01:06:32
Speaker
It really all comes down to like principles for me, man.
01:06:35
Speaker
You know, there's tons of like shiny objects and tons of like, there's always going to be like a different platform or a different way to place ads in front of people.
01:06:41
Speaker
But principles stay the same, man.
01:06:44
Speaker
Human psychology stays the same.
01:06:46
Speaker
I mean, there's definitely a way to be successful.
01:06:47
Speaker
You just got to find the right ways.
01:06:49
Speaker
Yep.
01:06:50
Speaker
So important.
01:06:51
Speaker
I agree with that 100%.
01:06:51
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, it took me a year and a half to even start this podcast because I was so nervous about it being perfect and like what microphones you got to get and all this stuff.
01:07:03
Speaker
And now look, look at me.
01:07:04
Speaker
I'm just on Zoom using Apple headphones.
01:07:09
Speaker
Because I didn't launch my group yet.
01:07:11
Speaker
And I was like, Oh, I want to get some people in my group and launch it.
01:07:13
Speaker
I don't have one person in my solar leads mastery group, but like, I know eventually it'll be successful, but like rescheduled this a couple of times.
01:07:20
Speaker
Cause I was like, Oh, well I want to get the group going.
01:07:22
Speaker
I was like, whatever, man.
01:07:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:25
Speaker
So yeah, I think that's the big, yeah, definitely a key to success.
01:07:30
Speaker
So the only last thing I'll say, man, is like, I think, I think people have a tendency to be like, Oh, he can do that.
01:07:36
Speaker
But why would I be able to do that?
01:07:38
Speaker
Right?
01:07:38
Speaker
So what I'm telling people is like, if you plug into the right systems, whether you're running leads on your own,
01:07:43
Speaker
from a company or from like a third party page, like,
01:07:46
Speaker
there is a way to be successful.
01:07:48
Speaker
You just need to figure that out.
01:07:50
Speaker
Like it's not, it's not like that's when I can't write like I still think that way about guys that have been way better than me.
01:07:55
Speaker
And I'm like, Oh, he must have something special.
01:07:58
Speaker
It's like when you realize and you go through years of hard work, you're just like, Oh no, you just put in hard work.
01:08:02
Speaker
Like there's ways, there's definitely ways to do it.
01:08:04
Speaker
So that's the only thing I would leave your viewers on, man.
01:08:06
Speaker
It's like, it's definitely possible to be successful with solar lead gen online.
01:08:10
Speaker
You just got to plug in systems, period.
01:08:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:13
Speaker
Love it.
01:08:14
Speaker
Love it.
Investing in Success and Listener Engagement
01:08:15
Speaker
Awesome.
01:08:15
Speaker
Well, yeah, go learn from guys like Aaron.
01:08:17
Speaker
He's dropped a ton of value.
01:08:19
Speaker
He's willing to help guys out, ask them anything.
01:08:21
Speaker
And then, yeah, I mean, like we talked about before, don't be afraid to invest in coaches and mentoring.
01:08:27
Speaker
That's going to be the thing that jumpstarts the success more than anything.
01:08:30
Speaker
So thanks again for coming on the show, Aaron.
01:08:33
Speaker
I'm sure we'll have listeners hitting you up and we'll definitely be in touch, but I will say goodbye for right now.
01:08:39
Speaker
So thanks for coming on again, man.
01:08:40
Speaker
Well, brother, thanks for having me, man.
01:08:41
Speaker
I had a blast.
01:08:42
Speaker
We'll chat with you soon.
01:08:43
Speaker
Appreciate it.
01:08:43
Speaker
Talk soon.
01:08:44
Speaker
Wow.
01:08:45
Speaker
What another value-packed episode of The Solarpreneur.
01:08:48
Speaker
Guys, 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 that's going to launch your solar career to the next level.
01:08:59
Speaker
And we do it all for free.
01:09:00
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.
01:09:10
Speaker
so that we can help more solopreneurs like you to change the world.
01:09:13
Speaker
And as a gift for leaving us a review, we have a special training package exclusive for solopreneur listeners over at solopreneurs.com.
01:09:22
Speaker
Remember, you need to leave us a review on iTunes to qualify for the training package.
01:09:27
Speaker
So take care of that now, and we'll see you on the next episode.