Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail.
Speaker: I teach you how to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
Speaker: What is a solopreneur, you might ask?
Speaker: A solopreneur is a new breed of solopro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery, and you are about to become one.
Speaker: Hey, what's going on, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Today, we're going to be talking about how you can build your squad, how you can help your team achieve better results, produce at a higher level, and I'm going to share some things that I've personally been working on that have been helping my team tremendously.
Speaker: So if you are interested in growing your team, this episode is for you, which hopefully everyone should be interested in growing a team because I think that's one of the best ways to grow in sales and in the solar industry.
Speaker: And so welcome to the podcast.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: I'm recording this actually from Utah here for a little family getaway.
Speaker: My sister actually just got back from a 18 month church mission.
Speaker: So we're coming out, visit her, spend a little bit of time with the family as we get closer to the end of summer.
Speaker: And want to apologize if my voice sounds a little hoarse or if I sound like I'm a little out of it.
Speaker: We drove pretty much all night and got in at like three in the morning.
Speaker: So half the night and then was up at like 7 a.m.
Speaker: So 630 to 7.
Speaker: So, a little bit out of it.
Speaker: I'm trying to recover here.
Speaker: And I know my one negative review on the podcast so far is that I sounded monotone, or one of the few negatives we've had.
Speaker: So, if that person is listening, then I apologize in advance for sounding a little out of it.
Speaker: But we're still coming at you.
Speaker: and still want to bring some high quality content.
Speaker: And again, especially if you are looking to build a team, this episode is for you.
Speaker: And specifically also next episode, we're going to be having on one of my friends, Will Brindley, who actually is managing a very successful, very large team here in San Diego at our company and has just grown it like crazy.
Speaker: has been able to push his team to get results and has hit the metrics to be a manager and just grow into it very quickly.
Speaker: So he's going to be coming on next episode, sharing how he grew his team and how he makes, you know, over a million a year in solar.
Speaker: Okay, but let's talk about some things that I personally have been doing.
Speaker: So for those that don't know my story as well, or maybe need a refresher, about two years ago, I was with two, three years ago, coming out of COVID, joined a dealer, pretty successful dealer, working with guys like Ricardo Richie, a lot of other successful dudes that just made over a million in solar, absolute beasts, was able to learn from them.
Speaker: But unfortunately, we had some issues as most people have that have been in solar for any length of time.
Speaker: Had some installer issues.
Speaker: We started, we stopped getting paid out.
Speaker: We had delays and long story short, we didn't get paid out a ton of money.
Speaker: And all of us just kind of disbanded, went our separate ways.
Speaker: And so since then, about two and a half years ago, I went to another dealer, had some issues with them, some similar, and just wasn't really building up the team to what it was.
Speaker: Essentially started over when I joined Legacy here at my latest company.
Speaker: I've been with for about a year now.
Speaker: And so pretty much started from scratch about a year ago.
Speaker: Didn't really have brought on a few people that came over just over after all the transition, but had to essentially start from the ground up.
Speaker: And so right now we are sitting at about 14 people on my direct squad.
Speaker: We're building a ton of momentum right now and shout out anyone that's on my squad listening to this.
Speaker: Love you guys.
Speaker: And specifically,
Speaker: My co-squad leader, we got Javier.
Speaker: He's been helping me a ton and would definitely recommend building up a team, building up a squad together.
Speaker: And so I want to share just a few things that we've implemented.
Speaker: If you are with a larger company, currently our team here in San Diego, our whole office, we're at over 150 reps.
Speaker: So obviously a massive team.
Speaker: So just to preface it, depending on how many reps you have, you should divide into squads.
Speaker: If you've read the book Extreme Ownership, one of the best books on leadership, Jocko, he talks about how one of the keys to leadership is you can't really lead more than 10 people at the same time.
Speaker: And so that's where squads come in, which is what we do.
Speaker: Obviously 150 people, that is way too many people to manage and way too many people to hold accountable.
Speaker: So we divide into squads.
Speaker: And so what I'm going to talk about is how you should be leading your squad or maybe your smaller office, get your reps to produce more and trying to grow.
Speaker: These are some systems I believe you should put into place.
Speaker: And I think it's helped our team a ton.
Speaker: And so here's what we've done.
Speaker: First of all, number one, we do a weekly squad call.
Speaker: Hey, this is outside of meetings.
Speaker: We have meetings with our whole office.
Speaker: We have our correlations, right?
Speaker: We do them twice a week right now.
Speaker: But on top of that, we are doing a weekly squad call because again, we know we're not going to get a ton of accountability for going to correlation with
Speaker: typically like around 100 people.
Speaker: It's not like you can go through everyone's numbers, just impossible.
Speaker: You're not going to go through and get weekly numbers.
Speaker: You're not going to really talk to people on a personal basis if you have that many people in a correlation.
Speaker: So what works for us is we have been doing a weekly team call.
Speaker: So we jump on Google Meet is what we use.
Speaker: And this is where we can get a little more personal and hold people a little more accountable.
Speaker: And so I'm going to go through the structure of these little team calls we have weekly.
Speaker: And this is something you could use also if you're just running a smaller office too.
Speaker: But if not, I would recommend people that have larger offices divide up into squads and run something similar to this or figure out a way where you can increase the accountability for, you know, little pods, little squads of 10 people.
Speaker: So
Speaker: So some of you already know that I run my own door to door sales team here in San Diego.
Speaker: And as we are gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results.
Speaker: But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
Speaker: Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout, but it's not a door knocking app.
Speaker: It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market.
Speaker: It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later canceled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given neighborhood.
Speaker: It's been working for a lot of teams across the country, and now I'm on board too.
Speaker: I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up.
Speaker: But I told them, hey, if I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal.
Speaker: And they did.
Speaker: So go to solarscout.app forward slash Taylor and book a demo with them, and you'll get 10% off your first month when you sign up.
Speaker: That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
Speaker: Okay, back to the show.
Speaker: Okay, so what we do is we go over, we try to keep them around 30 minutes.
Speaker: Okay, but we it's pretty straightforward.
Speaker: We go over a weekly value, we have our company values.
Speaker: So what just an example that's of our most recent squad call, the value we went over was building the foundation.
Speaker: So we talked about that and we gave, we try to give like an example, people we see that are living the values that we want in our company, in our squads, in our teams.
Speaker: And then we go over updates and reminders, just, you know, like agenda stuff, events coming up, activities coming up.
Speaker: And then our team, we're all about standards, right?
Speaker: And so what we do, we have a spreadsheet and our team, we know that the standard we want our guys to hit and we're holding ourselves accountable to is a thousand doors knock or four deals, daily checking at 2 p.m., daily checkout after 8 p.m., attending all the meetings, lead chat engagement, maintaining high level of accountability and being coachable.
Speaker: So those are our standards that we review and just kind of beat into our team's heads because we want them to live in the standards.
Speaker: Hey, so we review that.
Speaker: We go over some announcements, something really important for us that's helping massively as well as we have all of our new reps that join.
Speaker: We have something called eight and eight, and it's where they need to get ideally eight deals in their first eight weeks.
Speaker: If you look at any team, if you look at retention in solar, most people are going to fall out because they're not getting deals quick enough.
Speaker: They're not getting paid quick enough.
Speaker: And so they lose motivation.
Speaker: They fall out.
Speaker: So what we did is, and this wasn't my idea, but this is on a company level, but it's helped us out a lot is we just keep track of that.
Speaker: It's like, okay, okay.
Speaker: In the first eight weeks, where are we at?
Speaker: How can we get guys moving on that train quicker to actually get the eight deals in eight weeks?
Speaker: And it's just as they get deals, they're given like swag, backpacks, hats, stuff like that.
Speaker: But the main goal is to get to eight deals.
Speaker: And anyone that hits the eight deals in eight weeks, they're going to get to go on the company cruise that happens once a year.
Speaker: So it gives our guys a lot of motivation to come out running and try to get those eight deals in eight weeks.
Speaker: Hey, and then from there, basically the only two other things we go through is just accountability.
Speaker: So we have a spreadsheet of everyone's numbers, the doors they hit on the week, the appointments they booked, the sits, the closes, which definitely should be tracking those if you're not.
Speaker: Very, very important that you track those KPIs.
Speaker: Keep a spreadsheet of your team.
Speaker: have someone that's designated to go and update those numbers, whether it's yourself or I'd recommend outsourcing possibly like a virtual assistant, possibly a setter manager.
Speaker: So if someone that goes in and gets these numbers, updates them, and then you just go through the numbers, right?
Speaker: And it's holding people accountable.
Speaker: So our standards are, again, if people aren't hitting 250 doors in a week and they're not getting a deal, then we put them, we highlight them in red.
Speaker: And we give them like, you know, we don't shame them.
Speaker: We're not going to like punish them necessarily, but we're going to give them just they're going to see their name in red.
Speaker: And the idea is that they can want to make sure that they never show up on this spreadsheet in the red again.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's effort based.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But we anyone that gets at least a deal there in the clear situation.
Speaker: Hey, but our standards are 250 doors and at least a deal a week.
Speaker: If not, they are highlighted on this spreadsheet.
Speaker: And then we just have a goal board for the month.
Speaker: So we put everyone's name, list where they're at on the month.
Speaker: And we do bug goals.
Speaker: How many deals are they committing to for the month?
Speaker: And then our quarter, our install goal for the quarter.
Speaker: And then that's basically it.
Speaker: We sometimes do a little leadership thought or a small training after that, which you can delegate to other people on your team.
Speaker: But these calls, they are, it's been a game changer for us.
Speaker: And so especially if you are with a larger company, maybe you're trying to build up a squad, maybe you're trying to get into management.
Speaker: The biggest mistake I think I made is I we were growing our team, but I was not doing calls like this.
Speaker: Wasn't tracking our numbers that much would kind of look at them from time to time.
Speaker: But it wasn't like a weekly thing where I was analyzing how many numbers.
Speaker: And so I just thought, you know, our company, they have metrics to get into leadership you got to be doing.
Speaker: It's 40 installs in a quarter between you and your squad.
Speaker: And so when I first joined Legacy, my current company, I'm like, okay, we'll hit that easy.
Speaker: Just whatever.
Speaker: It's going to happen naturally.
Speaker: And then we came to the end of the quarter and we were pretty far off from what I thought in my head, the numbers I thought we hit.
Speaker: So I realized these things, you have to be intentional about it.
Speaker: Hey, you have to hold your team accountable.
Speaker: You have to get them bought into a goal, right?
Speaker: You have to incentivize them.
Speaker: And so these are all things we're doing.
Speaker: We have our whole office group me, but then we also have a separate squad text thread where we're checking in.
Speaker: We're holding people accountable on that as well.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But yeah, just a few small things that have been helping us a lot.
Speaker: So whether you are looking to get into leadership, whether you're trying to lead other people, maybe you only have two, three people right now.
Speaker: Well, hey, consider doing just a quick call and just getting the accountability and getting your two, three guys more bought in.
Speaker: Promise it's going to help you.
Speaker: Our team, they have been producing at a much, much higher level since we have implemented these things.
Speaker: We're hitting between 13, 14 reps.
Speaker: We have been hitting about 30 deals a month and it's only up from here.
Speaker: So those are the main things.
Speaker: Just doing a weekly squad call, having a just text thread with your squad and
Speaker: In addition to your main team group me, if you have a bigger team and just making sure guys are engaging, right?
Speaker: We're always posting check-in photos.
Speaker: A lot of days we're posting what are, what, what the KPIs we hit on the day.
Speaker: We post screenshots of our little, it's the Tally app where you can keep track of.
Speaker: your conversations and your appointments and closes.
Speaker: So I recommend doing that.
Speaker: I hope this helps anyone that is aspiring to get into leadership or is trying to become a better leader.
Speaker: Try these things out.
Speaker: I know it's going to help you so much.
Speaker: And next episode.
Speaker: make sure you tune in because we've got will brindley that he actually shared a lot of these systems with me and so he has a lot more that he's going to talk about um as far as leadership goes as far as producing on a much higher personal level um this guy uh we do these big check friday um you know little friday shout outs we post commission checks
Speaker: This guy will, he is consistently, you know, 20, 30 thousand dollar checks almost every week that he's pulling in.
Speaker: So if you want to learn how to do that, tune in to next episode.
Speaker: It's going to be unbelievable.
Speaker: And I hope you crush it this week.
Speaker: I hope you get a lot of deals.
Speaker: I hope you grow your company in whatever role you are in.
Speaker: We'll see you on the next episode.
Speaker: Hey, Solarpreneurs, quick question.
Speaker: What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day?
Speaker: For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level.
Speaker: That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community exclusively for solar professionals
Speaker: to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry.
Speaker: And it's called Solciety.
Speaker: This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give Solar Pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds for, are you ready for it, less than $3.45 a day.
Speaker: Currently, Soul Society is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled.
Speaker: So go to soulcidity.co to learn more and join the learning experience now.
Speaker: This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to soulcidity.co and join.
Speaker: We'll see you on the inside.
