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How I Lost 4k On a Deal
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Every action we make in solar sales should be calculated, but what happens if we fall short? In this episode, I outline, reflect, and learn from simple human error that cost me not only thousands, but also trust from the customer.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Solarpreneur Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong. I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in the year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
00:00:19
Speaker
I teach you 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.
Defining a 'Solarpreneur'
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a solarpreneur you might ask? solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.
Learning from Mistakes in Solar Sales
00:00:43
Speaker
Hey what's up solarpreneurs, today I'm going to tell you how I lost $4,000 deal Just from lack of preparation, some crucial mistakes I made that hopefully you can learn from and not do the same thing.
00:00:56
Speaker
So welcome to the podcast. My name is Taylor Armstrong. We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and have a much better time in the solar industry. Hope you're closing lots of deals. Hope you're having success in the solar industry. No better time to be selling solar than right now. We got crazy urgency with Trump's big, beautiful bill just passing.
00:01:16
Speaker
We've got tax credits expiring at the end of this year. um Luckily, we have and commercial credits that ah are still going to be able to apply it towards leases and PPAs till 2027.
00:01:30
Speaker
So um I feel super blessed to be selling right now. um Like I mentioned, I think in last podcast is we're in the gold rush, but we know when the deadline is. um Sometimes it can get a little stressful, not going lie, when we have a deadline hanging over our heads, but we don't know when it is.
00:01:47
Speaker
But ah now the good thing is we know when it is. Hopefully doesn't change. Hopefully a week from now there's not something crazy coming out that makes all this null and void. But hey, this is what we know so far.
00:02:01
Speaker
So um let's get into the topic. hey um I'm going to tell you guys what happened on an account that I closed today. and unfortunately, I lost a lot of money just due to some simple mistakes.
00:02:14
Speaker
And I was kicking myself after the deal. I was little depressed because it went from being a great commission to just an okay commission considering considering the size of the system.
00:02:27
Speaker
So i'm I'm like, you know what? I don't want other people to suffer through this. I want other people to make great commissions and not have to um work for less than what they're worth.
00:02:38
Speaker
Hey, so here's what happens. um Got to the deal. was a referral. um Got great neighbors. Actually, one of my neighbors, he referred his ah tenants to me. And I'm I went there and I did a call with the tenant, with the landlord before. her And she's like, I want to buy this system.
00:02:56
Speaker
None of this leasing, none of that. I know I want to buy it. So I went there just expecting that it was going to be some just wealthy a landlord that owns a bunch of homes that only buys their stuff, cash and all that.
00:03:11
Speaker
um So I went there kind of like expecting ah the worst, I guess you'd say, because, you know, at least out here, we don't do a lot of cash deals. They're always a little bit trickier. People tend to drag their feet on them, you know, not want to write the check and all that.
00:03:27
Speaker
So um kind of had maybe a little bit little bit of a preconceived notion of it, which that's one thing you can learn from. I'm always going to the deal expecting you're going to close it and don't.
00:03:39
Speaker
prejudge the customer, right, which I did a little bit, but went in there and to my surprise, um she was super chill. She had super nice house, but she was chill and she was actually really open-minded to doing a PPA, ah power purchase agreement, which is the main product we're selling right now in Southern California.
00:04:00
Speaker
um Because once I explained to her, hey you don't have to come out of pocket all this money And I told her some stories, right? I'm like, hey, there's people that are investors. They would prefer to do this because they don't want to put um tens of thousands dollars on this when they could see a greater return on other things.
00:04:18
Speaker
So I was telling her these stories. she had she had thought that it would cause a headache if she ever sold her home. But I explained to no, we help home sell all the time with PPAs. After I went through those concerns, those objections, she was totally fine. She's like, okay, now let's do it.
00:04:34
Speaker
hey But where I went wrong and where I started making some big mistakes was when we got to the application part, I didn't know my products well enough. We yeah we use Aurora right now, our design software, and there's specific battery types we have to select based on who we're using to fund the project, the financer.
00:04:58
Speaker
ah And so in this case, um we have the two options in Aurora. We have Nfin, we have Goodleap. think there's a couple more. But we have ah different batteries that we can use. We have the Q-Home batteries. That's, you know, product of Q-Cell, which makes sense. They're only available through Nfin.
00:05:18
Speaker
hey But where I went wrong is I thought these Q-cell batteries that are a little bit less expensive for the size of battery i had to use, I thought we could use these those through Goodleap, which is who I was using to fund the yeah PPA.
00:05:32
Speaker
So I go through it, get her approved, and I'm going to click send document. And it's just giving me error, error, error, error. I'm like, oh my gosh, she's ready to sign.
00:05:45
Speaker
Things are ready to go. And it's just giving me error. So do my thing, text a few people, and i find out that, yeah, we can't use that type of battery. um with good leap.
00:05:57
Speaker
Then I go to use the other battery, ended up switching to a different installer to use a battery that was a little bit less expensive. Long story short is after everything said and done, i went from making um the total commission on it was going to be, think, 13, 14 grand.
00:06:18
Speaker
And it was this is a big system, okay, and then it went about four grand less Because, you know, we I gave her the price already. I told her what it's going to be. you can't go change that on them.
00:06:31
Speaker
And so it hurts um because now I had to offer him the same price. We had to make some adjustments. And what I thought was going to be with this battery, with this product type, thought it was going this commission. and But because I didn't know my product well enough, because I didn't know which battery was compatible with the financier, it shot me in the foot.
00:06:54
Speaker
Okay, and the silver lining, the good news with it is is um I think I can go back and change some things
Importance of Confidence and Preparation
00:07:01
Speaker
around. i ended up using Lightreach, a different PPA provider.
00:07:04
Speaker
So it looks like I can go back and change it to Goodleap and i make more. But um yeah, it was just an unfortunate series and events series of events that I had to go from making 14 grand on a really big system. And now it's a lot less.
00:07:22
Speaker
Now it's like nine grand. Hey, um so I'm going to tell you some lessons from that. And I'm go just go through a couple principles. Hopefully you won't make the same mistake as me. I'll play just a little clip from it.
00:07:34
Speaker
You'll hear me fumble around a little bit, hear some mistakes I made. And then I'm going to go through just some lessons that you can apply in yourselves. Some of them you probably already could have deduced a little bit from the story I just told you.
00:07:46
Speaker
But I'm going to go through some points that I learned from that hopefully you can go and apply to yourselves. Yes, I'll play just a little clip from this so you can hear what went on hear me fumbling around a little bit.
00:07:57
Speaker
guess the battery they're using for that, because they only accept like a specific type of battery. um so the only spec thats is that this specific specific type of battery. like guess the one they we selected wasn't like compatible with with what they're requiring.
00:08:10
Speaker
So there's two options. We can use the battery they require, but it's it's like a more expensive one and the same capacity but just pull out like guess a couple more advanced features. So probably we take the numbers up another 15 to 20 a month on that one.
00:08:25
Speaker
Or we can use a different, we have a different lender that will accept the other battery we use and keep it the same. So you're saying it won't be this efficient? What's the PTA? If we put a bath plan, then we should have to pay more to get that other kind of battery?
00:08:39
Speaker
Well, yeah, just the kind the bank we're using called Goodleaf, they only accept a specific battery. And so that battery, there's more costs, I guess. So they're saying we'd have to bump the monthly number up by about fifteen to twenty bucks
00:08:52
Speaker
I think I went at $757,000. Yeah, I'm saying this would go to like $310,000, $315,000 instead of $294,000. Or another bank view that'll accept the original battery, and then that'll keep the number.
00:09:05
Speaker
i i don't you okay with but we just do that to switch together so's the other bank you think im asked my but they're going to have to so i think if we can accept the battery mentioned Okay, a
00:09:23
Speaker
okay so you heard a little bit fu one around made me look old alarmprofesional have to transition to another finance partner, another lender. So yeah, luckily she was pretty chill. She was fine with switching it.
00:09:38
Speaker
So some of you already know that I run my own door-to-door sales team here in San Diego. And as we were gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results.
00:09:49
Speaker
But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage. Then we discovered an app called SolarScout. But it's not a door knocking app, it's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market.
00:10:02
Speaker
It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later cancelled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given neighborhood. It's been working for a lot of teams across the country, and now I'm on board too.
00:10:17
Speaker
I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up. 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. And they did.
00:10:27
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. That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
00:10:40
Speaker
Okay, back to the show. But some people, you say this stuff, you try to say, oh, we got to up the price or we got switch. Some people just say, you know what? Nah, you know what? Leave me. it I'll think about it. I'll get back to you. Let me see what I can. let me Let me see what I want to decide.
00:10:55
Speaker
and I've had that happen in deals, too. hey So um here's three things I learned and that I want to go through with y'all. um So the first one is your close rate is going to depend on your confidence, right?
00:11:09
Speaker
Okay, you can see that I didn't have a ton of confidence. My confidence went down when I had to switch lenders, when I had to transition. And like I said, I've lost deals because of this. so make sure you have confidence.
00:11:23
Speaker
If you don't, yeah, try to stay as confident as possible. Because if you look, if you have to switch things up a little bit, the less confidence you look, then it's going to even more likelihood that they're going to not sign today.
00:11:34
Speaker
Okay, but yeah, just make sure you have confidence. And the way you do that is be prepared. and that's the second point is preparation is not always going to be the sexiest thing, right? For me, I'm personally not like the owl type. I'm not the engineer type. I don't like learning about all the panels. I don't like learning about all the battery specs.
00:11:54
Speaker
Some people love that stuff, but I'm a simple guy. I like to ah basically know what I need to know to close the deal. but I'm not the type that wants to learn every single spec and battery capacity and panel type, every detail about it.
00:12:11
Speaker
So just make sure you know what you need to know. And more importantly, make sure you have all everything set up with your logins. I have had another situation a couple weeks ago where um had to go back to a deal because I couldn't figure out my login.
00:12:26
Speaker
So it's things as simple as that. Make sure you're set up with all your logins. Have your go-to lenders you use, every go-to things. But I've had situations where we have a credit fail, transition to a different lender, and I'm not set up right. And I either have to go back or I've lost the deal in some cases.
00:12:44
Speaker
um And yeah, actually yeah another another situation last week, I had, this was kind of crazy. And this, I feel like wasn't totally my fault. I don't even know why this happens, but we use Aurora And I signed a deal through Goodleap.
00:12:59
Speaker
What happened was, though, I selected the wrong rate plan. You have to select the rate plan they're on ah before going solar. And i didn't know this. Somehow, by default, it was selected a completely different utility.
00:13:13
Speaker
um outside of San Diego. I signed the deal, everything went through. And then a week later, i get a kickback saying, oh, you need to go re-sign this deal because it was signed with a whole different utility, this whole different rate plan.
00:13:26
Speaker
So this was crazy. I'm like, and it wasn't just re-signing. I had to go back, rerun their credit, i redo everything, like create an entire new lead in the system. So whoever's working with Goodleap and Aurora, hopefully they can fix that because I'm like,
00:13:41
Speaker
man, this is ridiculous. I have to start from scratch again, but things as little as that, they can cost you. And luckily this customer, I was able to resign, but some customers, you have to do something like that. Go back to them say, Hey, we have to start from scratch. Mr. Customer, we have to rerun your credit.
00:13:57
Speaker
You know, you're not going to say it like that. I framed it in a way that was as good as possible. But there's people that'll just be like, you know what, forget about it, or they'll be too tough to get in touch with, and then the deal will fall through because of that.
Setting Up Systems for Success
00:14:10
Speaker
So make sure you have your ducks in a row to where you know the things that need to be selected, the rate plans you're supposed to select, you know the products, the batteries, the panels, that's another thing. Some them require specific panels.
00:14:22
Speaker
So just make sure you know all that. hey Make sure you're prepared. and then the third thing here, a third lesson, third principle is just have systems set up. hey So I mentioned that in this deal, luckily I had a ah group text I texted and then you just went through my people that I usually reach out to finally figured out what was wrong.
00:14:44
Speaker
um But yeah, if you don't have a support system, that's the power of having a team. We have our group chats. We have a group closer chat. And then we have, depending on the installer, for most of the installers we use, we have someone that's kind of like a rep support person.
00:15:00
Speaker
And luckily I was able to get a pretty quick quick response from them. They helped me troubleshoot, figure out what the problem was and transition on. And so it's super important, so have a group chat and then have a person you can trust with emergencies.
00:15:14
Speaker
Hey, we have a guy named Zach at our company. That's kind of like the rep support, sales support guy. We call him Zach GPT. But have a Zach GPT. hey If you don't have someone like that, that's pending, they can answer quick questions.
00:15:29
Speaker
Sometimes you're going to be in a huge bind because I manage a team. We have managers. But if if your managers, they're also selling at a high level, you can't count on them to always respond. right What if they're in a deal?
00:15:42
Speaker
What if they have stuff going on? So if you can have multiple people and someone that can respond quick, ah it's going to help you out a lot. And speaking of GPT, ah Chat GPT actually can answer a ton of questions for you on random stuff. So I actually use that pretty freak frequently in deals, just using AI to help me troubleshoot and get answers to things that I didn't know.
00:16:04
Speaker
Hey, because yeah, i mean I had another situation where the last thing I'll say on this is if you can have someone just audit your deals before you leave the home, just go through and checklist, little mental checklist, or keep it on your notes.
00:16:20
Speaker
Make sure you know everything that needs to be done. If there's any uncertainty at all, have someone audits the deal. If you can have some type an account manager, or someone go through, make sure everything's cleared, you're not missing any documents, everything's cleared with the lender, it's going to save you a ton of time and help a lot.
00:16:40
Speaker
I had a account, it's been like probably eight months now, but signed them, they were super excited about it. It was a lay down deal. And we had so many issues, had to go back three times, missing documents.
00:16:54
Speaker
And finally, after the third time, um I thought we got them signed. But then come to find out ah weeks later, there we thought we were ready for to install. We look and the funding had expired and literally lost the deal just because we didn't we weren't on top of it.
Recovering from Setbacks
00:17:11
Speaker
Okay, partly my fault, but um you got to have better systems in place for that installer too.
00:17:17
Speaker
They didn't audit my accounts. And there was some stuff that was missing. The deal just expired. And it would have been easy deal, easy commission, easy install customers excited. And now he totally just like lost all confidence in the process.
00:17:31
Speaker
So I hope that helps someone out there. ah You know, some negative stuff that happened. But hey, there's a happy ending that this customer still super
Seeking Podcast Guest Suggestions
00:17:39
Speaker
excited. And even though I lost some commission on it,
00:17:44
Speaker
um we figured out a you know potential solution that i can make back at least a good chunk of what i lost because of my mistakes my mental errors so uh not all bad news some good news in there too but hopefully you can learn from that to be prepared on your deals know your stuff and uh yeah just audit your accounts as much as you can and make sure you get everything submitted right the first time it's always much easier So i hope this helps someone out there. Let me know your thoughts on the topic of the day today.
00:18:15
Speaker
And also let me know what you'd like us to talk about in the future and what guests you'd like to have on. More guests on. We do have a shortage of guests for the podcast. So would love to hear from you if you know someone that is killing it in solar so we can ah come and pick their brain, see what they're doing.
00:18:31
Speaker
So we'll see in the next one. Happy selling. Go crush it this
Promoting Valuable Podcast Episodes
00:18:35
Speaker
week. Sell lots of accounts. See you next time. What's up, solopreneurs? Hope you enjoyed the episode. Before you run out and start selling more solar yourself, wanted to let you know about an exciting new cheat sheet we created specifically for you in mind.
00:18:52
Speaker
One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start? What episodes should I listen to in the podcast? You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
00:19:06
Speaker
So what we've done, we created the top 10 most downloaded, most listened to, and i would say widely accepted, most useful podcasts that we've done here on Solapreneur.
00:19:19
Speaker
We put them together all in one sheet so you can go, you can hit the ground running, especially if you're new, you do not want to not have this sheet. So go download it right now. It's going to be the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com. Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs. We will have that in the show notes. Go download it right now.
00:19:45
Speaker
And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them. That's going to show you how. So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.