Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
Speaker: I teach you 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, solarpreneurs?
Speaker: Today, we're going to be talking about three secrets that can help you sell more solar during the holidays.
Speaker: If you have not been selling for a while now, you may not know that it can be tricky at times during the holidays.
Speaker: So we're going to jam on a couple of things that hopefully can help you out during this time of the year.
Speaker: Or if you're listening to this during another time of year, still some things I think you can apply.
Speaker: Welcome to the show.
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: In case you're wondering where I got some of these lines from...
Speaker: I do listen to a lot of sports podcasts, and if you're wondering, sometimes I structure the podcast, the Solar Printer podcast, after a few of my favorite sport podcasts that I listen to.
Speaker: I like to get people in a good mood, and some of the introductions are pretty similar in a few of these NBA podcasts, things like that I listen to.
Speaker: Okay, so that's kind of the structure that I take for this podcast too, in case you're wondering.
Speaker: But nonetheless, I hope we can help you achieve your goals in solar.
Speaker: And I hope we can help you sell more this holiday season.
Speaker: I've been doing this seven years now, 2016.
Speaker: So what are we coming up on?
Speaker: Seven years.
Speaker: And I've had some really great holiday seasons of selling.
Speaker: I've had some
Speaker: not so great.
Speaker: So before we jump into the topic, I just want to preface it by saying I think the biggest secret to selling more during the holiday season is to not slow down.
Speaker: Hey, if you've been doing this for a while, you know that it can be an easy time of the year to slow down.
Speaker: Take your foot off the gas and naturally you're going to a little bit.
Speaker: Okay, if
Speaker: If you're going full horse straight through Christmas, then man, you must be like a robot out there selling.
Speaker: I hope you at least take Christmas Day off, part of Christmas Eve at the very least.
Speaker: But the other days, I think you got to be strategic about it.
Speaker: You still should be pushing hard, but I think there's some strategies you can implement.
Speaker: to still get results.
Speaker: But maybe you can get into your flying altitude, right?
Speaker: You think of a plane taking off.
Speaker: I think we should think of the holiday season, December as a month where we get to our coasting altitude.
Speaker: Maybe we're not
Speaker: going full force in the takeoff, but we're still at a nice cruising altitude.
Speaker: We're still cranking out sales.
Speaker: So let's talk about how we can do that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So three things.
Speaker: Um, the first one is you need to be a master at creating urgency during the holiday season.
Speaker: Um, I,
Speaker: I have really struggled over the years at times on helping people take action now during the holidays because I think the easiest excuse that people can come up with is, oh, you know what?
Speaker: Solar sounds great, but we got family coming into town.
Speaker: It's going to be extremely busy.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Hit me up after the new year.
Speaker: Think about this.
Speaker: And that's what everyone does for a lot of goals they have in their lives.
Speaker: So how can we help people prioritize solar and want to do it now?
Speaker: Well, you got to be building urgency.
Speaker: And we all know you should build urgency whatever time of year you're selling.
Speaker: But especially during the holiday season, you got to get creative with this.
Speaker: How can you build extra urgency during the holiday season to help people come towards a decision and now rather than later?
Speaker: So a creative idea that I actually got from our team out here today.
Speaker: Hopefully they don't mind me sharing this.
Speaker: Hopefully I don't get kicked off my team for sharing some insider secrets.
Speaker: Hey, but I thought this was a great idea.
Speaker: Get a text from your manager or, you know, just someone on your team of a promotion you got going on now.
Speaker: Maybe your company is actually doing like a holiday promo.
Speaker: where they're going to give the customer something extra or do a little incentive.
Speaker: But if not, you create your own incentive, right?
Speaker: That's the beauty of our job is we can create whatever incentives we want and we can be really creative with it.
Speaker: So a text that we use here on our team is...
Speaker: Just something like holiday special.
Speaker: Hey, we have a holiday special going on until Sunday.
Speaker: Any customer who enrolls by Sunday night will receive a thousand dollar bonus the day of installation.
Speaker: So you have someone like I think it's cool.
Speaker: You have someone text you this and then you show this to all your potential customers in the home.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that way it looks super legit.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Even though you created it and we're not we're not lying to the customer or anything.
Speaker: It is a promotion that we're maybe doing ourselves.
Speaker: I have someone text you this and then say, hey, look, I just got this text today.
Speaker: Actually, this is going on till the end of the week.
Speaker: This is this the reason why all your neighbors are trying to get in on the program.
Speaker: Not only are we saving them money now, not only are they getting more money to save for future holidays, but they're also getting a thousand bucks.
Speaker: OK, Mr. Homeowner, if you had an extra thousand bucks, what would you get your wife for Chris?
Speaker: What extra thing would you get your wife?
Speaker: OK, get a little chuckle from them.
Speaker: Get them thinking about that thousand bucks.
Speaker: So stuff like that, right?
Speaker: Create a holiday incentive, have someone text it to you and then show this to your potential customers out there.
Speaker: And then the other, another thing you can use for urgency, just going along with that, is have something printed out.
Speaker: That's already an example.
Speaker: If you have someone text you the promo that's going on,
Speaker: But another thing that's extremely powerful is print out something that's expiring.
Speaker: Another one of my friends out here, he has a SunPower dealer and he got an email from SunPower saying that they were adjusting their rates, saying there's some type of rate adjustment.
Speaker: So quotes were expiring on a certain date.
Speaker: So what did he do?
Speaker: He printed that out and
Speaker: He's taking it to all his appointments.
Speaker: He's using that as ammo to get people to take action.
Speaker: So he's saying, hey, look, you guys can do this whenever.
Speaker: But just so you know, we got this not making this up.
Speaker: We got this email from corporate.
Speaker: They're adjusting the rates.
Speaker: As you know, inflation is a real thing, not only for the utility, but for us, too, unfortunately.
Speaker: even though our rate increases are far less than the utility.
Speaker: But because of that, that's why we're helping people now is so they can get the most savings possible.
Speaker: Okay, so whatever the good principle to sell by is people believe what they see, right?
Speaker: Grant Cardone talks about this in his closer survival guide.
Speaker: People believe what they see, not what they hear.
Speaker: So when you're creating these promotions, when you're trying to add more urgency, it's going to be much more believable and inspire people to take action more if you have something printed out.
Speaker: Hey, and then last thing on that, even if it's maybe something that ended, so maybe your company did have a rate adjustment, prices went up, maybe something did change, but it already passed.
Speaker: You can still use these things as ammo to build urgency.
Speaker: For example, my buddy that had...
Speaker: has some power dealer.
Speaker: He got the email.
Speaker: Even if that deadline has passed, he can still show it.
Speaker: Maybe it won't be quite as powerful, but it's like he can show, hey, Mr. Homeowner, just so you know, this was a rate adjustment that happened two weeks ago.
Speaker: They're saying they're going to have another one pretty soon.
Speaker: So just being transparent with you guys, this is why so many people want to get in on it.
Speaker: We constantly have these rate adjustments.
Speaker: So wouldn't it make sense?
Speaker: I know you guys like need to look at all the details and all that, but wouldn't it make sense to save a little bit more now and not be affected by some of these rate adjustments get you guys as much savings as possible?
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: So yeah, all we'll do today, we'll get your application in and we will make sure we can lock in that rate.
Speaker: So you're not affected by future increases.
Speaker: You're not affected by the next rate adjustment that they have.
Speaker: Okay, so even if it's not happening, print it out.
Speaker: You can still use it as sort of an example of what will more than likely happen again.
Speaker: Okay, so that's the first thing.
Speaker: And that's probably the main point of this.
Speaker: I think you got to be building a lot of urgency during the holidays.
Speaker: Number two, this is just kind of an observation that I've had, especially during this holiday season, whatever reason.
Speaker: I've had so many appointments fall through.
Speaker: I'm sure a lot of you can relate.
Speaker: People, again, they like to put things off.
Speaker: They like to not take the time to look at it right now during the holidays.
Speaker: So a big problem that I have had, and I know a lot of people on my team have had, is just appointments falling through.
Speaker: And last year, I did a little blitz out in Dallas, Texas.
Speaker: This was around Thanksgiving.
Speaker: And I remember we had so many appointments falling through these Texans.
Speaker: They take their holidays seriously.
Speaker: They were preparing for Thanksgiving like six, seven days before getting stuff.
Speaker: We were knocking like a week before Thanksgiving and we had people saying they're already starting cooking for Thanksgiving out there.
Speaker: But something we did then and something that I have changed a little bit now is I've stopped confirming appointments.
Speaker: And many of you have heard me on the show just saying
Speaker: I've talked about how I am a proponent of confirming appointments.
Speaker: I hate wasting time.
Speaker: I hate showing up and people aren't there.
Speaker: So a lot of times I have confirmed appointments.
Speaker: But right now, my school of thought, especially during the holidays, is I'm not confirming any appointments.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It gets to a point where it's just maddening, where you have text after text and people saying, you know what?
Speaker: Too busy right now.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Let's not do it.
Speaker: So I've actually found and I haven't like tracked it to the T, but I've found that I've actually had more success.
Speaker: by just showing up during these, at least during this part of year, then sending out a confirmation text or even calling to confirm.
Speaker: OK, and this may change.
Speaker: This is my thoughts right now during the holiday season.
Speaker: But I think it's good to be flexible.
Speaker: Like some people swear by confirming appointments.
Speaker: Some people that I work with that have a lot of success don't confirm any appointments.
Speaker: They just show up.
Speaker: So there's arguments for both sides of it.
Speaker: And generally, I do like to confirm appointments.
Speaker: But I would say, especially during the holidays, especially if you're getting a lot of appointments falling through, just stop the confirming, show up, and talk your way into it.
Speaker: People are much more likely to just...
Speaker: You know, even if they forgot about the appointment, they're much more likely to just make it happen if you show up at their door.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Adds that little social pressure and you can, you know, kind of talk them into it, even if they're on the fence at the door.
Speaker: Okay, so that's step number two.
Speaker: That's secret number two.
Speaker: And then last but not least, just have fun with it.
Speaker: Okay, remember, this job is fun.
Speaker: Today, I actually did a podcast with my buddy Jake Ransom, who's out here.
Speaker: It's podcasting me dropping here in probably next week.
Speaker: But he's someone that just has a ton of fun when he's out there.
Speaker: And I think Christmas holidays, we should just remember that this job is fun.
Speaker: If you're running a team, if you're running an organization, make sure to throw out some Christmas incentives.
Speaker: Make sure to throw out, do a little Christmas party if you haven't already.
Speaker: Do Christmas competition.
Speaker: Something we did with our team last year I thought was fun is a little like holiday selfie competition.
Speaker: We've got pictures with Santa hats.
Speaker: Every appointment we booked, that was a point if we got a picture with a Santa hat.
Speaker: If we close the deal...
Speaker: and post a picture of us holding like a mug of hot chocolate or whatever that was two points.
Speaker: And then that went towards kind of like a giveaway end of the year.
Speaker: So that was a fun little fun little incentive, fun little prize competition to do at the end of the year.
Speaker: But whatever you do, just make sure you're having fun.
Speaker: Don't take things too seriously.
Speaker: This is Christmas.
Speaker: This is the holidays.
Speaker: Have fun with it.
Speaker: Spread some Christmas cheer.
Speaker: Sing loud for all they hear, as Elf says in one of my favorite Christmas movies.
Speaker: And I hope you crush it this holiday season.
Speaker: Hey, remember, you can still sell a lot during the holidays, but you don't have to work nonstop.
Speaker: Get at that nice cruising altitude.
Speaker: Lock some deals down and hope you continue to have a great holiday season and sell a lot of solar.
Speaker: So that's it for today's episode.
Speaker: Hopefully it helps.
Speaker: We've got some exciting episodes coming up here in the near future.
Speaker: Remember, if you would like to see a certain guest on the show, if you would like to cover a certain topic, hit me up either at taylor at solarpreneurs.com or on social media.
Speaker: Instagram is where I'm currently most active at taylorjarmstrong.
Speaker: hit me up and let me know if you know of any great guests that we should have on the show.
Speaker: Always looking for great talent, for great stories to hear about in people's solar journey.
Speaker: So we'll see you on the next one.
Speaker: Love y'all.
Speaker: Peace out and happy holidays.
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
Speaker: 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 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 SolCity is open, launched and ready to be enrolled.
Speaker: So go to SolCity.co to learn more and join the learning experience now.
Speaker: This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners.
Speaker: So be sure to go to SolCity.co and join.
Speaker: We'll see you on the inside.
