Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
Speaker: I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals.
Speaker: What is a Solarpreneur you might ask?
Speaker: A 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.
Speaker: Hey, what's going on, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: We are back with another episode.
Speaker: My name's Taylor Armstrong, rather.
Speaker: I forgot to finish that sentence.
Speaker: I hope you're doing awesome.
Speaker: If this is your first time listening to the podcast, welcome to the solar coaster.
Speaker: We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and have a much better time overall in the solar industry.
Speaker: Hope you're doing awesome at the time of this recording.
Speaker: We are in July.
Speaker: It is blazing out here and I'm in San Diego, California.
Speaker: I can't even imagine knocking like Arizona, Texas, some of these other states.
Speaker: So y'all got my mad respect.
Speaker: If you are knocking in over a hundred degree weather right now, it's insane.
Speaker: I'm having trouble cooling down and, um,
Speaker: It's a grind to get out there sometimes.
Speaker: Hardest door is the car door, as they say.
Speaker: So hope you still are getting out there, grinding, and surviving this heat.
Speaker: Stay cool out there.
Speaker: On today's podcast, we're going to be talking about a little issue I had come up and an important reminder for myself.
Speaker: Something that I just brushed over that I want to share with everybody and hopefully you can start to implement these things.
Speaker: Before we jump into the topic though, I wanted to thank everyone that has left a review recently.
Speaker: We are at 190 reviews over on Apple or iTunes.
Speaker: I don't know what they call their podcast platform.
Speaker: But if you want to help me get to 200 reviews, that would be freaking awesome.
Speaker: So go over if you have not left a review, please would mean the world.
Speaker: Go leave a review takes like 30 seconds.
Speaker: I think you can do them on Spotify too, but we're at 190 on Apple.
Speaker: So let's get to 200.
Speaker: What do you say?
Speaker: Okay, so that's my ask.
Speaker: Go share the show.
Speaker: Go leave a review if you have not already.
Speaker: Okay, but let's jump into the topic.
Speaker: Okay, and here's the story that goes with it.
Speaker: Here's the little mistake I made.
Speaker: So I closed the deal.
Speaker: This was like three months ago.
Speaker: Mexican family.
Speaker: I speak Spanish, so I explained everything to them in Spanish.
Speaker: They were excited to get the project going.
Speaker: But the one issue we had is they had an old roof.
Speaker: And they had an ancient electric panel.
Speaker: So as anyone knows that's been in the industry for a while, that's going to cause some delays because you got to wait for a main panel upgrade.
Speaker: Out here in San Diego, that usually adds like 60 days to the project.
Speaker: Takes a long time.
Speaker: And of course, the roof adds a little delay in there as well.
Speaker: So I explained to this customer, hey, it's going to be a while.
Speaker: Things with projects like this, it never goes super quick.
Speaker: So we got to wait.
Speaker: It's going to be probably three, four months.
Speaker: So I explain all this and granted my Spanish, mi español, no es perfecto.
Speaker: My Spanish isn't like the world's greatest Spanish.
Speaker: So it could have been him maybe not understanding as much.
Speaker: But long story short, fast forward to today, we're like, you know, three months in advance.
Speaker: This was three months when I signed the deal.
Speaker: I get a notification that the roof is finally ready to be replaced.
Speaker: We're ready to do the roof.
Speaker: We're getting close with being able to replace the electric panel.
Speaker: And so I hit the customer up.
Speaker: I'm like, hey, Gregorio, good news.
Speaker: We can proceed with your project.
Speaker: Everything's going great.
Speaker: And he just gives me this reaction like, wait, solar, am I?
Speaker: You guys are still doing the project?
Speaker: And I'm like, yeah, we've been working on your project.
Speaker: Everything's been progressing.
Speaker: He's like, oh, well, I didn't hear from you guys for like months.
Speaker: So I didn't even think that I was still going solar.
Speaker: I don't even know.
Speaker: I can't even remember like what.
Speaker: what the project is, what it entails.
Speaker: So I thought I thought it was canceled.
Speaker: And I explained to him like, no, we just had some delays.
Speaker: I know it's been a while.
Speaker: But like I explained to you in the first meeting we had, these things can get held up when there's, you know, multiple things we have to do for the project.
Speaker: And I have to meet with him again now.
Speaker: Basically, I have to resell the project to him.
Speaker: He didn't say he wanted to cancel it.
Speaker: He was just surprised to hear from me because he thought the project was canceled.
Speaker: He thought it wasn't pressing.
Speaker: So the big mistake that I made, as you can probably guess at this point, is lack of communication.
Speaker: I was not communicating with my customer.
Speaker: And now I'm paying the price for it.
Speaker: Could lead to a cancel.
Speaker: I think I'm going to be able to save it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Cause he wasn't like, it wasn't like freaking out or anything, but I have to go back.
Speaker: I have to drive probably an hour round trip because it's an area that I'm not working anymore.
Speaker: Take time out of my day when all of this probably could have been prevented if I was communicating with this customer.
Speaker: And I did put this through, it was a complicated project.
Speaker: So I did put this through an installer that I don't typically use.
Speaker: It was a little bit different than what I'd normally do.
Speaker: And so he was outside of the normal, I guess you could say, scope of communication outside of the standard operating procedure that I have for just checking my installer portal, communicating with the customers.
Speaker: My mistake was he got forgotten.
Speaker: I'm like, oh, this is a one-off project.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: That installer, they're probably communicating better.
Speaker: I'll just kind of relax for that one.
Speaker: He seemed chill.
Speaker: And so I didn't communicate with him for several months.
Speaker: And this was an older couple, older Mexican family.
Speaker: So just end of the day, kind of a recipe for disaster because especially older folks like that, sometimes they don't know how to use technology.
Speaker: They're not going to reach out to you.
Speaker: They're going to forget things, right?
Speaker: And so I dropped the ball on it.
Speaker: So moral of the story is always be communicating with your customers.
Speaker: You need to set up an SOP, a standing operating procedure to communicate with your customers.
Speaker: If you don't, you're going to be like me.
Speaker: You're going to have to spend unnecessary time on the phone with customers.
Speaker: You're going to have to spend unnecessary time possibly going back to prevent them from canceling.
Speaker: to go and re-explain the deal, to go and resell them, show them the value proposition.
Speaker: And it's just going to cause cancels, going to cause headaches, going to cause delays, where all this probably could have been prevented if I was communicating with this customer.
Speaker: So I'm going to give you three tips, three things that you can start to do.
Speaker: Easy to say, right?
Speaker: Communicate with the customer, but how should you do it?
Speaker: When should you do it?
Speaker: How often?
Speaker: What tools do you use?
Speaker: This is a fascinating conversation to have.
Speaker: And I love this side of solar.
Speaker: I love setting up these systems and getting this dialed because I think this is something that a lot of people don't have set up.
Speaker: A lot of people are not doing.
Speaker: And this is one way that I think it's going to get you more referrals.
Speaker: It's going to lead to more satisfied customers, far less cancels.
Speaker: your life is going to be much smoother, much easier.
Speaker: So take it from myself.
Speaker: If you do not have this set up, set up something today and I'm going to give you some tips.
Speaker: So here's tip number one, either you or you're an assistant, maybe it's someone on your team, maybe it's your brother, sister, cousin, whatever, commit to one day of the week to go through your pipeline, get updates for your customers, and then give the customer the updates and
Speaker: What's going on in the project?
Speaker: Where are they at?
Speaker: Are we waiting on the permits?
Speaker: Are we stuck on the HOA?
Speaker: Hey, give them some sort of update.
Speaker: And I think a smart thing to do, I got this from Taylor McCarthy, but as you close the deal, you should be telling these people, hey, this is a long project.
Speaker: set the proper expectations, especially if it's a complicated project like this one.
Speaker: But let them know, hey, it's construction.
Speaker: There's going to be delays.
Speaker: Things happen with it.
Speaker: So generally, no news is good news.
Speaker: That's the line.
Speaker: No news is good news.
Speaker: So we're going to try to give you weekly updates.
Speaker: But just know that even if you don't hear something for a little bit, that's generally a good thing.
Speaker: We're still working on it.
Speaker: So I think that's a great way to preface it as you're telling them what's going to happen as you're
Speaker: setting the expectations because you don't want to tell them that the deal is going to be installed in three weeks, then it takes three months.
Speaker: Think that's going to lead to happy customers?
Speaker: Probably not.
Speaker: But that's step number one, either yourself or an assistant.
Speaker: I personally have a virtual assistant that helps with this, but set up a system for one day of the week to go through your pipeline, give the customers an update.
Speaker: Personally, I do this
Speaker: On Fridays, it's the day that I like to go through and give the customers an update and take it from me.
Speaker: Don't cut corners on this.
Speaker: Even if you have a one-off deal through a different installer, maybe you have to send it to a buddy to close, whatever.
Speaker: Still take the responsibility.
Speaker: take ownership of doing this, even if it's, you know, through different installers or even if there's something funky going on with it.
Speaker: And step number two is this, have the same person give that update every single week.
Speaker: Hey, whether it's you,
Speaker: I think you need to get to the point where you have an assistant or someone helping with this, especially if you want to do volume, right?
Speaker: If you're closing five deals a week, it's going to start to add up a lot.
Speaker: And guess what?
Speaker: You're going to get to the point where you close five, five, five.
Speaker: You got 15 deals in the pipeline now.
Speaker: That's going to start to take some time as you're responding to their questions, as you're giving them updates all by yourself.
Speaker: So if you want to really take it to another level,
Speaker: learn how to outsource some of these things.
Speaker: Hey, and we can help you, by the way, if you're wondering, how do I set this up?
Speaker: There's so much to do, so much to focus on.
Speaker: We do have a program for this.
Speaker: Hit me up if that's something that interests you.
Speaker: But right now with the people in our Inner Circle program, we're helping them set up these systems, set up these processes, get their own virtual assistants so they can offload all of these things and spend more time on the important stuff like selling.
Speaker: like contacting referrals, right?
Speaker: Okay, so make sure you do that.
Speaker: But a person that's probably is doing more volume than anybody in the solar industry, he's been on the podcast, Ricardo Ritchie.
Speaker: He just did, I think, 90 deals in 60 days or something like that.
Speaker: Um, maybe it's 45 days, but something insane.
Speaker: But he, what he does is every single deal he closes, he sets up a three-way text with him and his, or with the, uh, customer with his assistant.
Speaker: And then, yeah, obviously he's in there too.
Speaker: And he introduces them and he says, Hey, this is the person you're going to get updates from every week for the scope of the project or for the length of the project.
Speaker: If you have any questions, you can reach out to them, just send them a text.
Speaker: They're really good.
Speaker: They're going to get back to you.
Speaker: And then that way he sets it up to where they're not going to bother him.
Speaker: I mean, he's, yeah, he's, he's going to try to get back to him, but he sets expectation that they should be reaching out to the project coordinator, the project manager for updates, for questions they may have.
Speaker: Cause when you're closing, you know, 30 deals a month, you're,
Speaker: you don't have time to respond to all these customers and give them updates and do all that.
Speaker: Hey, but I don't know if you've had the experience where you've called like a customer support line.
Speaker: They transfer you to someone else.
Speaker: Maybe it's your credit card company.
Speaker: You're trying to get a charge, dispute or whatever.
Speaker: I recently went through that.
Speaker: Wife's wallet got stolen, had all these charges to dispute.
Speaker: But sometimes you call the company and they're like, okay, you know what?
Speaker: We're going to transfer you to our manager.
Speaker: We're going to transfer you to this department.
Speaker: We're going to transfer you to someone else.
Speaker: I've worked with some installers who shall not be named.
Speaker: I'm not going to throw them under the bus, but some installation companies I've talked to, they're the same way.
Speaker: Try to get an update for a customer and they'd send you to five different people.
Speaker: They all have different stories.
Speaker: So I'm sure everyone's had that experience.
Speaker: It's extremely frustrating when you don't know who to talk to, when you're getting different stories, when you have questions that aren't answered.
Speaker: So make sure you are introducing them to someone, whether it's yourself or
Speaker: or project manager, or your assistant, make sure they know who to get that update from.
Speaker: So they're not like I was talking to 10 different people to get one update.
Speaker: So that's step number two, have the same person give the updates every week.
Speaker: Okay, same day, same time, same person, that's going to lead to customer satisfaction.
Speaker: That is good customer service.
Speaker: And this is what's lacking in the solar industry.
Speaker: So let's clean this stuff up.
Speaker: Let's not be like the crappy companies out there.
Speaker: And then the third thing, last but not least, is get organized with this and use a CRM, customer relations manager.
Speaker: Okay, we've had some people on recently that have talked about CRMs, but there's free ones.
Speaker: Okay, you don't have to spend money.
Speaker: If you're brand new, you can start organizing your projects.
Speaker: And even if you're just setting up deals, some of the best setters that I'm working with right now and the best setters I've seen in the industry are
Speaker: They're taking initiative to also organize their pipeline, organize their deals.
Speaker: And this is something that I love.
Speaker: My top guy right now, top setter that's having a ton of success, he's following up with me and he's helping me manage the projects.
Speaker: Hey, I'm doing this, but it helps so much to have a setter who follows up and says, hey, Taylor, how's this deal going?
Speaker: Do we need to update them?
Speaker: Hey, where are they at in the process?
Speaker: Anything we can do to speed this up?
Speaker: He's taking initiative and that's what separates setters that aren't doing so great from setters that are crushing it.
Speaker: Okay, so even if you're a setter listening to this, oh, Taylor, this doesn't apply to me.
Speaker: I'm not closing deals.
Speaker: I don't have to manage my pipeline.
Speaker: I think it's going to help you get the deals installed if you help your closer do this.
Speaker: Okay, but use a CRM.
Speaker: There's free ones like monday.com.
Speaker: ClickUp is free.
Speaker: I'm recently starting to use that a little bit.
Speaker: The one that I use, it's the best one in my opinion.
Speaker: Right now it's high level.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You can, a lot of people are using this in solar now.
Speaker: You can text your customers from it.
Speaker: You can email, you can set up automations, a ton of ways you can customize it.
Speaker: And this is what I use with my virtual assistant.
Speaker: She goes in there, she can text from there and she can have all the customers online.
Speaker: organized and you know drag and drop pretty dialed and again this is what all of our clients get in our coaching group in our coaching program so if you would like to have access to this stuff and be coached on how to just maximize the results from it hit me up got a few openings for our group okay but that's tip number three
Speaker: Whatever you're doing, make sure it's organized.
Speaker: Put it in a spreadsheet for crying out loud.
Speaker: Put it in a notebook.
Speaker: There's guys that are old school that just are writing these things down.
Speaker: But figure out some way to organize it and keep track of all these things.
Speaker: Because if you can't be organized, then how are you going to give your customers updates?
Speaker: How are you going to know what's going on?
Speaker: So those are the three tips for it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Learn from my mistakes.
Speaker: Number one, commit to one day of the week to go through your pipeline and give your customers the update.
Speaker: Don't cut corners if it's a one-off deal, right?
Speaker: Number two, have the same person give that updates every single week, whether it's you, whether it's assistant, whether it's a lower producing rep in your office, have someone help you give an update every week.
Speaker: And then number three, use a CRM, figure out a way to organize these people and don't drop the ball on the organization aspect.
Speaker: Okay, so these are little things that are often overlooked, but I think it's extremely important.
Speaker: And this is what's going to create longevity in solar.
Speaker: Okay, we can't just be the reps who are five by the night who come in, come out, we're not organized.
Speaker: It's like pouring water in a bucket with holes in it, right?
Speaker: You're just going to leak customers, you're missing out on referrals, you're
Speaker: you're missing out on a lot of opportunities if you're not implementing these things.
Speaker: So I hope these things help.
Speaker: Send this to someone that could use some more organization that is having a lot of cancels.
Speaker: I think this is going to help them send it out.
Speaker: And I can't wait for the next episodes.
Speaker: We've got some exciting guests coming on.
Speaker: So keep tuning in every Tuesday and Friday.
Speaker: We're coming at you.
Speaker: Love you guys so much.
Speaker: Appreciate the listens, the support, the sharing of the podcast, and we'll keep bringing the heat.
Speaker: So we'll see you next time.
Speaker: Peace out.
Speaker: Go close some deals.
Speaker: Hey, solopreneurs, are you sick and tired of spinning your wheels every month and not seeing your cells increase?
Speaker: Well, so was I. And the truth is, I was never able to improve it until I figured out what was going wrong.
Speaker: So that's why I'm excited to announce for a limited time, we are doing a free cells diagnostic.
Speaker: We'll break down your cells process.
Speaker: figure out the holes in your business and see how we can help you improve.
Speaker: So at now we have six bucks for this month.
Speaker: So book a call now.
Speaker: Don't miss out.
Speaker: What you're going to do is send an email to taylor at solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: That's taylor at solarpreneurs with an s dot com.
Speaker: I'll send you out a calendar link and we will figure out the time that works best.
Speaker: So shoot that email and let's increase your sales.
