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From Door Knocking to AI Deals: How Jordan Alexander Revolutionized Virtual Solar Sales
231 Plays21 days ago
Jordan Alexander is embracing the future as he uses AI to optimize his virtual lead generation, giving his team more room to grow in every other aspect of their sales. Away from traditional CRMs and direct human intervention, Jordan's integrations mark a new era of efficiency, ethics, and trust building that will be a part of solar's potential future.
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Transcript
Invitation to the Solar Blitz Event
00:00:01
Speaker
Would you like to make more money than you've ever dreamed of? Then join us on our final Blitz of the Year in sunny Southern California this November fourteenth through the 22nd. We're going to have Golden Door Award winners, people who have had a thousand plus career installs in solar. So make sure to click the link below, get your spot before they run out. we have 20 spots, very limited.
00:00:23
Speaker
We'll see you there.
Taylor Armstrong's Solar Journey
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong. 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.
00:00:44
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.
00:00:56
Speaker
What is a solopreneur you might ask? 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.
Introducing Guest: Jordan Alexander
00:01:07
Speaker
All right, we are back with another podcast.
00:01:09
Speaker
What's up, everybody? and This guest, I'm excited. He was referred to us by, yeah, really, really cool, Sean Tolmander. He came on the podcast with us. and think it was like four or five months back.
00:01:22
Speaker
And then um this this ah individual was recommended us to us by Sean. ah This guy, he's crushing it. They're doing a lot of retail, virtual I'm super interesting stuff. So I'm excited to have on Mr. Jordan Alexander. Welcome to the show, Jordan.
00:01:38
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you for having me. Yeah, and it'll be fun. ah This guy, he's from ah England across the across the pond there, and he's got a cool accent. So if anything, if you don't show up for the podcast, just show up to hear this guy's accent.
00:01:51
Speaker
I think yeah not a lot of people have heard this accent on the podcast. but So that bring out your best accent for us, man. That'll be good. Yeah. I'll try. Do you feel like ah it's changed a lot? Like since you you said you've been here 14 years now.
00:02:04
Speaker
So do you feel like you got you had a yeah you had a way more way thicker accent in the beginning? For sure. Yeah, it sounded like Harry Potter when I was a kid. Now it's more American. Believe it or not, most people think I'm Australian or South African now. I don't even get England that much.
00:02:18
Speaker
Yeah, I probably would have said that too, actually. Cool,
The Advantage of Accents in Sales
00:02:23
Speaker
man. So yeah, I think it'll definitely do you feel like because I always think people with accents, I feel like it almost gives them an edge in appointments and talking about solar to people because they almost like have to listen more.
00:02:34
Speaker
and I don't know what it is. It just kind of like captures the tension, especially people knocking on doors like we got our door knocking teams and some of our best door knockers. They have like pretty thick accents. And you would think, oh, these guys, <unk> they're not going to do as well, but they actually crush it.
00:02:49
Speaker
So what do you feel like it's the same thing? do you feel like it it kind of forces people to pay attention to do you a little bit more in the beginning? It can, definitely. yeah ah Back when I was door knocking a lot, you would definitely get the, not even the objection, but the, oh, where are you from? ah Or you why do you sound like that? But, you know, it can also hurt sometimes if you get a real pro-American person, we don't want to listen to this English. yeah But it definitely helps. It's good icebreaker.
00:03:14
Speaker
Yeah, because don't know, people... A lot of people think I have an accent too. I get that. Are you from like Minnesota all the time, which I don't know how i got like a Minnesota accent, but but sometimes I feel like it helps me out there.
00:03:26
Speaker
So, stuff like that but ah yeah, man, so I'm excited to dive in and just kind of talk about the things you guys
Transition from Vivint to Solar Sales
00:03:33
Speaker
are doing. As we talked about before we started recording, things are shifting a lot in solar. A lot of changes have happened and I know you guys are doing some retail, some things a little bit different.
00:03:43
Speaker
But how long have you been working with ah Sean now? Sean and I, just under a month. Been a few weeks we've been together. we're We're just now launching a lot of Home Depot and Lowe's retail with the company we're with Vital.
00:03:55
Speaker
Like you said, there's been a huge shift in the industry. So we had to kind of pivot to keep our volume and production up. ah What we did with the virtual side was a lot of loan-only states and a lot of um states are now being pulled out of but not only Freedom, but a lot of other companies because there's not going to be enough volume without the the tax credit and the loans. so We're looking forward to the retail. we've We've done some soft launches so far and the statistics so far so good. Look forward to to improving it and growing it.
00:04:23
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. So yeah, I want to talk a lot about that. But before we get into that, what did solar, how did you get into solar? Like, what were you doing before you linked up with Sean? Yeah, what did it look like getting into solar for you?
00:04:36
Speaker
It's funny. I was actually like an anti-solar guy because I started at Vivint, like 90% of door knockers. So when I was out there door knocking, my first first thing I'd say is, hey, I'm not the solar guy. I promise I'm with Vivint because it was just so heavily saturated in Florida.
00:04:52
Speaker
And um yeah, I was super against it. I didn't think it was it was anything special. um And then after I'd done my first season at Vivint, I was part of... ah part of the team of that whole Vivint and Solar Pros transition.
00:05:05
Speaker
you know that was That was my management, my friends. So I went over, I checked it out, and um I realized there was a lot of money involved, a lot of potential. But I wanted to to grow quicker than then I probably should have. So I went and found a a small local company and became our own manager, built a small door-to-door team.
00:05:22
Speaker
At our peak, we had 11 people out there knocking doors closing. So it went well. you know I realized that the solar money was a lot better than the alarm money or the pest money. um So slowly transitioned. and And it's funny, that's actually how I got into the virtual side was I met ah guy who tried to recruit me um and a few of my door knockers over to his
Virtual Sales and Lead Generation Strategies
00:05:43
Speaker
company.
00:05:43
Speaker
And um we ended up both kind of brainstorming the idea together from driving from house to house to house. We we could only sit in so many appointments a day. yeah And we were like, hey, I'm just going to call this next appointment. And you know, do it over the phone because I don't want to drive two hours to it after I just drove two hours this way back and forth and started to work. We got momentum and we started to close over the phone and we realized we could do it.
00:06:07
Speaker
So then I spent all of my time diving into lead generation and how to get the ah the lowest cost per lead, lowest acquisition and and still keep a ah good closing rate. And then, yeah, started about a year and a half ago now.
00:06:19
Speaker
Okay. Wow. So for about a year and a half now, you've been doing only virtual then. that right? Yeah, mostly. Yeah. Pretty much only virtual. I haven't i't been in a house closing in a while all over the phone.
00:06:30
Speaker
Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's cool. And i know it's a dream for a lot of people. and I know some people have like dabbled in the virtual stuff, but it hasn't worked out. um Yeah, myself included. I've done some virtual too. And obviously during COVID, anyone that was selling during COVID, I think everyone had to do virtual at that time.
00:06:47
Speaker
But then once once COVID was over, um I'm just like, I'm going back to in person. know there's pros and cons. Like you said, virtual, you can get in front of more people. You don't have to drive all over the place.
00:07:01
Speaker
um But yeah, what are some like, why do you think some people fell a virtual and I know people are like, Oh, it's so hard to close yeah doing a virtual. What have you found? And what are like maybe some mistakes people make some differences in closing virtual versus in person?
00:07:17
Speaker
Right, it is a whole different game, right? So when when you get into the lead generation side of it, it's completely different whether you're doing virtual
Handling Volume and Pricing in Virtual Sales
00:07:25
Speaker
or not. So you have two aspects of of the business at that point.
00:07:28
Speaker
You have a lead generation side, which is heavily, heavily dependent on cash flow. And then you have the phone call phone sales, which is another learning curve, Now, closing over the phone is never going to be what it is in person. You're not shaking the hand.
00:07:41
Speaker
you're not You're not meeting them face to face. You're not spending an hour and two hours in the home. um So naturally, your retention rate is going to be going to be high and um you're going to have a lower percentage of closing.
00:07:52
Speaker
So we we played the volume game more heavily. We weren't underselling ourselves badly, but we were mainly selling on price more than value. When I'm in a home, I tend to sell more on value, especially I'm in one of the meccas for solar. I'm right here in Duke Energy and Tico and FP&L. So it's really easy to sell here on value and you can actually sell fairly high with still good savings. But when we're selling in these other states like Montana, Idaho, yeah Arkansas, Georgia, not quite as much as on ours.
00:08:19
Speaker
And the utilities are sometimes little bit less expensive. um So you really kind of have to drop the price, sell on the savings more than more the value, especially over the phone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:30
Speaker
That's cool. And so what, uh, yeah, how do you guys determine what States you sell and you just kind of like test leads wherever, and then you see, Oh, this, we're getting a lot of leads in this market. And then you put more money to it.
00:08:43
Speaker
Is that the
Lead Generation and Market Research
00:08:44
Speaker
process? Yeah. Unfortunately, I didn't have a crystal ball because if I did, I'd have i have a lot more money in the bank. But yeah, it's it's just trial and error. um The way I looked at it is the first thing I went for is what's going to have my lowest cost per lead?
00:08:58
Speaker
Where do I have the lowest baselines or red lines where I'm going to make be able to make the most money? you know Where has the best early rates with decent net metering? And obviously, every state has little niche areas that are better than others.
00:09:10
Speaker
So then you need to zone into the certain areas. So a lot of it is market research. You've got to do a lot of research in the markets ahead of time. And again, the the numbers are ah the biggest part. What most people don't understand with like a a lead generation side of the business is if you're spending $30, $40, $50 a lead, you know you think, okay, you know I'm making $5, $10,000 a sale here. I can spend more. I can spend more.
00:09:32
Speaker
But what you don't realize is when when when you actually break down the numbers, an extra $10 per lead can take out more than 50% of your profit. you know like it can it can die It can take such a big chunk out of it to where lead cost is important. Acquisition cost is important.
00:09:47
Speaker
you know And then you then you break down the quality of lead versus the price of the lead. If you're spending $10 a lead, but you're closing one for every 200 of them, It's not great. I want to spend it a little bit more for the leads um and and get a better quality lead to to keep the acquisition down.
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. What do you
Competition in Lead Generation
00:10:04
Speaker
find? Because something I saw in um closing like virtual online leads, I don't know if it just... I never like kept track of all the numbers, but it seemed like there were more people that were wanting to like shop around and it's like they click on...
00:10:18
Speaker
uh one button all these companies are contacting them uh over the internet so how did you see that a lot like the people are more like okay thanks for the info now i'm gonna go shop with the other company or whatever and yeah how do you guys deal with that um Well, I mean, the easiest answer and the easiest way of dealing with it is running exclusive ads. So that way you're not you know getting people who have have been sent to five different companies.
00:10:43
Speaker
um Obviously, you're going to lower your lead cost significantly by doing a cost per lead basis. I mean, the big companies like CEE, Clean Energy Experts, they went out of business too recently. You can buy the shared leads and you and then you're just bidding against other people.
00:10:57
Speaker
You can buy exclusive leads and then hope that they didn't fill out two ads or three ads or they didn't speak to somebody earlier. The majority of the time, because these people are interested, they have some sort of interest, they have spoke to somebody before, they've sat down with somebody before, they have another quote.
00:11:12
Speaker
So a lot lot of the time these people know what they're talking about. And um again, the easiest way to deal with it, especially being over the phone, in my opinion, is just transparency. As long as you build the right value, you show pricing and you show the ethics of of what you're doing.
00:11:26
Speaker
And it makes sense. There's no reason for them not to do it. But you do have to play that volume game. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's the difference, obviously, door knocking. It's like you're taking a lot of people that maybe they weren't really interested. They didn't really have any previous knowledge of ah solar in a lot of cases.
00:11:43
Speaker
But yeah, you're bringing that level, and so... It's where there's a lot less ah shopping around and all that just because you are the one to educate them and get them interested and get them to that point.
00:11:54
Speaker
And ah it's frustrating when, because it happens in door knocking too, where you're the one that educates them and they're like, oh, great. You know what? Now you showed me that I actually am interested in solar. Thank you. Now I'm going to go get 10 quotes or whatever. it's like, it's like, oh, man.
00:12:07
Speaker
Then you go back a month later, they got some solar with some other company. It's like, you got to be kidding It's like, they just got bunches door knocker. Yeah, yeah. yeah But yeah, so like in your experience, when you were knocking doors, a lot of people...
00:12:24
Speaker
asks, what about as far as what you make? Because it sounds like you probably have more volume. You're maybe closing more virtually. You can get in front of more people.
Door Knocking vs. Virtual Sales
00:12:32
Speaker
But ah does that translate to actually, you think like an average person that's knocking doors for their leads versus an average person that's ah doing something like this, online leads?
00:12:42
Speaker
what do you What do you think? Are they making more doing it that way? Or is the average door knocker making more? it's ah That's a great question. And my answer is going to be whoever works harder will make more money. Right? Okay.
00:12:53
Speaker
the The commissions are going to be similar. ah If you're going out and self generating, obviously you'll make the most money knocking on a door, closing a deal. You have zero costs. um It's 100% commission.
00:13:04
Speaker
You're not splitting it with anybody. Now, if you do the traditional set of closer model, and it's very, very similar to our retail model. So our our average commission for ah for a sales rep was right around $3,000.
00:13:15
Speaker
um On the low end, we're looking at $2,000. So you know that they were making really decent money and and right on par with what you would make with Assetical as a model. ah The difference for them is like everything is paid for. They're not shelling out any any sort of money. We we took care of that and on the back end.
00:13:30
Speaker
And they get the volume game. Like i said, they get warm leads. Everyone that calls interested. They're sitting in an air-conditioned office behind a computer. They're not walking 20,000 steps a day getting yelled at.
00:13:40
Speaker
So it's just a different game. um The people who are willing to work hard and hustle, door to door will always be the way. You have zero costs. You can go out there essentially 24-7 and go and make money.
00:13:51
Speaker
um yeah But if you are if you have the funds to invest and you have you have the team behind you to help you build it as well, the virtual side is very, very scalable. you can You can get in front of a lot more people. um You can get a lot more deals with this.
00:14:04
Speaker
yeah Yeah. And then what's your opinion? Because I've seen some people that try to do like a combination, like some door to door and then um like some virtual, some um online leads and everything. And I think some people can succeed with that. But I've also seen it where some people try to do both and they just like are putting part time into both and not really getting that much success in ah in either one of them.
00:14:28
Speaker
So you guys, do you have anyone doing like a combination or would you recommend that? Or what are your thoughts on that? As of now, we don't. um I think it really just depends on your structure of ah your work life. um If you're on like the blitzing model where you're doing a week or two on and then, you know, a few weeks off, then when you go on your blitz, as long as your head's down and you're going 110% door knocking, then what you do in the in the three times, completely fine. If you want to, you know, buy leads or go do virtual or go self generate,
00:14:56
Speaker
it doesn't affect your your bulk of work, right? um If you were, let's just say a full-time door knocker and you are in a local market, if you're doing both, it's goingnna be it's going to be difficult for you to focus on one. I would recommend you put 100% of your effort into one ah niche and stick to it.
00:15:12
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. I think that's good too. Yeah. Um, and cause yeah, I was, I was running some ads a while back and getting okay results. But then i think, uh, what happened with me, I just got like kind of exhausted with having to constantly adjust the ads and tweak it. ye And, uh, you know, it's not just like this magic thing that can turn on and it's going to work forever. It's like, you know, you constantly got to be adjusting things, uh, changing the copy, changing images,
00:15:39
Speaker
stuff like that. So, ah well, first of all, how did you like learn all this? Did you just kind of like try on air? Did you take like some course that taught you how to generate leads? You just jumped in?
00:15:51
Speaker
I just jumped in and started started doing it and I learned as I went. I'd been through multiple different lead companies, lead management companies. I'd taken little bits and pieces I learned from all of them.
00:16:02
Speaker
and And yeah, it it it was really trial and error for me. I had no backing of social media advertising. I had no background of of marketing in general. So it was all new to me. But what helped me do it was I had really good team in place where I had great closers that were producing good volume. had a great operations manager that would would take that weight off my shoulders so I could just go 110% into the lead generation, lead management. And you weren't like nervous at all that this is like, I'm kind of experimenting with this. You weren't worried, worried that you're going to be dumping money into something that might not.
00:16:32
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, that thought's always going to be in your head, right? It's, ah it's inevitable. yeahre You're dumping tens of thousands of dollars in. And there's no guarantee of any sort of return, right? So that's just any business in general, though, without without taking that risk, without without attempting to it, you'll never know what happened.
00:16:48
Speaker
You know, was okay with with potentially losing money and at least trying it and than sitting there never trying it, right? That's cool, man. Well, sounds like it's working ah well for you guys. and And I'm sure right now it's probably a lot of your defy leads have picked up with, with ah you know, we got tax credits expiring, things like that.
00:17:06
Speaker
Is that something you guys are really like drilling down on right now? And you feel like that's a good, good urgency builder for getting leads right now? Yeah, so we we were. um We're at the point now where we're not really pushing that anymore because of timing.
00:17:19
Speaker
You know, we're almost at the point where, especially where we are here, getting a ah job to PPO by the 31st isn't super guaranteed. it's it's not It's not strong anymore. We're now making that pivot um where we're just kind of sticking to the PPAs and leases since that's really all we're going to be able to sell primarily. And then we're also pivoting the states because our our bread and butter was where people weren't, if that makes sense. like You didn't have big door knocking teams going up to Oregon or going up to Montana and Idaho and you know all of these other states.
00:17:47
Speaker
No one's in them. so So lead cost is below, competition is super low, and you can still make a decent commission. It's never going to be what it'll be in Florida or California, but it's um the the numbers just made way more sense.
00:18:01
Speaker
so Now we're transitioning. We're completely switching our model for the markets that we're targeting. We're switching all of the advertising that we're doing to PPA-based other than you know getting a 30% credit, 30% off the system, et cetera.
00:18:14
Speaker
and And then we're going to supplement the missed volume by not being in all of these other states with the retail. That's awesome. And then what type of systems you guys have? Because I'm sure just like in door knocking, there's people that don't show up for...
00:18:26
Speaker
their appointments, their calls. um You know, most like virtual guys I talk to a lot of them use like, you know, a high level account or CRM to have like automatic follow ups and all that. So I don't know what systems you guys have.
AI in CRM Systems
00:18:40
Speaker
Maybe you can recommend some like basic systems for someone that's trying to set all this stuff up. For sure. Yeah, go high levels going to be the immediate immediate one. It's super easy. There's a ton of AI you can integrate into it. You can go pay a company thousands of dollars to build it out. mean, you can go on Fiverr and find somebody to build out your GoHigh level fairly inexpensively, implement a little bit of AI, and and you know it'll do the job. it'll hit It'll do the follow-ups. It'll put them on the calendars. We integrated AI about four months ago, ah four or five months ago, and it's so much different now.
00:19:09
Speaker
um Before, we were kind of just like a basic CRM where leads came in. They were worked manually by ah by a sales rep and then that was it. They didn't get touched by anything else. And once we implemented the AI, took a lot of the, I don't want to say door knocking, but like the the outreach to people who never answered the phone or needed a follow up, you know, took that weight off the shoulders and and let the guys just focus more on ah more on the fresh leads and the appointments that they were sitting. yes Yeah, that's, yeah, that's some grids changed a lot because, yeah, I mean, back when I was running all this stuff, we had, there's no, nothing like it is now. No ai
00:19:40
Speaker
No chat, GPT, none of that. So yeah, like the AI, you you guys just have it like reach out to people, cold leads, people didn't didn't respond and you just have AI automatically following up, things like that or yeah whatever. other whatever other do you have it yeah What else do you have it doing?
00:19:55
Speaker
We're not doing too much of the cold leads right now. um It's mainly just our pipeline because we have thousands and thousands of leads in our pipeline. And yeah, we we have the voice AI, we have the text and the email.
00:20:06
Speaker
The one piece of advice I'll give is AI's extremely important. Everybody needs to be utilizing it. There's a lot of compliance and legalities you need to be careful with. If you are going to implement AI, make sure you do it properly.
00:20:17
Speaker
Because you know you if you do get caught doing something incorrectly, ah you know especially with the new outreach laws for messaging people who haven't opted in, you've got to be really careful with that stuff. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. And ah is a, so the voice AI, like calling, is it to the point where you can have it call people and things like that? Or is it not?
00:20:35
Speaker
and Yeah, it'll call them, it'll speak to them. It'll set an appointment all over the phone. So it can even like live transfer to us. Like if they're on the phone, it'll, it'll ring. So whoever the, the, um, lead is assigned to, it'll ring that sales reps phone number so to let them know they're on the phone.
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah. Cause I mean, I don't know when I get these AI calls, I can always tell it's at least I think I can always tell it's it's AI talking. um so you feel like that You feel like it hurts conversion, like people can still tell it's AI, right? like When it calls them on the phone?
00:21:03
Speaker
Yes and no. um I would say more people don't think it's AI than do. A lot of the people we speak to are over the age of 30 or 40 years old. you know Anyone our age can pick it up pretty quickly because we grew up with that kind of stuff. But you know most people in their 40s or 50s, they're not super familiar with AI. and you know Especially over the phone, sometimes the line's not super clear.
00:21:25
Speaker
And they can't always tell um yeah unless they have some sort of tech background or, you know, people involved in their lives share AI with them and they hear the videos and stuff like that. That's incredible.
00:21:35
Speaker
I mean, yeah, it's coming a long ways and it's got to be nice just havingvin having it set appointments. And so like how many appointments you think you get a day from AI talking? Is it like pretty consistent and just go set appointments for you?
00:21:48
Speaker
It is definitely. Yeah, the older leads obviously have a way lower conversion, like the ones who we've already reached out to. But when we get fresh leads in, I mean, the AI probably sets 20 to 30% of them within 48 hours into an appointment. And then it increases even further when we actually, we speak to them on the phone when we get it we get a hold of them.
00:22:05
Speaker
So it's really helpful. And then most of those are pretty, they'll actually come to the appointment. It's not just setting an appointment, but then people don't show up. You feel like you can set just as solid of appointment as a real person talking to them?
00:22:17
Speaker
My opinion on this will differ than most people's, but I don't think appointments are a thing in virtual.
Setting Virtual Appointments vs. In-Person Meetings
00:22:22
Speaker
Whenever they do set an appointment, it's not it's not an appointment like when someone's coming out to your house to sit down to bring physical documentation or laptop in front of you. You're going over stuff like that.
00:22:32
Speaker
Our appointments is is just a conversation. right So I don't think of it as much as like, oh, hey, let's all sit down at the dining room table and put the phone on speaker. It's more of just like catching them at the right time, you know which is super difficult to do over the phone, just like door knocking. You know you never know what someone's doing behind a closed door. But it's not it's not an appointment like, hey, let's get together at five o'clock to to fully set this up. It's like, hey, I'll give you a call at five. you know We'll go over what the solar looks like. And then while they're on the phone, that's when you have to utilize, like do you have access to email right now?
00:23:02
Speaker
Are you with your your spouse or the decision maker in the home? You've got to figure those things out. And if they are, we We pick that apart in the middle of the pitch or the phone presentation. And as long as it's a right setup, then we're going to go all the way to the end. We're pushing for documents. We're pushing for for credit approvals.
00:23:16
Speaker
If we don't get that, then we do set follow-ups. You know, that's that's one of our little tricks is I'm asking throughout the throughout the pitch how many people in the house use power who own the home um would make a decision like this. I'm asking little questions to figure it out. and And then if they say something like, oh, yeah, my spouse or my husband or wife comes home later on,
00:23:34
Speaker
Like perfect. You know, these systems take us a little bit to design. There's a lot involved. What I'll do is I'll grab this information from you, everything I need for for a proposal, and then set a follow up to try and speak to them together.
00:23:45
Speaker
So it sounds like you're just trying to make it not like an official appointments where they're sitting down and having to devote a bunch of time. We're just like, yeah, we're going to give you a quick call this time. and basically heads up okay cool yeah well with solar right it's like if you get into the alarm system industry or or the pest control industry it's it's immediate right if you get it closed it's getting installed or done essentially immediately with solar it's it's a multiple week process i mean on on the fast end some of us get lucky with 10 day to two week installs in certain areas, but it's it's every bit of four weeks right before those panels on the roof. So it doesn't matter what appointment you set or how far you push them on that one appointment.
00:24:26
Speaker
There's so much time in between. There's so much follow up in between. You know, a good sales rep for solar, in my opinion, is is checking up weekly with the sale and updating them and communicating with them and and just keeping them in the loop because two weeks of no communication can sometimes scare somebody.
00:24:41
Speaker
So some of you already know that I run my own door-to-door sales team here in San Diego. 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.
00:24:53
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.
00:25:06
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. It's been working for a lot of teams across the country and now I'm on board too.
00:25:20
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, I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal. And they did.
00:25:31
Speaker
So go to solar scout dot 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 solar scout dot app forward slash Taylor.
00:25:43
Speaker
Okay. Back to the show. Yeah, 100%. And I think for people knocking on doors, it's like you almost have to treat it the same way, I think, especially how it is now, you know, and ah we're in California, pretty
Improving Door-Knocking Techniques
00:25:55
Speaker
mature market. People have heard about solar. And so most of the time, if you're just saying, hey, we're coming back for an appointment, it's and you know be people get in their heads and it's going to be some long drawn out process, then ah they just ghost the appointment. So I think, yeah, it's funny you say that because I think it's pretty similar even in door knocking. Now you almost just have to say, hey, we're popping by it this time with everybody. we're but We'll be here around five and it's a quick thing. We're just going to go over a design.
00:26:21
Speaker
And if you can get them to think like that, then we've seen like our our our appointments rate go way up just because, yeah, it's just like something that's no big deal in their head. The more they think it's going to be like a doctor's appointment, the some long drawn out thing, the more likely they're to ghost it.
00:26:37
Speaker
You know, guys like Taylor McCarthy talks about that, like not even saying the word appointments. But I think that's just how it is. And these days we've been so ah' conditioned to think of appointments as long drawn out things.
00:26:48
Speaker
They're going to take off the day that you got to make them think it's just like a quick thing. So sounds like it's pretty similar in doing the phones, the yeah virtual stuff. here Yeah, especially when they've already heard from somebody before. I mean, the amount of people, especially in our markets in like Florida and California, almost everybody sat down with somebody. So they know from the last time they did a year or two ago that it's an hour process. And they're like, oh, I don't want to sit here for an hour and hear it out again.
00:27:11
Speaker
ah to it two out The guy at last time he wouldn't leave, it'll be different. I promise. Yeah. Some guys are just like, we got some guys on our team that are just like, you know, ah every time I get in a home, I'm just going to stay in there as long as possible. So they never want to do this again. So they'll just sign up with me because I know they're not going to want to go through like a three hour home visit again.
00:27:32
Speaker
So they might as well just sign up with me so don't have to go through this. Like, okay, well, you better close them then. If you don't close them, then they're probably never going to do that again. Right. That's the tactic. Oh, we want to sit for two hours with six different companies.
00:27:44
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Decent tactic, I guess. It's funny, man. Well, so yeah, let's set let's talk about um some of the retail stuff you guys are doing, Jordan. So I know that's pretty new for you, but what's it been like?
00:27:58
Speaker
So are you doing the same process for getting like a... Retail leads now or like you guys are sending people in the Lowe's and Home Depot's or what's that been like doing the retail?
Retail Partnerships and Revenue through Referrals
00:28:09
Speaker
Yeah, so our initial launch was actually a third party lead provider. So I didn't have to worry about any appointment setting. I just worried about closes in home. You know, initially so far so good. We didn't get a ton of volume yet to to give you like real statistics, but you know Roughly, we've had three closes and 32 appointments. So, so far, so good. Not not and a big enough pool to really get a ah strong number though.
00:28:32
Speaker
What we're in the process of doing now is opening an internal retail team, which will be somebody who's like you know internal to Vital and us with management. they're going to be setting the appointments and Lowe's and Home Depot's. We're also going to keep this third party lead provider that we currently have, um let them build up and start rolling. So we'll have a couple of different lead sources from all in the retail.
00:28:52
Speaker
and It's pretty cool opportunity because these people are ah inside of a trusted store like Home Depot and Lowe's that they're all the time, you know, to have some sort of partnership with them builds a level of trust already, which is super helpful going into the home.
00:29:05
Speaker
and And again, it's it's to me, it's more similar like the virtual side, because these people are more reaching out to us as opposed to us reaching out to them, you know, that they show a level of interest. So when we actually go out to the home, it's something I've heard of before, they've thought about it before, you know, they reached out about it, as opposed to on the door knocking side.
00:29:22
Speaker
these people may have never heard of solar before, you know, and just now figured out the interest in it. So it's little bit different for us. Yeah. Okay. Something I've heard, i don't I don't know what your experience has been, but when you get a lead from retail like that, can you guys like kind of do whatever you want with it? Or are they pretty strict with like their brand? They want, they they're like, okay, you can only reach out to them once. Or like, can you put them in your system and do whatever you want with the lead? what does that look like?
00:29:51
Speaker
Yeah, to to an extent. um I mean, ah we we obviously have to follow compliance laws just like anything else. But yeah, I mean, we we are encouraged to follow up with them. You know, obviously, if they say no, we're not going to um hound them down constantly, constantly, constantly. But we do stay in touch with them.
00:30:07
Speaker
yeah There are automated messages that go out. and So if they reschedule an appointment, um especially if we sat the appointment and it didn't close initially, we're heavily encouraged to follow up and, you know, and try and get the close.
00:30:18
Speaker
At the end of the day, I like Me as a closer, I either want to hear a no, which is fine, or I want to hear a yes. I don't like the limbo period. and So if if I sit with you and we don't close the first time, I'm going to check in again and within a few days, a set of follow-up appointment, and going to keep going over it because there's only so much time you need to make a decision like that.
00:30:38
Speaker
And again, I either don't want to get to the no where, hey, you're off the list, not going to waste any more time, or the yes, like let's get it rolling. Yeah, 100%. hundred percent Yeah, well, that's interesting. Yeah, i will be curious to hear, um you know, future results.
00:30:52
Speaker
I've heard a lot of people doing that in the past, good and bad. But like you said, I mean, if you can have a um already like a trusted brand behind you and the people think it's... Because I hear a lot of times how people that went solar from Sunrun or whatever that used to be in the Costco, a lot of people jo say, oh, I went solar with Costco.
00:31:12
Speaker
like they don't even They don't even know that Sunrun was actually the company that did it just because they're thinking so much about the store where they heard it from. um so do you guys get that? all out Do people think you're like with ah with Home Depot, with Lowe's, do you have to like wear your own shirts or...
00:31:31
Speaker
How do you like yeah kind of use their brand your to your advantage? We do for sure. Yeah. And and we have Lowe's and Home Depot vests, aprons, you know, so so we do have access to say we're partnered with them. Of course we are.
00:31:42
Speaker
um When I mean, in our case, it is very well known, like during the process that we are vital in freedom. You know, we are partnered with Lowe's and Home Depot. and if it was the third party lead company, then they can even say that that was a lead company who set the appointment.
00:31:57
Speaker
um But even just going through the documents and everything, and it's it's pretty clearly stated what company is actually doing the installation. And we're always trying to address that. You know, like, hey, we're the ones doing the installation. This company is doing it. We're partnered with Home Depot or partnered with Lowe's because we don't want to have that confusion.
00:32:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, well, um so as we start kind of wrapping up here, Jordan, you've obviously you've been in the industry a long time, have a lot of had a lot of success in not only door knocking, but now doing the virtual side of things.
00:32:27
Speaker
So me coming from just mostly door knocking, running center closer and all that. um What are some what's some advice maybe you gave on just like building urgency? You talked about how now, you know, we can't.
00:32:40
Speaker
Maybe we can't use quite as much the tax credit aspiring. Right. Yeah, I still bring it up, but, um ah you know, it's not like, yeah, you're not getting busy, though. It's and so and only applying to the purchase system. I just bring it up as a reason that, A, lot incentives are expiring.
00:32:59
Speaker
But they don't necessarily have to know right then that it's only applying to the yeah the purchase systems. and but ah um But yeah, what what's like some urgency builders you use in the deal? And what do you think you're going to use moving forward? as you know We go into the new year, we can't necessarily use the tax credit ending as urgency after that. do you have any ideas on any tips on that for closers?
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah. And to be blunt, I never really used the tax credit thing until the last three months, you know until the big, beautiful bill came out. um It was never like that big of an urgency for me to push.
00:33:35
Speaker
I've always sold on the value of rate increases. That's always been my bread and butter, especially here in Duke when I was doing homes, Duke and FBNL and TECO, they raise rates consistently. It's historically proven.
00:33:48
Speaker
um you know when you show them break down the electric bill and show them that they're already paying for the solar fields that are going up and and all that building the the rate increase urgency is my favorite thing to do because if you can show them that they're stuck in this situation the bill is consistently going to go up just like it has statistically over the last 50 60 years plus um that urgency is important to me and then when you see these new bills that are getting signed for fpnl is attempting to raise bills by 100% within the next five years. right so When you see things like that coming out, it's that's the urgency I see where like, hey, the sooner we get you into this program, the sooner going to get away from these rate increases. These bills are going to keep going up and up and up. you know In this case, obviously, the leases can escalate as well, depending on if you sell you know zero to three, 4%. But the breakdown still statistically makes sense. If you show the rate increases over the last 100 years versus the 2.9% escalator or the 1.9%, whatever you do sell, it's always going to beat the system, especially when you you're coming day one, you know, 20, 30% lower than what the current bill is.
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. hundred percent And then you talked about um how important just the communication is. And these days, you almost got to be, yeah, you need to be having that communication weekly because as you said, the solar is a long process.
00:35:05
Speaker
So what type of system? i don't know if you set up the systems or like, how do you guys manage the project to make sure these things are getting to install? What's your ah systems? What's your advice on i'm having good communication and just actually like retaining the project so they make it to install?
00:35:21
Speaker
Yeah, so if you have some sort of automation CRM like I have set up, it does quite a bit of it for you. um When we put them in the post-sale bucket, then it's automated to give them the weekly happy messages.
00:35:33
Speaker
um On top of that, to make it more personal, what I do is every Monday when I come in the office, I go through my active pipeline of personal sales. And I go through and I text them what the status of their project is, what's going on, if there's been an update.
00:35:46
Speaker
If there hasn't been an update, it's simple. It's, hey, Taylor, hope all is going well. no updates here. On this end, we're still in permitting stage, you know, and And that's it. wait We're just keeping the communication going, keeping them happy, asking them if they have any questions.
00:36:00
Speaker
um Best time to handle an objections before it comes up, right? But yeah in that in that time, if they've heard something else from a friend, a family member, somebody who didn't like solar, someone who had a bad experience, and you don't speak to these people for three weeks, then you know that can get into their heads and they can start to think negatively. But if you consistently speak with them, crush the objections they have, or you know crush any any sort of skepticism that they have, then...
00:36:24
Speaker
you're more than likely going to get higher installation rate. Yeah. you ever get nervous about ah like automating that too much, having CRM or AI send out automatic updates?
00:36:35
Speaker
Just because I've had some experiences where, ah you know, I use like virtual assistants And at one point I was trying to automate it a little bit too much where we didn't have, we weren't on the same page.
00:36:47
Speaker
So I had talked to the customer on the phone. They had some concerns then and we weren't in great communication. So then my VA gave like a different update than I had just told them. And then actually caused the customer to cancel because they're like, oh, you just, Taylor just told me this. Now you're saying this, you know what, this I'm confused. Just forget about it.
00:37:05
Speaker
Cancel the project. And I'm like, oh, shoot. So from then from then on, I'm like, you know what? i better like I don't want i don't want like me trying to automate the process too much to cause like customer confusion, lead to cancels. um So yeah, what do you think about that? Do you try to you try to make it more personal? Or how much do you like automate versus you sending in personal updates?
00:37:27
Speaker
All right. my My personal automation is very basic. and that The automation I have going out is not project updates. it's It's more of communication updates. You know, I hope hope everything everything's going well.
00:37:38
Speaker
um I'm the one who personally does the updates. You know, that's my job. My job is to communicate with the customer. I'm the one who's built a relationship with them. I'm the one that's, you know, spent hours on the phone with them or in person with them, whatever it may be.
00:37:50
Speaker
um you are the one who needs to be texting them actual updates, right? I know project management sometimes does that depending on your company or, you know, you have the the personal management that reaches out and the the permitting teams reach out, engineering teams reach out, but you have that connection with them as long as you stay in contact with them on the on the status of if there is anything that's changing or when it changes, I think it's more personal. I think you'll have a sticky retention rate. If you are going to use automation, I would probably recommend keep it basic.
00:38:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's good advice. um Okay, well, and then last last question I had for Jordan. What about, I don't know how big you guys are on referrals. Do you get a lot of referrals from doing um virtual? i don't know if you have like systems set up for that, but ah maybe some advice you have with referrals.
00:38:35
Speaker
Absolutely. So I mean, referrals are the biggest part of your revenue stream. Because in the virtual side, and in the retail side, there are lead fees involved. Of course, it costs tons of money to to generate these leads. So whenever you pull a self gen out of being in a home or being on the phone, that's self gen pay, there's no fees involved, there's no lead fees involved, it is strictly commissioned to you.
00:38:57
Speaker
So I have my team trained to ask for referrals every single time, ask for three to five names, Let them know we do the referral fees, $500 referral fees, $750, whatever you want to do.
00:39:08
Speaker
I highly, highly encourage it. I teach the Cloverleaf method for the people who don't doorknock is whenever you do sell a home owner, first off, you should ask them to tell their neighbors. But second, you should be knocking on every single door within a quarter mile radius of them and i'm pushing for those referrals because it doesn't take much time.
00:39:25
Speaker
It doesn't take much effort. It's simply just asking the question and it can double or triple your revenue stream. Yeah. Wow. So good. Yeah. um That's a big one, especially for people that are doing in person. If you're not knocking around your installs, um you know, a lot of times I'll get a deal in a neighborhood.
00:39:42
Speaker
Maybe I've already knocked those homes. But when you got the trucks, they're actually installing i such a good time to go back and re-knock, even if even if they already said no before. <unk> like, hey, we came by before.
00:39:56
Speaker
and know I caught you at a bad time last time, but i don't know if you saw the trucks actually here doing your neighbors. And they still have that info for for the home. So we just while they're here, we just thought we'd come by make sure you guys already got the info, make sure that you guys at least know know what you're saying no to, and then try to transition an appointment. So powerful.
00:40:18
Speaker
yeah That's actually ah that's a lesson I learned when I was at Vivint. And it was actually my very, very first sale ever as a doorknocker. um i I spoke to this one lady and she gave me the runaround. She was like partially interested, partially wasn't. yeah She just wouldn't close. And I was very inexperienced at the time.
00:40:35
Speaker
And three days later on the on the Blitz, I sold the neighbor and they were friends. And as I sold the neighbor, as the truck came and started doing the installation, the homa the original homeowner, the lady came outside and asked me to come back in the house. And I sold her right after. i mean, within 15 minutes of the truck being there, she was signing up.
00:40:53
Speaker
So... Yeah, jealousy is a big thing. Some people don't want to be the first one. Some people are skeptical, you know, if that if their neighbor does it, and they have a little trust in their neighbor, though they might feel more comfortable. So you don't want to leave any meat on the bone.
00:41:05
Speaker
It never hurts to to ask. It never hurts to go out there and spend a little extra time. Yeah, so good. So good. Yep. um Well, cool. So if people want to reach out to you, maybe learn more about the virtual stuff, or pick your brain on that, what's the best way to get in touch with you, Jordan?
00:41:21
Speaker
ah Probably fine. Yeah. If you shoot me a text message or or a voicemail, you can just call me and I can answer. um It's going to be the easiest way. um On the virtual side, we're we're a little bit thinner on the hiring because you know there's so many costs involved. We don't want to overgrow.
00:41:35
Speaker
It's not like a door knocking team where you give a thousand people a t-shirt and send them out. No costs involved. yeah But on the retail side, there's a lot of opportunity and and we're definitely ah but' definitely looking for people to scale on that side. I don't know if...
00:41:50
Speaker
If you want me to read my number out or leave it like a chat somewhere. Yeah, you can, uh, yeah, you can shoot it to us. We'll just put it in the show notes and, uh, yeah, just don't blow them up too much. Yeah. Yeah.
00:42:02
Speaker
Hopefully we don't get you. Yeah. You just, by saying that you just opted in, you just, say you're under compliance, right? so object with People in spam, you know?
00:42:14
Speaker
I'm on instant time zone. Just keep that mind.
00:42:18
Speaker
Okay. Well, cool, man. Well, Jordan, it's been ah awesome having
Advice for Struggling Sales Reps
00:42:21
Speaker
you on. And to wrap up here, do you have any advice for maybe a struggling rep? Like you said, it's a lot of ups and downs. Solar, it's a crazy time right now. So I know a lot of people have left the industry, gone to other types of sales.
00:42:34
Speaker
And so um what would you say to maybe rep that's like struggling? i don't know if I should continue in solar. what What do you say to that rep? ah the The grass is not always greener on the other side. I think any opportunity that you work hard in is going to be a good one.
00:42:47
Speaker
So if you're struggling in one industry, you're more likely going to struggle in another. It's not necessarily the product. It's the person. So put your head down, work hard and aim for success.
00:42:58
Speaker
Love it. Love it. So good. So, uh, yeah, keep with it. Keep going. you will see fruits if you, uh, put your head down and go to work. So, uh, Jordan, thank you so much for coming on.
00:43:08
Speaker
We'll be excited to hear about how things are going in the retail, hear about more in the future. Some of the results, results you guys are getting with that. Um, but yeah, man, keep crushing it and, uh, look forward to talking again in the future.
00:43:20
Speaker
Yeah. I look forward to it. It's been a pleasure, Taylor. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, man. Hey Solarpreneurs, quick question. 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.
00:43:36
Speaker
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