Transcript
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 fail.
Speaker: I teach you how to avoid the mistakes I made in 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? 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. Hey, what's going on solopreneurs? Today we're gonna be talking about the importance of trust in your solar cells and how trust is gained in drips and lost in buckets.
Speaker: So welcome to the show. My name is Taylor Armstrong. We're coming at you live today. from Cabo Mexico on a little anniversary trip this week. Thought, hey, why not get in a little podcast while we're here hanging out on the beach. So if you're watching the video version of this, you're seeing a little ah ocean background.
Speaker: Hopefully you enjoy little switch up here. But as usual, we're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals and have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: And I hope you are enjoying your summer and having tons of success and hopefully able to get vacations in here and there as well, because solar is a long journey. You need to be at rewarding yourselves. This podcast, it's going off of a little experience that happened. If you follow me on social media, already saw what went on with this.
Speaker: But a long story short, we had a handyman that had been working at our house basically since we bought the house past about two and a half, three years. And we'd always had him come for odd jobs.
Speaker: He always did a pretty good job. um You know, charged really inexpensive. So little off the beaten path, you know, a little rough around the edges, but um always was a good guy. What happened though is he...
Speaker: did some work for us this past Sunday. After ah he got done the next morning, I went to go to an appointment and I realized, i don't know where my iPad is. Could not find my iPad anywhere. You know, I wasn't really suspicious of our handyman at first, just because, you know, we had trust him for years.
Speaker: It built up the trust, had always done a good job. And he was outside of our house, but I thought, did we leave doors unlocked? I don't know. And so didn't really think anything of it, but I checked the Find My app, showed my iPad, pinned it like a random location, went there, it didn't have any success.
Speaker: But then the next day we saw pins at a different location, which was a mobile home park. And that's when I started to... be really suspicious because our guy Carl, our handyman, he'd always told us he lived in a mobile home park, Escondido in our in our town there.
Speaker: That's when I'm like, okay, you know what? Probably was him. So we went and confronted him, ended up getting the iPad back. Was definitely an unexpected experience to say the least. We'll not be using him for a handyman work anymore. But it just caught me thinking...
Speaker: and He built up so much trust with us, gained that trust over time. Three years of gaining trust, doing jobs. He had been in our house, had played with our kids, had lots of interactions with them. And then one single bad mistake, he lost the trust in an instant.
Speaker: So in solar cells, might be a little different. you know we're We're building trust in like an hour for someone to make 25-year commitment. But there are... you know, things we can do to gain and to lose trust.
Speaker: And it's not going to be built over years, but it can be lost depending on what we do. so I'm going to give you four things to think about today, some ways that you can build some trust and hopefully not end up like my guy, Carl, losing the trust.
Speaker: and losing sales, because Carl, he lost a lot of future business, patriaring our trust like that. So don't be like Carl. But here's the first one, and that is to tell the truth no matter what, even when it hurts to sell. And I've seen guys tell little white lies here and there in solar. There's always the hard questions that customers ask. Like, hey what if we want to move? We want to get out of our contract later down the road.
Speaker: And it can be easy. Stretch the truth a little bit. to Not give them the full picture. Maybe leave things out at your convenience. I've seen guys do it. And in the past, I caught myself.
Speaker: leaving omitting details here and there to give little, you know, like little more desirable answers to some of these questions, especially on questions like that. For example, even this, this something that happened recently, small mistake I made on a cell, we had a customer, a Mexican customer, we a lot of these Mexican families around where I saw around San Diego, a lot of times they use very little power just the nature. A lot of homes don't have AC around here.
Speaker: And um we set this appointments. The customer is only paying, I don't know, 90, 100 bucks for electricity, very little. When we sat down for the presentation, the customer told us, oh, yeah, my bill's gotten crazy above 200, sometimes 250. And I looked at his bill, I saw his usage chart. God, no, he's not paying that much.
Speaker: But I was in disappointment with the guy who said it. He instantly just jumped to, oh, wow, yeah, it's a lot. So you're averaging like 250 for electricity. And the customer agreed with a He said, yeah, no, it's been crazy. Probably like, yeah, 250, which I have no idea where he got that from.
Speaker: But um it definitely helped us. The setter jumped in, already like kind of set that that was his average electric bill. And so I kind of went with it. Like, all right, well, whatever.
Speaker: They think they're paying more for electricity, then that's going to help us get the sale easier, right? And sure enough, we got the sale. But then guess what happened the next day? We get a call from the customer.
Speaker: And he says, ah you know, I double checked my bills and I'm actually paying a lot less than I thought. So i'm going to go ahead and cancel the solar. And just like that. And didn't, he didn't, he't you know, necessarily like accuse us that we told him he was paying more. Like he thought he was paying more than he was.
Speaker: And we just didn't correct him. But this is something that's If we would have just broken it down with them, would have helped them see and would have been, guess you could say more truthful in that. I think there's a way we could have got the sale and he would have seen, okay, these people, they're helping me understand how much I'm actually paying. They're helping me understand the benefits of solar and would have been a better chance of getting the sale rather than us spending all that time knowingly having the customer agree that he was paying a lot more than that actually was, then the sale cancelling. 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.
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 Solar Scout. 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. It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later canceled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given neighborhood.
Speaker: It's been working for a lot of teams across the country and now I'm on board too. 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 give my listeners a great deal. and they did.
Speaker: So go to solarscout.app forward slash Taylor and book a demo with them and you'll get 10% off your first month when you sign up. That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
Speaker: Okay, back to the show. so There's things like that. Look at your sales process. Maybe you're not necessarily lying to the customer, but are you leaving out details? Are you letting them believe maybe their bill is higher than it actually is?
Speaker: Are you leaving out what they will pay after going solar, right? Connection fees. Are you being truthful with them, explaining the costs after they go solar? And this is what's going to set you apart from other reps. And it's going to get you more referrals too.
Speaker: It will always gain you more in the long run than what you will make in the short term by possibly getting a customer by telling these little half-truths or leaving out details. Just think about that. Don't omit things. Don't tell little to half-truths. Tell people the full truth.
Speaker: And number two, don't be afraid to admit when you don't know something. And it's another thing to me tempting, just give them the answer they want to hear. But I remember one of the first sales I got, I think this was partly because of bad training, but I don't think I fully knew the answer myself. One of the one of my first customers that I closed by myself, they asked me, hey, are we still going to power when the electricity goes out? Oh, yeah, 100%.
Speaker: And it made sense in my head, right? Solar panels. of course, you're going to have power. By the time, you know, there wasn't batteries going on these systems. They didn't have power when the electricity went out. So sure enough, six months later, after they got their power, their system up there, power goes out. The electricity still goes down in their house. I get a call from them I'm like, hey.
Speaker: They tell me, you told us we still electricity. What's going on? And then i had to tell them, you don't have electricity. I didn't know. Okay. And so I should have just told them, I'm not sure. Let me get a better answer. i think I had heard it from one of my coworkers, to be fair. But, you know, always double check your sources.
Speaker: Make sure you know what you're talking about. Number three. This is just doing the little things, building rapport. We all know to do that. But what are some little things you can do when it comes to building rapport that can set you apart from other reps?
Speaker: Something I heard in a training that ah my friend Melissa Hermize gave, one of the greats in solar, is um she talked about for people with pets, people with dogs, bringing little dog treats along, giving dog treats to the pets when they come and greet you. I thought that was genius, right? Something to set you apart.
Speaker: Maybe it's something like memorizing the kids' names, i'm checking in with them later about their kids. You know, I remember one time one of my customers my customers, I went to their kids' basketball game. and You can bet that I got referrals from this customer, showed up their kids' basketball game. Even something as small as answering the phone. So many reps just don't answer the phone for their customers.
Speaker: Are you picking up the phone when your customers call? and getting back to them in a timely manner. So think about those little things. And then last but not least, just remember to keep your word after the sale.
Speaker: Whatever you're telling the customer, you got to make sure you do it to a tee Are you telling them you're going to give them weekly updates? Then give them the weekly updates. Are you telling them that you're going to show up at the site survey, then show up at the site survey?
Speaker: Whatever you tell them, make sure you actually do it. It's one of the fastest ways to get a cancel is by not doing what you said you're going to after the sell. We're setting unrealistic expectations.
Speaker: Are you telling them that they're going to have their solar installed in a month and it took them three months? Well, good chance that customer is going to cancel after a month. You set bad expectations. So make sure always under promise and over deliver. Just have that communication, start that group text after the cell and always be in communication with your customers and over delivering for them.
Speaker: So I hope this gives you some things to think about. okay And just think about how many these tiny decisions go into building enough trust. Right. Goes back to our handyman.
Speaker: that we fired, right? all the All the little, all the times where he did a good job, it was building trust, was lost in an instant. Don't be like Carl, make sure you are not losing trust in instant and keep your word.
Speaker: That's how we're gonna build a good reputation solar. That's how we're gonna all improve as an industry. That's how we're gonna make our lives much easier in the future is by developing the reputation of keeping our word.
Speaker: Hey, so I hope this serves as a cautionary tale. If you are being a little bit untruthful in your sales, then now's the day. Change it. yeah You don't have to keep telling half-truths. You can go out and change how you sell.
Speaker: I promise you, it will help you in the long run. Even if you think you're going to lose sales leaving out details it will be better believe me thanks for tuning in today we got some exciting episodes coming up make sure to tune in for next podcast we've got my friend Brad Mortensen over at RepCard he's going to come on talk about some new features they're using as part of RepCard this is a great tool to build trust speaking of trust so tune into that one I'm sweating my tail off here in the heat so we're tuning out today but we'll see you on the next episode peace
Speaker: What's up, solopreneurs? Hope you enjoyed the episode. Before you run out and start selling more solar yourself, wanted to let you know about an exciting new cheat sheet we created it specifically for you in mind.
Speaker: One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start? What episodes should I listen to in the podcast? And You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
Speaker: So what we've done, we created the top 10 most downloaded, most listened to, and i would say widely accepted, most useful podcasts that we've done here on Solrepreneur.
Speaker: We put them together all in one sheet so you can go, you can hit the ground running, especially if you're new, you do not want to not have this sheet. So go download it right now. It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com. Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com. Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs.
Speaker: We will have that in the show notes. Go download it right now. And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them. That's going to show you how. So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.
