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3 Ways to Increase Profitability in Solar
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This episode highlights three pointers you should consider adjusting in the systems you use for every step of solar sales. Knowledge is important in optimizing systems, and translates to less hassle for you and your customer.
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Transcript
Introduction to Sales Success and Podcast Goals
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong. I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in the year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail.
00:00:19
Speaker
I teach you avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
00:00:31
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.
Maximizing Profitability and Customer Service
00:00:41
Speaker
Hey, what's going on, solopreneurs? Today, we're going to be talking about how to increase profitability, profitability sorry, tongue twister in sales, how to make more per deal, something we all should be trying to do because we all want to be making our dough. We want to be making cash.
00:00:57
Speaker
So let's be making what we're worth. I'm gonna go through a couple ways that you can start to make more money per deal. Welcome to the podcast. My name is Taylor Armstrong. We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and have a much better time in the solar industry.
00:01:12
Speaker
Couple asks before we get into today's podcast, if you have not left us a review or a comment, please go give us a review on Apple, iTunes, Spotify.
00:01:23
Speaker
or YouTube. Let me know where you're tuning into the content. um We have seen more of a shift, more and more people are listening to these on YouTube. um So yeah, let me know where you're tuning in from.
Upcoming Events and Industry Acknowledgments
00:01:37
Speaker
And um the second thing is we have a couple blitzes coming up on our team. If you are interested in joining ah blitz and making um some good money and being around the best the best, hit me up. We've got a few spots available for upcoming blitzes.
00:01:56
Speaker
The link is in the show notes. You can go apply it to come join us on our blitzes. Only the best of the best. Okay, so this topic, um I want to give a shout out to my guy, General John Soriano. If you're not following him, this guy is one of the best leaders, I would say, in solar. Learned a ton from this man.
00:02:15
Speaker
So go shoot General John a follow, but he did a training for our team down here in San Diego, and he was just talking about this topic. So a couple of the points are his ideas and ah things that I was reminded of as well.
00:02:28
Speaker
So shout out to John, go give him a follow. um But the question that he asked us when he started this training is, what's better, the salesman that installs 60 accounts at $10,000 or the salesman that installs 100
Sales Strategies and Customer Communication
00:02:40
Speaker
accounts?
00:02:40
Speaker
at $5,000. And maybe you're like me, maybe you need to pause and actually do the math because I'm not the greatest at math. But if you take a second and think about it, the math on it is 60 installs at $10,000, that equals 600,000. 5,000 at 100 installs equals 500,000. So obviously the one that installs 60 at $10,000, they're better. need ask yourself, are you selling profitably?
00:02:58
Speaker
so obviously the one that installs sixty at ten thousand hours they're doing better and so we need to ask yourself are you selling profitably Hey, maybe you're selling a lot of deals, but maybe you're giving them giving the farm away. Right. So how can you make more money per deal and how can you do it without necessarily screwing over the customer? Because especially depending on the market, i think there's a point where, you know, you got to be serving the customer and you got to be feeling good about what you're selling.
00:03:29
Speaker
Okay, we do this in California, so it's actually pretty difficult to screw over ah homeowner because the rates are so high here. um But I like to show some pretty good savings, um right? Some people, they sell straight bill swaps. So I think in California, ah in most cases, I think you should be showing at least a little savings. It shouldn't just be a straight bill swap unless they're you know on a ton of discounts or some other circumstance, like a roof or something like that added in.
00:03:57
Speaker
But maybe you're in a market where... It is bill swaps or maybe you're in a market where you're you're never showing customer savings from year one on day one. hey So in those markets, yeah, you still can feel good about what you're doing because that's just the nature of it, right? You're still doing something that's beneficial to them. So how do we install more and focus on the profits?
00:04:19
Speaker
yeah I'm going go to go so through three things that I think are super important to do that. And the first is you need to have consistent follow through. What I mean by that is we need to be showing up for our customers, not just on the day of signing, but also after.
00:04:34
Speaker
and So do you have a system in place? Are you nurturing your accounts? Are you giving them weekly updates? And this is something that ah ah John went through in his training that um I've been hit and miss on. I've heard it from a few people, but having done this consistently, I thought it was a great idea. And that is just creating a group chat.
00:04:53
Speaker
with your customers and using that to give them the updates throughout the process, right? And even better is making sure you have all decision makers involved in the process, right? So if it's a husband or wife, making the group chat with Johnny and with Jane,
00:05:11
Speaker
And then labeling the chat, Johnny and Jane Go Solar or the Brian's Go Solar, whatever their last name is, right? So I like that. You have one central place. It's not just like text all over the place. I've noticed that sometimes you have installers communicating with the customers.
00:05:26
Speaker
They're getting texts from this and that. So many people, and I've been... I'm culpable with this too, is just sending them texts without even having the customer save my phone number. It just causes confusion and a confused mind always says no.
00:05:40
Speaker
So if you can have a central place where the customer feels like, okay, this is a safe place. I can get updates. I can ask any questions. It's just going to make the process go smoother. It's going to reduce cancellations and it's going to cause less confusion and get more referrals too, which is what we all want.
00:05:57
Speaker
ah So you if you have a assistant or if you have a setter that set the appointments, even better is ah include them in it, too, because how many setters get like ghosted when they're trying to get updates, too? So this is a way where you can keep not only the homeowners in the loop, but your setter that set the appointment you had someone on it.
Site Surveys and High-Impact Activities
00:06:17
Speaker
They can know. And if you have an account manager, an assistant that's helping, which I definitely recommend if you're doing more than like five deals in a month, they can give the updates in this group chat.
00:06:28
Speaker
and They can pop in there because the idea is that you should be in many appointments as possible. So maybe you don't have time to respond, but your assistant should, your account manager should. So take it to a next level, get someone that's also in there. And even if you don't have an account manager, then at least you got, if there was a setter on the deal, at least they can also help ah take on some of that responsibility, giving the customer updates. and And yeah, they should, depending on how much they're making on the deal, they should be able to get involved in giving them updates.
00:06:59
Speaker
And then another thing, little bonus tip with a follow through is um have someone show up on the day of the site survey. Again, maybe you're too busy for this, but if you have a setter, they can show up.
00:07:11
Speaker
If you're in the area, i would try to show up. All right. There's so many deals where If they don't make it to the site survey, they're canceling. The site survey, it's the number one, i would say, factor of if the deal is going through. If you can get a deal site surveyed, then the chances of it actually getting installed go up exponentially. i don't know the numbers on it. I don't know the stats, but I would bet that it goes up, I don't know, 50% at least if you can actually get them site surveyed because that means they're bought in. They had someone there.
00:07:41
Speaker
for the site survey and they're probably they're pretty interested they're not canceling if they can get a site survey most likely hey um so that's step number one consistent follow-through step number two is know how to make the deals more profitable hey um i had a deal this was two three years ago where i actually made negative money on it and it's because i didn't do my math correctly didn't sell profitably needed a new roof And I gave it away. I thought I was making more than I actually was on the deal.
00:08:13
Speaker
That roof got installed. I was only going to make, I think, eight, nine hundred bucks on it. um Customer threw a fit because he thought gutters should be included in that roof and they weren't.
00:08:24
Speaker
So our roofer just did the gutters. Anyways, there's a whole mess. Kind of long story. But long story short, I made negative money on this deal. And it's because I didn't calculate my things correctly. um i I said, and and I think this was last podcast, I had another one where um just because I mixed up the finance series we're going to use, um i picked one that I didn't calculate the commission correctly, and I ended up making two, three thousand less on it than I thought.
00:08:54
Speaker
think this was last week I did that podcast. So moral the story, know your products, know your commissions, try to calculate beforehand how much you want to make and what you mean actually need to sell it at.
00:09:09
Speaker
And ah don't let the customers have million price. okay we We talked about this in our trainings too. It's much better, I think, instead of dropping price for people, maybe give them them incentive, maybe give them $1,000 at install, maybe offer to pay their first three, four, five, six months.
00:09:26
Speaker
Because if they see that you're in control of the pricing, that you can drop the price, now much more likely to shop around, ah going to be tougher to get the deal closed. They see you're in control the price.
00:09:39
Speaker
So try to make it so you're not in control of the price. If you need to throw out an incentive, hey, are you military? Are you low income? Whatever. You can ask some qualifying questions.
00:09:50
Speaker
Great. We're going to pay the first six months of your bill. Much better than having to like sit and recalculate pricing, just pay him some money if you need to. And then just also another thing that's come back to bite me is know which financiers are going to possibly give you a hard time.
00:10:07
Speaker
For example, we have um a few options that will allow um like metal roofs, We have a few options that will allow mobile homes if they own the land.
00:10:19
Speaker
And so many times it's happened when our on our team, someone has gone to like a weird situation like this. Maybe it's a mobile home. um Maybe it's a ah home that's in a t trust.
00:10:31
Speaker
It needs extra extra documentation. um Sometimes there's just financiers that are going to be a headache or they're not not even going to approve a deal depending on the situation. So we have a cheat sheet for our team um where it just lists out exactly what can be and approved.
00:10:48
Speaker
Another example is if they can do second homes, vacation homes, or rental properties. Granted to this, we're using Good Leap out here on our team. I tried to sign it with a customer, a rental property.
00:11:01
Speaker
got kicked back because it needed proof of occupancy and customer couldn't provide proof of ah occupancy. He's not living in the home. So it got DQ'd. We had to switch and to another one. So in this case, I don't think it had a massive effect on the commission, but it definitely made me change things. I to go recalculate it And I did make less because the the EPCs were different with the different financer. What I was going to make was different.
00:11:26
Speaker
So know your products, know your financiers, know your lenders. It's going to save you headaches and it's going to make you more profitable. It's going to make you it more bucks in your pockets.
00:11:37
Speaker
That's step number two. And then last but not least is just focus on the income producing activities. So many people, I see closers that go close a deal and then they'll spend the next, I don't know, hour or two doing paperwork or following up or this and that.
00:11:55
Speaker
And you got people that are sitting in their cars doing back end work at five, six, seven at night. It's like, come on, guys. So know what time is most effective for maybe going out and prospecting.
00:12:08
Speaker
What if you could do that back end work in the morning and then you could go sell during those hours? And then also just like setting appointments. yeah some Some people maybe you got like a packed schedule with setters and all that.
00:12:21
Speaker
But especially if you're just self-genning deals, you should never be setting a deal at like five, six o'clock if possible. okay Unless you have a packed schedule, set that appointment at 7.30 or eight o'clock when it's dark, right? Because that just gave you an extra two hours to prospect.
00:12:40
Speaker
You could have got another golden lead, golden prospect, and then you can go close your deal and you got another solid one lined up for the next day. I've been guilty of this many times too, is just letting the customer dictate when they want me to come back.
00:12:54
Speaker
But if they ask you, hey, can you come back at six o'clock tomorrow? Be like, uh, that's, you know what? looks like we're booked at that time. i have eight o'clock. That works for you guys too, right?
00:13:05
Speaker
Most the time people are just like, yeah, that works too. It's like after six, they're home anyways. Okay. You know, you get some people, maybe you have kids, whatever. where maybe you do need to do it at six o'clock, or maybe you do need to do it at a time where it's like prime prospecting, prime knocking hours.
00:13:23
Speaker
So yeah, you got to do what you got to do. It's not always going to work, but just make the attempt to set appointments outside of those prime prospecting hours, and you're going to multiply your effectiveness.
00:13:35
Speaker
Hey, and then if you who do have setters, another question ask yourself is how many doors can you knock on in a day? um John, he asked us this question when we were in this training the other day.
00:13:46
Speaker
And most people, it's like, yeah, you maybe knock around 100 doors in a day. Hey, so if you 100 doors a day, that's kind of where are we cap out at.
00:13:58
Speaker
But if you have two solid setters, how many d doors are being knocked? 300, right? right So another way to increase your profitability and another way to focus on income producing activities is multiply yourself through recruiting.
00:14:12
Speaker
Get other people to go do the income producing activities. You're going to multiply your effectiveness. um You should be making more money if you have some setters. hey Especially if you're following these other principles.
00:14:26
Speaker
But ah don't be the guy who has setters and you're never going and knocking with them. You're just waiting, sitting on your hands, waiting for the next lead. i mean, unless you're like packed, packed, packed, you should always have time to knock with your guys. You should always have time to go self-gen a few deals and ah lead by example, lead from the front. Okay, so um I hope those things help you just think of some ideas on how you can be more profitable in your solar cell link.
00:14:56
Speaker
Okay, again, just to review them is ah number one, just consistent follow through with your deals, create group chats with your homeowners, with your sales, and you show up to site surveys. Number two, know your products, know your financiers, know your lenders, know how to make the deal more profitable, know which one to sell depending on the circumstance.
00:15:19
Speaker
And then number three is focus on the income producing activities. Don't be focusing on stuff that's not going to make you money and make sure you're prioritizing things. If it's five o'clock at night, don't be going and doing back up back end work when you could probably do it in the morning.
00:15:38
Speaker
Okay, so I hope those things help um send this out to your teams. And the last thing we have before we wrap up today's podcast is if you know someone that's crushing it in solar,
00:15:49
Speaker
We are looking for guests all over the place. um Would love to get anyone you know that's crushing it in solar or in business or in life. We look for all types of people.
00:16:00
Speaker
Anyone that has a cool story to tell. So ah hit me up either on Instagram or shoot us an email, um support at solarpreneurs.com. And we would love to hear your guest suggestions or topic suggestions.
Introduction to Solcite Community
00:16:14
Speaker
Okay, so hope you enjoyed today's podcast. Go sell some deals and we'll see you on the next one. So some of you already know that I run my own door-to-door sales team here in San Diego.
00:16:24
Speaker
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. But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
00:16:35
Speaker
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. It's been working for a lot of teams across the country and now I'm on board too.
00:16:58
Speaker
I'm going to be one of the first use SolarScout in San Diego so I decided to partner up. But I told them, hey, if I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal. And they did.
00:17:09
Speaker
So go to solarscout.app forward slash Taylor and book a demo with them and you'll get 10% off your first month when you sign up That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
00:17:22
Speaker
Okay, back to the show. 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?
00:17:35
Speaker
For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. 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. And it's called Solcite. 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 Currently, SoulCity is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled. So go to SoulCity.co to learn more and join the learning experience now. This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to SoulCity.co and join. We'll see you on the inside.