Transcript
Speaker: What do you call an underground group of solar professionals on a mission to create a more sustainable world?
Speaker: We call ourselves solopreneurs.
Speaker: And while some might call us crazy, foolish, and dissatisfied with the status quo, we're the ones taking action to create a better future for ourselves and the world.
Speaker: Solopreneur is dedicated to give you, the solar professional, the tools, skills, technology, and mentorship to take the industry by storm and sell more solar with less effort.
Speaker: We are solopreneurs and this is our story.
Speaker: Boom, what's going on, solopreneurs?
Speaker: We are nearing fall now.
Speaker: Actually, it's fall here in California.
Speaker: Quarter three is coming to a close.
Speaker: Are you crushing your deals?
Speaker: If you haven't had the best quarter, now is the time.
Speaker: Put in the work.
Speaker: Don't wait until next quarter.
Speaker: Do it right now.
Speaker: I'm excited to be here for another episode.
Speaker: Just finished my Halo Top ice cream here.
Speaker: It's kind of my go-to sugar rush.
Speaker: I don't want to eat sugar, so I go to that ice cream, and I figure I can eat as much as I want out of it, because it's healthy, right?
Speaker: Just kidding, that's not the right attitude to have.
Speaker: I'm trying to get them to be a sponsor of the show, so we'll see if that happens.
Speaker: Halo Top Ice Cream, what do you guys think?
Speaker: But I'm excited for today.
Speaker: We have a special episode, and I'm going to talk about something that I've been seeing float around a little bit in the communities there on Facebook.
Speaker: But first, I wanted to give you a progress update.
Speaker: Keeps me accountable, kind of tell where I'm at in my cells.
Speaker: I have up and down weeks just like everyone sometimes.
Speaker: Last week I was able to hit my career high of eight closed deals in a week.
Speaker: And I'm pretty stoked about it.
Speaker: It's my personal best.
Speaker: I feel like I just hit the game winner.
Speaker: It was an awesome week for me.
Speaker: Eight deals.
Speaker: And San Diego, the systems are a little bit smaller, but I was able to close eight deals.
Speaker: Pretty good checks coming in with that.
Speaker: And what I've taken from it is it's just all about consistency.
Speaker: There's going to be ups and downs in sales.
Speaker: But if we're doing the little things, if we're being consistent in our little things,
Speaker: It's going to help us have those big weeks.
Speaker: You think of Kobe Bryant.
Speaker: You think of Michael Jordan.
Speaker: You think of Donovan Mitchell, who I'm a big fan of, Utah Jazz.
Speaker: But they do the little things consistently.
Speaker: They don't have big nights every night, but they have consistent weeks, consistent months.
Speaker: They're having good games, but their career highs, that's only happening once a season.
Speaker: I mean, you can't have career highs all the time.
Speaker: So it's all about doing the little things.
Speaker: What do your mornings look like?
Speaker: What do your days look like?
Speaker: What do you do to be consistent in your sales?
Speaker: And if you do the little things, if you track your progress, that's when you're going to have the monster week.
Speaker: That's when you're going to hit your career highs.
Speaker: So be consistent in whatever you're doing and don't be up and down.
Speaker: Sales, sometimes we can't always...
Speaker: We can't always control who's going to say yes, but we can control the little things that we're doing.
Speaker: Are we getting consistent leads?
Speaker: Are we prospecting consistently?
Speaker: I talked to some people where they're trying to do all these fancy online lead gen things and they're not working out.
Speaker: So they just, that's the only solution they have.
Speaker: If the online lead gen isn't working out, go out and hit some doors.
Speaker: That's one thing you can control.
Speaker: Maybe you can't control how many leads are coming in online directly, but you can go out and knock some doors.
Speaker: You can get leads in an hour knocking some doors.
Speaker: So do those things that you can control.
Speaker: Anyways, so I want to get into the episode of the show today, or the topic rather, of the show.
Speaker: and that is new roofs dun dun dun it's the dreaded new roofs we hate well I should say roofs that need replacing in order to get solar that's what I mean by new roofs in the past that was like my biggest fear is signing up a deal and then only to find out they get their site survey their inspections done and I get the dreaded email this customer needs a new roof
Speaker: And worst thing is, it usually happens when these people are stoked to go solar.
Speaker: They're all stoked to go solar.
Speaker: They need a new roof.
Speaker: And then I would lose the deal every single time.
Speaker: We're doing mostly loans here, so I know a lot of folks are doing PPAs, maybe leases.
Speaker: And I'd love to hear from you guys about what your experience is, what you do with new roofs.
Speaker: Because I'll be honest, I actually haven't funded a new roof if it's a rental or if it's a PPA.
Speaker: So those of you that are doing that, you can let me know how that works.
Speaker: But as far as what we're doing down here with my company, we're doing loans.
Speaker: So the way the process works, if a customer needs a new roof, we'll actually wrap that in their solar loan.
Speaker: A lot of times now we have to do two different finance companies.
Speaker: Right now we're using LoanPal.
Speaker: Service Finance is the other one.
Speaker: if they do need the new roof most of the time we will need to wrap the loan and put it in these two different funds part of it in loan pal part of it in service finance so what will happen is they'll do the site survey they will send us the results and we'll get an email back that says how much they need to fund for the roof and how much is included
Speaker: exactly what the process is going to be.
Speaker: So first of all, if you find out that they need a new roof from the beginning, include it in the deal from the get-go.
Speaker: I had a deal just last week where I was able to do this, close them up, it's going to make your life way simpler.
Speaker: If you can't figure out that they need a new roof from the beginning, then you can just include it from the
Speaker: as you're signing up that person rather than needing to go back.
Speaker: It's going to save you time.
Speaker: But if you do get the dreaded email, if you do get the results back from your site survey, what do you do?
Speaker: How are you going to make that deal close even though they need a new roof?
Speaker: for me it was a super negative thing when I saw the email come back that they need a new roof I just assumed I was screwed every time nothing I could do these people weren't gonna want a new roof they only want to go solar if the roof passes inspection well I'm happy to say I have been able to turn things around a little bit it's not a perfect system
Speaker: I still lose dills when they need new roofs.
Speaker: That is something that I'm doing to build earners in the cell.
Speaker: Flip the script as we've talked about.
Speaker: If you haven't already read pitch anything but you're trying to flip the script.
Speaker: So I do use that as sort of a takeaway in my dills.
Speaker: I say look we still need to figure out if your roof can even pass inspection.
Speaker: We still need to get you approved on our end.
Speaker: Let's figure that out first and then we can go solar from there.
Speaker: I am using it as kind of a takeaway, which does make it a little bit worse if they do need the new roof, because if you're using it as a takeaway like I am, then that kind of defeats the purpose.
Speaker: You already told them that they essentially can't go solar if they need a new roof.
Speaker: If you need to do that, do it to close the deal.
Speaker: but it is gonna make it a little bit tougher to go back and say, all right, we can actually do the new roof for you.
Speaker: Here's the details.
Speaker: So what do you do?
Speaker: If you have told them that, first of all, remain calm.
Speaker: I'm gonna give you some tips.
Speaker: I'm gonna help you figure out how to close them.
Speaker: Here's what you do.
Speaker: You're gonna keep super positive
Speaker: It can be a negative thing, especially if you use that as a takeaway in the cell.
Speaker: So you've got to actually flip the script again, and now you're going to make them think that this is a positive, and now you're going to build urgency on why they need to do this now.
Speaker: Okay, so you're going to call them.
Speaker: You're going to tell them that there needs to be some roof work done, but instead of making it sound negative, you're going to say, look, our people inspected your roof, and we had two options.
Speaker: We could either put the solar up.
Speaker: we could have potential issues with the roof later or option number two is we could do some roof we could do some work on the roof right now and be able to fully guarantee your roof and be able to make sure that the solar is up there for good and never has issues ever again you're making it seem like a good thing so at that point you Tom we picked the second option we want to make sure the roof is good
Speaker: We want to make sure that we can fully guarantee the roof.
Speaker: So we just want to do some roof work up there.
Speaker: At that point they may panic.
Speaker: They may say, oh, what are we talking about here?
Speaker: Again, you're going to remain calm.
Speaker: They're probably going to ask questions.
Speaker: Oh, how much is my roof?
Speaker: How much is that going to cost me?
Speaker: And here's what I'm doing that I feel is working.
Speaker: You don't want to shove all this information down.
Speaker: It can be a lot to take on, especially if you're doing the financing for it.
Speaker: You don't want to just start throwing out numbers.
Speaker: Because what I've found, people tend to think in, if you give them the monthly numbers versus the total finance numbers, if you give them that big finance number, that's going to scare a lot of people, just hearing that right off the bat.
Speaker: If we do a new roof and we finance it through, loan, pound, service finance, that finance price is going to be probably five, six, seven grand more than what it would be if it was just paid for cash.
Speaker: So you're not going to want to give them all this information, at least right now, not right off the bat.
Speaker: You want to spoon feed this information to them.
Speaker: What I found is you need to get back in their home and just go through it.
Speaker: They're going to need to sign documents anyways.
Speaker: And if you are doing it through multiple funds, it's going to make it a little more simple if you can get back and explain rather than trying to tell them that they're going to be funded through two different financers and go into all those details.
Speaker: So that's step number two.
Speaker: Just get back into the home.
Speaker: if they're insisting on information you can tell them like a ballpark number.
Speaker: I'll be like yeah.
Speaker: Good news is it actually doesn't go up too much more per month.
Speaker: You only are paying what?
Speaker: About a hundred bucks for the solar after the tax credit.
Speaker: Well good news is roof is only going to be 40 bucks more than that.
Speaker: So you're going to get a new roof and you're only paying around 40 more a month.
Speaker: But I'll have the exact number when we meet up.
Speaker: That's what you're going to tell them and then you're going to push to get back in the home.
Speaker: Once you are back in the home, here's the next thing you do.
Speaker: You got to, got to, got to be super assumptive.
Speaker: Anyone that needs new roofs, anyone that there's a change of work, well, technically they have the right to cancel if there's a change in the work that's going to be done.
Speaker: But you're not necessarily going to tell them that.
Speaker: You don't want them to think that they can just cancel.
Speaker: They can, but you want to be super assumptive.
Speaker: You want to make it seem like you're still doing this deal.
Speaker: Yeah, the roof's a minor setback, but you're assumptive, you're confident, you're still having all the confidence that they're going to do it.
Speaker: I had a deal a couple weeks, about a month back,
Speaker: and this lady needed a new roof i went back followed the same process and it became pretty obvious that maybe the roof wasn't going to be the best thing her roof still had a decent amount of time on it and just because of some i guess maybe there wasn't enough support underneath the shingle something like that they need to do some roof work but she had about a 60 bill before
Speaker: So it was probably about tripling her bill by the time the roof work was done.
Speaker: So I knew it was kind of going to be a stretch.
Speaker: She was just an older lady living off of her income.
Speaker: So at that point...
Speaker: There's some concerns about her even being able to pay the bill.
Speaker: I knew she was on a fixed income.
Speaker: So I knew it was going to be a stretch.
Speaker: I still went in there super assumptive.
Speaker: I still went in there fully expecting the deal to happen.
Speaker: But I was so assumptive even knowing that maybe it wasn't the greatest thing for her.
Speaker: I still went in super assumptive.
Speaker: And she believed so much that she needed to make the deal happen that she still needed to go through with it.
Speaker: that she basically told me, Taylor, I know this is honestly out of my budget.
Speaker: I don't want to do this.
Speaker: Is there any way I can get out of this?
Speaker: And I had told her, even before I got there, I had told her that she'd still have the option.
Speaker: But when I got in there, I was just so assumptive.
Speaker: Just told her numbers, just made it seem like a super positive thing that she believed that she needed to still do it, even though maybe it wasn't in her best interest.
Speaker: And I think I almost had her in tears at one point just because she didn't want to do it at all.
Speaker: Knew it was probably out of what she wanted to pay right now.
Speaker: So that's the key.
Speaker: Just be super assumptive with it.
Speaker: Tell your stories.
Speaker: Make them believe that it's going to be a good thing for the home.
Speaker: So that's probably the most important thing when you're in the home, being assumptive.
Speaker: After you do that, you just want to make it clear the benefits.
Speaker: If they didn't pass the roof inspection, chances are they're going to need a new roof pretty soon anyways.
Speaker: So you need to sell them hard on this.
Speaker: What are the benefits to them?
Speaker: If they need a new roof anyways, why not just do it right now?
Speaker: Because here's what happens if they do it right now.
Speaker: The bill is still going to stay the same if it is financed.
Speaker: The roof will be guaranteed now.
Speaker: And here's the kicker, the tax credit will increase.
Speaker: I know there's been some controversy with this.
Speaker: It's been floating around the communities a little bit.
Speaker: Some people are saying that they only credit you for the actual portion of the roof that the solar is gonna be on.
Speaker: But I'm of the mindset, and I've heard this from accountants too, if you do the entire project as one contract, if you have all the numbers together,
Speaker: Then they just show their tax person, just fill out the form 5695, fill that out, and you're putting the total project cost on there.
Speaker: So they're going to get a full 30% tax credit, at least at the time of this recording.
Speaker: We all know it's going down next year.
Speaker: We'll choose that to build your urgency if you're not.
Speaker: They're going to get that full tax credit, though, and they're going to be able to apply that towards the roof.
Speaker: so you can explain this to them this the big benefit be like look we do the roof direction let us get credit towards that roof to you so federal government is gonna pay for essentially thirty percent of your new roof with the solar that's not good to you guys and there you go here explaining that clearly and yeah again it's been financed put the emphasis more on the monthly numbers
Speaker: If you're financing 10, 15 grand onto the system, the bill's probably not gonna go up.
Speaker: We do the 20-year terms.
Speaker: Bill's probably not gonna go up more than 50, 60 bucks.
Speaker: So use that to your advantage.
Speaker: Tell them, look, we're talking 50, about 50 bucks extra in a month to get a new roof, protect your home, and then lock your bill in.
Speaker: And the federal government is gonna pay for part of that.
Speaker: So all we're going to do, Mr. Homeowner, we're going to just, we got these documents updated with you.
Speaker: Since it is coming from a different financer now, we are going to send an application.
Speaker: They'll just verify you have a decent credit for that.
Speaker: And then we'll make sure everything gets done with it.
Speaker: So let me get you these updated documents.
Speaker: So you're not asking them.
Speaker: You're being super assumptive.
Speaker: You're telling them you're going to get the documents and you're making it happen.
Speaker: So that's a couple of things that have been helping me.
Speaker: Let me know what you think about this.
Speaker: Is this something that you're running into?
Speaker: Something that happens pretty frequently in our deals down here in San Diego.
Speaker: There's a lot of not so great roofs.
Speaker: That's another tip.
Speaker: Maybe some of these
Speaker: You don't necessarily need to go to every home that has a bad roof because I know it's not ideal.
Speaker: We definitely don't want every deal to need a new roof because it does delay the process.
Speaker: It's not a perfect situation.
Speaker: But using just these tips, I was able to close the last four out of the five deals that needed roof work.
Speaker: And let me tell you, in the past, I didn't close any of these deals.
Speaker: It was more like me going to them and being like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: They do need to do some roof work.
Speaker: Would you guys want to do it?
Speaker: It's going to be like $13,000 is all.
Speaker: Would you guys want to do it?
Speaker: That's basically what I was doing.
Speaker: So go in there, be super assumptive, let them know the benefits, let them know why they should do it now.
Speaker: Something they're going to do anyways.
Speaker: And using those, just making the simple switch, being assumptive, keeping things positive, explaining to them those benefits, you're going to see your ratio go way up.
Speaker: You'll be able to close more roof deals, and you're not going to lose near as many deals when they fill the roof inspection.
Speaker: Let us know if you have any other tips on what you guys do in these situations.
Speaker: How do you handle the roof deals?
Speaker: How do you handle new roofs?
Speaker: And how do you make it a positive thing for them?
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Speaker: Thanks, guys.
Speaker: Crush the rest this quarter, and then let's gear up for quarter four.
Speaker: Wow, what another value-packed episode of The Solarpreneur.
Speaker: Guys, if you couldn't tell, we spend a lot of time and energy to put these episodes out to hopefully give you just one strategy, one golden nugget that's going to launch your solar career to the next level.
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