Transcript
Speaker: Hey, what's up, solarpreneurs?
Speaker: Taylor here.
Speaker: I got to thinking the other day, wouldn't it be nice if we had a compilation of all the greatest tips from the people we've had on the show?
Speaker: So my team and I, we took the liberty of preparing a little closing guide because it's all about closing more deals.
Speaker: That's how the money's made.
Speaker: We prepared a closing guide from some of the greatest closers in the industry and people we've had on the show here.
Speaker: So I wanted to give that guide to you for free.
Speaker: So if you want to check out the guide, head on over to closer.solarpreneurs.com and we will give you a copy 100% free.
Speaker: They'll go straight to your email.
Speaker: See you on the other side.
Speaker: What is up my solar closers, my solar peeps, my solarpreneurs.
Speaker: We're back with another episode.
Speaker: It is Saturday night.
Speaker: 9 o'clock at night, almost 10 o'clock here.
Speaker: And I'll be honest, I wanted to just call it good for the week and do an episode next week.
Speaker: But I've been slacking a little bit, so I promised myself I'm going to get some quality content out there for my solar peeps this week.
Speaker: And I'm committed.
Speaker: I wanted to do it.
Speaker: So here we're at Saturday night recording an episode just in my room here.
Speaker: Even got a pile of laundry.
Speaker: piled up here should be doing some laundry but that can wait it's podcast time I'll be honest I had an episode for last week or I supposed to have a killer interview actually one of the top dudes from Vivint Solar we're gonna have him on the show he's here in San Diego and we scheduled the time we're gonna meet up do a podcast episode this guy's closing machine his you know clothes
Speaker: Probably hundreds of deals since he's been out here.
Speaker: This is going to be an awesome episode, but funny story, I show up to do this podcast interview, and I'm not going to say his name because I think we'll get him on the show here soon still.
Speaker: But what happened, I go show up to interview this dude, and he's got all the managers from Bivitt.
Speaker: He's like, hey, Taylor, good to have you here.
Speaker: I want to introduce you to the other managers here in San Diego.
Speaker: Then they sit me down and this thing turns into a recruiting meeting and I'm like, hey, can we do the podcast episode?
Speaker: Obviously, I hear them out and listen to what's going on.
Speaker: And Vivint Solar, I mean, I think they got the best probably sales guys in the industry.
Speaker: Everyone knows Vivint Solar, they're kind of the top dogs.
Speaker: of the sales world of the outside sales door-to-door they know their stuff it's no secret so I mean I was open to hearing them but I just didn't think I was gonna be going to a recruiting meeting when I thought I was just going to interview this guy so anyways didn't get him on the show turned into sort of a recruiting thing and they got me good
Speaker: Hey, those guys, those guys are sales guys.
Speaker: Didn't switch to Vivint Solar, okay?
Speaker: Love those guys, and who knows?
Speaker: Maybe it could happen.
Speaker: But really, we ran out of time, and we're going to have to do that episode another time.
Speaker: So that is the long story of why we didn't have an episode last week.
Speaker: So you can blame the Vivint guys for that, okay?
Speaker: But we're going to have other quality guests on the show, okay?
Speaker: And as I've said in a few other past episodes, send me your suggestions for who you have.
Speaker: If you hear of people that are crushing it, if you hear of people doing something interesting, something unheard of in the industry that could add a ton of value, hit me up.
Speaker: Let me know who those people are.
Speaker: And again, join the Solarepreneur Facebook group.
Speaker: I made a post in there a few days ago.
Speaker: Once you hear this, it'll...
Speaker: at least a few days ago but asking to send me your suggestions for anyone you hear of that could add some value to the show that's doing something cool so join the Facebook group let us know who you know that's crushing it with that being said let's get into our topic today so I wanted to talk about just three innovative knocking strategies a couple of them
Speaker: I've done and just recently I've learned a lot from guys that I'm working with that are implementing some of these strategies.
Speaker: Specifically, one of someone on my team that I'm working with, he closed actually 65 kilowatts.
Speaker: Last week, maybe it was the week before that, 65 kilowatts in a week.
Speaker: I personally haven't closed that many in a week.
Speaker: He closed eight deals.
Speaker: My record is also eight deals, but they were tiny systems.
Speaker: So he is dominating.
Speaker: He closed a ton of deals, and a lot of the strategies he used, he shared a couple with me that I'm like, huh, man, I'm going to have to try that.
Speaker: That's what I'm going to share on the show today.
Speaker: I don't know if you would want me honestly sharing these, but I don't care.
Speaker: I'm here to add value.
Speaker: I want you guys to crush it.
Speaker: And I know that as we all share our strategies, what's working with each other, really it's going to help us all out.
Speaker: Because let's be honest, there's idiots out there in the industry that don't know how to sell, that don't know what they're doing.
Speaker: It's bringing the industry down.
Speaker: as a whole because really we all need to learn to sell not just on price but create more value what drives me nuts is when people just compete so much on price it's like come on learn to add value don't just sit and compete on price with everybody that's when it's all going to make it worse for the industry as a whole we're going to make less so let's just learn to build more value to sell better then we're not just competing on price with everybody
Speaker: So don't be that sales guy that's just dropping price like crazy.
Speaker: Build some value.
Speaker: But I digress.
Speaker: So here's the three strategies.
Speaker: Number one is add-on systems.
Speaker: Okay, so by add-on systems, I mean you go to someone that already has solar and you sell them more solar.
Speaker: Okay, what's the benefit of this?
Speaker: Number one, they're already sold on solar.
Speaker: You shouldn't have to convince them to go solar.
Speaker: They already got it on their house.
Speaker: They know the benefits.
Speaker: Hopefully they enjoy it.
Speaker: Hopefully they understand why you would go solar.
Speaker: So it should be a way quicker sell and should be honestly pretty simple.
Speaker: Just throw some more solar up there.
Speaker: Okay, and this is, like I said, the guy that closed 65 kilowatts on our team.
Speaker: This is something that he did.
Speaker: A lot of the deals he got were actually people that already had solar on their home and he just added more.
Speaker: I honestly never had done much of this.
Speaker: In my head I was thinking, no, I didn't skip all the solar homes.
Speaker: No need to knock people that already have solar, they already have the product.
Speaker: But it didn't really occur to me that so many people that got solar, and I speak for my market again, I'm in San Diego,
Speaker: But anywhere, regardless of whatever market, people get solar.
Speaker: Maybe they move away.
Speaker: In general, people use quite a bit more energy once they have solar than they were using before.
Speaker: So a lot of systems are being undersized.
Speaker: And also, how about how many people were possibly sold less solar than they needed from the get-go?
Speaker: So not only that, but people are using more energy.
Speaker: So it's a huge thing and I think the biggest mark that's missed by a lot of people, including myself, is how about all your past customers?
Speaker: How many of your past customers have you followed up with to check on their system to see what their true-up bill is, to see if they're using more energy, they need add-on panels?
Speaker: Because let me tell you, I've had quite a few sales
Speaker: from people that had solar installed by other companies that now I just added more solar up there.
Speaker: Okay, so if you're not following up with your customers, checking in on them, then it's pretty likely that someone else will down the road.
Speaker: And guess what?
Speaker: You're going to drive by a year later and you're going to see extra panels added on with your system.
Speaker: Okay, it's happened to a lot of people.
Speaker: And it's probably honestly happened to me too, because I haven't done a great job about following up with my customers.
Speaker: So how many customers do you have?
Speaker: Don't just rely on your company CRM.
Speaker: Your company should be collecting emails, your contact info for your customers.
Speaker: But are you storing all this information somewhere?
Speaker: I would suggest having all that information
Speaker: If you're not using some type of other personal CRM, pipe drive, talked about high level, can message me for more info on this, or some type of email manager, ClickFunnels, ActiveCampaign.
Speaker: If you're not storing your customer's data and then reaching out to them, following up with them, guarantee they're gonna get hit up by other companies and probably get sold more solar panels.
Speaker: Hey, solarpreneurs, real quick.
Speaker: If you've been in the solar industry any amount of time, you know that in order to take it to the next level, you need to always be recruiting.
Speaker: What is it, ABR?
Speaker: Always be recruiting.
Speaker: So if you need help with recruiting, I wanted to share with you something that helped me take my recruiting skills to the next level.
Speaker: We literally went from an office of less than 10 reps to 25 to 30 reps in less than three months.
Speaker: And we did this with reps that continue to sell with us.
Speaker: Two or three of them went on to become managers.
Speaker: Several of them were top producers in our office.
Speaker: And there are multiple reps that are still with us to this day, more than a year later.
Speaker: So what is it that helped me?
Speaker: I took up the services of Ryan Holman with Sells Recruiting University.
Speaker: He helped me develop a system to take my recruiting game to the next level.
Speaker: And he really helped me follow up with the recruits, schedule group interviews with them, get a huge pool of applicants coming in day after day.
Speaker: I wanted to share with you guys his link.
Speaker: If you are looking to take your recruiting skills to the next level, go to Calendly.com slash sru forward slash solarpreneur.
Speaker: Once again, that's Calendly.com slash sru slash solarpreneur.
Speaker: SRU is Sales Recruiting University.
Speaker: Ryan will help you take it to the next level.
Speaker: So make sure you're following up.
Speaker: But really the point of all this, we're talking about innovative knocking strategies.
Speaker: So don't shy away from knocking homes that already have solar.
Speaker: And you're not going to knock every home that has solar, especially if you're in these neighborhoods just slammed with homes close together.
Speaker: It's not probably a great use of time to knock every house with solar, but don't just skip them all.
Speaker: Maybe you pick one home every street to knock on.
Speaker: I like it too because even if they have solar, chances are they're going to be way nicer to you.
Speaker: Here in San Diego where we knock, where we're going door to door, it can get rough.
Speaker: There's a lot of competition down here.
Speaker: It's cutthroat.
Speaker: Especially when a neighborhood's been hit up super hard.
Speaker: A lot of homeowners get a little aggressive with you.
Speaker: And then it always gives me a breath of fresh air.
Speaker: When I go and knock someone that has solar, 99% of the time, they're nice, they're not mad that you're at their porch.
Speaker: I mean, you act like you're there for a reason, just checking out to see how their solar is going, and they're happy you're stopping by.
Speaker: So if anything, I would suggest maybe knocking one of those homes with solar on a street.
Speaker: Okay, keeps your sanity.
Speaker: And then, obviously, the main reason...
Speaker: is see if they're still paying a bill to the utility company.
Speaker: See if they need an add-on system.
Speaker: So you should have a pitch for add-on systems, which is something I learned recently too.
Speaker: Have some type of pitch, some type of system that you're going through to check on these people.
Speaker: So ours is, hey, we're just doing energy audits, so act like you're supposed to be there.
Speaker: act like that's the reason you knocked on their doors you're checking up on their system you don't have to say you're from the same company that sold them solar but say hey we're just checking up on all the people that have solar how long did you get it we're doing energy audits have you guys noticed any spikes in your bill have you had a bill aside from what you pay for the solar just get them to talk about their solar how's it working have they liked it did they not like it
Speaker: what's going on with it and then main thing figure out if they're still paying a bill to the utility company because if you can get this and if you figure out that they're paying still a substantial amount to the utility company boom you just got yourself a lead there for an add-on system and then just like you're knocking a regular door just go in get their information set up an appointment and get some more panels slapped on their home
Speaker: But the worst thing that can come out of this is maybe you get some referrals.
Speaker: If they are happy with their system, if everything's working completely fine, if they don't have any bill to pay to the utility company, you still can ask them, hey, well, that's great.
Speaker: I'm glad it's working for you.
Speaker: I'm actually working through the whole neighborhood.
Speaker: So who do you know that could benefit from something like this?
Speaker: And then the key with asking them that, be specific.
Speaker: Don't just say, who do you know?
Speaker: Because most people are going to say, I don't know, I'll keep my eyes out.
Speaker: But say, I'm going next door.
Speaker: I noticed they don't have solar.
Speaker: Do you know why they don't have solar?
Speaker: Do you think it's something they could benefit?
Speaker: And then maybe even offer them a gift card or whatever.
Speaker: You don't have to give them a full company referral amount.
Speaker: But say we're doing, I don't know, $50 gift cards if you think of anybody.
Speaker: Give them some sort of reason to give you a referral.
Speaker: It doesn't matter that you're not the person who sold them solar in the first place.
Speaker: So think about that next time you're knocking.
Speaker: Look for those systems, especially bigger homes.
Speaker: Knock the doors with solar.
Speaker: Not all of them, okay, because, I mean, obviously,
Speaker: Most homes aren't going to need more panels.
Speaker: If they have solar, then there's not going to be a ton of add-on systems, but you'd be surprised.
Speaker: There's way more than you think.
Speaker: So don't shy away from knocking occasionally a home with solar.
Speaker: Okay, so that's number one.
Speaker: Number two, check out areas that probably haven't been knocked as much as other areas.
Speaker: Okay, so specifically maybe rural areas, or I can't say that, but maybe places that are far away from your suburban areas, your cities and all that.
Speaker: So specifically here in San Diego, we can go out east and there's towns out in the mountain, there's towns in the desert, there's places that are really spread out.
Speaker: They're not your typical neighborhoods.
Speaker: So especially newer reps and everything, where do we send them?
Speaker: We send them to cookie cutter neighborhoods.
Speaker: The homes are close together.
Speaker: It's just volume.
Speaker: You can hit up a ton of these homes, talk to more people.
Speaker: But especially for the experience knockers, what about hitting these homes where they're spread apart?
Speaker: Here in San Diego, you see homes that are up on the mountain.
Speaker: You see homes that's, you know, you got to drive on a dirt road to get to.
Speaker: You see homes that are on bigger properties.
Speaker: And how many people are honestly hitting up these homes?
Speaker: Probably not a ton.
Speaker: Okay, I mean, especially out here in California, especially San Diego, pretty much everywhere has been hit up.
Speaker: Okay, so I'm jealous of people in other markets where it hasn't been hit up as much.
Speaker: It's one of the benefits.
Speaker: It's a curse and a blessing.
Speaker: Okay, because there's definitely good things that come with it.
Speaker: Everyone knows about solar down here, Southern California.
Speaker: but think about this I mean if they're spread apart people aren't really knock walk into these homes so use that to your advantage look and go on Google Maps or you can even search on this Redfin or different places where you look up properties and look up homes for sale things like that you can look up lot sizes just look in your city in your area
Speaker: Look for bigger homes.
Speaker: Look for spread out properties because these places are less likely to have been hit up near as much.
Speaker: Okay, and I mentioned before, a guy on our team that hit 65 kilowatts in a week, guess where he found all these leads?
Speaker: A gold mine.
Speaker: He went out to the desert.
Speaker: He drove where most people aren't going to drive, and he went to homes that were probably
Speaker: quarter mile apart or so and he just drove door to door just drove straight up in their dryways got out and pitched him solar okay and he didn't even have to have a good pitch I mean he told me I think half the time he was just saying hey we're doing solar we're helping out so-and-so in the neighborhood
Speaker: Which if anyone is knocked here in Southern California, that typically doesn't go over very well when you're in a normal neighborhood.
Speaker: You can't really just say, hey, we're doing solar.
Speaker: We're helping out so-and-so.
Speaker: Usually you kind of have to beat her on the bush because it's a trigger word for people out here.
Speaker: They've been hit up so much that it can, yeah, instantly shut things down.
Speaker: So that's tip number two.
Speaker: Look for homes that are spread out.
Speaker: Go on some of these sites, Redfin, Zillow, maybe.
Speaker: Look for properties that are more spread apart.
Speaker: And then go check it out.
Speaker: Okay, I'm hesitant to even share some of these things because I'm doing it.
Speaker: So if you're near San Diego, just stay out of my hood, stay off my turf.
Speaker: I'm just kidding.
Speaker: Okay, but go do this in whatever area you're in.
Speaker: especially in saturated markets it's going to help you find those people that haven't really heard that much about solar and maybe have never even checked out before that's tip number two so my last strategy with this my last tip of the day is look for new movements and why would you look for new movements
Speaker: Similar reason to why you'd go to homes that are spread apart.
Speaker: New move-ins, maybe it's their first house.
Speaker: A lot of times these people haven't heard of solar before.
Speaker: A lot of times they haven't been approached by solar sales guys.
Speaker: They were in rental houses before.
Speaker: Maybe they're in apartments, their first home.
Speaker: As you find these new move-ins, they're
Speaker: usually much more likely to be laid on cells and tell you for me personally in the last month actually I'm I'd say a quarter of the deals that I've closed in the past month we're actually new movements okay and I knocked on their door and they're my easiest sells to hadn't really heard much about solar thought it was a great idea hadn't been hit up a million times at their home because they just moved in
Speaker: and then got him looked up simple that okay so here's the deal with this
Speaker: In order to find your new move-ins, it's actually pretty simple.
Speaker: We did a podcast on this.
Speaker: If you haven't listened to this podcast, if you want to dive deeper into this, because I'm just scratching the surface, but go back to September 10th.
Speaker: We did an episode with a guy named Matt Romero, and this is his strategy.
Speaker: This is where I got it from.
Speaker: It's because that's all he does.
Speaker: He just goes to new move-ins.
Speaker: He looks up people that have moved in, and that's all he does.
Speaker: He would knock probably two hours a day,
Speaker: just doing that consistently close a deal or two a week and probably worked 10 to 15 hours a week okay go check out that episode if you want to take a deep dive in this okay right now we're just brushing over it a little bit but just to be brief what you need to do is go on again go on one of these websites where you look at properties
Speaker: you got your Zillow, you got your Redfin, there's probably a lot of them.
Speaker: I specifically use Zillow when I've done this.
Speaker: And what you can do is you can filter in on there all the homes that have been sold within the last six months, within the last year, I think it shows you within the last two years.
Speaker: You can set the filter.
Speaker: So what I did, I set it for homes sold within the last six months.
Speaker: And then it'll show you all the properties.
Speaker: Okay, you can narrow it down.
Speaker: The last six months, there's not going to be near as many.
Speaker: But I just did it for one city that we're knocking in.
Speaker: One suburb of San Diego here.
Speaker: I just did it for that one, and there were still close to 600 homes that have been sold within the last six months.
Speaker: And it blew my mind just in one town, basically, 600 homes still.
Speaker: I'm like, well, I would have never thought the 600 homes were sold within the last six months just in this area, just in this one city that we're in.
Speaker: So it shocked me.
Speaker: And what I did is I went and created a spreadsheet there.
Speaker: And then we plugged in, put all those people that had sold their homes last six months into this spreadsheet.
Speaker: And there you have it.
Speaker: It's going to act as a CRM because you don't want to be.
Speaker: just looking this up on the fly it's really not efficient you want to have it organized if you're driving to these homes it's not going to be useful to go one home here one home 10 miles away you want to have it all organized by distance so if you're on this one block what homes can you go to that just moved in if you're assigned areas if you're someone that's just knocking an area you don't have to do this for a city at a time
Speaker: But I would suggest doing this first thing.
Speaker: If you're a rep that just got assigned an area or a hood or a turf neighborhood, whatever you want to call it, go do this first thing.
Speaker: Look up the people that just moved in.
Speaker: Those can be the first doors you hit up.
Speaker: And I guarantee they're probably going to be a little bit more open to hearing about it.
Speaker: And it's not a guarantee that you're going to book an appointment.
Speaker: It's not a guarantee that they're going to be a lead.
Speaker: but in my experience I've found that they're much more open to listening.
Speaker: Okay, they're in that buying mode.
Speaker: They just bought a house.
Speaker: They want to hear about home improvements.
Speaker: They usually are open to doing stuff like that, saving money because they just had the big expense of buying the house.
Speaker: So do this even if you're just assigned an area.
Speaker: Okay, but I'm doing it for cities at a time.
Speaker: Okay, and with that, and I've talked more about this, but to compile the list, I threw it in a spreadsheet.
Speaker: here's the key I didn't do this myself okay and I know I've talked about this but I would suggest getting an assistant to do all this stuff for you and sorry now I have a virtual assistant she does all sorts of stuff for me but she did this it probably would have taken me honestly five six hours to do all this I mean it does take time copy and paste and people into a spreadsheet so go get yourself an assistant
Speaker: And if you want to hear more about this, guess what?
Speaker: I have an entire course that will teach you how to find an assistant, that will teach you how to train them, that will teach you to do awesome stuff like this that's going to save you so much time, teach you to follow up with your deals, teach you to do all the stuff that you didn't want to do, that you don't want to do.
Speaker: because how often do you have to spend time following up with customers sending emails getting I don't know HOA documents reaching out to customers for random things you need wouldn't it be nice if you had someone to do all this for you okay so if you want to hear more about this shoot me a message I can tell you more about the course or if you want
Speaker: I can do this for you.
Speaker: I did it myself.
Speaker: Send me a message.
Speaker: If you want me to do this for you, I'll charge you to do it, but I'll save you the time.
Speaker: Or you can go out and hire your own assistant.
Speaker: Send me a message and talk more about that.
Speaker: I would definitely suggest becoming a solopreneur.
Speaker: That's what the podcast is about.
Speaker: Be a solopreneur.
Speaker: Be an entrepreneur.
Speaker: An entrepreneur isn't going to go out and do every little things.
Speaker: He's going to hire a team.
Speaker: And that's what you need is a team.
Speaker: Build up a team.
Speaker: Learn to do these things.
Speaker: Save yourself time.
Speaker: Because the more time you can spend, focus on those money-making activities, closing the deal, getting new leads, the more money you're going to make.
Speaker: You shouldn't be spending your time.
Speaker: compiling lists okay you shouldn't be spending your time I mean it's helpful but really you should be outsourcing a lot of these things so hit me up I'll do it for you if you want to pay me I'll have my team do it for you or you could check out the course we get you an assistant and then you can have one in-house just handle all those all this stuff
Speaker: So let me know if you want to hear more about the course, what we're doing to help people create their own teams, to help people become entrepreneurs, to help people become a solopreneur, which is the name of the game.
Speaker: So there's my three tips, three innovative knocking strategies.
Speaker: Let me know if you have any other knocking strategies that have been helping you.
Speaker: What have you been doing?
Speaker: Okay, I'm always looking for ways to combine marketing with prospecting, with selling, with
Speaker: We all know knocking doors is an awesome way to get leads, but how can you think outside of the box?
Speaker: If you're not, your competitors are, what can you do to differentiate yourself?
Speaker: What can you do to combine those innovative marketing techniques with still knocking on doors?
Speaker: So these are a couple things that my team and I have been using.
Speaker: What do you use?
Speaker: Send me a message.
Speaker: Let me know.
Speaker: Okay, shoot me a like if you gain knowledge.
Speaker: And most of all, guys, please just share this with one person that could benefit.
Speaker: We're trying to grow the show.
Speaker: Okay, leave me a review if you haven't.
Speaker: Let us know even if you don't like it because we look at those definitely too.
Speaker: And then I promise to continue to release new content.
Speaker: Okay, we're going to try every week.
Speaker: So I apologize for not being super consistent with that.
Speaker: But we will strive to always be getting the top content out every week.
Speaker: Let me know if you guys think of anyone that you want to see on the show.
Speaker: So keep crushing it.
Speaker: Don't let the COVID stop you.
Speaker: And close those deals.
Speaker: We'll talk to you next week.
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.
Speaker: And we do it all for free.
Speaker: And if you found any value in this episode or it's helped you in any way, all I ask in return is that you just take 30 seconds of your time and leave us a review on iTunes.
Speaker: so that we can help more solopreneurs like you to change the world.
Speaker: And as a gift for leaving us a review, we have a special training package exclusive for solopreneur listeners over at solopreneurs.com.
Speaker: Remember, you need to leave us a review on iTunes to qualify for the training package.
Speaker: So take care of that now, and we'll see you on the next episode.
