Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
Speaker: I teach you how 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.
Speaker: What is a solopreneur, you might ask?
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: Hey, what's up, storepreneurs?
Speaker: Today, we're going to be talking about how to overcome the customers that complain about negative reviews or your prospective customers that don't want to sign because there's a few negatives.
Speaker: How do you overcome it?
Speaker: How do you tackle it before it comes up?
Speaker: And how do you still close deals even with negative reviews?
Speaker: So all that and a whole lot more.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: And as usual, we are here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: This is actually started this once, got about 45 seconds into it, but then a baby started freaking out.
Speaker: Hey, some of you know, just had a baby about a month and a half ago.
Speaker: Sometimes this kid isn't too happy.
Speaker: So I apologize if you hear some baby screaming in the background, but that's how it goes.
Speaker: Don't have a mansion yet, but I got...
Speaker: Got our three bedroom house here.
Speaker: And unfortunately, it's not all soundproof.
Speaker: Don't have the Joe Rogan studio quite yet.
Speaker: But hey, we're going to get there after I sell some more solar.
Speaker: But thank you for listening to the show.
Speaker: And we're free and available on Apple, Spotify, iTunes, wherever you can find your podcasts.
Speaker: We're coming at you every Tuesday and Friday.
Speaker: Thank you so much for sharing the podcast, spreading the word, helping us grow.
Speaker: That is what keeps this thing going.
Speaker: And special thank you to our sponsors.
Speaker: that support the show as well, especially Solar Scouts.
Speaker: They just are great software and really appreciate them sponsoring our podcast.
Speaker: So go check them out if you have not already.
Speaker: So let's jump into the episode.
Speaker: Hey, and I have to tell you, this was probably one of the craziest closes ever.
Speaker: I've done in a while because I get to the house and this lady, she just starts telling me right off the bat, hey, no, I don't want to look into it.
Speaker: Looked in your company.
Speaker: You have negative reviews, so I'm just going to cancel the appointments.
Speaker: And luckily, I did not give up.
Speaker: I kept pushing through and I'm going to show you some live footage here in a second of how I was able to overcome this customer's just doubts and fear of going with a company that has some negatives.
Speaker: And really, we don't even have that bad of reviews.
Speaker: And I was showing her our reviews and it's like, yeah, there's some negatives, but we have like, you know, four star average, nothing terrible.
Speaker: And so really, they're just there's going to be those people that no matter how many positives there are,
Speaker: They look up two negative reviews and they're going to base off of that and be like, no, I don't want to do it.
Speaker: You're going to hear how I handle that and some things I did that I think help her see that, hey, even though there's some negatives, that doesn't necessarily mean that's how your experience is going to be.
Speaker: Here's some ways that I helped her humanize the whole experience.
Speaker: Okay, look at me like a human being and I care a little bit more.
Speaker: So I'm going to be playing back some live footage.
Speaker: And I hope it helps somebody out there.
Speaker: But if you have ever struggled with this objection, you know, it can be extremely frustrating where people are just basing their entire customer experience off of a few random reviews.
Speaker: So I'm going to play back this recording and hopefully you learn a thing or two from it.
Speaker: And yeah, we'll give you some highlights along the way because this was an older lady.
Speaker: Sometimes she was a little bit tougher to understand at times.
Speaker: And I did record this with Ciro.
Speaker: They are the best software to record your closes, record your presentations.
Speaker: and get feedback.
Speaker: And already one thing that you'll hear that I learned is I said the word like way too many times in this presentation.
Speaker: And so just listening back, that's one thing that I changed.
Speaker: I didn't even realize it.
Speaker: I said like way too many times.
Speaker: So there you go.
Speaker: That's the power in recording yourself.
Speaker: You hear things that maybe you repeat.
Speaker: You hear things that maybe aren't explained the greatest that you can listen to one time and already have some things to fix.
Speaker: So very powerful way to make improvements.
Speaker: But let's jump into this and figure out how we can overcome this specific objection.
Speaker: And just to give some quick context, I started this recording basically when I got inside the house.
Speaker: So she came to the door, tried to cancel the appointments, which I'm glad I didn't like call or text to confirm because she would have just canceled right then.
Speaker: But instead, I just showed up, which can be a great thing to do at times.
Speaker: I pushed past it, got inside the home.
Speaker: And then I started recording when I knew I was just going to have to pull out the big guns and start overcoming this.
Speaker: So you're going to hear what I said when I got at the kitchen table and started pulling up some reviews and started going through it with her.
Speaker: So here's how it went.
Speaker: Yeah, I'll show you the crack one here on.
Speaker: Have you heard of that?
Speaker: Better Business Apparel?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sorry, because I know I dealt with them.
Speaker: They only matter on business.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And, uh, it's not going to be a few steps up under the table.
Speaker: I just don't say anything.
Speaker: Okay, so you'll hear right off the bat, she's saying, oh, I don't trust anything on Better Business Bureau.
Speaker: I was showing her that because our company, we have an A plus on Better Business Bureau.
Speaker: So I'm like, oh, this will get her.
Speaker: And then of course, she's like, oh, I don't trust them.
Speaker: I don't care what Better Business Bureau has to say.
Speaker: So already I'm like, okay, this is going to be harder than I thought.
Speaker: I was hoping I could just show her that.
Speaker: All her concerns would be eased and then easy money after that wasn't quite that simple.
Speaker: So next, I...
Speaker: you know, just start talking about other things.
Speaker: We go back and forth on reviews.
Speaker: So here's the start of the next little section here.
Speaker: I don't have enough panels in my roof.
Speaker: They did nothing.
Speaker: They were such afraid to get their money.
Speaker: And this is really normal.
Speaker: I mean, that's not the only one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, you're a smart lady.
Speaker: You know how business is, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's always going to be people that have negatives because at the end of the day, this is construction.
Speaker: There's a lot of negatives at the end of the day.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the graph came out that...
Speaker: wasn't very good at all.
Speaker: And, you know, I dealt with a couple of soap companies.
Speaker: And we had soap for 20 years.
Speaker: They blew up, flooded my garage.
Speaker: All the night came up and took them down.
Speaker: How long ago was that?
Speaker: About 20 years ago.
Speaker: I talked to Robert a lot about his.
Speaker: And he's
Speaker: Okay, so just to recap a little bit, I know it's probably a little bit tough to understand 100% of what she's saying on the recording, but she's saying she had pool solar on her home.
Speaker: They blew up.
Speaker: They flooded her garage.
Speaker: She's just saying there's so many negative reviews.
Speaker: So it is not looking good here at all.
Speaker: I'm just getting my teeth kicked in.
Speaker: Don't even have time to respond.
Speaker: She's not taking anything.
Speaker: And this was a close case.
Speaker: It doesn't have a sad ending, but I do end up closing this.
Speaker: So how did I flip her?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: How do you get these people to start paying attention?
Speaker: I did feel like it was almost a miracle because when I was hearing all this, I was like, man, this is I was getting in my head.
Speaker: I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker: This seems almost like a waste of time.
Speaker: But then as the more I talked to her, the better things started going.
Speaker: So the next section here, we went.
Speaker: Yeah, she started talking about how she's heard that our company is scamming seniors.
Speaker: And then here's where I think I started to bring up some valid points that I think did get her to think a little bit.
Speaker: So here's what I said.
Speaker: Because just to be blunt with you, Legacy Power, they have thousands and thousands of customers across the whole country.
Speaker: Yeah, I was reading.
Speaker: I mean, I read up on that whole thing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So any company that has thousands and thousands, if you go through, if you added up all the negatives, probably represents less than 0.5% of everyone that's done it.
Speaker: I promise.
Speaker: I mean, I saw a chart of the reports from Nationwide on here, and it had...
Speaker: just under 50% of satisfied customers.
Speaker: And they had like one or two percent of two customers, three customers, which was the average customer, I would say.
Speaker: It was a few.
Speaker: And then the negativity chart went over to 50%, a full 50%.
Speaker: And so they polled the tens of thousands of people we've helped.
Speaker: They talked to every single one of them?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: This is what I have received off of the summerreview.com.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyways, if you look up any company that has tens of thousands of customers, I don't have to.
Speaker: Well, I'm not talking about solar.
Speaker: I'm talking about earphones.
Speaker: I don't know if you've looked up Apple's reviews.
Speaker: They're worse than our reviews.
Speaker: I don't know if you've looked up SDGuni reviews.
Speaker: They're not one star.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Okay, so here's a few things that I think started helping a little bit, right?
Speaker: You notice that...
Speaker: I was trying to bring in other companies as examples.
Speaker: And that's what I was meaning to say.
Speaker: I think I said our company has tens of thousands of customers, which I don't think we have that many yet.
Speaker: But what I was meaning to say is there are companies that have tens of thousands of customers and they have terrible reviews.
Speaker: So this is where I think she started realizing a little bit.
Speaker: Hey, if you look at any big company out there, Apple, Microsoft,
Speaker: the utility company, right?
Speaker: It's like, why do people stay with the utility company?
Speaker: They have one star reviews, right?
Speaker: So if you can make a solid case through examples like that.
Speaker: So some of you already know that I run my own door-to-door sales team here in San Diego.
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.
Speaker: But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
Speaker: Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout.
Speaker: But it's not a door knocking app.
Speaker: It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market.
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.
Speaker: It's been working for a lot of teams across the country, and now I'm on board too.
Speaker: I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
Speaker: Okay, back to the show.
Speaker: These things can start helping people rise.
Speaker: Okay, maybe it is a little bit ridiculous that I'm...
Speaker: not even giving solar a chance when every other product they use also has negative reviews out there.
Speaker: So this is something you need to do when people bring up negative reviews is get them to compare it to all the other products, all the other companies they're using, and then get them to realize is, hey, this is construction.
Speaker: Hey, one thing we pride ourselves on is that we're not a perfect company.
Speaker: Things go wrong in construction.
Speaker: You know, there's uncontrollables.
Speaker: There's things that you can't control at times.
Speaker: But one thing we will do, Helen, one thing we will do, Mrs. Customer, is we will fix it, which is it.
Speaker: And hopefully you're with a company that does actually fix things, right?
Speaker: But I know personally, my company, we fix things, right?
Speaker: Or if your company doesn't, you need to take it on yourself, take that responsibility upon yourself that you're going to fix the things.
Speaker: And I hope everyone listening to this podcast takes on that ownership of helping your customers, even if heaven forbid your company's out of business, the customer service isn't responding.
Speaker: I hope you will still take that responsibility and still respond to your customers.
Speaker: Yeah, but this is what I started to explain to her a little bit.
Speaker: So, yeah, like all I'm saying, Helen, like, yeah, you need to feel comfortable with it.
Speaker: But like instead of taking some arbitrary reviews that like may or may not give you the full picture and represents like a very, very small percentage of everyone that's done this, like I would recommend.
Speaker: I mean, these are dozens of people that I've helped personally.
Speaker: So I can send you all these.
Speaker: We can send you like.
Speaker: We can send you, like, phone through the process that are happy with it.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Are you going to send me a dozen people that we're not happy with it?
Speaker: Well, you can contact them there.
Speaker: But, yeah, I'm sure you could find something.
Speaker: How much does the system cost?
Speaker: There's not a cost for it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just a fully funded program just to where they would have to approve the homes.
Speaker: That's not a guarantee that we could do it.
Speaker: But if they did it, you guys would just pay a lower rate for the power here.
Speaker: And they would also put in batteries so you'd have full backup.
Speaker: Wouldn't have to worry about outages, stuff like that.
Speaker: If batteries are about five years, then you have to buy a new one.
Speaker: How much are they?
Speaker: 50 grand.
Speaker: So you'll notice here she starts asking some buying questions, right?
Speaker: So these things are slowly but surely helping a little bit, right?
Speaker: I'm making her realize that, hey, there's people that have done this that have had a great experience.
Speaker: Hey, and if you didn't notice from the recording, I was actually pulling up on my phone the dozens and dozens of pictures and videos I've recorded with my phone.
Speaker: families I've served.
Speaker: And I was just scrolling through this, helping her see all this proof of people that are happy that have done this.
Speaker: And right after that, she says, okay, well, how much is this going to cost me?
Speaker: Boom, buying question.
Speaker: So you know, I've gained back a little bit of ground.
Speaker: Hey, but we start going through it.
Speaker: I'm answering a few more of her questions.
Speaker: I thought I was making some big ground up here, but she actually does shut me down again.
Speaker: And I'm like, oh my gosh, back to ground zero.
Speaker: So let me find that section here.
Speaker: I'm going to pass this over here.
Speaker: That's your home.
Speaker: That's your husband.
Speaker: You're going to have that stuff.
Speaker: No, I think I'm seriously, I have lived in a lot of places.
Speaker: And when you came and you told me different things, I thought, wow, yeah.
Speaker: And then I made it my business to come in and look it up.
Speaker: And then I saw him.
Speaker: I'm a comment.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: Beautiful family.
Speaker: Beautiful.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Aw.
Speaker: I miss the kids being nice.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: We just had a baby.
Speaker: So we got a four-year-old, a two-year-old.
Speaker: A baby right now.
Speaker: Congratulations.
Speaker: Okay, so she shuts it down again.
Speaker: This time the daughter's here.
Speaker: So the daughter's, I'm trying to get the daughter on my side.
Speaker: It's an older lady.
Speaker: Daughter lives with her.
Speaker: And she's telling the daughter, no, you know what?
Speaker: I'm not going to do it.
Speaker: Too much negative.
Speaker: And then this actually helps me.
Speaker: You hear the daughter.
Speaker: She sees the picture on my phone and my family.
Speaker: We start talking about babies.
Speaker: We start talking about kids.
Speaker: And this played in my favor quite a bit.
Speaker: So shout out to the daughter.
Speaker: She, I think, in some ways, saved the deal right here because it gets the customer's mind off of thinking, oh, no, I'm not going to look at it.
Speaker: I'm doing it.
Speaker: Now they're seeing me as a family guy.
Speaker: They're seeing me as a human.
Speaker: They're seeing me not as just as some annoying pesky sales guy that comes in.
Speaker: But hey, I got a family here.
Speaker: I got people I take care of.
Speaker: This is my livelihood, right?
Speaker: So anyone listening, even if you don't have kids, even if you don't have family,
Speaker: What can you show the customer to humanize them or to humanize yourself to them?
Speaker: Maybe you have a picture of your dog and they love dogs.
Speaker: Maybe you have a picture of you, I don't know, doing stuff with your brother, sister, whatever.
Speaker: Like show them things, relate to them.
Speaker: Always have like pictures you can show them of your family, of just something you can relate on.
Speaker: And this stuff helps so much because it just takes annoying sales guy out of it and makes them treat you differently.
Speaker: So this came in clutch for me, and this was one of the reasons I was able to overcome, you know, some of the negativity stuff.
Speaker: For time's sake and just for audio quality's sake, I'm not going to go to every single section here, but just to highlight, she starts asking me how long I'm being with the company.
Speaker: And here's the way I got them to open up and at least check it out and really get my foot in the door here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, but yeah, well, what I was going to say, I'm like, they already prepared it.
Speaker: So why don't we just show you like comparison to what it is and all that.
Speaker: And then if you like it, by all means, let's get you in touch that have done it and not just go on to people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, cause yeah, I just say for you guys to pay way more just cause we can help you feel comfortable.
Speaker: Um, off of like a few, you know, reviews.
Speaker: How about a year?
Speaker: Okay, so from there, it was pretty much history.
Speaker: I say, the line I used was, hey, Helen, we're here, we're at the table.
Speaker: They already prepared it, so why don't we just show you a comparison to your current bill.
Speaker: If you like it, then let's get you in touch with people that have done this so you can base experience off of real things instead of just some arbitrary reviews you're finding online.
Speaker: But if you don't like it, no harm, no foul.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So our job as salespeople, we need to get our foot in the door and just get to the next step.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Hey, we're on the baseball diamond.
Speaker: We're just getting to first base and then we're getting to second base.
Speaker: So don't think of the whole sale like you got to do all these things.
Speaker: Just get to that next step.
Speaker: And that next step was for me was say I got to overcome some of the negativity around her thinking of reviews and
Speaker: And then I got to get to the next step.
Speaker: So you heard how I did that.
Speaker: Number one, I just related our reviews to any large company that services a lot of people.
Speaker: They're going to have negatives.
Speaker: And then after that, I made myself a human.
Speaker: I talked about my kids, talked about family.
Speaker: Daughter did help with that too.
Speaker: And then once I saw her getting comfortable with that,
Speaker: I went in, got the next step.
Speaker: Came between there.
Speaker: I did pull up other people.
Speaker: I did pull up testimonials.
Speaker: We did talk about how this is construction, how there's going to be things that go wrong.
Speaker: Hey, but I think all all these things, they helped.
Speaker: You just take it step by step, make them feel a little comfortable.
Speaker: Then you get into it.
Speaker: And then ended up closing this deal.
Speaker: Once I got her and the daughter to listen, it was game over.
Speaker: They loved it.
Speaker: They never gotten this far with anybody in the process.
Speaker: Took them through the process, ended up closing the deal.
Speaker: It was a 12 kilowatt system, which is pretty big out here in our neck of the woods and definitely making a healthy commission on that.
Speaker: But I would not have if I was a rookie salesperson, if I just gave up, if I called and she was like, uh, looked at negative reviews, don't come.
Speaker: any of that.
Speaker: It's so crazy how all these little things building up can literally be the difference of you making a great commission or going home broke.
Speaker: Hey, and luckily I followed the process and went through the steps and now it's going to be my biggest commission possibly ever on a deal.
Speaker: So super happy about that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Knock on wood.
Speaker: It's not installed yet, but they're super happy and excited.
Speaker: So hopefully you took something from this episode.
Speaker: Just don't give up on the process.
Speaker: But those are some steps you can use to overcome the negative review objection and a lot of things you can apply to any objection.
Speaker: So keep selling and don't give up.
Speaker: Even if you're not making any money in this industry, the only reason you fail is when you give up.
Speaker: So don't give up.
Speaker: Keep going.
Speaker: You will have success.
Speaker: Okay, thanks for tuning in today and we'll see you on the next episode.
Speaker: What's up, solarpreneurs?
Speaker: Hope you enjoyed the episode.
Speaker: Before you run out and start selling more solar yourself, wanted to let you know about an exciting new cheat sheet we created 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?
Speaker: What episodes should I listen to in the podcast?
Speaker: 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 Solopreneur.
Speaker: We put them together all in one sheet.
Speaker: So you can go, you can hit the ground running, especially if you're new, you do not want to not have this sheet.
Speaker: So go download it right now.
Speaker: It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs.
Speaker: We will have that in the show notes.
Speaker: Go download it right now.
Speaker: And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them.
Speaker: That's going to show you how.
Speaker: So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.
