Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong. went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in the year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail.
Speaker: I teach you 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? 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. All right, what's going on, everybody? We're back with another podcast. This is someone that was on quite a while ago, but we're excited to have him back on the show, and he's been working on some exciting things. I would say he's definitely ah changed the industry for the better with a lot of his products and what he's done for the industry help guys.
Speaker: use more technology, have more innovative follow-up systems and ah methods in their sales. One of my favorite products that I've used, so we're welcome back for the second time, Mr. ah Brad Mortensen. Thanks for coming on back on the show with us today.
Speaker: Heck yeah, dude. I am. Appreciate you having me on. It's always good to to jam with you. You've also been a pillar in the industry, especially obviously in solar. Just one of those consistencies that, you know, is is crazy with the solar coaster and everything that has gone on in the last five years. Solarpreneurs has been there.
Speaker: Yeah. Steady. True. So I think, uh, you I just want to give you kudos, like from the outside looking in, like every time I see something about your brand, I'm like, dude, he's still, he's still cranking. Like he's still do like, it's just that consistent, like energy. That's like, people need that ah consistency. So props to you, man.
Speaker: Thank you, man. i Appreciate that means a lot. Yeah, i think, you know, some people I hear from people, sometimes they go through faith, they listen to podcasts a lot. And I've had some guys say, Oh, I took a break. And I honestly thought you weren't doing the podcast anymore. And then I look back and you're still doing the podcast the whole time. I'm like, Yeah, we we still got it going. something Some people thought I like just because they stopped listening. They thought that the podcast was like gone. I'm like, no, it's it's still going, man. We're still here. But yeah, you know, that's I always tell people that's what's ah been one of my biggest keys to success just I've never been the best. Never ah done anything like super crazy, but just the consistency that's a always been, I think, one of the biggest keys for success. And I'm sure you'd agree.
Speaker: So people keep it going. What do you, what do you attribute that to in your life? Like, where do you think you got that from and just being so consistent? Is it something that you did and you saw results and it made you want to do it again? Like, or was it something that you've always done or seen your dad? Like, where did you learn that from? Um, I mean, i don't know if I haven't been consistent in everything I've done, but I would say two things. One is just, I've always felt like i'm I'm not as not quite as talented as other people just growing up. I was always a kid that had to study a little bit more to pass the test and work a little bit harder in the sports and stuff like that. I don't know why that was, but I felt like I just had to
Speaker: be a little more consistent, train a little bit more to be at the same level as most other people. Not always, but just in general with a lot of things. Yeah. But yeah, the second thing is, it sounds kind of silly, but with a podcast, I've kept it going for so long. It's just something I don't want to stop because it's like,
Speaker: If I stop, I just lost all the progress I made. I've done little things like I have my assistants, my like editors that I pay. And it's just kind of funny that like feel like I feel like if I'm paying them to do the job, like I can't stop producing podcasts because otherwise I'm paying them for nothing.
Speaker: so that's been like a funny thing. But yeah, it's just something you make big progress on. You don't want to lose it. Another example is, you know, I speak Spanish. as I did my two year church mission to Columbia. A lot of people, they never practice Spanish. They just forget it. But I'm like always, I got my Mexican ah people on my team that they'll come up and try to talk like English to me. I'm like, no, I want to practice Spanish, man. Let's talk in Spanish.
Speaker: And they're like, oh, really? Okay. And they're kind of like... you know surprised but i'm just like yeah like why why wouldn't i practice it if i spent two years trying to learn it because a lot of people just forget it you put in all this effort to learn a thing don't know if just sounds crazy to me that like if you put that much effort into getting decent at something and then to like lose it like that so i guess that's kind of what i've always um gone back to with the podcast i just love so i don't want to lose the progress you know no That's what's awesome. Yeah. So it's kind of summing that up. It's like, once you start something, make sure that what you're starting is something worthwhile. As it starts to gain momentum, it's like you almost become accountable to the thing.
Speaker: yeah And it makes it probably somewhat easier, but then also it's just, you know, consistency is also hard. It's to just show up every day, you know? Yeah, yeah. And so that's cool.
Speaker: Um, I still have been chilly. So yeah, I, I try to get my Spanish in everywhere I can. I've gotten into trouble a few times with it, uh, assuming things, but anytime I can, I mean, living in Arizona, you get, you get, uh, a lot of opportunity to speak Spanish. So.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. You probably had, if you learned the Mexicans, you probably don't run into too many Chileans down here. So have you learn, learn the Mexican Spanish. No, not to, no, dude, when I do, though, it's like being back home, it's like, vamanos, you know, but, uh, yeah, I know the Mexican Spanish is way different and I've learned a few words, but I don't, I like the Pueyes. I don't, I don't speak like they do, you know, they think I'm like usually from Spain or something weird. Well, no, that's good, man. But no, it's a good, definitely good trait to develop. And I'm still working on it every day. Speaking of consistency, man, it's something you've been always showing up with RepCard too. And what's cool is you guys have evolved the products a lot. I remember at first it was just the digital business card thing. And now you've expanded it. You have like area management and you're doing, I know you have another product we'll talk about after like AI Sales Coaching.
Speaker: And so you're always looking for ways to make it better and, um, yeah, get more people that use it, which I think is great. That's what any great, uh, product should, should do, I think. And so, yeah, tell us what are some, uh, I think we did a podcast probably, I don't know, two, three years ago. I'd have to go look, but I would have been some of like the big changes you think since, you know, you guys have just started as a business card.
Speaker: What are the, some of the things you've been most excited that have rolled out since then? Honestly, it's it's crazy to think about how long ago that was. And I wonder what the date is and where the product was at the time. And I'd love to hear the things that we talked about, you know, that were exciting then that are probably just now and just been a part of the product. But, you know, our whole mission has always been to try to impact the individual rep. It's like, how do we impact reps? Companies and teams and offices, regions, they're all made up of individual reps.
Speaker: that are trying to take care of their family and that are trying to grind and hustle and do all the things to to win more customers. And so over time, we've just tried to listen to what the customers want. And that's led us down the path of canvassing, like you said, leaderboards, you know, you can build really dynamic leaderboards in our tool. Now you can build out from the leaderboards, really dynamic competitions. If you're looking for a way to like like drive competition or drive usually some certain behavior. You run a competition and it's like, hey, if you do five of these this week, you get this or whoever does the most or anybody that does this gets this or you can do milestones where people are chasing certain milestones and once they earn it, They either get a prize or they they at least achieve that benchmark. And then they've got to get to like the fifth milestone before they can achieve prize or something. So a lot of ways to incentivize through that. And so all of that takes into consideration like the door knocking, like the calendar tool we built has like leaderboards and, uh,
Speaker: Or not leaderboard, sorry, it has um like a setter closer like mechanism that tracks to the leaderboard. And so like when guys have to go to an appointment, it forces them to tell the system what happened after the appointment, which then hits the leaderboard, which then can hit a competition.
Speaker: So we've built a lot of those things around the leaderboards and competitions, but, you know, chat, calendars, the digital business card, like all that stuff kind of all plays into that. Yeah, what I've always loved about RepCard is it makes it so easy for just reps to come in and have the systems already in place because you can piece together a bunch of other softwares. You know, I think in our last podcast, we probably talked a little bit about that. There's guys that use this whole system and like go high level and build out all these dispositions and this and that. And ah you make it like super complex tool like RepCard just makes it so easy for a new rep to step in day one and have everything in place and not have to like try to mess with
Speaker: um all these other softwares and get extremely complicated. Because what I see most of the time is reps will try to get in these other complicated softwares and then they'll just stop knocking doors because they're like, oh, I'm going to figure out all this and I need to like master this tool and it takes away time from other things they're doing. And so RepCard, I think it just makes it way more simple for every rep to be able to use and get into all at once. and Is that something you guys have tried tried to be? um Is that a big thing for you guys is just keeping it simple for, um you know, new rep using everything? We call the RepCard Sauce, SOS. It stands for Sales Operating System. After doing this for, you know, six years, we've just realized that so many people want a system. It's kind of funny with AI, and I'll go into that in a sec, kind of my thoughts on AI. But, you know, people always ask essentially for one app to kind of do everything. You know, we want one system. We want to bring a rep in, give them access to rep card and like let them just like turn loose and...
Speaker: have everything he needs. And so we have like an LMS now where you can train reps and we're adding quizzes right now and some fun stuff, but it's like allowing a rep to get in, get one login and just like go to war, like have all the tools he needs. And so people historically have wanted that for so long. And then now you fast forward to 2026 and you got this thing called AI.
Speaker: You have so many people that are like, well, can just build my own fill in the blank. Oh, I can build my own ah LMS. I can build my own leaderboard. i can build my own competition thing. I can build this. And then they're like, well, well maybe I could just do this. All a sudden they're trying to recreate SalesRabbit or trying to recreate, you know they're trying to recreate like software. it's not that you can't do it, but it starts to be almost a distraction to save how much money, like it just, you're trying to save. Otherwise you wouldn't do it. You're trying to save the monthly fee from one of these subscriptions and
Speaker: to build it yourself. And all of a sudden you realize you've become like a tech department. you You now have a tech department in your business. And so it's like, what what cost? You know, what is it what is it really worth to have to maintain and to have it be, you know probably really insecure. you know, a lot of AI stuff that's built is not secure. no one's trying to hack a five-man solar company either though. So it's not like they can live in in this kind of like no man's land. But it's just been interesting to see like so many people that want to like try building stuff on their own, but they're forgetting that Two years ago, all they wanted was everything to be in one spot. I've been guilty of it too, with different things inside of our business, which is little things where you, you start learning about ai and it's so easy and to, to leverage, but then you don't realize like it's, it takes maintenance and it takes time and it, it it ends up.
Speaker: becoming, it can be become a distraction. Right. And so, well, yeah, it's interesting. You know, I know you're talking about, you guys can be the one-stop shop, have one login and have access to everything. Is there anything you've, you've thought about adding, but then you're like, okay, this is like, you know, too much to add. Are you guys trying to be like one access for everything?
Speaker: is there things that you think you knew you wouldn't add, you know, cause there's a lot of stuff that goes into it. There's payroll, crazy stuff like that. But is there things you think you'll never really get into? We'd definitely have partnered up with companies. We partner up with, uh, stacked. They do ah the automate commissions, um, something that they do extremely well.
Speaker: And something that we had looked at and it's like, it's, it's something that can't get, you can't get wrong either. You know, nobody wants a paycheck that's like half baked or like someone didn't think it through or they forgot to add your overrides or whatever. And so we're like, you know, stacked is such a great option. Um,
Speaker: for companies just to go and have that and it ties right into our software. We just launched that integration in the last ah two or three weeks. So you can be inside of RepCard and actually see your paycheck. And then if you want more details on your paycheck, you can click into it and get more more details on why it's a certain amount, but you can see your, your live paycheck amount in rep card. And so, uh, we've definitely leaned into some partnerships, um, in certain areas. We've tried to just maintain a clean, simple platform because it can get, like you said, it can kind of get all over the place where it's like, man, like, what is this now? Like what, what, there's so many different things you can do.
Speaker: And so really try to to keep it simple, but yeah, there's, there's a lot there for sure. Yeah. You know, we're obviously talking about solar, but I know you guys are, A lot of different industries are using RepCard now. Have you seen that change quite a bit? What's what's the industry that's more using RepCard right now? i don't know if you have like a focus, if your focus is more solar pest control or it's pretty even throughout. what's like What's your main industry, would you say right now?
Speaker: You know, it's really just kind of a mix. There's not one that's super heavy. Historically, it's been solar. um But outside of solar, you know, there's just roofing, pest control, home security, like all the traditional ones.
Speaker: ah Fiber has been kind of somewhat new over the past few years because like it didn't really exist. It seemed like ah like two or three years ago, but... That's become more of a thing. Insurance, car sales, real estate agents, just anybody doing direct sales where they're talking to tons of clients, leads, they're trying to get a touch, you know, a quick touch point. They're trying to stand out. They're trying to be memorable. Those are the types of industries that we or just where our product lands better. Yeah. So do you see a pretty big difference on how rep card is is used based on the industry? Because it's like when I was in pest control, i mean, this was 11 years ago now, but I don't remember ever really handing out business cards in pest control because it was just like you got the sale and then you're done, you're out of there. Maybe give them your number. But um I don't know if that's changed in pest control.
Speaker: But yeah how do you see the differences in how it's being used based on, based on, a you know, solar versus pest versus fiber? What's some differences you see? Yeah, there's definitely um different use cases for it. When you look at an industry like pest control, yeah, the business card is not used as much for, you know, it's it's not as heavy as it would be like in solar because there's so much of a commission and such a big transaction writing on it. And solar or pest control can be ah literally a five minute transaction. Like I think I closed the deal in like 90 seconds one time.
Speaker: Like it was crazy. Knock the door. They were like leaving and they're like, oh yeah, we need a Here's the card. Let's go. We don't have time. Like they just wanted the service. It was like crazy how fast you could go and transact. um And so the business card wasn't needed, but it's needed in that industry for a little bit of credibility. You know, sometimes it is so fast. And so you walk away from the house.
Speaker: the the, you know, the wife shuts the door and like, Hey honey, who was that? And it's it's the bug guy. And it's like, i I just signed up for pest control. I gave my credit card and it's like, you what? Like, and so the card serves as like a token of almost like a digital receipt of the human. Like, Hey, this is the person that came by. If he was some fly by night, dude, he wouldn't give me his card. It wouldn't have this logo, his brand.
Speaker: It wouldn't have, you know, his website, a phone number, an email. Like why would you leave all that, all those tracks if you were trying to hide something? So yeah. it's used in different industries differently. And so, um, it's been fun to kind of like lean into that. And so we've got some cool stuff coming in, in some other industries. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Well, I think we were talking, um yesterday we were kind of planning the podcasts. Um, I think you're mentioning that now you have for some industries you can do and transactions on rep card as well. Um, is that something you've rolled out for like past where people, they can, they're mapping their, their, ah their canvassing on the app and then they can make the cell within the app too. No, with all of the transactions, we fully integrate on that side with like yeah like field routes. So it feels like it's in rep card, but it's it's behind scenes. it's all
Speaker: It's all tied into field routes or whatever tool they're using. yeah Yeah, I think last podcast, you know, i still have a bunch of these in my car. i need to you get these things handed out. But remember using those little like tap cards, those little ah square cards that had like the QR code on the back.
Speaker: They have like a little um little hook about solar on it. Is that still a product you guys are using? Yeah, people still buy those all day long. um You know, again, it's just kind of a different time and place. It depends what you're doing. if you're If you're doing solar and you're trying to get someone's info, then like you want to use the mobile app and send your card via the app. If you're, you know, and just networking, then you can use those tap cards and just kind of get your information out. If you're like some type of conference or something and talking to other, you know, agents or other, other reps, um then maybe you don't care as much to get their info, but you want to just more give out your info. You can, you can kind of do it that way. Yeah, I've got a, I've got a bunch. I was handing those out too.
Speaker: people on the doors I would knock and then you know if they didn't answer leave one of those cards in the door i probably oh you're talking about you're talking about the the QR code cards yeah yeah i don't know if that's different from the yeah those are I thought you were talking about like the tap cards like the plastic like business card ones but you're talking about the the drop cards what we call them yeah the drop cards yeah it's Yeah. Those are, those are super cool. I'll be honest. It's one of those things that we built out and it kind of just was a dud. Okay. And it's, I don't think it's because of the idea. I think there's just a lot going on. Like even when I sold pest control my very first summer, you know, you, they had all these flyers that you could, that you could take with you. And so at the office, they had just stacks and stacks of flyers. And so in order to hold that many flyers and it's hot and sweaty and greasy and everything out on the doors, like,
Speaker: if you put them in your back pocket, dude, like they'll get wet from like, you're just your freaking swaths, dude. And like, like, and so then you had to wear like cargo pockets and like put them in your cargo pockets. And then like, you got these huge pockets as you're walking. And so like, just like in the physical, like nature of carrying door hangers is just like annoying. And so that's why when we made those drop cards, they're like, for those of you listening, they're a three inch by three inch card. And there's a big QR code on one side, just three inch, you know, ah qr code. And then on the backside, it says something about solar, like don't let your utility bill get the best of you or whatever.
Speaker: And it's meant to just kind of like intrigue somebody and get them to scan. Like who doesn't want to just scan a QR code to see what the heck's on the other side of it? And so it was like this thing you could like knock a door. If they didn't answer, you just slip it in their door and it's like they would scan it and it just redirects to your business card and it allows for them to just connect with you and yeah and try to, you know, start a conversation.
Speaker: Um, so ultimately it's a door hanger. We call it a drop guard. Um, because they were, they weren't styled. They didn't, they weren't long and had like a little hook on the end to hang out on the door. It was just three inch by three inch and you would just kind of shove it through the door jam.
Speaker: I think it's the best way to do like a flyer like that. If you're doing door to door and you want some, like hit, hit up our shop, shop.repcard.com and you can order them. You can customize them and the whole thing, but it's ah just an easy way to, to have a leave behind.
Speaker: But like you said, like door-to-door guys are so active. Like they're just active hunters. Like I want to find the next live person, close the deal, set the appointment. They don't really think long-term. And so we've taken stabs at that through our, our follow-up tools and like the drop cards and have to have different options for people to take advantage of their time.
Speaker: But yeah overall, it's not something that we, we talk about internally a lot or, or, or mess with, but, uh, It's a tool. It's there. if it's up your I would do it if I was knocking again. Like, you know, you may only get one one callback every now and then, but it's low effort.
Speaker: Yeah, I thought was a cool idea. Yeah, I just thought of them because I still have them sitting in my in my car. I haven't used them all. I would ask eat you yeah yeah i remember you tell me for a while. Yeah. and I don't remember what the results were. so yeah Yeah, I mean, it probably depends on areas you're hitting. Like San Diego is obviously pretty be saturated, so it's probably going to take way more of those cards to get a callback compared to maybe a less saturated area.
Speaker: And so, york yeah. So I didn't have, i maybe got one or two callbacks out of, probably dropped like five or 600 of them, but, um, yeah you know, would have to test it again. what One of those deals, you know, pays you a nice commission. So you were getting some callbacks. That's really like probably healthy numbers, all things considered, you know,
Speaker: you do mailers, like if any service, any company that there's a million mailer companies out there, it's like, when you actually talk to them, it's crazy. Like they're talking about points of percentages and stuff like, oh yeah, you're, you know, you'll get like per thousand, you're going to get like two or three calls or whatever. And it's, it's like the numbers are,
Speaker: or crazy unless your offers is like insane but yeah no just curious about that though but yeah i want to talk about uh competitions you're mentioning you guys have like the scoreboard you know numbers integrated in rep cards so what are some things you're seeing successful companies that are killing out with like incentives competitions do you have anything you're seeing that's working well to like drive that specifically for solar maybe what are what do you see in top companies do to like drive their scoreboard and incentives stuff like that You know, the best thing that that so like some of our top companies, what they're doing is they're just keeping it simple. They're not trying to distract the reps with like a ton of different metrics. They're getting like one to three metrics that they're focused on from a leaderboard perspective.
Speaker: um You think about any role inside of a solar sales organization, you've got usually a setter and a closer. And there could be like leadership. areas too, but like at its core, it's a setter and a closer, right. To get a deal done.
Speaker: And then you've got the technicians and in the office and all that stuff. But if you have that setter and closer, just focused on one or two metrics per role, like for setters, it's like number of conversations that they're having and number of appointments set.
Speaker: Yeah. And then the closer, it's how many appointments did they sit down with and how many did they close? And then you can run some percentages in there, like set to set to sit ratio and like sit to set to close ratio. And you can build all these ratios within rep card. So overall, there's not a lot of metrics that they're trying to cover, but it's super focused. And then you run competitions off of that.
Speaker: And so you take those one, two or three metrics for a setter and you're like, hey, For every door knock, you're going to get two points, like every conversation that you have. But then every set appointment, you're going to get 20 points. So it's 10 times the number. So to really win and to gain a big lead, you need to set appointments.
Speaker: And then for every sat appointment that you set, you're going to get you know an additional 10 points. And then for every close, you're going to get 50 points. And so you can build things like this into our competition. And for a setter, they're really just focused on setting those quality appointments and talking to more people.
Speaker: but Then there's there's kind of that daisy chain of like what happened after the actual sit and the close that also affect. And so they they want to set quality appointments. They want to make sure that the person's educated on what what they're getting into.
Speaker: And so then that just changes the performance of the setter. And then the closer on the other side, they have a ton of incentive to close the deal for the commission, but then also there's the pride of the leaderboard. There's the the prize in the competition that that sometimes changes behavior. Um, yeah and can also change behavior for the worse, you know, if guys are light cheating and stealing out there to get a deal, but, but all of that, that whole mechanism is just so beautiful. It's, it's what sales guys crave.
Speaker: It's been cool to see people leverage it harness it. I just leading pest control teams back in 2016, 2017, like, dude, it was all manual. Yeah. and mean You were, I was using a a software to put stuff into but in order to calculate it it was all manual and it would take a lot of time and so it's cool to see companies be able to just spin up a competition in literally two or three minutes and have it act their bottom line yeah that's so good yeah i think it just tools like this they just help reduce the f fri friction on incentives planning competitions because it's been something i've noticed in solar
Speaker: Like when we haven't had good systems to track something in place, we've thought of like cool competitions, i had ideas, but they were like, oh man, to track this, it's going to be a headache you know, sometimes it gets too complicated with like too many points and this and that and people get confused.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's important whether you're using RepCard whatever you're using um to have some like simple tracking system and track the right things. That's just some, we just got back from a leadership retreat actually over at our at our company and something we were talking about is just like incentivizing the small,
Speaker: things. um A lot of people probably heard the book, Atomic Habits. And I was just listening to one of his podcasts he's done on that too. And it's just like, incentivizing this step before the step. Like you said, maybe it's you're giving some small score or whatever to just knocking the door podcast has listened to he's talking about a guy that just like he showed up to the gym for five minutes. I went home, didn't even do a workout just because I'm in the book, James Clear, he talks about it's like you need to get in the habit before you can improve the habit. You need to first start the habit.
Speaker: So just like showing up, doing the small thing and then you can start improving it. And so I think that's what we do is people knocking on doors as a people in solar. You know, if you can get guys, we incentivize the small things and people get excited over even like 20 bucks. It's like we' we're doing incentives like, hey, 20 bucks. If you can go talk to, if you get a picture with the homeowner or whatever, just like incentivizing the small thing, because then that's going to develop the habit and help you incentivize the other things. So, um but no, that's good. See you guys. Good. You're doing it.
Speaker: stacking wins is a real thing. And you got to be careful because, you you know, Bradley spoke on stage one time and he talked about like, okay, eat one less French fry. Leave five French fries in the box and why count that as a win and like stack a win and just like, yeah, you want to go and and gain weight in the right way and eat good food. But for now, like just eat five less French fries, you know? And I'm like, you know, was kind of like, I see both sides, but like you can't just be okay, ate five less and then I ate six less and then you know, you're just, you're still so far off from where you want to be. So it's like good to stack wins, but also like have a little bit of self accountability where you're like, you're, you're, you're pushing for the right thing. So that's why in that example I gave, it's like, cool. Give, give a few points for like having a a conversation, not just a door knock, but like a conversation and we can track that kind of stuff.
Speaker: Um, And so it's like, cool. If you just have a conversation with somebody, whether they buy or not, they shut the door, but you're probably not going to win the competition by just having 3,000 conversations this week.
Speaker: You're going to win by getting the appointment set and doing those other things that are going to give you more points. But it does feel good to see that number kind of going up as you, as you, you know, just try and as you put forth the the best effort.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good. So, yeah, let's talk a little bit about I know we're going to get into that. So you got your whole AI sales coaching tool we'll talk about. But before that, yeah, what have you guys started integrating AI within RepCard to? I mean, I'm thinking...
Speaker: Because even just people use ChatGPT to just like, hey, give me a message to follow up with this customer whatever. Simple things like that. You started using AI like that within RepCard where can like, don't know, generate some messages to send to customers or anything like that you're doing within RepCard.
Speaker: Yeah, none of it's ah live just yet. We've got a lot of cool stuff coming. So and we launched the AI coaching thing that we'll talk about in a minute. um But yeah, we're really close to launching some other cool AI um tools that will help, like you said, just speed things up, you know, less thinking, more action, and just letting reps win. Kind of going back to our core mission is just helping reps win in the field so they can spend more time with their families.
Speaker: Yeah. And every interaction that they have with somebody, they should be able to take advantage of the time that they took to get out in the field, to build the rapport, to knock the door. Like that is so hard to do at scale. And so for you leaders out there, like it's hard what you guys do, getting guys, getting 10, 20 dudes.
Speaker: area coordinated, chopped up, get them out to hood, get a car group, like all the things. So like, let's give them a tool where they can take advantage. And so with AI, we're just speeding up some of those processes that inside of our tool have just been redundant or time taking or ah require a lot of thinking with just the power of AI. So yeah stay tuned for all the, the updates that that we'll be pushing out to, to just provide more value.
Speaker: Okay. All right. Well, sounds like some exciting stuff for going on pretty soon. So guess I'm trying to do it on purpose. So that's why you're going be like, wait, hold on. yeah um Okay. Well, you've got your AI sales sales tools. I know that sounds like that's kind of separate from RepCard, right? That's a separate... Yeah, the AI coaching thing is a separate app. um It'll be fully integrated sometime in the next probably few months. But we did launch it as a separate platform.
Speaker: And it currently, you know, ties into RepCredible Easy, but we're just going to kind of deepen that integration with our own tool. But ultimately, you know, companies usually have scenarios that happen over and over and over again to sales reps. And it's like, how do you do role play? How does a rep practice before work, after work when he's not with the guy? Sometimes you do role plays in the office and it turns into a joke and it's kind of whatever. And so we we built this AI powered sales coach um where you guys can build, when you when you go into the tool and you say, hey, I'm in solar, it already has a default brain.
Speaker: And then you know that your coach, like the the coach's brain, and then you can add more information into the brain. And then that information gets used when it's coaching the rep on the role play. And so you go into the app and you just hit start role play, you role play with somebody, and then it gives you feedback based on how the role play went. Now you can create different scenarios and say, hey, I want my rep to focus on wealthy people and I want to have it be a male or a female. i want You can create and collect different things in the platform to kind of create a different scenario and then it's kind of locked. Each rep can try those scenarios and they can compare how they did against another rep on that one scenario.
Speaker: okay And so it gives it gives a lot of customization and not just in the brain and the and the logic. I mean, maybe you guys are selling... REC panels, or i don't even know what panels people sell anymore in solar, but like there's different panels that have different spec sheets that have different information. They weigh more, they're different sizes, they're different colors, like little things like that, that like the rep, if he says something that's off inside of the role play, it's going to take that spec sheet into consideration. And he's telling people the panels weigh a hundred pounds a piece and they're like, Maybe they're 200 or maybe they're 50, but it'll guide on some of those things and just take into consideration anything from a spec sheet to the way that they should be doing an intro, maybe a certain close. They should be handling objections certain ways.
Speaker: And so it's actually pretty crazy what or how good it is. Like I haven't... knock doors in years now. And when I role play with it, it just like, it puts me right back in that energy of like, I know that like hustle of the door, like you've got to respond quick. You need to be like listening and intently listening with the customer is saying so you can like handle their objections. And like, it really puts you on the doors, even if you're just sitting on your couch. Nice. That's cool. Yeah. What made you decide to, you know, launch something like that? You guys got all going with RepCard. What, what led to this whole AI sales coach thing? you know, the training part of our platform has always been something that we've wanted to expand on. And so when it came time to actually spend time and money and resources on it, um AI had b started to become become a, you know, kind of like a real trusted concept.
Speaker: We wanted to build out something more on the training side. We felt like that was somewhere we wanted to improve. And so we just were like, hey, let's build a tool that could allow teams to role play, whether they're with in correlation meeting and you want to pull open somebody's phone and put on speaker and do a role play and let everybody listen, or if they're just at home or whatever, and and let, let something be kind of evergreen.
Speaker: So if a guy needs help before after work, or even if he's on the doors and he's struggling, whatever, like, going and doing a role play can help. I i wouldn't say like on the doors is like the use case that we thought of like middle of the day, some guy's going to go to the curb and sit down and like do some role plays. Like that's not what we're thinking, but, um, before and after letting people just recruit and get people right into training.
Speaker: And so, you know, from recruiting over the years, Taylor, like, especially like in pest control where you recruit a guy in November and he doesn't knock his first door till, you know, April. Yeah. yeah You can only go to so many like meetings and meetups and trainings and he's in school. Typically those, that, that industry is like the guys who are typically in college in the off season. And so it's like, how do you solve that?
Speaker: And so we chose to build that with AI. All right. That's cool. Have you gotten pretty good feedback from it? Um, you know, people on solar have seen improvements. It's currently right now in open data. So you can go to saucy.ai, S-O-S-S-Y.ai, and you can sign up and add all your users. It's totally free to the end of July and use it. So we're getting tons and tons of feedback right now from people and, you know, just making tweaks and changes to it, but it's totally free right now so to get in. Yeah. Well, we will link to that. I'm going to go check it out for sure.
Speaker: Sounds like a fun thing to do just in like correlation trainings or whatever. Cause you know, everyone's used to being in the hot seat, getting up, but before the, I'm just picturing putting someone up there and you're against the AI in front of the whole room. And you can also have everybody go kind of walk into their own corner of the room or walk outside and they, everybody could do a role play, a scenario that you created. And now it's going to rank everybody's against everybody. So you take five minutes, hey guys, everybody go do a role play.
Speaker: Think about the power of that versus like, okay, let's everybody listen to Jim, talk to Joe in the office and he dicks around with all the different comments that happen in a role play. And like all the sudden it's 20 minutes goes by and nothing really productive is getting done versus like, dude, let's take five minutes. Everybody go do this role play we just put out and let's come back and we're going to see who gets, to you know, whoever gets number one gets, you know, an energy drink. Yeah. Like, let's go. That creates so much more energy. Nice. What we've done historically in door to door. Yeah. All right. That's a cool idea. I might try that this week. I'll send you a video. Yeah. Dude, it's get in at all your users. It's totally free right now. And then, dude, send a video of all your guys. Yeah. Hitting it.
Speaker: All right. Energy drink on Brad for the top rep. We'll send a swag box to the top guy, dude. We won't let him belong. Something I forgot to ask you about. I know before you guys had in RepCard, you kind of switched between if you're using it for recruiting or sales.
Speaker: I think there's like a different pipeline depending on if you're using it for recruiting or sales. So is that something you're still focused on? Are a lot of guys using it to organize their recruits? And i don't know if you've changed anything as far as like using RepCard for recruiting. dude. So... This next Monday, we're launching our e-docs.
Speaker: So you'll be able to fully recruit from a to Z on our platform. So you meet a guy, you you get somebody, you you interview them, you can send the documents for them to sign their W-9, like all their forms, rep agreement, all of that with one button click. You just go into their recruit, hit send docs, you choose the docs and send it off.
Speaker: They get a text message in real time. They can open it up and start signing docs with you right at the table or right, you know, if it's virtual, they can just sign right while you're on the call. And so it tracks the progress of all of their, uh, their document signing.
Speaker: And, um, and then once they're done, then you can just kind of convert them to a rep card user and get them right into the role play and, you know, the training and all the other things that they need. So the, the recruiting stuff has been something that we've have done forever, just with the recruiting, like through sending your business card to recruits and organizing your recruit contacts that sometimes can be everywhere in your phone. And so now it's way more organized. There's a lot of been other updates on the, on the backend of repcard.com that more of an admin would use to manage all the recruits coming through the pipe. And so some people use it for kind of an ATS, an applicant tracking system to kind of keep track of all their, their hires and all that fun stuff. And yeah, if I remember it, there's still, it's like, you know, if you send out your, your card, whether it's your creweder a potential customer or whatever, it still can notify you. Oh, someone's viewed your card still doing stuff like that. Right.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's just been huge since day one of just like letting people know like who's engaging when like that's ultimately the hottest lead in your Rolodex. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Um, I'm going have pull back open. Yeah. oh I'll admit having a been slacking on using rep card, um, for a little bit now, but you got me excited to pull some of these things, dust, dust it off the shelf. And,
Speaker: um use it for my recruits because i'm just like as we're talking about this i'm like why did i stop using it for recruiting and you know some companies they have like my company they have their own canvassing app and things like that but whether your company's already using a different canvassing app or whatever i think there's still so many things you could use your up card for i'm just thinking that's a no-brainer for recruiting yeah i have so many different contacts on my phone that i don't even i don't even remember all these recruits and i've forgotten to follow up Yeah. hey I had to go to my phone like freaking, you know, Bob Taco Bell or like freaking, you know, you have like some guy named like Costco because you didn't even get his name and you just saved him as Costco. You ask him for his number and you walk away and it's like awkward to go back. And then you're like, you saved in your number as just like discount tire or something. And you're like, dude, like what? Like how how are you supposed to recruit at scale?
Speaker: Those are some of the best recruits of those organic conversations when you meet another salesperson or someone, a a waiter at dinner. to not have a system or a process is just kind of foolish. We will link to all this guys can go check out, um, rep card. And I believe you guys still have like a free version too, right? For people that just want to go in there, check it out and do some basic stuff. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. It's a free to life option. You can go in there and, use it as long as you need. And, and then there's upgraded options that you'll, you'll, you'll see why you want to upgrade because it'll, it'll dangle some carrots of like, Hey, like you could make more money with knowing who opened your card. Otherwise it just says, you know, somebody opened your card.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Smart. And so before we start wrapping up, I want to ask you too, Brad, I know you're a family guy. You got a, your kids, you got three, four kids. Remind me. Yeah. Four. Yeah. Two boys and two girls. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, what I've always respected about you, you've been a family guy. um I see you showing up for your family and still crushing it in business. And um seems like you've but always been able to prioritize the family, make time for them and have a awesome family life. And that's something that I think a lot of solar guys struggle with. and I talk about it on the podcast all the time, how one of the toughest parts of our job is I've got three kids and it's like we're running appointments in the evening
Speaker: Um, you know, we're trying to run teams, we're on calls at like weird hours, stuff like that. So, uh, any advice you would give on just how you've been able to like, you know, keep crushing in your business, grow rep card, you know, still show up your family and have them be the priority priority and, um, be successful in that. Yeah. First thing I'll say is that it wasn't always that way. I'm just so grateful for second chances and opportunities to to grow in life. And there's a few tactical things I've done. Like when I get home from work, I don't,
Speaker: I don't, yeah, I bring my phone in now, but for a long time I didn't bring my phone in or my Apple watcher and I'd leave everything in the car and I'd go in and just find my wife, kiss my wife, and then just go find my kids. And usually they're at the door, they want to see you, they're running up to you. And so I call it like, don't give your kids the the finger, like where you're like, one more minute, hey, hold on one second, one second. And then 32 minutes goes by.
Speaker: You know, you're talking to some recruit who's going to like change your business and then your kids get, you know, the short end, the short version of dad. And then you try to go find them and they're not, they don't even care anymore about the excitement of you coming home. And it just, it's a total buzzkill. So that time to me is like sacred. When I get home, I just, I absolutely love turning onto my street and just going inside. Like if you, if you video my house, like sometimes they're like sprint to the door. Yeah. Like not full sprint, but it's like a light jog. Like I'm just so pumped to get home and, you know, not, not bringing your phone inside and not being distracted. Sometimes your mind is still distracted.
Speaker: And so you have to just try to really fight that and just realize for those of you listening, like just realize like the recruit can wait. a lot of things can wait to the next morning. Yeah. Now, if the client needs to sign something and what, like there, there are kind of like little fire drills, emergencies, whatever, like I get it. But for the most part, um, I got caught up in thinking that everything was like super urgent and that, you know, people needed me for something. And so I'd have to respond. I took pride. It was almost like a pride. I just, in like being responsive and making sure that they had what they need, but I was also telling my family that they were second yeah in line. Yeah. That was one huge thing. And then I think another big one is just communicating with your spouse. I think sometimes people feel like communicating with your spouse about the situations that you're in is like showing weakness or maybe there the spouse is going to think that you know things aren't good or whatever, like but just checking in with your spouse and being like, hey, like how have things been the last like month or two? I know the schedule's been crazy. And ideally, you want to set those expectations ahead of time. But even if you say, hey, I'm going to be running appointments you know between five to nine o'clock. I don't know when they're going to come in, but I'm running like this late appointments with my company. And you guys got some goals to make money to buy a house or whatever. like That's cool. But check in.
Speaker: Like after a week, two weeks, three days, like a month, like whatever, like check in and like, hey, how has this affected you? You know, have you noticed anything different about this new schedule that maybe is good or bad, something I should change? Like, and then just listen.
Speaker: And so I'm kind of going a little tangent there, but it's just stuff that's so important to me because I know... So many you guys listening are hustlers and you want to grind and hustle for a brighter future freedom and financial freedom and all that. But you want to make sure your family's right, right next to you.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. full time Yeah. It can be tough to do for sure. It's like, um you know I always told myself, oh, I'm doing this for my family. I'm working hard. um for my family so I can spend more time with them later.
Speaker: But then it's like started realizing later a lot of times is never going to come. It's just like it turns into an endless thing. And so, um yeah, it's it's life and it's hard. And dude, you've been married one time.
Speaker: Some people have married six times. you know like From a lot of us out there, it's your first time and you you don't realize that. You think tomorrow, yeah, we're going to get to... like and um That's what's tough is that you need mentorship. You need guidance. You need... and I think that's like a taboo thing. Door-to-door has built-in mentorship, but like when you're talking about like counseling or coaching or marriage help or... like dude, like who cares? Like, that's like the most important thing in life. Like go go get some help. Go, go ask someone for ah an opinion, ask a friend. Like that's, that's, uh, it's funny to hear you say those words. Cause I, I said that for so long. It was just like, it's that conundrum of like, I'm doing it for my family, but like take the time to spend the time with the family. But like the fire drills are there and there's all this momentum. It's something that kind of you, you battle internally. Yeah.
Speaker: Other people understand it kind of in their world, but you're, yeah, it's just such a crazy thing. So people need to talk about more. For sure. I know it's, it's one of the toughest things. I'm seeing so many, especially in door-to-door solar, seeing a lot of guys, and you know, crush it in their cells, make a ton of money.
Speaker: But then I have some major issues in their relationships and things like that. So it's sad to see. And that's something that I've been thinking about a lot is just trying to figure it out for myself because I've made a lot of mistakes. I'm still figuring it out.
Speaker: You know, my wife still still says, oh, you're you're you're in appointments all the time. We're so still trying to figure out balance at times and there's seasons. You know, that's one thing like you're saying, there's times when we're doing competitions. I try to communicate to to my wife, oh, we're going to be busier for these next couple of weeks during this competition. and that's definitely how upset an expectation.
Speaker: Talking about schedules. But it's like, how can you still prioritize? Prioritizing her and your kids through a competition may look different. Maybe it's that you come home for lunch during the competition times can and and you have lunch with them because you're going to be gone at the night or you... you know you leave later but you're you know because you're going to be gone all through the night or you know yeah just a lot of communication and then just looking for different ways to still connect and and not just assuming that like they're okay yeah definitely definitely well yeah i think we could do a whole separate podcast on that topic because you know a ton we can talk about on that but um yeah we'll have to do a part two on that but thank you for giving us some perspective on that. Always good to remember the ah most important relationships. And so um as we're wrapping up here, Brad, we'll link all this in the notes, but um best place to reach out to you, follow RepGard and all that. Is that just on ah Instagram or any other place that people can find out more?
Speaker: Yeah. Instagram, um, you can follow everything is, uh, the handle is rep card app. And so you can find that whether it's YouTube, Instagram, um, all the, all the above. And then my personal one is just Brad.
Speaker: I think there's two underscores and then Mortensen. So, um, that's where you can find me. Yeah. Okay, cool, man. And then last question before we wrap up, and anything as far as it goes with ah solar, guys that are having success with RepCard or just success in general that you're seeing in solar, um anything we missed or anything that you would, any final advice you'd give for a solar guy using RepCard or whether they're using it or not that you're seeing that's been making successful companies or reps? Yeah. So in solar, when you set an appointment, you need to send a video to them
Speaker: ahead of time that kind of like sets the expectations for the appointment. So in RepCard, you can have videos loaded and you can have one or two that talk about like the warranties or that talk about, um and some of these videos, I think we have defaulted in the system. So when you get in, they're already sitting there for you. They're just generic solar videos.
Speaker: But when you set an appointment or you get an appointment from a setter, then you can send your rep card and put have let them put a face to the name and tell them to go watch these few videos that talk about your warranties, how the system goes, like solar one-on-one, just basic stuff.
Speaker: And then when you get to the appointment, the first thing you do is you ask like, hey, so did you have a chance to watch those videos I sent? And you can tell if they did or not because it will tell you. Yeah. And if they've watched them, your closing percentage will go up by a lot because they start with, yeah, I did. And you're like, sweet. What did you like or not like, or what, what questions came up and they go, oh, and boom, the things that they tell you is everything that you're going to battle all the objection. They all come out at the very beginning.
Speaker: in just a natural organic way, um, where you were trying to educate them. They got educated, it created some questions. They give those questions to you and you can just start addressing those and kind of tailor the system to them in that process versus you just getting there and going straight into like the proposal and then being, okay, so what questions do you have? Or like,
Speaker: Yeah. You know, and I'm, I'm, that's not really how people like close, but you get what I'm saying. Like starting with a little bit of homework, essentially, it gauges their interest level and gives you confidence if they've watched it. And then you're able to, to take advantage of that by being like, so what questions came up? And it's like, oh, my brother-in-law said this, or video said this, but I didn't know this. or ah How does that work? Now it's almost like you're taking an order versus you're trying to sell them.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Love that. Yeah, so good. And yeah, I mean, whether people use RepCard or not, guys, you guys can go do this. RepCard is going to make it way easier to do everything Brad's talking about. So um thank you for coming on today. and We will post all this in the show notes. Go check out RepCard.
Speaker: ah give Brad a shout out on Instagram. But ah yeah, man, thank you for being so given to the industry, help us get more sales through follow up and make our lives easier. So um yeah, i look forward to some of the ai stuff you're dropping in and keep crushing them man. Thanks for coming on with us.
Speaker: Awesome, Taylor. Thank you so much for your time, man. Yeah. Thanks, man. So some of you already know that I run my own door-to-door sales team here in San Diego. And as we are gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results. But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage. Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout.
Speaker: But it's not a door knocking app. It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market. It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later canceled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given neighborhood.
Speaker: It's been working for a lot of teams across the country and now I'm on board too. I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego so I decided to partner up. But I told them, hey, if I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal. And they did.
Speaker: So go to solarscout.app forward slash taylor and book a demo with them and you'll get 10% off your first month when you sign up. That's solarscout.app forward slash taylor.
Speaker: Okay. What's up, solarpreneurs? Hope you enjoyed the episode. Before you run out and start selling more solar yourself, wanted to let you know about an exciting new cheat sheet we created it specifically for you in mind.
Speaker: One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start? What episodes should I listen to in the podcast? You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
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