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. Hey, solopreneurs. Today, we're going talking about some off the beaten path lead gen methods, alternative lead gen methods. We're going to get you thinking about different ways you can be generating leads for your solar business. Welcome to the show. My name is Taylor Armstrong. We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: I hope you have enjoyed some of our recent interviews. We've had some insane value brought from guests like Lenny Gray and a lot of recent ones. I can't even remember so many great interviews we've had. So go check them out if you have not. And speaking of that, please leave us a review. Check us out on YouTube. yeah You can leave us a comment on YouTube too. We'd love to hear from you and ah shoot us a follow. So we're going to be jumping into some alternative lead gen. I got thinking about this. We recently had a training on our team from um you know one of my mentors, Mike Brands, also one of our top podcasts we've done on the show.
Speaker: If you haven't listened to it, we will link to it. He is one of the leaders on our team, and he got talking about some different ways he's been generating leads and getting sales lately. And it got me thinking myself as a door knocker, a lot of people on here that just knock doors. Sometimes we forget that there are different ways to generate leads. There's things we can do, things we should do that really don't add that much time and effort that could make us an extra 10, 20, 30 grand a month just by doing a few of these simple things.
Speaker: And so we're going to talk about three different ways, three things you can add. And these are things that shouldn't take much time. It's the more not asking to make a massive shift in how you've been generating your leads. So if you're primarily a doorknocker like myself, you can start to add a few of these things. I believe you will make a huge return on your investment if you choose to add a few of these things.
Speaker: Hey, and I've done mostly to a degree. There is one at the end. Stay tuned till the very end because the third one actually have not done before. But it sounds like Mike Brand had some massive success with this. I'm excited to try this out.
Speaker: So stay tuned till the end. You're going want to hear this one for sure. But the first one is just working with referral partners. a lot of people know this. It's like there's a lot of people selling things to homeowners. There's a lot of people working on homes.
Speaker: Why are we not leveraging referral partners? And so one of the exercises we did when I first heard this training that thought was really good and I'll invite you to do right now. Mike, he had us just list out buckets of people we know.
Speaker: Right. So he asked us, who's already in your world? You got people from church, you got contractors, interior designers, roofers, CPAs, pool guys, realtors, house flippers. So just in general, and if you know these guys, well, there you go. But if you see these guys working on homes,
Speaker: It's a really smart thing to do to stop and have a conversation with them. I've learned this from people outside of kind of like door knocking circles because they are really good at this. They stop, they have conversations with these people. Why? Because they can become potential referral partners and it could be thousands and thousands in commissions just by developing relationships with some of these people.
Speaker: So the exercise we did, I'd invite you to do right now, you can pause this wherever you're listening, but I would just take a minute or two minutes and write down every single person you know in these buckets, right? So again, it's like church, contractors, pool guys, realtors, house flippers, interior designers, looking at some of my notes here.
Speaker: and then write out these buckets, add real names under the bucket, and then circle the strongest partners or referral sources. right And so if you do that, i actually did this last week during the training. person that came to mind it was ah a guy i go to church with, and he owns a pretty successful pest control but company down here in Southern California and knows a lot of homeowners.
Speaker: So we've done A little bit of work together, but I've never really had a chat with them about being like an official referral partner. So I sent them a text when I did this, scheduling a time to talk with them.
Speaker: We're ah lining up a time to grab some lunch or whatever. And just from that one single text could be a lot of money and commissions, right? But the good thing about it is you don't have to feel like a sleazeball. You don't have to feel like you're just coming at them because we're also talking to homeowners. So when you go to these people, you can benefit them.
Speaker: right? You make it a win-win. We're not just going to these people, asking for our benefit. It's like, we need to understand that we can actually be helping them. So just a text you could include in this ask is something like, hey, random question. I'm working on growing my business more through relationships and you were one of the first people I thought of. I really value your opinion. Can I buy you lunch or grab 15 minutes on the phone this week? I'd love to run something by you.
Speaker: Something like that that just opens the door for a conversation. And when you get that conversation, you can easily use ChatGPT to generate, you know, like some more ideas for you, figure out a way you can make it a win-win and really benefit each other. so that's the first one. Don't forget about referral partners. Maybe some of you already have these. I've had a few, but sometimes they go dead. So this was just a reminder and reminder to me.
Speaker: to focus on getting new referral referral partners and also nurture those relationships that i already have okay and then number two directly from customers all right this one should be a no-brainer but it's like are we getting referrals directly from the customers and then a reminder that we had in this training is just making sure we're cultivating the relationship right because sometimes we all want the referrals we're not asking for it and that's the number one problem But number two, we're not keeping that conversation going.
Speaker: hey And so Mike talked to us. He's like, in the group chat you create with your customers, are you talking about things other than solar? right Are you asking them how their kid's soccer game was? I don't know, Rams fan, are you trolling them on the game saying, hey, what happened in the Rams?
Speaker: Whatever. So figure out these things. And then if you can bring up things other than solar, then your chances are going to go up that you get referrals. That was a reminder for me.
Speaker: So many times I'm just creating this group chat, but I'm only talking about solar topics. I'm only giving updates about solar. So a big focus was let's try to think about things other than solar and actually create a relationship here.
Speaker: not just transactional. Hey, and then the third one, and this is one that I haven't done, but I am really excited to get started and give it a shot. Sending out written printed material to people around your installs.
Speaker: right Maybe some of you had done this. If you're watching this on YouTube or something, would love to hear. If you've done this, had success with it. You know, Mike, he was talking to us about this and he uses a service that sends like gifts and cards to customers.
Speaker: So he's sending like some premium cards. He's spending a lot of money on this. I know there's people that sometimes send out like postcards or just a little letter. But Mike, he was actually sending out like a box of candy and a letter to these people.
Speaker: So he did this a little different, thinking I'm going to try both methods. But you know, it's just people were installing. First of all, you need to be talking to the neighbors around the install of the day of the install.
Speaker: Something my have not been super consistent on. Sometimes I get busy, forget when my installs are going on. and totally forget to even show up to them. okay But if you can, do everything you can to show up to the installs.
Speaker: and But then this other thing he's doing, he's going, you know, everyone has your CRM, your door knocking app. ah What Mike's doing, and he's going to the people and kind of cherry picking the ones that that first of all, own the place, right? you don't want to be sending this to renters, especially if you're spending decent money on it. But then number two, looking for ones that maybe you had a decent conversation with um and couldn't quite get them over the edge, or maybe people you just couldn't catch home, but you already tried them.
Speaker: Just basically people you think would be higher percentage that if you sent them a little gift, sent them a letter, would they be willing to sit down with you? and And, you know, Mike went through his spend on this and it was a massive return. I think he spent like, um you know, over the past month, a thousand dollars on these. And then he got a few sales that, you know, gave him like a like a 10x return, something crazy. Maybe not that much. Need to look up his stats.
Speaker: But, ah you know, it makes sense, though, if you sent out a little gift to these people, and he he sent out something that was just basically ah giving them the heads up that you're going to be working on a project in the neighborhood, kind of like a construction don notice. So the note said something like, hey, we'll be installing more solar panels at your neighbor's home Friday and Saturday this week.
Speaker: At this address, wanted to give you a quick heads up before work begins. We understand that construction projects can sometimes mean extra trucks, noise and activity on the street. And we want to be as respectful as possible. Our crews will not be begin work before 8 a.m. And we'll make sure the work area is kept clean and everything is picked up at the end of the day. And then yeah he basically puts like this contact info.
Speaker: So he wasn't necessarily getting like people calling from this, but what he did that was really cool and that makes sense is once these little gifts, letters, whatever you want to send out, were sent out, he goes and actually knocks on the door before they install and then just does a follow up. And it's a really soft conversation. He's not pitching solar. He's just saying, hey, I'm following up on the note we send up we send about the construction at this address. um Then he says, I'm Mike. You guys got the candy?
Speaker: as well that we sent. And then at that point, said people totally dropped their guard and a few of them like let them right in and just grabbed total attention after that because it's law reciprocity, right? People want to give something back.
Speaker: You send them a little gift, ah you send them something in the mail, then they're not much more likely to listen. And, um you know, again, you could do it with letter. I'm going experiment with both, maybe sending just a letter because I think it would have a similar effect. But if you do want to go a step above and you think you have some people that would be really solid candidates, you know, maybe are they're bigger homes. Maybe they have a pool in the backyard. and Maybe, they you know, they're spending lot on electricity.
Speaker: Why not send a gift to little tube of candy? And you're that much more likely to get their attention just from the law reciprocity. You know, especially if the wife answers the answer to the road door or something.
Speaker: He said a lot of times he was getting just drinks given to him and just easy appointments set from this. Hey, so ah yeah, again, I'm just speaking from the training we're given and I'm going to try this. Hopefully come back with um some of my personal results that I can give you. But I thought this was a really cool thing that you can go out and try it this week. There's lots of services you can use to send out cards, gifts.
Speaker: I mean, shoot me a message. One I've used is send out cards. Makes it really easy to send cards and gifts like that. Try it out. And um the point of this is just to get you thinking outside the box. How can you generate more leads? Not without totally switching up your lead, Jen. We're not saying you should stop knocking doors.
Speaker: But these are small, easy things you can do, especially as we get closer to daylight savings time. Maybe when it gets dark a lot earlier, maybe you you don't have to knock in the dark the entire time. You can devote an hour that you probably wouldn't have been knocking anyways and do some of these other Legion methods, right?
Speaker: Or maybe it's a day where it's raining all day. You don't want to knock doors. You can do other things that are productive to get leads. So start thinking outside the box. I think that's how we make solar sustainable.
Speaker: You know, for me thinking about always having to knock doors all the time to get my leads. As am, I don't want to be 60 years old knocking on doors. No offense to people that are that old still knock doors, but I want to have you know, referral networks built up and I want to knock doors and because I want to, right? Not because I have to.
Speaker: So hopefully you can all think about those things. Let me know what other are alternative lead gen methods you have been experimenting with. Give these a shot. Hopefully they work for you. I know they will. and um love to hear your experiences with it. So tune in to the next episode. Please shoot me your comments and your suggestions for any future guests or topics you would like covered.
Speaker: And we'll see you on the next one. So some of you already know that I run my own door to door sales team here in San Diego. 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. Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout. But it's not a door knocking app. It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market.
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. 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, 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, back to the show. Hey, solopreneurs, quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day.
Speaker: For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety.
Speaker: This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give Solar Pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds for, are you ready for it, less than $3.45
Speaker: Currently, SoulCity is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled. So go to SoulCity.co to learn more and join the learning experience now. This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to SoulCity.co and join. We'll see you on the inside.
