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 fail.
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, Solrepreneurs?
Speaker: Today, we're going to be talking about a secret method that can help you save your deals from canceling.
Speaker: I had a deal that almost canceled.
Speaker: They tried.
Speaker: I dragged them back into it.
Speaker: I'm going to tell you how.
Speaker: So welcome to the podcast.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: We are here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and in this case, save your deals from canceling.
Speaker: And thank you for being a listener of the podcast.
Speaker: We are free and available on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, coming at you every Tuesday and Friday.
Speaker: So appreciate you spreading the word, sharing the podcast, leaving us a review if you have not already.
Speaker: As usual, we're going to give the announcement that we are doing our first live event today.
Speaker: It is the Solopreneur Referral Bootcamp.
Speaker: So if you feel like getting more referrals in your business, if you are sick of just only relying on doors to get your leads and would like people to be calling you with referrals, then consider coming to the bootcamp.
Speaker: It is going to be April 17th in Sandy, Utah.
Speaker: Location is confirmed for the Aquarium, Living Planet Aquarium, I believe it's called.
Speaker: It's going to be so cool.
Speaker: And if you don't go, you're going to get thrown in the shark tank.
Speaker: So make sure you come to this event.
Speaker: It's very simple.
Speaker: You just go to bootcamp.solarpreneur.com and there you can snag your tickets and
Speaker: Or alternatively, you can buy your SolarCon tickets, solarcon.com, and use our discount code, which is just Taylor.
Speaker: Get an extra 10% discount, and you'll get a ticket for free.
Speaker: I think that's the best deal, but hey, you can buy a ticket too.
Speaker: So hope to see you there April 17th.
Speaker: be there or get eaten by sharks.
Speaker: So now let's talk about how to keep your deals from canceling.
Speaker: We've had many episodes on this.
Speaker: And I mean, just the basics, like don't just sit in soft clothes.
Speaker: People tell them that they can cancel whenever they want.
Speaker: This is just a recipe for disaster.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: But I'm going to tell you a story about my deal.
Speaker: That's almost canceled.
Speaker: I'm
Speaker: I was able to save it.
Speaker: I surprised myself.
Speaker: Just being honest, I thought they were for sure going to cancel, but somehow I got these people back on board and I'm knocking on wood right now because it's not installed yet.
Speaker: So anything could happen, but for now I got these people back on board.
Speaker: They're happy with it.
Speaker: Should be going to install soon.
Speaker: So learn from my mistakes, learn from what I did.
Speaker: Here's what happened.
Speaker: Close this deal a couple of weeks back.
Speaker: They were about a week and a half at the time of this recording.
Speaker: and it was mostly with the wife.
Speaker: So the first mistake I made, I didn't really get the husband involved too much.
Speaker: He was there for part of the presentation, but he was kind of working on some projects, doing his thing.
Speaker: And I explained on the basics.
Speaker: Once we got the numbers, I walked him through that.
Speaker: The reason I wasn't as concerned about getting him in on the entire presentation was because he wasn't actually on the title of the home.
Speaker: It was just under the wife.
Speaker: She actually signed with her dad.
Speaker: So I'm like, all right, well, she's probably the main decision maker here.
Speaker: I'll run it by the husband, but it's whatever.
Speaker: So closer, she's happy with it.
Speaker: She's excited.
Speaker: And we scheduled a site survey for, I think, three days later.
Speaker: And the site surveyor shows up.
Speaker: No one answers the door.
Speaker: They call me.
Speaker: We had to reschedule the site survey.
Speaker: So I'm sending her text.
Speaker: Hey, Tomasa, when works?
Speaker: When can we get the site surveyor back out there?
Speaker: No response.
Speaker: And I'm starting to get worried.
Speaker: You know, naturally, when you start getting ghosted, when people start not responding to you, you know, a lot of times it means they don't want to continue with the solar project.
Speaker: So I'm like, you know, I'm just going to schedule it and we'll figure this out.
Speaker: So I call on my schedule.
Speaker: I say schedule for Saturday.
Speaker: That's when I first met with them.
Speaker: They should be there.
Speaker: And I text her, I say, hey, they're coming at this time.
Speaker: Still don't get a response.
Speaker: Still don't get a confirmation.
Speaker: So in my head, I'm just like, all right, you know what?
Speaker: I'm just going to show up to this site survey.
Speaker: They'll knock the site survey out.
Speaker: If someone's there, I'm just going to show up and tell them to do this site survey.
Speaker: So weekend comes, Saturday rolls around.
Speaker: send her one last text trying to confirm the site survey, still don't get an answer.
Speaker: And so I show up to the site survey.
Speaker: I'm banging on the door.
Speaker: No one's coming in the door.
Speaker: So I tell the site survey, all right, just run this up, climb up on the roof, get this bad boy site surveyed.
Speaker: Let's get this thing cranking.
Speaker: He's climbing up on the roof, gets his ladder out, jumping around up there.
Speaker: And then sure enough, finally, someone comes to the door, which I knew they were in there the whole time.
Speaker: They just weren't coming to the door.
Speaker: But if you want to get someone's attention, send your guys on the roof walking around up there.
Speaker: That might get them to come to the door if they're not.
Speaker: So it gets their attention.
Speaker: Husband comes out, and he just starts going off.
Speaker: He's like, no, get off my roof right now.
Speaker: What do you think you're doing?
Speaker: And I'm telling them, hey, no, we're just here for the site survey.
Speaker: Remember me?
Speaker: It's your solar guy.
Speaker: And he's like, yeah, we thought about it.
Speaker: Cancel it.
Speaker: And this is all in Spanish.
Speaker: Cancel me, cancel me, cancel me, cancel me, cancel me.
Speaker: El Contracto.
Speaker: You know, just telling me that he doesn't want panels anymore.
Speaker: So I'm just confused.
Speaker: I'm like, okay, well, what's going on?
Speaker: Sounds like you guys heard something bad about it.
Speaker: What's going on?
Speaker: And I'm just trying to deescalate the situation.
Speaker: And so he starts telling me, oh, I talked to friends.
Speaker: They had bad experiences.
Speaker: And just start spouting out like all the things that people had told them from their bad experiences, from programs in the past.
Speaker: So I'm listening to him and then I, he gets done and I'm like, okay, well, can we, let's go through, let's go through some of that because, um, just to be blunt with you, things have changed a lot.
Speaker: So that's actually why I'm here is because there's completely different programs that aren't like that.
Speaker: So I'm willing to bet if I called all your friends and family, showed them the differences with this, they would be surprised.
Speaker: So I just start walking through his concerns one by one, trying to de-escalate it.
Speaker: I'm not confronting him.
Speaker: Remember, that's the first rule of overcoming objections.
Speaker: Always agree with the customer.
Speaker: So I'm not trying to tell him he's wrong.
Speaker: Yeah, I probably got a little...
Speaker: A little defensive because he was just saying some things that were straight up lies about solar straight.
Speaker: I'm not sure.
Speaker: So I'm probably could have done better at this, but I tried as best as I could to not say, hey, you're wrong.
Speaker: This is how it is.
Speaker: And what I didn't said is I just started dropping names like crazy.
Speaker: I mean, I had built a lot of momentum in this neighborhood.
Speaker: Most of these homes were smaller homes.
Speaker: And this was one of his biggest concerns was, hey, this isn't a big home.
Speaker: You only need solar if your home's like huge, if you're using a ton of power.
Speaker: So I tried not to be like, that is not true.
Speaker: You're wrong.
Speaker: What I said instead is, hey, that's actually what a lot of people have thought too.
Speaker: But we just helped out.
Speaker: Your neighbor, his name is Don Florencio, which is true, helped out his neighbor.
Speaker: And he was using less power than you guys.
Speaker: So why did he still do it?
Speaker: The reason he still did this is because he's leveling out his electricity costs.
Speaker: He's protecting his rate for the future and he can now use more power.
Speaker: And those are some of the benefits he's seen.
Speaker: And these people, they were saving money, wasn't like massive amounts of money.
Speaker: But I tried to paint the picture to him and I just started throwing out example after example of many things as I could think of.
Speaker: Hey, Mr. Avellino, if you could go back three years ago, lock in the gas prices when they were $3.20 a gallon.
Speaker: This is California.
Speaker: We got high gas prices out here.
Speaker: But if you could lock it in when they're $3.20 instead of $3.40, back then it wouldn't have been that big of a deal, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But if you could tell me that now your gas was still locked in at $3.20, that would look all better instead of paying $5 a gallon.
Speaker: So all we're doing here is you're just picking the gas.
Speaker: It's the same gas.
Speaker: You're just picking the gas station that's coming in at $3 instead of $4.
Speaker: Would you do that, Mr. Avry?
Speaker: And he says, yeah, I would.
Speaker: And then slowly but surely, I start one by one overcoming his objections.
Speaker: And he was coming at me pretty hot.
Speaker: I thought he was just going to walk in, slam the door because he was heated.
Speaker: There was someone on his roof jumping around up there.
Speaker: And funny enough, the site survey actually, he saw us going at it at one point.
Speaker: And he gets off the roof and just leaves.
Speaker: He doesn't even want to be there.
Speaker: He jumps in his car and heads out of there.
Speaker: Doesn't even finish it.
Speaker: So we eventually get his concerns resolved.
Speaker: And he's like, okay, are you a Christian man?
Speaker: Can I trust you?
Speaker: And I said, yes, senor, I go to church.
Speaker: I will not let you down.
Speaker: And not only that, I live like three streets down, which yeah, right now I'm just knocking like a couple miles from my house.
Speaker: So I'm like, look, I will, you know,
Speaker: I'm literally like a couple miles down the road from you.
Speaker: I will give you my address.
Speaker: If something goes wrong, come knock on my door.
Speaker: But I would set up my friends, my family, my aunt, my uncle.
Speaker: All of them know that this is better than staying with your current situation.
Speaker: All we're doing is cheaper power here.
Speaker: You're not buying solar panels.
Speaker: In this case, I was doing a power purchase agreement.
Speaker: You're just buying the power for at a cheaper rate.
Speaker: Not a loan, no cash, no money out of pocket.
Speaker: So I'm telling them, look, all you're doing, we're just becoming your new utility.
Speaker: You're getting the power at a lower price per kilowatt hour.
Speaker: I know you're going to be happy with it.
Speaker: But if not, I'm a church-gown man.
Speaker: Come knock on my door.
Speaker: I'll make sure you have a good experience.
Speaker: You got my personal guarantee.
Speaker: Then I put out my hand.
Speaker: I shake his hand.
Speaker: And I say, does that sound good?
Speaker: He shakes my hand.
Speaker: That's when I know, all right, the deal's back on.
Speaker: Hey, and so lessons learned from this.
Speaker: Number one, consider going back to your site surveys.
Speaker: Hey, I usually don't go to my site surveys, but if you have a deal that is a little bit shaky, like I did, if you have a deal that maybe you just talked to the wife, you didn't fully get the husband in the conversation, but you still close it, you might want to consider going back to these site surveys.
Speaker: Or another secret I learned from some people on our team, if you are working with your setters, consider having your setters go to the site survey and take a little gift.
Speaker: Hey, especially if these deals are a little bit shaky, this is something that can solidify the deal and then make sure the site survey is actually happening.
Speaker: Nothing causes me more headaches or very few things cause me more headaches than having to sit and reschedule site surveys because the homeowner wasn't there.
Speaker: So make sure you confirm these things and consider having people go back.
Speaker: Hey, and then the second thing from this is just don't give up on your deals.
Speaker: Always fight.
Speaker: There's always a way to win back the deal.
Speaker: Okay, I thought this deal was lost.
Speaker: This guy came out heated.
Speaker: He was practically screaming when he came out the door saying...
Speaker: get the F off my roof in Spanish.
Speaker: So that site server got out of there quick, but just remain calm.
Speaker: Always agree with the customer.
Speaker: Deescalate the situation.
Speaker: Hey, if any of you were at door-to-door con, you saw Chris Voss, who is literally the FBI negotiator that teaches you a lot of these techniques.
Speaker: So use your mirroring and use techniques like that.
Speaker: If you've not read his book, those will help you calm the people down, de-escalate the situation and potentially win the deal back.
Speaker: And it's not going to work every time.
Speaker: Understand that these things can help you save your deals.
Speaker: all right so hope that helped and then after that what happened was i mean site surveyor was gone so i ended up having to call him and say hey i called this guy down can you please come finish the site survey see a whip background come back and i think he was relieved you know there wasn't any screaming wasn't any people saying get that off off my roof when he got back there all right but hope that helps all right so consider
Speaker: I'm going back to your site surveys.
Speaker: I think it will help you save some deals will help you get some people that were maybe a little bit on the fence about solar.
Speaker: It's all about getting these people as solid as possible.
Speaker: But remember, you don't want to sit in soft clothes these people, make sure you have them set on a decision.
Speaker: I mean, a lot of people are going to want to
Speaker: you know, maybe know that there's like a cancellation clause, like a lot of deals I go to, even if they are pretty certain of it, a lot of them will be like, well, this all sounds great.
Speaker: But if for whatever reason I woke up and I decided I didn't want to do this, can I cancel?
Speaker: So those people, it's like, yeah,
Speaker: There is, I'll show you here, there is an opt-out clause.
Speaker: Like you have, the state gives you some time to review it and all and everything.
Speaker: But Mr. Customer, assuming everything's exactly how we said it was today, nothing more, nothing less.
Speaker: Do you see any reason that you would want to cancel this and just stay with your current situation with the utility?
Speaker: No?
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Well, guess what?
Speaker: It is exactly what I'm saying.
Speaker: Nothing more, nothing less.
Speaker: So I know you're going to be super happy.
Speaker: Initial here.
Speaker: Authorize me here.
Speaker: And then let's do this.
Speaker: You're making a great decision.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Show them that certainty and then make sure as much as possible gets a firm decision when you leave.
Speaker: Don't leave things hanging.
Speaker: If they're being uncertain about it, they probably have unspoken concerns.
Speaker: So make sure you get to the bottom of what their concerns are and don't leave things open-ended before you leave the home.
Speaker: So that's the tip of the day.
Speaker: Hope it helps you save some deals from canceling.
Speaker: Thanks for tuning into the podcast.
Speaker: Can't wait to see everyone at the Solorpreneur Referral Bootcamp.
Speaker: Grab your tickets now and also grab your tickets for SolorCon.
Speaker: We'll see you on the next episode.
Speaker: Peace out.
Speaker: What's up, solopreneurs?
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 Solarpreneur.
Speaker: We put them together all in one sheet 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.
