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This 1 Thing Saved My Account From Cancelling
93 Plays1 year ago
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The SOLARPRENEUR podcast is here to help you close more deals in the solar industry, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully, have a much better time and situation.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
00:00:08
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Taylor's Journey to Success
00:00:10
Speaker
I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
00:00:19
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.
What is a Solopreneur?
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a solopreneur, you might ask?
00:00:33
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.
00:00:41
Speaker
Hey, what's going on, solopreneurs?
Saving a Client Account
00:00:42
Speaker
Today, I'm going to share with you one thing I did that helped me save an account from canceling and might not be what you expect.
00:00:51
Speaker
So you're going to have to wait for a minute till we tell you what that thing is.
00:00:55
Speaker
Welcome to
Podcast Goals and Personal Anecdotes
00:00:56
Speaker
the podcast.
00:00:56
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
00:00:58
Speaker
As usual, we are here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and have a much better time in the solar industry.
00:01:06
Speaker
I apologize if my voice sounds a little hoarse.
00:01:09
Speaker
We actually just got back from a little team event today.
00:01:12
Speaker
We went to Universal Studios there in Hollywood.
00:01:17
Speaker
Had a great time with the team.
00:01:19
Speaker
Did lots of shouting, did lots of hollering.
00:01:22
Speaker
So voice a little bit shot right now.
00:01:25
Speaker
And a long day recording this after being there all day long.
00:01:30
Speaker
Should have probably had it done days before, but I procrastinate.
00:01:34
Speaker
I'm a sales guy.
00:01:35
Speaker
What can I say?
00:01:36
Speaker
Sometimes we wait till the last second.
00:01:38
Speaker
So here I am getting it done.
00:01:40
Speaker
Always want to make sure we bring you consistent content week after week.
00:01:44
Speaker
And if you have not left us a review or shared the podcast, please do so.
00:01:49
Speaker
That is the reason that I go to Universal Studios all day long and come back and record more content for y'all because I love you.
00:01:58
Speaker
I want you to have success and I want you to take your solar career to another level.
00:02:04
Speaker
So please do that if you have not.
00:02:07
Speaker
But yeah, I had a good time with the team.
00:02:08
Speaker
Would highly recommend throwing incentives like that.
00:02:12
Speaker
Team days.
00:02:13
Speaker
We've done paintballing in the past.
00:02:17
Speaker
I've gone rafting on rivers, theme parks, hikes.
00:02:25
Speaker
You can think of all different types of things to do, all different types of budgets.
00:02:30
Speaker
Doesn't have to be expensive.
00:02:32
Speaker
But I had a great time and that was an incentive we ran about a month ago.
00:02:37
Speaker
We celebrated all the people that pushed hard during a blitz that we did.
00:02:41
Speaker
We like the mummy ride was probably our favorite there.
00:02:43
Speaker
If in case you're wondering, in case you want to go to Universal Studios, it's a good time and go on a Monday or a weekday because it was dead there.
00:02:52
Speaker
It's a good time.
00:02:53
Speaker
Okay, so let's get into the topic.
00:02:56
Speaker
And that is one thing I did that recently helped me save a deal.
00:03:01
Speaker
And we all know there's probably never going to be just one thing 100% of the time that makes or breaks a deal.
00:03:09
Speaker
But in this case, it was one specific thing I did that completely flipped the deal on its head.
00:03:15
Speaker
I thought it was going to cancel, thought I was losing her, and did this one thing.
00:03:19
Speaker
And she ended up sticking with it and being excited to go solar again.
00:03:24
Speaker
So I'm going to tell you the story of what happens.
00:03:27
Speaker
And hopefully you can go and do this one thing if you're not ready.
Solar Energy in San Diego
00:03:31
Speaker
Okay, so this customer, she was living in a retirement community.
00:03:36
Speaker
And this particular community, there was hardly any solar, which is pretty rare for California, at least San Diego area where I'm at.
00:03:44
Speaker
Typically, any neighborhood at this point is going to have, I would say, at least 15% solar at the very least.
00:03:52
Speaker
But usually more like, I would say more like 30% solar in most neighborhoods around San Diego where I'm at.
00:03:59
Speaker
It's because it makes so much sense out here.
00:04:01
Speaker
So a little bit odd, very few people with solar in her specific community.
00:04:07
Speaker
And they were condos that probably contributed to it.
00:04:11
Speaker
I think the HOA made it very tough to get solar before that.
00:04:15
Speaker
And they didn't really have the bylaws written out, whatever you need to specify how to approve the whole process.
00:04:24
Speaker
And so I noticed it.
00:04:25
Speaker
So I decided, you know, I'm going to hit this neighborhood.
00:04:29
Speaker
And I told the story, I think about a month ago on the podcast.
00:04:33
Speaker
But first thing I did was I go and get a testimonial with the few people that had solar in the neighborhood because I knew that that was potentially going to be an objection coming up.
00:04:42
Speaker
Like, hey, no one has gone solar.
00:04:44
Speaker
I don't think it's allowed or I don't think it's possible.
00:04:47
Speaker
So I wanted to get ahead of that.
00:04:49
Speaker
So that thing did help me.
00:04:51
Speaker
Ended up closing this specific deal.
00:04:54
Speaker
And this lady, she was really excited.
00:04:58
Speaker
Just didn't have a ton of objections.
00:05:00
Speaker
And after I showed her the testimonial of the other lady, yeah, it was pretty smooth close.
00:05:07
Speaker
And things were going well.
00:05:10
Speaker
And about a week ago,
00:05:12
Speaker
I get the final plans back.
00:05:15
Speaker
And so I know, okay, we have to submit the HOA application.
00:05:17
Speaker
That's the next step.
00:05:19
Speaker
Everything's pretty much ready to go.
00:05:20
Speaker
Now we need the HOA approval.
00:05:23
Speaker
So I get the HOA application.
00:05:29
Speaker
This one, we have to go get her signature again.
00:05:32
Speaker
We have to go get the neighbor's signatures again.
00:05:36
Speaker
And so at first I'm calling her, calling her, and she starts to not answer.
00:05:42
Speaker
She hadn't been like super responsible for her, but I call her probably half a dozen times and not able to get a hold of her.
00:05:49
Speaker
So I'm like, okay, well, I'll just have to roll up, see what's going on.
00:05:54
Speaker
So finally, after that week of calling her, I roll up to her house and finally catch her at the door.
Customer Challenges and Solutions
00:06:03
Speaker
Well, actually, I catch her sister first.
00:06:05
Speaker
She says to come back.
00:06:06
Speaker
So I go back the next day and I catch her finally.
00:06:10
Speaker
And I could tell right off the bat something was up.
00:06:13
Speaker
She didn't look happy to see me at all.
00:06:17
Speaker
And just I kind of had a hint of that just because she hadn't been picking up.
00:06:23
Speaker
The sister was kind of weird at the door, too, when I talked to her.
00:06:27
Speaker
So I knew, okay, something's up here.
00:06:29
Speaker
What's going on?
Introducing Solar Scout App
00:06:31
Speaker
So some of you already know that I run my own door-to-door sales team here in San Diego.
00:06:35
Speaker
And as we are gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results.
00:06:42
Speaker
But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
00:06:46
Speaker
Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout, but it's not a door knocking app.
00:06:51
Speaker
It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market.
00:06:55
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.
00:07:05
Speaker
It's been working for a lot of teams across the country, and now I'm on board too.
00:07:10
Speaker
I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up.
00:07:14
Speaker
But I told them, hey, if I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal.
00:07:19
Speaker
And they did.
00:07:20
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.
00:07:29
Speaker
That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
00:07:33
Speaker
Okay, back to the show.
00:07:35
Speaker
I talked to her and she just starts going off about how she doesn't still doesn't know if she wants to go solar.
00:07:43
Speaker
She heard some negative things.
00:07:46
Speaker
I made some mistakes and appointment that I had with her neighbor two doors down didn't go great.
00:07:52
Speaker
And I made the mistake of name drop dropping this customer maybe a little bit too much.
00:07:58
Speaker
And she connected with this customer that like was sort of like the Karen of the neighborhood and just was extremely skeptical.
00:08:07
Speaker
And then that rubbed off on my customer.
00:08:09
Speaker
Then on top of that, our installers, they had been calling her multiple times every day, telling her that her account was ready for install because I didn't let them know that we were still getting HOA approval.
00:08:22
Speaker
So that was a small mistake I made.
00:08:24
Speaker
And then she was like burnt out by all those calls, was like made it seem like our installers didn't know what they were doing because she knew we still needed to get HOA approval.
00:08:34
Speaker
So just some mistakes made on my end and then some miscommunication.
00:08:38
Speaker
In my head, I'm like, okay, why didn't you talk to me if you were concerned about the installers calling and concerned that they didn't know that you didn't have HOA approval?
00:08:48
Speaker
Like, why not call me?
00:08:49
Speaker
Why not get an update?
00:08:50
Speaker
Why not see what's going on?
00:08:52
Speaker
And so we had a conversation.
00:08:53
Speaker
She was complaining.
00:08:55
Speaker
And I kind of gave it back to her a little bit because I'm like, look,
00:08:59
Speaker
I had been calling you, I had been leaving messages to make sure we're on the same page, because she had more doubts and questions put in her head from her neighbor, and then just from the installers calling her.
00:09:12
Speaker
So it was just a whole mess.
00:09:13
Speaker
We were on completely different pages.
00:09:17
Speaker
She thought the whole thing was unprofessional, but she didn't express any of that to me.
00:09:22
Speaker
And I was just like, why don't you pick up?
00:09:24
Speaker
And so I long story short, I try to get the HOA signature from her.
00:09:29
Speaker
And she's like, you know what, I'm right now I didn't want to think about this.
00:09:34
Speaker
I don't even know if I'm ready to go solar.
00:09:37
Speaker
I didn't even know that I was like signing up all the way.
00:09:41
Speaker
And when I signed her up, I made it very clear that, hey, we're moving forward with this.
00:09:45
Speaker
This is the process.
00:09:46
Speaker
But, you know, time had gone by.
00:09:48
Speaker
And on top of that, she was a Mexican lady.
00:09:51
Speaker
I closed this deal in Spanish, which I'm fluent in Spanish, but.
00:09:55
Speaker
Sometimes, you know, it's not my first language.
00:09:58
Speaker
Sometimes I can't explain things quite as well.
00:10:01
Speaker
Sometimes I can't overcome objections quite as well in Espanol.
00:10:05
Speaker
So, yeah, it didn't go very well.
00:10:09
Speaker
And I thought this lady was going to cancel.
00:10:12
Speaker
And I'll get to what I did in a second here.
00:10:15
Speaker
But make sure you don't make those mistakes.
00:10:18
Speaker
You know, communicate with your customers.
00:10:21
Speaker
Probably should have dropped by this lady's house sooner when I realized she wasn't communicating, especially where she was pretty close.
00:10:29
Speaker
She was only a 15-minute drive from my house.
00:10:32
Speaker
So not a ton of excuses there.
00:10:35
Speaker
Hey, so we end up just basically still frustrated.
00:10:40
Speaker
She said she was going to talk to the people that had gone sore in her neighborhoods and she just needed to do some thinking.
00:10:48
Speaker
She didn't say she fully wanted to cancel out the sore, but she's like, I need to think if I want to for sure do this.
00:10:55
Speaker
And I need to give it a week.
00:10:57
Speaker
I'm not going to sign in the HOA form.
00:11:00
Speaker
And she sort of used that as leverage.
00:11:02
Speaker
She knew that we need the HOA form completes to move forward in the process of going solar.
00:11:10
Speaker
So she just like use that as kind of a way to like basically put the deal on holds.
00:11:17
Speaker
She knew that we can't go anywhere until we get that form signed off on.
00:11:23
Speaker
So I'm just like, oh, great.
00:11:24
Speaker
Like, this is going to cancel.
00:11:26
Speaker
I've been down this road before.
00:11:27
Speaker
People start getting cold feet.
00:11:29
Speaker
Buyer's remorse.
00:11:32
Speaker
She's not confident in her decision making.
00:11:34
Speaker
She's an older Mexican lady.
00:11:38
Speaker
It's probably going to cancel.
00:11:40
Speaker
And I was being negative about it.
00:11:42
Speaker
So here's what I did.
00:11:44
Speaker
I'm like, you know what?
00:11:46
Speaker
Okay, she said come back next week.
00:11:49
Speaker
Okay, so I'm going to do everything I can to press this account.
00:11:53
Speaker
Let's just see what happens.
00:11:54
Speaker
Okay, so immediately I tried to correct, do damage control on everything I could.
00:11:59
Speaker
I called the installers.
00:12:00
Speaker
I said, hey, don't contact this lady anymore.
00:12:03
Speaker
We need to get HRA approval.
00:12:05
Speaker
Please don't call her.
00:12:06
Speaker
Don't reach out to her.
The Impact of Gifts on Sales
00:12:08
Speaker
I went and talked to the other customer that's or the other appointment I had that had sort of like put negative thoughts in her head because things didn't go great.
00:12:17
Speaker
And I tried to like clarify things with her.
00:12:20
Speaker
and make sure that, yeah, there wasn't any more damage done from talking to that particular neighbor.
00:12:25
Speaker
And then the third thing I did, and this is what I think saved the deal, is I let like three, four days go by and I go and take this customer a little gift.
00:12:40
Speaker
I took her actually a Cutco.
00:12:42
Speaker
It was like a Cutco serving spatula thing.
00:12:46
Speaker
And if you know the brand Cutco, they got super nice knives.
00:12:50
Speaker
It's like guaranteed for life, I think.
00:12:53
Speaker
Really nice products.
00:12:54
Speaker
A lot of people have come from selling Cutco.
00:12:57
Speaker
Check them out.
00:12:57
Speaker
But I gave her this spatula.
00:12:59
Speaker
She wasn't there.
00:13:01
Speaker
So I gave it to the sister and she gave it to my customer.
00:13:07
Speaker
And what happened was this, six, seven days go by and actually get a text from this customer.
00:13:15
Speaker
And I'm like, oh, great.
00:13:17
Speaker
She's saying she doesn't want to go through with it.
00:13:19
Speaker
And she actually text me saying, hey, Taylor, I got your gift.
00:13:23
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:13:25
Speaker
Please come by when you're available so we can sign that H way form.
00:13:30
Speaker
And I'm like, is this the same lady talking?
00:13:32
Speaker
Is this my customer?
00:13:35
Speaker
So this little gift and just trying to do damage control and what I could just completely flip the script of this customer.
00:13:45
Speaker
She all of a sudden was like willing to sign the H way for him.
00:13:49
Speaker
And I wasn't reaching out to her.
00:13:50
Speaker
She reached out to me.
00:13:52
Speaker
And it just made her want to, I guess you could say, return the favor of me giving her a gift.
00:13:58
Speaker
And that was it.
00:13:59
Speaker
That one thing, it went from this deal almost canceling to just completely flipping the script on it.
00:14:07
Speaker
Hey, so that's the secret.
00:14:10
Speaker
Give a gift.
00:14:10
Speaker
All your problems will be solved.
00:14:13
Speaker
Maybe not all of them, but just wanted to share that.
00:14:18
Speaker
And I think the point of that story and the moral is, well, number one, yeah, try to give gifts, but make yourself seem like a human.
00:14:25
Speaker
Because once I gave her that gift, all of a sudden, I think we connected more on like a personal level.
00:14:31
Speaker
She's like, OK, this is a friend now.
00:14:34
Speaker
He's going out of his way to do things for me.
00:14:37
Speaker
She wanted to return the favor.
00:14:39
Speaker
And then I think it just gets the emotions evolved a little bit.
00:14:42
Speaker
Because she knew solar is the right thing to do logically.
00:14:45
Speaker
But we got to remember that any sales process, anytime someone is buying something, sales is a transfer of emotions.
00:14:53
Speaker
So when you make people feel good, they have emotion.
00:14:57
Speaker
Emotion leads to feelings.
00:14:58
Speaker
Feeling leads to thoughts.
00:14:59
Speaker
Thoughts lead to action, I think is what they say.
00:15:02
Speaker
Tony Robbins says stuff like that.
00:15:05
Speaker
So we need to create those emotions.
00:15:08
Speaker
We need to make people think of us as human beings, as people.
00:15:13
Speaker
And it's just going to be much more likely that people stick with it, with their commitments.
00:15:18
Speaker
And if they're on the fence, if they're feeling iffy about something, if they're having buyer's remorse,
00:15:23
Speaker
Consider, yeah, make sure you give a gift.
00:15:26
Speaker
Just do something like that to bring people down a little bit, make them see you as a human being again.
00:15:31
Speaker
And people don't cancel on their friends, right?
00:15:36
Speaker
So if we can become their friends, much less likely to cancel.
00:15:40
Speaker
Hey, so yeah, and I've talked about giving gifts, I'd say many times in the podcast now.
00:15:47
Speaker
But it's just a reminder that if you do have people on the fence, if you have people overthinking things, even if you have maybe like many of you've heard my process as far as like, well, I'll send them a card with some brownies, a little treat or whatever.
00:16:03
Speaker
I'll usually send that in the mail.
00:16:06
Speaker
And I think I did send this to this customer, but
00:16:09
Speaker
It's like it's been a little bit.
00:16:12
Speaker
And so maybe that's what it's going to take is maybe give them another gift, maybe hand deliver it.
00:16:18
Speaker
And in this case, it worked for me.
00:16:22
Speaker
So hopefully if you're listening to this, if you have people that maybe they're on the fence, maybe you close them a little softer than you should have.
00:16:30
Speaker
You should not be someone on the site survey.
00:16:33
Speaker
You should not be cancel closing saying, hey, you can cancel whenever you want.
00:16:36
Speaker
Hey, we're just going to get this started.
00:16:38
Speaker
Do a site survey.
00:16:41
Speaker
avoid that as much as you can.
00:16:43
Speaker
Sometimes I'm guilty of a little bit, but whenever possible, try to not soft close, make sure people know, hey, this is to get it going.
00:16:51
Speaker
Like if we got to get it approved, but if everything gets approved, everything checks out, then we're doing this.
00:16:57
Speaker
All right.
00:16:58
Speaker
So make sure they know that you're getting the process started.
00:17:03
Speaker
Um, and that'll help too.
00:17:05
Speaker
But if you have people on the fence, then yeah, maybe try giving them an extra gift and hopefully you'll have a similar result where people will be like, okay, you know what?
00:17:14
Speaker
This guy's pretty cool.
00:17:15
Speaker
This girl's pretty cool.
00:17:16
Speaker
Let's just, yeah, I'm kind of, kind of not positive about this, but you know, they seem cool.
00:17:22
Speaker
I like them.
00:17:23
Speaker
I trust them.
00:17:24
Speaker
Let's move forward with it.
00:17:26
Speaker
Okay, so I hope that helps.
00:17:28
Speaker
Treat your customers like family, treat them like human beings, and they will love you for it.
00:17:34
Speaker
And they will hopefully be much more likely to progress to install and make you money and give you referrals.
Invitation for Guests and Resources
00:17:43
Speaker
So remember that.
00:17:45
Speaker
And guys, please send me your suggestions.
00:17:48
Speaker
If you have guests, if you have people you know that are crushing it in solar, crushing it in business and or life,
00:17:55
Speaker
Would love to hear about them and potentially have them on the podcast.
00:17:59
Speaker
Or if you are listening to this and would like to be on the podcast, we do have applications available.
00:18:04
Speaker
So shoot me a email or a DM if you're interested.
00:18:09
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
00:18:11
Speaker
Make sure to tune in.
00:18:12
Speaker
We've got a ton of exciting guests coming up and some great content coming at you.
00:18:16
Speaker
Special thank you to our sponsor, Solar Scout right now, the best solar prospecting software available on the market.
00:18:24
Speaker
Check them out.
00:18:25
Speaker
And we'll see you guys on the next podcast.
00:18:28
Speaker
What's up, solopreneurs?
00:18:29
Speaker
Hope you enjoyed the episode.
00:18:31
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.
00:18:41
Speaker
One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start?
00:18:48
Speaker
What episodes should I listen to in the podcast?
00:18:51
Speaker
You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
00:18:56
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 Solrepreneur.
00:19:09
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.
00:19:18
Speaker
So go download it right now.
00:19:20
Speaker
It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com.
00:19:24
Speaker
Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com.
00:19:29
Speaker
Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs.
00:19:31
Speaker
We will have that in the show notes.
00:19:33
Speaker
Go download it right now.
00:19:35
Speaker
And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them.
00:19:40
Speaker
That's going to show you how.
00:19:42
Speaker
So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.