Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
Speaker: I teach you how to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
Speaker: What is a Solarpreneur you might ask?
Speaker: A Solarpreneur is a new breed of Solar Pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.
Speaker: what's going on top of the morning to all our solopreneurs out there we are back with another exciting episode and we've got a familiar face on he's been on a couple episodes previously and we're going to be starting up sort of a new um kind of interview series we're doing so familiar face is james swiderski what's up james thanks for coming back what's up taylor thank you man thank you
Speaker: My pleasure, my pleasure.
Speaker: And so James, we're talking off camera just about this new concept of training we're doing, which is sort of like on the company level, issues we see.
Speaker: So do you want to kind of introduce this, I don't know, series we were talking about, kind of what the thinking was behind it?
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: So the new series we want to do is called Train to Win.
Speaker: And more specifically, we want to give company owners and I guess more ambitious reps that are looking to really scale their sales, some tools and strategies on how to actually develop out their sales skills.
Speaker: This is not just specific to solar as far as people struggling with training in general.
Speaker: It's an epidemic in multiple industries.
Speaker: And
Speaker: For those of you who are not familiar, I am the founder and CEO of a training, global training company called Epic.
Speaker: And what we do is we help multi seven figure companies scale past eight figures with their teams, hire reps, develop systems and processes around that.
Speaker: So what I'm going to do is pop on once in a while, do a solo episode about some of my experience with having trained over a thousand people.
Speaker: with my company as well.
Speaker: So that'll be for you business owners out there.
Speaker: Train to win.
Speaker: Tune in, listen to that for some specific tactics on how to train and scale your sales team.
Speaker: Yeah, it's stuff that we should all be talking more about for sure, 100%.
Speaker: And the reason I thought it w as a good idea is just because there's such a disconnect in the training in the industry.
Speaker: On the company and the rep level, I remember starting out, I struggled with it a ton, just getting and finding good training.
Speaker: and then actually implementing it.
Speaker: Because how many companies do you know, James?
Speaker: I'm sure you've seen it where they bought the Cardone U's.
Speaker: They bought these training platforms.
Speaker: And what do they do?
Speaker: They don't even hop on it.
Speaker: So it's a huge problem.
Speaker: I mean, I know companies have lost thousands and thousands.
Speaker: I mean, my previous company I was with, we spent, I know, a ton of money to get the Cardone U. Yeah.
Speaker: And on it.
Speaker: And then it didn't increase our sales.
Speaker: It's not just solar either.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: I would say solar is even a little behind the eight ball on it, but the statistic on that actually, there's over $1.5 billion a year spent on enterprise training for sales teams.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And this is crazy.
Speaker: The stat was done by EdTech, their conference in 2017, and they found that 87% of sales training that was purchased for their sales team was forgotten within 30 days.
Speaker: So if that's not the equivalent of lighting cash on fire,
Speaker: As a CEO, I don't know what it is, right?
Speaker: So yeah, that's what my company solves.
Speaker: And I want to kind of talk about why that's the case and more specifically what you guys could do about it, solar specifically.
Speaker: Yeah, well, let's jump into it.
Speaker: And so for our listeners, our solopreneurs that don't know, James helped us through his epic platform.
Speaker: He helped us build out SoulCity, which we've been talking about here and there on the episodes, which is the new training platform that we just released.
Speaker: And we're already seeing people get results with it in training.
Speaker: We think it's going to revolutionize.
Speaker: the solar training game just because it combines the learning with games you can take with a separate accountability.
Speaker: So we're going to talk kind of the specific things that James is doing to help just sales training in general with that system.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Developed within Epic.
Speaker: But yeah, I guess, why did you decide to start this whole Epic thing?
Speaker: I thought it was Epoch.
Speaker: Epoch.
Speaker: Just for the record, it's spelled E-P-O-C-H.
Speaker: So James gets sick of correcting people.
Speaker: It's not E-Pock, it's Epic.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Whatever you want to call it.
Speaker: E-Potch, C-H.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: The biggest thing I trained, if any of you guys know my background, right?
Speaker: So I got into sales consulting and training like after I left my first solar company job, a startup I worked with.
Speaker: And I found out scaling this company up from a couple million upwards of eight figures.
Speaker: with their sales team that sales training was just fundamentally broken altogether.
Speaker: The most common training mistakes we see actually, and I even have a few of them listed here that I discovered through training my own reps was they didn't have a predictable system to do it, right?
Speaker: That's very common.
Speaker: And that's why guys will go by like Cardone University, Jordan Delford, Straight Line Persuasion, stuff like that.
Speaker: All great programs, by the way.
Speaker: I've taken all of these programs.
Speaker: I spent over half a million dollars in my own money on sales training programs.
Speaker: That's how I got good at sales.
Speaker: And I recommend people do that, right?
Speaker: The problem was this.
Speaker: most companies in solar and my company in particular, we did not have a way to measure training success.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We were spending all this cash on training, but we didn't know if it was actually producing a real ROI.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that was the first problem companies have is they don't measure training outcomes and how to actually get an ROI.
Speaker: If you...
Speaker: are generating leads, buying Facebook ads, anything like that, right?
Speaker: For your business, you need to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns, what's happening on the calls.
Speaker: And if you don't measure these things, we can't improve them.
Speaker: What gets measured gets improved, right?
Speaker: So that's the biggest thing.
Speaker: If you own a company right now and you're looking for a better way to train your reps or you're a rep,
Speaker: looking to improve your skillset, the first thing you should do is establish a baseline with your skills and where you're currently at by tracking everything from activities to what skills you're working on, your current sales pipeline, you need to make sure you're tracking.
Speaker: So I'd say that's the first mistake I've seen working with, I'd say probably a little over 45, 50 different solar companies at this point in my career.
Speaker: Yeah, no, that's good.
Speaker: Yeah, tracking is huge.
Speaker: And like, my question is, how do you know?
Speaker: I don't know, what are some specific things you track?
Speaker: I know you talked about a little bit of just barely, but like, when I've gotten coaching and training, sometimes it's tough to tell with reps, it's like, oh, are they just more motivated to work?
Speaker: Are they like putting in a few more hours or is this like actual information helping them?
Speaker: So what are things that, I don't know, is there anything specific you're seeing?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like you track this thing and that's how you know if the training is actually working or how are you seeing?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah, so the biggest, before we get to that, I want to kind of give the big idea of this.
Speaker: So the big idea is to adopt what I call conscious skill development.
Speaker: So most reps kind of use the spray and pray method with training and companies.
Speaker: And that method is...
Speaker: the most familiar with anybody and it's proven, right?
Speaker: You will learn that method is to just go out there, do the craft, repeat, put in the work and you'll learn as a byproduct through experience, right?
Speaker: And that is effective to a degree, but you're wasting a lot of time in there.
Speaker: Is what I found working with teams and myself
Speaker: we're able to really cut the learning time by a drastic amount.
Speaker: And I can't give you an exact percentage or anything, but I've been able to learn everything from marketing to sales to recruiting to basically every skill within business.
Speaker: It's kind of a running joke Taylor and I have with things.
Speaker: I just have like a ridiculous set of skills, whether it's from producing sales videos, promo videos, marketing email, whatever it is, right?
Speaker: And it's because I use this process.
Speaker: What was your question again?
Speaker: Mine was just like, are there specific things?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Are there specific things that you're like, I don't know, companies that you've been working with?
Speaker: It's like, okay, that's how you're going to know if it actually had an ROI or ROI or paid off.
Speaker: Cause yeah, I know that's a big problem is like guys can't see that it's, they don't necessarily know if they improved from this training or maybe your reps were working more hours.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: What are things you're telling them?
Speaker: So here's what we measure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So five key things specifically for solar.
Speaker: One, it's going to be,
Speaker: Most of you guys, it's gonna be knocking doors, right?
Speaker: Second, we have appointment setting for skill sets.
Speaker: We have presenting for number three, closing's number four, and then five is emotional intelligence, EQ, right?
Speaker: These are kind of like the five core skill sets that you need to master to really successfully sell solar.
Speaker: How you measure these is you define a clear outcome for each activity.
Speaker: In other words, like what do we wanna produce when we're prospecting?
Speaker: For most guys, it's we want to get a new lead, right?
Speaker: A new opportunity.
Speaker: So we define what we want to accomplish with each skill.
Speaker: So for prospecting, maybe it's a new lead.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: For prospecting,
Speaker: Some door knocking companies, it may be time spent on doors is the most valuable metric.
Speaker: So these metrics will be different company to company.
Speaker: And the way you determine what is the most valuable metric to measure is the one that produces the majority of the hours.
Speaker: outcomes.
Speaker: And you can only do this if you track, right?
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: That's why nobody does this is because their tracking is not in place to begin with.
Speaker: You need to be tracking, not just like leads and appointment set.
Speaker: It's actual activities.
Speaker: So how much time are you spending per rep on the doors, right?
Speaker: How many doors are you knocking to get a conversation, right?
Speaker: These are things that you need to track if you want to have a successful training system.
Speaker: So go through each activity within your sales process.
Speaker: if you're a rep or a company owner and define what you want to accomplish with each particular skillset.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Does that answer your question?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's better.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think a big thing that companies struggle with is just the actual tracking.
Speaker: Um, because I've seen, you know, I've worked for multiple companies now where it's like they're tracking is just, um, you know, whatever's posted in like the group, me, the group chat.
Speaker: It's like, Oh, I got a lead.
Speaker: Okay, we're going to put that up, count it as a lead.
Speaker: But it's like, they don't know, was that lead, was it qualified, was it actually booked with a homeowner?
Speaker: Were they using enough energy to even count as a solar lead?
Speaker: Like all these things.
Speaker: And then they don't even know how to figure this out and track it.
Speaker: Start majoring it good.
Speaker: So what's really cool about what we've been able to do within Solcitee too, is we're helping companies set up just systems for actually tracking this.
Speaker: Because the truth is most people don't know how to set up good systems to track and measure and report all these different KPIs.
Speaker: It's like they're just arbitrary numbers thrown up on a scoreboard on a group chat.
Speaker: And they may or may not be true.
Speaker: I mean, I've worked for lots of companies where reps are just throwing up.
Speaker: I got six leads today where four of them were booked with people that didn't even own the home.
Speaker: And the other two, they just put just to make them make themselves look good.
Speaker: So it's like, come on, you're not going to be able to know.
Speaker: Happens all the time.
Speaker: Like so much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's, yeah.
Speaker: Soul Society will have done it.
Speaker: It's done for you tracking.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I've got to give you a secret sauce right now on kind of how to do this as a rep or a company owner.
Speaker: But basically the first thing we accomplished with our enterprise setup is like we literally will track your reps on over 45 different skillset points that we found in the industry, whether it's from door knocking, specifically tailored to your business.
Speaker: And then we generate reports for your entire team on a weekly basis down to the rep.
Speaker: So you'll know exactly what's going on, what insights you need to make good decisions.
Speaker: So again,
Speaker: That's what we do there, but let's keep moving and give them kind of the get back on track, give them the process on how to actually train and develop your skills.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: So like we're talking about, I mean, you set up a lot of these processes so you can get into the specifics, but I think the cool thing for me was just seeing
Speaker: The interactive stuff, the quizzes.
Speaker: I don't know about you, but I've gone through tons of video, you know, courses, trainings, things like that, just online courses where it's just a random video and then you're expected to remember all this, to implement it.
Speaker: And half the time you don't even remember what you just watched.
Speaker: So I think a big key in any training course is just actually getting tested on the material, getting quizzed and remembering it.
Speaker: So that's a big key that I thought was super impressive about what we've been able to develop within society.
Speaker: But yeah, what are some other things, James?
Speaker: Do you want to talk about that and just other specific, I guess, training processes that were set up within that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So back to the conscious training thing, the way you combat this and really just accelerate your learning time ridiculously is set a time, a minimum, I would say one hour is what I recommend with clients.
Speaker: Have each rep, or if you're listening as a rep, set aside one hour where you dedicate all of your time, focus, and attention to developing a skill, right?
Speaker: That skill can be anything, door knocking, presenting, whatever it is.
Speaker: Now there are a couple of rules with skill development time I have for myself and our clients when we do this.
Speaker: One, this needs to be private time.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Zero distractions, nothing getting in your way.
Speaker: Like if you want to be really hyper effective here, it's got to be all in laser focus, turn off the Facebook, turn off the notifications, all in skill development time.
Speaker: Second, this is not sales activities.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So let's
Speaker: a knocking doors doesn't count as your skill development time, right?
Speaker: Going on presentations does not count.
Speaker: This is not actually talking to customers.
Speaker: That's where I don't see a lot of guys do this, where they don't actually dedicate time to, think about it this way.
Speaker: If you're talking to a homeowner, right?
Speaker: stuff's changing constantly, right?
Speaker: Something shows up, you gotta build rapport here, you're dynamically shifting.
Speaker: You can't work on your skillset in that case.
Speaker: You need to have a fixed variable.
Speaker: So sales activities don't count.
Speaker: And then third, binge watching courses and videos is not training time.
Speaker: This is what throws a lot of people off.
Speaker: It's basically just entertainment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just watching a bunch of videos back to back.
Speaker: And that's why we do things very differently with Soul Society too, where it's just like 20 minute bite sized videos.
Speaker: It's not designed for you to binge watch all the videos in a weekend.
Speaker: It's to just choose one skill based video, watch that, implement it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that's what you want to do to set yourself up for success.
Speaker: Aaron Shaw, Ph.D.: There's another tool with this I like to use what I call a practice log.
Speaker: Okay, so this could be a digital version.
Speaker: This could be a paper version, whatever you want to do.
Speaker: I've been using this long before solar.
Speaker: It happens to work fantastic in sales.
Speaker: I actually learned this process as a musician growing up as well.
Speaker: So what you do is you document what you're training, your specific outcomes, what you're working on specifically within each skill set on a daily basis during this hour.
Speaker: So you're productive.
Speaker: The way I like to do it is simply just define my skill goal.
Speaker: So let's do it you, Taylor.
Speaker: What's a skill that you'd like to work on and further develop right now with your sales?
Speaker: I would say increasing my closing percentage.
Speaker: Yeah, getting it up probably at about 40% right now.
Speaker: I want to get it up to more like 60, something like that.
Speaker: Okay, cool.
Speaker: So we want to set the clear outcome.
Speaker: We want to increase your close rate by 20%, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: So how do we know if we increase Taylor's close rate by 20%?
Speaker: We need to define that metric.
Speaker: So
Speaker: let's say that you go on 10 appointments, right?
Speaker: We know that you're going to close four of them about right now on average, right?
Speaker: So we know he needs to close two extra appointments, right?
Speaker: Per what?
Speaker: Month, week, month,
Speaker: we define what we want to set, right?
Speaker: If it's month, we say month, right?
Speaker: So you want to write these down.
Speaker: You got to get really granular.
Speaker: Like how will you actually know if he increased it?
Speaker: Make sure you're tracking those numbers, right?
Speaker: Now to the training specifically, right?
Speaker: What makes up a close?
Speaker: Because closing is kind of a broad skill, right?
Speaker: I don't actually think closing is a skill set.
Speaker: Closing is handling rebuttals, handling objections and smoke screens.
Speaker: It's how your presentation works, right?
Speaker: So we need to identify like what is the root cause that's causing Taylor's close rate to be 40% and not 60%.
Speaker: So let me ask you that, Taylor.
Speaker: Do you know or have a suspicion of what that root cause would be?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I would say just based off of what I know, without tracking it super good, is just getting in front of more qualified people.
Speaker: Because right now, I mean, I'll go to closes sometimes where it's like, there's a good chance they're not even going to qualify.
Speaker: So I guess stuff like that.
Speaker: And also if, you know, if the spouse isn't there,
Speaker: Um, so I don't know, just getting in front of more qualified people because my closing ratio can't increase if I'm not getting in front of
Speaker: You know, like obviously my closing ratio is going to be less if it's just talking to one spouse.
Speaker: It's talking to people that are lower credits.
Speaker: If it's talking to people that have energy bills that are super low, those are all things that decrease it.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: I think for me, it's like also tracking those things, like how many of these appointments are actually super qualified to even close.
Speaker: But yeah, that's just one thing I would think of.
Speaker: Is that what you're asking?
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: You answered perfectly.
Speaker: So what's interesting here is Taylor thought he had a closing problem.
Speaker: He doesn't have a closing skill problem.
Speaker: This is where reps would make the mistake with this and they'd go start working on like fancy closing lines and stuff like that.
Speaker: He doesn't have a problem with those lines, right?
Speaker: He has an appointment setting skill issue at this point.
Speaker: So now we know, all right.
Speaker: The root causes appointment setting.
Speaker: That's what we need to spend our time on, right?
Speaker: See how that works.
Speaker: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: So we want to work backwards at this point.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I was just going to say, that's probably a lot of, um, a lot of companies once they start actually tracking and getting deep into this data, it's probably like what they'll realize is companies think they have one problem, but really it's another problem.
Speaker: Every time prospecting, maybe it's getting more qualified leads.
Speaker: So that is interesting.
Speaker: Like, uh, so I used to own a marketing agency, right?
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: All the time we hear in solar, I have lead problems, right?
Speaker: I need more leads.
Speaker: I could tell you like seven to eight times out of 10, it's not a lead issue.
Speaker: It's a offer issue.
Speaker: It's a branding issue.
Speaker: It's a training issue with their reps.
Speaker: They're not training the reps how to self-generate.
Speaker: Even when they get the leads, they don't actually use them effectively.
Speaker: They won't.
Speaker: waste 90 out of 100 of leads, right?
Speaker: Boiling things down to its first principles is like a fundamental skill here.
Speaker: So how do we actually practice your appointment setting?
Speaker: That's what I want to talk about here.
Speaker: So we've got our practice log.
Speaker: We've set aside an hour to practice.
Speaker: Here's what we're going to do.
Speaker: We're going to divide our 60-minute skill session into three more main parts, okay?
Speaker: The first 20 minutes, we're going to work on what we call fundamental techniques, right?
Speaker: What are the like basic technical mechanics of setting an appointment?
Speaker: So in this case, this would be like how long the call should be when you're setting an appointment, how long you should take on the door to set an appointment, right?
Speaker: What you're saying, the script itself is
Speaker: That's technical.
Speaker: That's fundamental.
Speaker: The objections and FAQs, that's technical and fundamental.
Speaker: So in this first 20 minutes, we're going to practice really just going through all of those processes.
Speaker: So like knowing your FAQs,
Speaker: just right off the bat, right?
Speaker: Somebody says, what if the solar panels get dirty?
Speaker: Boom, you can handle it without even thinking, right?
Speaker: So in this 20 minute period, I'm gonna go through my weak points, my FAQs, my whatever it is, my scripts, and I'm just gonna practice them.
Speaker: I'm gonna say them out loud.
Speaker: I'm gonna...
Speaker: Turn myself on camera, right?
Speaker: I'm going to practice saying it that way.
Speaker: I'm going to record myself.
Speaker: I'm going to get my tonality right.
Speaker: I'm going to break down specifically what parts in there I'm missing, whether it's tone, whether it's script, whether it's FAQs, right?
Speaker: We're getting very nitty gritty details for 20 minutes and just repeating that process.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's huge.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is another huge thing I think companies miss is just their recording aspects, actually seeing what their reps are saying.
Speaker: I just had another Lenny Gray.
Speaker: He was on the episode, I think, I don't know, two episodes ago.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He wrote the two door-to-door millionaire books.
Speaker: But yeah, it's something he talks about a lot in his training is just actually having your reps record what they're saying on their doors, record their objection handling, and
Speaker: Send it into their managers, send it into the company owners, send it into the VPSLs and all that because then they can actually diagnose and fix the problem.
Speaker: That's something that I think is super powerful.
Speaker: What we're doing within Solciety is we're helping also companies set up these systems and get recordings from their reps, have them actually train effectively because how many people think they're out there following the script, following how they were taught to handle the objections, and then you get out there, you listen to them, and you're like, what the phrase are you saying?
Speaker: That's accountability.
Speaker: Accountability is a big problem with that for sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So after we've worked on our fundamental techniques, right?
Speaker: The technical skills, it's only got to get us so far, right?
Speaker: Next, we want to do modeling and reviewing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So the next 20 minutes, this is where your rep should be watching what your managers are doing, hopping on a quick call with them, listening to recordings of themselves or managers or other people in
Speaker: best looks like specifically for the skill they're working on.
Speaker: This is where you review the game tape too, right?
Speaker: They'll listen to their recordings.
Speaker: Hey, I don't like how I did this.
Speaker: The next practice session, they're gonna work on that specific skill they identified, right?
Speaker: The last 20 minutes is role play and implementation.
Speaker: So we wanna make sure that we're practicing the new skills that we just learned in modeling, right?
Speaker: And we're role playing with somebody, an accountability partner.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So managers, other reps, people online and groups, whoever it is, you got to be role-playing on a daily basis.
Speaker: Like this is another just fundamental everybody misses, right?
Speaker: Sales is a predictability game, a consistency game, right?
Speaker: For every one day, two days you miss selling, right?
Speaker: It's going to take you three to four days to make that skill up.
Speaker: If you go a year with it,
Speaker: without selling, watch what happens, right?
Speaker: I've done the same thing too, where I go like six months, 12 months without like hopping on closing calls regularly.
Speaker: That skillset is almost shot, man.
Speaker: Like it goes down considerably and I have to get back in the ring, right?
Speaker: Role playing, actually going out there in the field more to get that skill place up.
Speaker: So that's kind of my skill session divided up into 60 minutes.
Speaker: Tech technique, 20 minutes, modeling, 20 minutes, role play, 20 minutes.
Speaker: Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker: It's funny how much it, yeah, me, James and I were both from the music world.
Speaker: So I know you're doing like trumpet and stuff.
Speaker: But yeah, it just reminds me.
Speaker: It's so funny.
Speaker: You know, that's how practice sessions were divided up.
Speaker: It's like 20 minutes of technique, 20 minutes of, I don't know, improv, whatever, 20 minutes of whatever repertoire you're working on.
Speaker: Yeah, it's the same stuff.
Speaker: And people forget about all these things in solar.
Speaker: But I think this is what separates truly the best from the people that are just staying where they're at is they're always working on these things.
Speaker: And you mentioned like, you know, even guys that are experienced getting out and doing taking sales calls, still doing role plays.
Speaker: That reminds me of a story where I had my previous company, I had one of like, he was a VP of sales, he came out with me.
Speaker: to a deal.
Speaker: And I'm thinking, okay, this guy is going to close them like no problem.
Speaker: 20 minutes will be in and out of the house.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Close them.
Speaker: And he hadn't gone to a close for probably, I don't know, maybe at least a couple months at that time.
Speaker: And he came to this close and he just, I mean, it was, it was okay, but he forgot a couple of crucial things.
Speaker: Number one, the husband was in the other room
Speaker: He forgot to even invite the husband into the presentation.
Speaker: And then at the close, you could tell he's just super uncomfortable.
Speaker: So I'm like, man, I thought this was going to be a 20-minute close.
Speaker: And at the time, I was a newer rep.
Speaker: So I'm like, okay, he's probably doing this for a reason.
Speaker: He probably just knows he's so good at closing that he doesn't have to invite the spouse into the room.
Speaker: He's that good, so he doesn't even need to invite them.
Speaker: But sure enough, we get to the end.
Speaker: I'm like, no, I need to talk to my spouse.
Speaker: You get all the same objections.
Speaker: And I'm like, wow, okay.
Speaker: So that's what happens.
Speaker: Even guys that are at the top of their game, if they're not doing these things, there's no staying neutral.
Speaker: You're either getting better or you're getting worse.
Speaker: So that's what's going to happen.
Speaker: Perfectly said.
Speaker: So yeah, I think that's a big thing we're trying to solve.
Speaker: But yeah, James, anything else that we're doing, I don't know, in the epic processes in SolSciety, what else are we missing?
Speaker: Anything else we're implementing to help companies and reps improve their craft?
Speaker: So, I mean, I'll talk about a lot more on the specific company stuff, but the biggest benefit in our program we've put together and what my company provides for Taylor as well as a content partner is the tracking, as I talked about.
Speaker: Accountability is second piece that most companies miss.
Speaker: You need to be holding your reps accountable for training, not on a monthly basis or weekly, a daily basis, okay?
Speaker: If you need, if we're asking and showing you right now that training...
Speaker: 60 minutes a day, right?
Speaker: You can plainly see on here, whether you take anything, what we're saying for real or with a grain of salt, doesn't matter.
Speaker: You can admit that if your reps were to train specifically on their weak points and their skills for 60 minutes a day following this process, do you think they would get better at selling?
Speaker: It's an obvious answer.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The problem is
Speaker: Most company owners don't believe their reps will actually put in the work with this and they don't want to babysit their reps with that.
Speaker: So that's where we actually come into play in our partnership, me and Taylor here, is we actually hold your reps accountable through what we call a pod check system, where they're actually holding each other accountable with quick five minute check-ins.
Speaker: with each member of their team on a daily consistent basis to make sure they're training and they're reaching their goals.
Speaker: The other part of this is just incentives at the end of the day.
Speaker: What are you actually rewarding and incentivizing as a business owner?
Speaker: And the biggest mistake again that not
Speaker: just anybody right i'm not just picking on solar here but it's for sure in solar that's where i've learned this process we're incentivizing only one outcome most of the time and that's sales right most companies say hey taylor go sell 10 deals we'll buy you a rolex or whatever we'll rent you a tesla for a year right the problem is that only incentivizes who like your top producers that know they're gonna be able to do the action the rest of your team is just like
Speaker: screw it, Taylor's a rock star, I'm not gonna even try, right?
Speaker: This happens like every freaking time a sales contest.
Speaker: And when I was the VP of sales, right?
Speaker: a few years back, I was just like, dude, no matter how awesome the prize is, cash, we did like a 25 grand in cash for like a month competition one time.
Speaker: Guess what?
Speaker: It's the same crap.
Speaker: Three reps out of the lot are actually motivated by it, right?
Speaker: And what I realized...
Speaker: is it's because we're incentivizing only results and results are so overwhelming and big to go and accomplish, right?
Speaker: Our rep sees he's gotta go close 10, 15 deals to go on the company retreat.
Speaker: He's like, dude, I haven't even closed more than three deals.
Speaker: I'm not even gonna, how the freak am I gonna make this happen, right?
Speaker: This is why your numbers are so key because guess what happens when you know your numbers?
Speaker: you can track activities and incentivize activities, not results.
Speaker: If you know for a fact that going on 10 appointments as a rep is gonna yield three, four closes, right?
Speaker: You can now place rewards, right, on appointment set and not those deals.
Speaker: Where companies get scared with this is because they don't know their metrics, they don't have any trust in the system that an appointment is not just gonna get fudged to get a quick reward.
Speaker: If you have accountability with your reps and you know they can't BS you, right?
Speaker: You can incentivize whatever you want to do, right?
Speaker: Make the barrier super low.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So that's the final piece.
Speaker: We do the same thing with SolCiety.
Speaker: We help you craft really unique and specific incentives to your team that will actually motivate them and use action motivations and incentives rather than just results.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah, so powerful, guys.
Speaker: So this is key.
Speaker: Whether you get on Solciety or not, it's something that every company needs to be thinking about is just how can we better develop these systems?
Speaker: How can we better develop our reps to get the maximum efficiency out of them?
Speaker: Because if you're not doing these things,
Speaker: It's a big reason you're losing reps.
Speaker: Companies are losing reps.
Speaker: It's like, you know, pouring water into a basket.
Speaker: You have 10 holes in the basket.
Speaker: You don't have these processes and systems set up, set up the water's just leaking out the ends of it.
Speaker: I mean, right now, or matter of fact, our company's doing this exact thing.
Speaker: We have a, uh, Connor McGregor tickets set up for the weekend.
Speaker: Um, we have to close six deals.
Speaker: So that's great.
Speaker: And yeah, it's going to motivate the top guys, but how about the guys that have never closed more than two deals in a week?
Speaker: or that I've only closed one day a week.
Speaker: It's like, you need to have these top incentives, but you also need to be rewarding these little things, these mini habits as guys like Mike O'Donnell, stuff like he's come on and talked about these things.
Speaker: But what are these little actions that you can reward that are going to lead to the big actions?
Speaker: Because not everyone's going to go out and hit six deals in their first
Speaker: first week so how can you also give them incentives how can you motivate them and then how can you track and set all the systems in place because most companies that i've seen just i mean they don't even know how to track their incentives and it happens they're at every company i've been with it's like you could talk to any rep they're they've been oh yeah i won this incentive but i didn't get paid out on it yeah i was keeping track so i personally owed a lot of prizes from back when i was selling full time
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: And I know for reps, that's the worst thing you want to do is have to go, you know, beg your, your manager.
Speaker: Your credibility as a sales leader just tanks, man.
Speaker: Culture just goes down.
Speaker: Like, why would you even want to participate in the next contest?
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: And it's not that they don't want to, but it's just, they don't, yeah, they don't, they probably don't even know who won it.
Speaker: They don't have a system set in a place to track that.
Speaker: And then they just forget.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: It's important to have someone in charge of this.
Speaker: And then if not, I mean, yeah, considering getting on Solcity, that's what we're trying to help companies do is really set up these systems and then track up for them.
Speaker: So you don't have to worry about all this.
Speaker: You don't have to remember it.
Speaker: And then we're going to help you put these systems in place and actually get reps rewarded for these little actions they're taking.
Speaker: So super powerful stuff.
Speaker: Go set it up, figure out a way to do it.
Speaker: And James, I think we covered quite a bit of the details, but anything else that I don't know you wanted to cover that I didn't think of?
Speaker: No, I think I'm looking forward to putting out some solo episodes to really dive deep on some of these concepts.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, so we're looking forward to it.
Speaker: Let us know what you thought of this, guys, especially for company owners.
Speaker: Let us know if there's things that you struggle with because that's what James is going to be doing specific episodes on.
Speaker: It's things that companies struggle with and things that we can help them improve as far as systems and processes.
Speaker: So James, thanks for coming on.
Speaker: Guys, we'll be hearing more of you.
Speaker: And we had a few, sorry, we had some Wi-Fi issues.
Speaker: So I apologize if there was some blips in the audio, but we will get that figured out for next time.
Speaker: So set that up.
Speaker: And James, any final words you wanted to share before we talk next time?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: All right, guys.
Speaker: Well, we'll see you on the next show.
Speaker: Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker: And then if you are a rep that's listening to this, make sure to send it to your company owners so they can also work on these things.
Speaker: Because I know that's another problem is company owners aren't listening to this podcast.
Speaker: So send it to your company owners.
Speaker: Send it to the guys that do need help setting up these systems.
Speaker: And that's it, guys.
Speaker: So James is going to be talking more, and we'll see you guys on the next one.
Speaker: Hey SolarPrinters, quick question.
Speaker: 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 solar professionals.
Speaker: and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level.
Speaker: That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new solar learning community exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry.
Speaker: and it's called Sol Society.
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 a day.
Speaker: Currently Soul Society is closed to the public and membership is by invitation only.
Speaker: But solopreneurs can go to soulciety.co to learn more and have the option to join a waitlist when a membership becomes available in your area.
Speaker: Again, this is exclusively for Solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now.
Speaker: Thanks again for listening.
Speaker: We'll catch you again in the next episode.
