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. I 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. So some of you already know that I run my own door-to-door sales team here in San Diego.
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. But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
Speaker: Then we discovered an app called SolarScout. But it's not a door knocking app. It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market. It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later canceled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given e-word.
Speaker: It's been working for a lot of teams across the country, and now I'm on board too. I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up. But i told them, hey, 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. Okay, back to the show.
Speaker: Hey, solarpreneurs. Today, we're going to talk about the skillset you need to develop if you want to be a seven-figure earner. So welcome to the podcast. 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. Today, we're also going to tell you teach you how to be a seven-figure earner.
Speaker: And I'm still working on the journey to seven figures. So I don't want to tell you that I have made seven figures in a year because I have not yet, but we're working on it.
Speaker: And it got me thinking I was recently at the this Alchemy Sales Summit in Utah. I did a few podcasts where I brought up some lessons learned from the sales summit, but we heard a Casey Baugh speak, just went over a bunch of principles that have helped him in his career and helped him develop.
Speaker: And something he said that I hadn't thought about as much is that in order six figure skill set is learning to sell, but the seven figure skill set is learning to develop other leaders.
Speaker: yeah One more time, the seven figure skill set is the skill of developing other leaders. And if you think about it in any organization, the people that are making the most money typically, they're the ones that are leading senior regional managers, they're VP sales. And what are they doing?
Speaker: ah Typically, they needed to develop multiple leaders under them to get to that position. And so wherever you're at in your sales career, think about it. Are you developed yourself as a leader and now...
Speaker: Who have you helped develop as a leader? If you can't answer that question, then it's something you got to get figured out to take it to another level. And it's something that I'm currently in the process of doing. And I've learned a lot being at my current company because now going on, what is it, 2016?
Speaker: So going on nine years of being in solar, i didn't really know this or didn't really think about it. I just thought you sell, you get promoted to ah manager, but I hadn't really thought, okay, i need to be constantly developing other leaders.
Speaker: And that's what's going to take me to the next level. So if you were at a smaller company, maybe a a company that has less resources, think, how can you develop other people as leaders? And I'm going to give you three tips, three things that I have learned and that we are currently doing in in our company to help develop other leaders that you can implement implement in whatever stage you are at.
Speaker: It's the first one. That's create a leadership development program. So currently in our company, we have something called the DNA program. And it's a leadership training program where people that have hits, you know, like on the higher side of a sales metric, they have a requirement that they have to hit a certain amount of installs in a quarter.
Speaker: And if you hit the number, then you are... considered in leadership training after that. And I like it because it gives something ah for people to shoot towards, right?
Speaker: It's kind of like the first baby step towards getting into leadership. And in this DNA group, there's weekly calls. Every Monday, there's a call where they talk about a leadership principle. They go over the KPIs, the key performance indicators of the people in the DNA group.
Speaker: ah They hold each other accountable. And just a great little leader in training group. So if you don't have something like this at your company, maybe you're a manager, ah maybe you're company owner, highly recommend getting a little leadership ah developments group together. you don't have You don't have to have a lot of people, but maybe you have five people who you think are potential leaders.
Speaker: How can you pour into them? How can you get them to start thinking like a leader? So consider doing something like a DNA group. You better not copy us. Don't call it that.
Speaker: But ah we actually copied it from someone else. So I feel like everyone copies each other at one point, but maybe come up with a different name. ask chat GPT, hey, what's a cool name for my leadership development group? Think of something. That's step number one. Okay. Number two, start to delegate leadership responsibilities.
Speaker: And side note to that, if you are not a leader yet, if you are just, everyone should be leading themselves, right? And that's a good training you can do. We've had it where we ask, we get up in front of everybody. We say, hey here's a leader.
Speaker: And if if they don't raise their hand, then they're wrong because everyone's leading themselves. But if you are not yet a so-called manager or leading other people yet, start to take upon yourself, how can you start acting like a leader without having the official title?
Speaker: yeah You don't need to be a manager. You don't need to be a head honcho to start acting like a leader. And what we've found is the people that start acting like the thing before they achieve it, those are the ones that actually do it.
Speaker: Maybe you volunteer to lead a correlation. And that was one of the first things I started doing before I got into leadership back at my first company back in 2016. I would volunteer to just give trainings because I knew it was going to help me up level speaking skills.
Speaker: I knew it was going to make me study more of the topics I wanted to talk about. I refined my sales skills. And I knew it was the first little step for me to start leading others. So maybe you volunteer to lead some trainings.
Speaker: And if you are a leader, then the second piece is start delegating things. And maybe you have people that you can tell you see that they have leadership in their veins, but maybe they don't they're not volunteering to do these things. You go delegate it get them thinking um that they can become a leader, that they can up level their career.
Speaker: So things as simple as we've done like book clubs at our companies. um You sign them a little book minutes, things like ah greeting people as they come in the door, right? Maybe you got new reps that are coming in, making sure they know exactly where they're going, making sure they're comfortable.
Speaker: And it reminds me back when I was a missionary for my church, we used to always say every new, you call them converts, the people that are new the church, every new person needs a responsibility. Because if they didn't have a responsibility, then they're going to get lost in the crowd. So I think that's how developing leaders need it too. They need responsibilities.
Speaker: They need to start acting like they're a leader even before they're not. So start delegating. And then last but not least, have a super clear path. for leadership. And this is mistake I see all the time, especially in solar. We got a setter closer, right? We got people that are just setting appointments.
Speaker: And unfortunately, the first company was with, they just, they always wanted to be people. They wanted people to be setters rather forever. Like they didn't want people progressing. So many people just quit eventually because they would get good at setting, um but there was no progression after that.
Speaker: There's no career career path. So do you have a clear progression path at your company? And if you're a rep or if you're not in charge of that, maybe go to send this podcast to the leaders of your company so they can develop a clear path.
Speaker: hey There should be a metric. How many recruits do you need? How many sales do you need me to getting? um Our company, we have a captain metric. where that's it's right after the DNA metric. But all you need is ah six installs in a quarter, super doable. And then you need to at least two recruits, two people on your squad that did ah three installs in a quarter.
Speaker: ah So something super doable. um These are California numbers. hey um But think of a small metric that is in place for people to progress to the next level.
Speaker: And if you are doing set or closer model, do you have progression path where people can progress? I don't know, maybe a set or manager or what they need to do to eventually become a closer? Because the quickest way to get people to quit is if they feel like they're stuck, they feel like there's never going to be any any progression and they feel like there's no vision for their future.
Speaker: And some people, maybe they do want to be setters forever, um but most people, they want some type of progression, even if they are going to continue as setters. What's a way that maybe they can, you know, make more money per deal.
Speaker: Maybe it's hitting X amount of deals in a month. They get paid a bonus. They get paid extra. Think of ah things you can do to progress people's careers and make them feel inspired because when people don't have a vision for their future, ah the Bible says where the people have no vision, they perish. So make sure you give them that vision. so those are three tips, three things you can do today to start getting that seven figure skill set, which is developing other leaders. okay Get some type of leadership development plan in place.
Speaker: ah Delegate leadership responsibilities. If you're not yet leading other people, then start acting like it even before you are a leader. And then number three is create that clear path of progression. Figure out what are the metrics, how many recruits, what do they need to do to progress to the next level?
Speaker: Companies are going to have some type of override structure. How can you progress to the next level? And, um you know, that's another thing. Potentially start getting.
Speaker: um compensated for helping other people. So I hope that helps. And I hope if you don't have some type of leadership structure, if you don't have some way that you're helping people develop this seven figure skill, then you need to start thinking about it. Okay, so I hope you enjoyed the podcast today.
Speaker: ah Please join us. We got SolarCon coming up. There are still some discounts available, although I think it has gone down at the time of this recording. So go grab your discount today.
Speaker: ah we got the link down below in the show notes and keep tuning in Let us know if you have suggestions for guests or topics for future episodes, and we'll see you on the next podcast.
Speaker: Hey, Solarpreneurs, 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. 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 day. 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.
