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How AI Finds Your Next Solar Customer Before You Do
1 Playsin 6 minutes
Shadi Barhoumi, founder of ScoutStack (formerly SolarScout) is back for another episode of sharing one of the most revolutionary integrations of artificial intelligence in solar. After years of using their product to save time and improve the quality of our time on the doors, Shadi has expanded beyond the solar space: creating the sales industry's next powerhouse for door knocking.
CLICK HERE: https://apply.solarpreneurs.com/
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Transcript
Taylor Armstrong's Sales Success Journey
00:00:03
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.
Avoiding Sales Mistakes with Industry Insights
00:00:19
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.
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a solopreneur you might ask? 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. All right, welcome back to another podcast. I'm excited.
World Cup and Solar Market Challenges
00:00:45
Speaker
We're doing this podcast out from the field today and we're welcoming a guest that's come on, not one, but here for the second time, giving a warm welcome to Mr. Shadi. And then I always started to forget forget how to say your last name, Shadi. Is it Barhumi? Barhumi.
00:00:59
Speaker
Yep, I was just saying ah you always have to remind me how to pronounce your name because um you know I'm used to pronouncing Hispanic names and all that and little bit different. It's a Tunisian last name. That's right. Yeah. Last name from Tunisia got got destroyed in the World Cup, but still positive about it. Yeah, yeah that's all right, man. It's all right. We have to wait four years, every four years, I think, right? Four years.
00:01:23
Speaker
Yeah, we were just talking, saying that it's been little tricky with with a customers selling solar right now because so many people are watching the games.
Lead Generation with Scout Data
00:01:30
Speaker
They've been ah canceling appointments and telling us to go home and not work. Like, what are you doing out here? and That's right. World Cup.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, excited have you on, Shadi. And I think it's been a couple of years since our last podcast, but um I'll give just my little introduction and, you know, you can introduce yourself a little bit more. But Shadi, he runs a killer service scout. I think it was Solar Scout, but now you guys just just scout now, right?
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah, scoutdata.com. And so, yeah, it's been something that our team's been using. um I've been a big proponent of it. It's one of my favorite tools to use in the field for sure. Killer data, killer insights it gives you for helping target customers that are potentially more likely to buy and people that have bigger bills and yeah all sorts of interesting data that we'll
Changing Strategies in Solar Market
00:02:17
Speaker
get into. So, um yeah, we did a podcast a while back and we'll link that here so people can go listen to that one, too.
00:02:23
Speaker
But, i yeah, mean, two years. I know you guys have had some changes. So, um I mean, the past couple of years, Shadi, what have you? ah Yeah. How's the business been going and any updates in the past couple of years or cool things going on?
00:02:36
Speaker
Just kick us off here. Totally. Yeah. So I remember being on your podcast two years ago, gung ho about all of these, like, hey, we're going to take you to the people who want to buy solar, we'll take you there first. And then, you know, we had a bunch of different strategies, right? It's like, find the people who clicked on ads in the past two years and said they want solar. Find the recent move ins, find the expired solar permits that never got installed and have been like lapsed.
00:03:00
Speaker
And what's interesting is that as the market has shifted, people, you know, we've helped people shift to other industries like roofing and HVAC. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. But also people are doing creative stuff with solar too. They're like, hey, I want to find the people with solar installed on their roofs, but still have space for more solar.
00:03:18
Speaker
And so we help people pinpoint that or find the people with solar, but no battery to add on batteries. Those are two big kind of lateral plays we've seen within solar. And there's also actually the really interesting and controversial one, the solar exit category, which is like people want to find solar homeowners who want to get out of their solar contracts. That's been a really interesting one. And also maintenance too. People want to find
ScoutStack.ai and Lead Information
00:03:40
Speaker
people with solar that might be broken. And you can find that by targeting the bankrupt solar installers, solar systems. So the rabbit hole goes pretty deep. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. I know it feels like you're, you know, what you guys do sometimes reminds me of, ah I'm from Utah. I don't know if you've been to Utah, Shaddy, but they have all these drink shops all over the place where you can like customize the drinks and put all this crazy stuff in your sodas.
00:04:03
Speaker
And sometimes I feel like I'm like, Shaddy, these guys do it all. Pick an area and he's just like, right, what do you want? Who do you want to target? Then you got your ah like mad scientist in the background and then you guys are able to customize it, which is really cool. So a lot lot of different things. But is that how you're is that the idea is you guys ah get pretty custom and you're just able to access things based on what people ask you and different companies are needing? Well, we've aimed to surface it all in our tool called Scout right at ScoutStack.ai.
Scout's Expansion Beyond Solar
00:04:30
Speaker
People there can sign up free. And we try to make it super easy where when you sign in, you can circle an area with the lead finder and then it'll just show you the count of everything relevant to you in that area. You circle an area around San Diego and it'll show you 20,000 solar orphans, 100,000 people with solar installed already. And then you can start to unlock those and then see their contact info, the credit score, see when they got solar installed.
00:04:54
Speaker
And for door to door teams or call centers, that's how they start to target these particular niche customers. I mean, you guys used to be a solar scout. Now you're a scout. So is that like intentional? are you guys working with a lot of companies outside of solar? Or what was the idea behind changing the name and everything? Yeah, good question. I mean, the first, it's partially because we've expanded to other home services verticals. So the ah next step from solar we've done in the past few years is roofing. And it's been pretty clear, like, you can identify, especially in places like California, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, these are big retail roofing markets.
00:05:31
Speaker
And if you look at the history of roof replacements, you can figure out who needs a new roof. We've been helping retail re-roof teams in Utah as well, where you're from. There's lots of door knockers just trying to find old roofs, not even storm damaged roofs. So yeah we've been doing that for roofing. So is roofing, you guys help more people and roofing than solar now or solar still like your biggest ah client base?
00:05:51
Speaker
I would say it's 50-50 now and the roofing side is growing, right? And solar is consolidating to like fewer but larger accounts. So that's just what you're seeing. It mirrors the the change in the industry in solar.
00:06:03
Speaker
But roofing, there are way more people. It's like two to four times bigger than solar. And um they don't spend in the same way because a roof doesn't give you as much of a commission, but the need is ongoing and less seasonal.
00:06:14
Speaker
Okay.
Targeting Strategies in Solar Industry
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, so we can talk about some of the data points and yeah, like like we're talking about a lot of customization, lot of possibilities.
00:06:24
Speaker
But I know for our team specifically, we've been using and a lot of the new move ins. We like that people that sometimes haven't been talked to as much. you know I mentioned before, we focus on a lot of the Hispanic customers out here around San Diego where I'm at.
00:06:39
Speaker
So that's one of our favorite features that you can turn on and see all the Hispanic homeowners, which is really helpful. And then, yeah, we're starting to experiment with some of these other ones that you rolled out, which a lot of I didn't even think of before. For you, Shetty, what do you see in more teams using as far as solar companies go? What are like the most helpful data points you're seeing that most companies use to target?
00:07:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think the recent one, for years people asked us to turn it into a layer and we finally did. It was the new move-ins layer, like in the past two years. But within there, there were two kinds of people that people really liked. One was people who moved in from out of state. So for example, they moved into Dallas, Texas, but they came from California. When our users would stumble upon those people, they're like, oh, it's a totally different conversation. They're already very positive about solar. They're not skeptical. And it's a matter of like, hey,
00:07:28
Speaker
pretty sure I'm going to get solar at some point. It's very normal where I'm from. Tell me how it works here." So they love those. So we finally made it possible for you to draw a circle and say, show me all the out-of-state homeowners.
00:07:38
Speaker
That's one. The other one is first-time new homeowners. So people who moved in from apartments. They hadn't been advertised to for solar or considered it before, so they're more fresh. Yeah, it's really good. So you guys roll. I haven't experimented with this too much, but um from what i so what I saw on the app, there's also a way where you can create like
Scout Atlas and Targeted Marketing
00:07:56
Speaker
a list. Like say if someone just wants to you know drive, like in my case, um I think I told you I just had knee surgery.
00:08:03
Speaker
I'm a little bit limited as far as just getting out and knocking doors right now, still in recovery. For someone like me, you know, right now I am doing more of the targeted stuff where I'm just driving up the doors just because I know I'm not going to be knocking for eight hours out there limping around on my knee. So for for someone like me, you guys have a feature where you can like create a list, right? Like circle an area and then just say import list of all these people and all the fresh move ins kind of do like a drive by thing. If people done that and kind of a i feature you guys have on there too.
00:08:32
Speaker
Yeah, totally. It's been a thing we've seen, right? So we started out with a software that surfaces you know all the people who are likely to buy for your door knockers. And then many people are like, hey, well, we we don't knock, we call.
00:08:43
Speaker
Or we just want a list. We just want the data list. So we released this thing called Atlas, which you get access to. And it's literally a list builder. You say, I want all the people who have solar from a bankrupt installer who got installed in the past five years that are owner occupied, their home is at least 2,000 square feet because I want to sell them some maintenance services plus an HVAC upgrade. And you can just download that list from our website. So that's been a thing that we've rolled out recently to try to serve the people doing calls or that just want a small list to go and drive a route. That's cool. And let's talk about ah AI for a minute. So, you know, two years ago, I don't think the least that I know of, I don't think too many people were integrating AI with with stuff. And I don't know if you guys were using AI back then either. But obviously it's been explosion. Everything's AI now. I know you guys are using it too. So how what's what's been the thing with AI in a and Scout and how has that changed what you guys do and um anything you
Enhancing Sales with Pre-warm Mail Strategies
00:09:34
Speaker
can say about that? How it's made some adjustments for you guys and your business and features and stuff? Yeah, it's a great question. So we recently rolled out this thing called the Scout Agents platform. um I don't know if we've talked about it yet, but it's been basically a way for people to one, reactivate their existing customers. So the first thing is like, hey, got 20,000 people that I've knocked with my team before, and we know we're not doing enough to reactivate them. So that's the first thing that the Scout Agents do. The second thing,
00:10:00
Speaker
is demand generation, right? So these scout agents you know use our database to identify, let's say all the people who haven't gone solar yet, but have moved in in the past two years from a solar friendly state. It'll identify that and then it can send them email and direct mail personalized to them. So that's another thing that the agents do. um The other one is signals, right? So you can actually set up with a scout agent, a signal to listen for, hey, when someone moves in to this to my neighborhood, send them a piece of mail. so that they hear from me immediately. When a solar permit is filed, send mail to the neighbors saying, hey, your neighbor went solar. Lots of interesting ways you can do signal based outreach with the agents. What about have you guys done anything where planning on knocking a specific area? I'm sure there's companies that do this, but have like targeted pieces of mail to go out before you even knock a door. And then you could send like a team of door knockers in there because a lot of people there pitch their presentation at the door is like, hey, you might have gotten something in the mail about the program. And a lot of companies go around saying that whether mail has been sent or not, just because they know that generally there is advertisements being sent out. And so technically, it's like you're not specifying it's if it's from your company, but a lot of people do have like advertisements getting sent to them.
00:11:12
Speaker
Have you guys done any campaigns like that where you're sending out pieces of mail and then companies send in their team of door knockers? Totally. Yeah, we've had people want to warm an area before a blitz. It was sort of like warm up the neighborhood before they blitz there, send mail to all of the qualified homeowners, and then have all those people also loaded into the Scout app so they can knock the doors that got sent the mail. So they'll knock maybe 50 to 70% of the doors because those are the qualified ones in terms of son hours and owner occupied status. People who actually scan the mailer, those pop up on the
Sales Authority with Accurate Data
00:11:43
Speaker
scout app too. So you can see, hey, this person scanned it, go to their door. What I noticed, which is interesting is like, yeah, you know you get ah ROI on the mail, really get a bunch of ROI if you like knock the people who got the mail. And then the door knockers have this big psychological boost from being like, I send you this mail, like you recognize me, I'm legit. For some reason, that makes a big difference for the team. Yeah, it is cool because it goes from, psychologically goes from them doing a cold call to at least have the feeling that, oh, this is actually a little bit warmer lead because they should know what I'm talking about. It's not just like totally off base and like, what is this? They've seen the mail, then they can have something to go off of. And yeah, I think that goes, think that's kind of the idea of everything with Scout. I've noticed just like whatever point of data you have, it makes it easier. Monday I was out knocking doors. You know, I really like how Scout you have all the, you have the phone numbers, the emails.
00:12:31
Speaker
And so for me, it's just made it so much easier and people see me more as authority because before it's like sometimes people are hesitant to give out their emails and phone numbers and there's that skepticism. But now I just roll up with the Scout app and I'm like, Hey,
00:12:45
Speaker
I'm actually just supposed to confirm that we have the right info for you. And then even and occasionally, sometimes the phone number emails um are incorrect on there, which pretty rare is usually accurate. But even if they're incorrect, a lot of homeowners will like correct me where they're hesitant to give it.
00:13:03
Speaker
They'll like correct me like, oh no, it's actually this number where like before there's no way they don't get, wouldn't have given me that info. So yeah, it helps a lot just with like the authority and people being like, okay, this guy already knows the info about it. Turns it into more like, more like, oh, this guy's approached me cold. into
Flexible Use of Scout for Individual Reps
00:13:20
Speaker
something where I'm just like, oh, I'm just supposed to confirm that we have the right in focus.
00:13:25
Speaker
They've already made a proposal for your home. We're already coming back. it's just a question of making sure we got the right data for your home because we're already going to prepare a proposal for the home. So yeah, I've seen it help a ton just ah in that aspect. But anyways, so...
00:13:38
Speaker
Something I was going to ask you, Shadi, like you guys have, I know before, I remember right, in the past couple years, you guys were definitely pretty a team focus, getting like big teams on, companies on. I know there's been consolidations. i think I saw on your website, you guys are doing a lot of like individual account. Like if someone's just an individual, maybe they're at a bigger company where... their team's not going to sign up for Scout.
00:14:00
Speaker
Do you guys have some different options now where it's just individual people can go out and get access and opt to get like whole teams on? Yeah, totally. Yeah, we've seen that, you know individual reps are really like the real Scout champion. So like they'll use it with a team, say at Legacy. And then if they leave and go to some other company, they'll still be like, Hey, guys, you should like get this here because I used it and was really helpful. We wanted to make it easy for people to access it on an individual level.
00:14:26
Speaker
And instead of licensing like a whole territory of data, they can just kind of circle an area and pay as they go. We've released that recently. So there's a free trial. You can go to scoutstack.ai and then sign up for the free trial, try it out with 100 free credits. And then if you want to upgrade, you talk to our team and you can get a small credit plan where you just pay as you go. and That's been affordable for individuals. And it's been nice to see people being like, okay, first, I'm going to just get this for myself, I'm gonna have it make money for myself.
00:14:52
Speaker
And then you know, when my manager sees it, he'll get it for the rest of the team. Unlocking that kind of motion has been has been great for us. Yeah, I love that you guys added that. Because that was one piece of, you know, when we did our first podcast, I think you guys got quite a few people checking it out.
00:15:07
Speaker
But and the feedback I was getting, it was a lot of like individual people on the teams. And then at that time, I don't think there was like a great option for an individual rep. And so a lot of them were saying, ah, I just don't want to like pay for like a whole team account and you know, the individual accounts, uh, out of price range. I was getting a lot of that.
00:15:26
Speaker
And so, yeah, I love that you guys roll out this option where people would just like pay as you go, reload the credits. We'll drop all the, some more info for people to check that out and they'll be in the show notes, but for the credits, how does that work? um If people are out there, can you give us kind of like a small rundown on how credit would work? They're not going neighborhood for the week. How many credits would they expect to use and what exactly the credits get you when they're out? not totally neighbored Yeah. Yeah. So i mean, the good news
Identifying New Solar Prospects
00:15:50
Speaker
is that, you know, now that we rolled out this individual pay as you go plan, we've never gotten any price pushback, which is ah a good sign. People are like, yeah yeah, it makes total sense for me to just put the bill on this. Typically, people get a couple thousand credits when they sign up for their individual pro plan. And then, you know, you can click around and see who's the owner, whether it's owner occupied, some info about the house, square footage. You can just click all you want and see that stuff. And then if you want to unlock more information, then you can spend some credits. Like you'd spend one credit to unlock their phone number and their email and how long they've been there, where they moved from, all that stuff together as one credit. And then you can also see some signals on the home. Like you can see their whole permit history, right? You can see, did they get a roof replacement? You can see, have they been hit by storms lately?
00:16:34
Speaker
You can see, are they a high, low, medium energy usage? And a couple extra credits if you want to see the details on that. So spend a couple extra credits and you see their entire permit history. Oh, they got an MPU. Then they got EV charger. Then they got a re-roof done. You can see the whole story of every single home via the permit data all across the nation for a couple of credits. Yeah, I like that it's...
00:16:53
Speaker
You can get it like on the dock because yeah, in the example I was talking about for me when I'm out there knocking, always try to get, you know, say their contact info. But it's like if I'm getting pushback then it can just be like, like, oh, I don't want to give this and be like, well, actually, I think we already have it. I'll just confirm with you.
00:17:09
Speaker
And then boom, you can just click it and use the credit at that point. So um yeah, I like the idea of just using it as you need it. And then if someone's willing to give you that info or easy access, then yeah, save the credit for the next one.
00:17:21
Speaker
But how many ah credits someone's working? Have you got any data around how many someone, how many credits someone needs? You said like a thousand or something would be like a... Yeah, couple rep typically it's a couple thousand. So our default plan has been sized around one rep that's doing a decent amount of work.
00:17:38
Speaker
It's like their part-time to full-time job should fit comfortably within the plan. So and then if they need to buy more credits, they just buy more credits in the app. So that way it's been easy to get started, easy to spend the credits and you don't have much anxiety about it. yeah Another one you mentioned our team, people that had the roofs recently done. And so how does that one work? Is that another filter you can add is just look for anyone that had a recent roof done and then it's another one to target. Exactly. So you can filter for recent re-roofs. Those will all pop up like recent re-roofs in the past 90 days or six months. those Those will all pop up. You can unlock them and then you can see every single one. You can call them, you can knock them.
00:18:15
Speaker
Those people typically are new entrants to the solar market. because their roof was old before
Prequalification for Financing
00:18:20
Speaker
they got the re-roof. So solar didn't qualify typically. Yeah, well, so many ah different ways to use it. People using it for roofs, how does their data, what's what's different about the roof users? Because solar, I mean, you got a bunch of data points, but what's like the main data points that ah roofers are using when they get get on the scout?
00:18:37
Speaker
Yeah, I would say there's three things. So there's the retail roofers, right? And let's say those are guys like, so let's say in Utah looking for old roofs, they use it in two ways. One is they look at, we have this feature that highlights neighborhoods where the home age is just about due for a re-roof. So say a 20 to 25 year old neighborhood, those can highlight and just like light up in green with a click of a button and then people just go there. It's like, whoa, you know, obviously most of these roofs, if they haven't been replaced, it's time. So that's the first way they use it.
00:19:04
Speaker
The second one is on any individual home that they're knocking, they can click and pull the roof page and it'll show you the last permitted re-roof. And that helps a lot because it's like you're talking to somebody, the roof visually looks old and you see on your on your screen that, hey, the roof is like 16 years old, that it was last re-roofed. So you can show up with a ton of confidence similar to your thing where you're like, hey, I'm here to talk about your roof. It looks like it's 16 years old. i want to make sure this is your email and phone number so I can like get you ah a quote for ah a new one.
00:19:31
Speaker
That tends to show up with a ton of authority. That's cool. Yeah. And then I know um I think there's also a shows you like their estimated credit score, things like that. Is that pretty accurate? The data you guys pull on that for like estimated credit scores and things like that? Yeah. so there's there's the estimated credit score based on signals of their mortgage and their home um and then how long they've been there. So you can get a decent credit score like is it good? Is it likely just fair or poor? And then we also recently this week rolled out a credit prequalification where with the homeowner's consent and entering their date of birth, ah you can actually prequalify them for your financing options. So you'd say, hey, I have these three loans. One is 650 plus, one is 500 plus, one is 700 plus. You can figure that, like you can figure your different financing options and then you can just click to qualify the the homeowner. And you're like, sure, because it's based on a soft credit score.
00:20:20
Speaker
pull That'd be huge. And then you have to you have to get their date of birth from them or you guys already have access to that data and it's just their consent. To be compliant, you get their date of birth and then the you get their consent as well.
00:20:32
Speaker
And it's like one click and then you're good to go. Yeah, that'd be really cool. i know there is I'm curious how much like how often are you guys failing credit or how big of a difference would that make for you?
00:20:42
Speaker
No, I think that'd be huge. I mean, matter of fact, just right before we started this podcast, I just came back from the failed credit. Time is money, right? And so this one, i mean, I drove 40 minutes to this appointment and we confirmed that he was going to be there.
00:20:56
Speaker
But then ah I try to always ask, hey, you know how's credit for you? That is one of the qualifications. And he was a little bit iffy. He's like, it's not great right now. I'm not exactly sure. And so whenever they're a little bit iffy, I try to just transition straight into running it just because obviously I don't want to do an entire presentation with an unqualified buyer. We ran it. He failed credit. But yeah, if there's something like that to where even the person knocking the door, you can find that out beforehand. Yeah, i know forever. that'd be something really useful because it's like especially driving these appointments and spent like even even where I ran it pretty quick and when I sat down with the customer it still was probably two hours of time that I potentially could have saved if we used a feature like that so I do like that yeah totally that'd be really helpful Yeah, yeah. I mean, we were inspired by the fact that some of the big companies have, you know, in their own internal tools, they've set up this like one click prequalification. And so we've heard about that from certain companies and we're like, whoa, why shouldn't, you know, everyone should have access to that provided that it's compliant, right? And following all the rules, everyone should have access to something that makes it easy because it saves everybody time. There's zero downside to being able to say, I show up at your door or sit with you for an hour on something that requires
Tactful Use of Customer Data
00:22:09
Speaker
financing. we want to make sure that you're qualified before I do that. Exactly. Yeah. Something that someone needs to come up with, or I don't know if you know a way to do this, but I've heard of a few companies in the past that somehow figuring out like an integration with all the different financers we use, i run it through all of them at the same time.
00:22:26
Speaker
And then that way you have all the options because it's like for us right now, um some of the financers have different credit qualifications. And if they fail one, then there's like two more. Sometimes we'll try because there might be a small chance they'll pass with another one.
00:22:39
Speaker
But it gets annoying because a lot of times we have to go and create like a proposal through other the other financer and then, you know, go to log into different portal. And it can take like 10, 15 minutes to even have that one ready before we even run the credit again if it wasn't prepared beforehand. But yeah, do you know any way of doing that? Have you heard of any easy way and to do something like that?
00:23:00
Speaker
a question. I think it's pretty much what we're doing, right? So you pre-configure, you say, hey, we we offer these three lending products and this one has these criteria. You need a 650 plus and like no, you know, no bankruptcies or not too many open credit cards or something like that. This is all stuff that um we can see on the back end, but we don't actually reveal it, right? the The raw sensitive data itself to the end user, we say, you told us that you have these three products.
00:23:25
Speaker
When you run the credit score, we do all the matching and make sure, hey, these are the ones that you're fit for. These are the ones you're not. you're not And we just show what they're a fit for. So that protects everybody on both sides without releasing sensitive information.
00:23:37
Speaker
So i'm pretty sure that's the thing we just solved. Okay. Yeah, be fire. Well, that's cool. Well, um so here's another question I just thought Shaddy. Occasionally, you get those homeowners to where sometimes you you reveal all the data. It's like showing your cards.
00:23:54
Speaker
You show up and you say, oh, I have this info. And I've had some homeowners get like kind of creeped out by all the data sometimes they like you have on them. um you know And usually, if they're that skeptical, then a lot of times they're not going to buy anyways.
00:24:07
Speaker
But some of the homeowners out there even sometimes seeing their name or hearing their name that you already have, occasionally they'll, they're like, oh what is, you know, this is just creepy. I don't know how you have my information, but you know, forget about it. It can occasionally happen. And then, um, you know, you want to be careful. Maybe just, you you don't want to go to the door and be like, Hey, I have your phone number, have your email, I have this and that. Cause people are to be super creeped out if you just show all your cards and tell them all the data you got on them through the scout app. But, uh, Do you have any advice on that? Like with all with all this with all this data, with great data comes great responsibility, right? And so it's like, how do you effectively use it? Maybe i don't know if you have any tips around that or any thoughts where it's like making sure you're not creeping people out or or scaring them off just by rivowing all this data on them. You got any thoughts on that?
00:24:56
Speaker
Totally, yeah. I mean, I've definitely had the privilege of seeing a lot of really masterful salespeople, yourself included, right, use this. And then they would come to me and tell me, okay, given all the data you showed me, this is how I actually use it on the doors. And so one of our users named Melissa, who she's an amazing sales leader. She was like, You know, I know when i know that they're from, like oftentimes I'll go knock out of state move ins and I'll know that they're from out of state and I'll know they moved in like a year ago. But instead of being like, hey, you moved from Texas to California, you know, nine months ago, right? I'll be like, okay, yeah, are you new to the area? Oh, you've just moved in. Okay, is it from around here or from out of state? And she kind of draws that stuff out to build rapport, knowing in her back pocket that this is like the reality of them. And so that's how I've seen really masterful salespeople use it. drawing out, you already know that it is, but yeah, but that makes it a lot, sometimes lot less creepy than just saying, Hey, yeah I know your phone number is this. I know you just moved from out of state.
00:25:48
Speaker
I know you just pulled this permit five months ago. Now go slower with me. it's like That's right. pardon him Because what's funny is like just simply having that information on them is like in the conversation with the prospect, the fact that you know that about them doesn't make them more likely to buy. Actually, it makes them more likely to buy is their awareness of their own need, right? So when you say, yeah, you just moved from out of state, so you must be familiar with like all the programs around here in terms of how to save money, electricity. They're like actually, no, you know, I just actually, am I'm not from here. Then you start to make them aware of how they can benefit from these different things. But you know what questions to ask and
Scout's AI and Industry Diversification
00:26:22
Speaker
how to build the pain. And then do people, so with all this data, I have seen some of our reps occasionally get like, you know, overwhelmed with all the access to data they have. And I think especially for newer ones, sometimes they like so much data, to they maybe we don't know how to use it or they're just overwhelmed. So just go back to knocking how they were before.
00:26:41
Speaker
And so for someone that's like newer to scout and trying to start experimenting with these things, do you recommend that people just, okay, pick one, you know, pick one data point, maybe it's just new move ins this week or something, and then just focus on that one? Or are you seeing people have success kind of like combining it, do a different thing every day? Or I don't know, what do you what do you think about that? Yeah, I think this ties back to your question about AI. I think this is a really good place for like an AI. This is a feature that we're coming out with soon. You know, you click on a home, and it gives you the quick summary of like, hey, is this a good house to knock for solar or not? right do Do we have any signal that it's good? And if so, what are the main points to make? Oh, they moved in from out of state and and they probably have two ACs. They're like 55 year olds, so they probably have kids that are you know using electricity and stuff. And so these are the three main points. you know Simply by clicking on the AI tab, you'll actually see the, hey, this is what you should talk about when you knock them. That's it. You don't have to worry. So if you're just like rolling up to a home, you have a little bit of a pitch and the main points that will probably get them to buy there. And then if you want to do something more advanced, you can start to use the lead finder, find the out of state move ins, do a driving route.
00:27:45
Speaker
um So even if you're not being too strategic about which home you go to, when you show up to a home, it can help coach you on these are the things to talk about to get them to buy solar. Yeah, well, so many good things, man. Yeah, I mean, in in the future, do you guys see a lot of things that you're still wanting to add?
00:28:01
Speaker
lot of like changes that you're you're planning to make? Or i don't know if you're thinking of also expanding to different services, industries and all that. What do you guys, guys got anything exciting, exciting plan for the future?
00:28:13
Speaker
What's the future look like for you guys, Jenny? Yeah, I mean, we we are already seeing a ton of interest from HVAC folks, right? A lot of people from Solar have gone to HVAC and then turns out you can know who needs an HVAC replacement. So that's one move. And then the other move is basically helping people reach the folks that are most qualified. So we've seen lots of people saying, okay, great. Like now, you know, you have all this data.
00:28:33
Speaker
I want to use the agents platform and just send out emails and mail to these people who need my services that we could we can get those leads. That's another step we're taking. And that's like, ah you know, moving up the value chain, helping people actually get outcomes rather than just giving them data to go do the work themselves. So these are some of the directions we're moving in.
Optimizing Door-Knocking with Targeted Data
00:28:51
Speaker
That's cool. I don't think I asked this in last podcast, but you ever ah hit the doors yourself? Should ever been out there and and put your ah product to the test?
00:28:59
Speaker
That's a great question. Yes. I mean, that's how this thing started. It's so interesting and and and psychologically weird on the doors is what I found. So this started because in 2022, I flew to Texas to knock with some team that was selling solar just randomly. i was like, okay, let me see this thing. yeah And dude, I mean, the amount of rejection you guys face as just as part of the job, it's like, you know, 80 to 90% rejection all day, which is really hard. So the amount of toughness that you guys have is great.
00:29:23
Speaker
And then what did I see? I saw that, you know, the one appointment I ever set was a new movement. They were just like totally open. It completely different conversation. They were like, yeah, we just we just came to Dallas from, where was it? Georgia or something like that. We just came from Georgia. Like, yeah, let me check out the, come by on Saturday. I was like, dude, I could have just gone straight to this home and then not knock those 50 doors that like, they were literally didn't open the door. They had no soliciting signs. They yelled at me. One guy was a renter, but he talked with me for like 20 minutes and showed me his fish tank. it was like, it's like ah the wild west out here. But if I just went to the right one, I could have gotten that appointment. So that was the inspiration for it. But yeah, so I have been on the doors of folks using it. I think impressively people can like, once people have the phone numbers, they start to call them on the doors. They don't open the they don't open the door and they just call them. And they set the appointment like 30% of the time, which was pretty impressive. to see Yeah, that's cool. haven't tried that one. Yeah, I've tried it where they have like a gate in front and you can't access the door. I've actually had some success with calling with that. But yeah, it's a good idea. Just calling up they if they don't answer. Experiment with that one.
00:30:21
Speaker
Dropping a voicemail too. Our app doesn't do that. But what what I've noticed is when you drop voicemails, people actually read the voicemails now, right? So that's that's really cool. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. What about, I don't know if this is possible for something the future. I know it's, you know, it gets a little tricky with like some sure companies, you know, don't want to like share their data and everything. But ah something that's tough in saturated markets like San Diego, sometimes we'll send reps to an area and they'll be like, oh,
00:30:48
Speaker
um You know what, a company just came by here two days ago, or ah you know, we have we've had five companies come in the last couple of weeks. when When it's that bad, a lot of times we'll just send our reps to a different area.
00:30:59
Speaker
Do you think there's any possibility in the future of like,
Success in Saturated Markets with Scout
00:31:02
Speaker
I don't know, getting any data on that to where if it's an area that's been hit hard, maybe you want to like steer clear of this area or do you see any way of accessing things like that in the future?
00:31:13
Speaker
That's so interesting. Yeah, it's a great question. I think what I would say is that our our goal is always to like you know make it so that you can succeed even in a saturated area. We can't. And we you know as a principal, we don't so we don't share information on like, hey, like Taylor's team has been all through this area, so you should avoid it. Yeah, yeah. that's like customer's info. So we wouldn't want to share that, but we want to make it so that even if you know some some random team had like knocked everybody, you'd be able to show up and be like, hey, Mr. Smith, I'm here to talk to you about your solar system installed in 2016 from SolarCity. I don't think it's functioning well, and you probably are still getting a second bill. That's specifically why I'm here. I don't know what people came and knocked on your door about. And typically, even in a saturated market, the niche data angle helps you. So that's kind of been our philosophy around that. So many good things, man. And yeah, it's cool to see the evolutions you guys have made and I'd love to see you continuing improving it too. And that's one of the things I love most about ah working with you and your team Sheddys. I can tell you guys are definitely always trying to make improvements and get feedback. And a lot of times you've been able make quick changes for our team of
00:32:15
Speaker
because it's been a cool rolling it out to my team is we think i have ideas we shoot it to you and some of them you're like oh I never even thought of that but let's get that added so it's cool to be able to have the personalization and um your team helping us out and so is that something you guys are trying to do is get a lot of feedback from from teams and then ah add improvements and Do you customize it team by team if they want different data points too? i think the number one kind of philosophy around building a great product is you just talk to your users like crazy. So most of the time, you know all people text me and I'm happy to have that conversation. Just have them say, hey, I would really love to see this and for information. And then oftentimes we will build it in if it's we're seeing that pattern repeated. But yeah, talking to our users, incorporating their feedback is like you know kind of my number one job here. So yeah, so yeah we're really open to that. That's cool. been nice working with our team on it because I think of things, but as I rolled it out to other guys on my team, like I remember we did a call with you and they thought of a bunch of ideas. I'm like, I don't even think of that. That's that's it's a good idea. We should get that added.
00:33:19
Speaker
One of them was like, ah you know, new move ins, but out here in San Diego, a lot of new move ins there to have solar on it. So I know one we we're talking with you about, it's like, um can we get new move ins, but show the ones that don't have solar yet.
00:33:33
Speaker
So things like that. And I think you said you guys are rolling something out like that, right? Exactly. yeah identifying which of these which of these new movements don't have panels on the roof. That's one of the new new little um filters coming to the lead finder. So stay tuned for that. But yeah, that was that was your team's contribution, which was great. All right. Maybe I should have.
00:33:49
Speaker
Maybe I should kept that close to the vest. No, we don't. stay out at Stay out of San Diego if anyone's listening to this. It's funny. It's all it's kind it's all it's all about execution. It's not about how many people know about it It's all about
Open-mindedness and Future Opportunities
00:34:00
Speaker
execution. Yeah, exactly.
00:34:01
Speaker
We'll execute on it. but Well, cool, man. So, yeah. Thank you so much for coming on. Shadi's sharing some of the new... the features and things you guys are doing with the app. And um I know you already dropped the website, but if if people do want to learn more, is that the best ways on the website or any other ah um ways to get involved with what you're doing that people can reach out to you?
00:34:21
Speaker
Yeah, I would say the number one way to like, you know, actually get access to this thing right after the podcast as you go to our a website. This is our new website called scoutstack.ai. And there you can actually sign up for free, get 100 free credits and try out pretty much all these features I'm talking about. So yeah, scoutstack.ai. And then we'll set up a link for you, Taylor, so people that come through you, we we know it came through you. So cool. We will put that link in the podcast and definitely get you this solopreneur special treatment.
00:34:48
Speaker
If they know Shaddy's going to give you the VIP treatment, if he knows you're coming from the podcast, we'll post that link in the show notes. And, yeah, man, appreciate you for helping us out and working with our team. But, yeah, I guess to to kick us off, any other advice you want to give for for a rep or any other last things you've seen from people really crushing it with ah with with Scout that that we didn't mention so far, Shaddy?
00:35:13
Speaker
that's a good question. I would say our transition and what's helping us be successful is being open-minded to the other home improvement stuff like roofing and HVAC and then other stuff you can do with solar like batteries. So I think to reps who are wanting to diversify, right, or wanting to incorporate more things that they can sell, you know finding finding something that shows you all the different opportunities on a home, not just do they want solar or not, increases your your kind of dynamic range of what you can sell. So I would say stay open minded to all the different moves you can make in terms of upselling different stuff and cross selling.
00:35:46
Speaker
i think that's that's big. That's like the next couple of years for us. I love that. Yeah, it could get super interesting. Well, so good. Chetty, thank you again for coming on. Go check out what they have to offer. This thing helps so much. It's been a game changer for us and our team. Yeah, we'll have to do a podcast hopefully before two years again. sending you guys are always dropping cool stuff. But yeah, we'll be in touch. And thanks again for coming on the show with us today, Shetty.
00:36:10
Speaker
It's been a pleasure, Taylor. Thanks so much. So some of you already know that I run my own door to door sales team here in San Diego. And as we are gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results.
00:36:23
Speaker
But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage. Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout, but it's not a door knocking app. It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market.
00:36:37
Speaker
It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later canceled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given neighborhood. It's been working for a lot of teams across the country and now I'm on board too. I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego so I decided to partner up. But I told them, hey, I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal. And they did.
00:37:01
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.
00:37:14
Speaker
Okay, back. to the What's up, solarpreneurs? Hope you enjoyed the episode. Before you
Podcast Closure and Special Deals
00:37:20
Speaker
run out and start selling more solar yourself, wanted to let you know about an exciting new cheat sheet we created it specifically for you in mind.
00:37:30
Speaker
One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start? What episodes should I listen to in the podcast? You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
00:37:44
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 Solopreneur.
00:37:57
Speaker
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00:38:19
Speaker
We will have that in the show notes. Go download it right now. And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them. That's going to show you how. So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.