Transcript
Speaker: What do you call an underground group of solar professionals on a mission to create a more sustainable world?
Speaker: We call ourselves solopreneurs.
Speaker: And while some might call us crazy, foolish, and dissatisfied with the status quo, we're the ones taking action to create a better future for ourselves and the world.
Speaker: Solopreneur is dedicated to give you, the solar professional, the tools, skills, technology, and mentorship to take the industry by storm and sell more solar with less effort.
Speaker: We are Solopreneurs, and this is our story.
Speaker: What's going on, Solopreneurs?
Speaker: We are back with another episode.
Speaker: This time, it's just me in the house.
Speaker: I apologize for missing last week.
Speaker: We're actually in Lake Powell.
Speaker: If any of you guys haven't been to Lake Powell in Utah, Arizona, you need to get down there.
Speaker: It's a blast.
Speaker: No excuses to not have an episode, but I am closing my own deals every week.
Speaker: Things do get a little busy, but I'm going to do the best to get you quality content every Friday coming your way straight to the podcast app or wherever you find your podcasts.
Speaker: So I wanted to get going.
Speaker: I wanted to revisit a couple reviews.
Speaker: We haven't checked them out for a while here, but just to thank the people who have given me a shout out.
Speaker: This is honestly what keeps me going.
Speaker: There's been several times where I've gotten super busy and just thought, you know,
Speaker: I'm not making money off this.
Speaker: Why not just stop the podcast?
Speaker: I'm making money off my solar deals.
Speaker: So let's focus my time there.
Speaker: But every time I see these reviews come in, this is honestly what has kept the show going.
Speaker: So I wanted to give a couple shout outs.
Speaker: First, we got one by Ian Chams.
Speaker: Says this podcast provides so much value in every episode.
Speaker: It's incredible skills that are not only imperative in solar, but in life.
Speaker: This podcast has completely changed my view of the industry by providing top quality content that you won't find anywhere else.
Speaker: Thank you, Ian.
Speaker: Makes my day.
Speaker: Loved it.
Speaker: Then we got another one by at Cleedog.
Speaker: He said, Great cells nuggets for solar earth nuggets.
Speaker: Listen to two episodes and going to go for more.
Speaker: If you want to be in the top 1% of solar cells pros, probably a good idea to check this pod out.
Speaker: Appreciate that.
Speaker: Then we got one here, and I'm not necessarily just picking the best ones.
Speaker: Luckily, we've had mostly good reviews.
Speaker: But I don't care what you think.
Speaker: Just leave your review.
Speaker: This is what gets people listening.
Speaker: So I appreciate the honest reviews too.
Speaker: We got one from Green Gorgeously here.
Speaker: This is a four-star review.
Speaker: She says, lots of good info, but I'd love for the hosts and guests to try to be more inclusive with their wording regarding sales reps.
Speaker: I'm a woman's sales rep, so when you discuss girlfriend or wife at home or the guys, that doesn't apply to us.
Speaker: It makes us feel out of place and excluded.
Speaker: We are here, and we are kicking butt selling solar as well.
Speaker: Please recognize this.
Speaker: Green Gorgeously, want to give you a shout-out for leaving an honest review.
Speaker: Really appreciate it.
Speaker: Telling what's on your mind, and especially in the social stuff we got going on in the country now.
Speaker: Obviously, U.S., if you're listening to this, can definitely appreciate that comment.
Speaker: And let me tell you, we definitely are going to try to improve that.
Speaker: I know I've been guilty of it, as I'm saying.
Speaker: Guys only referring to the wife at home, things like that.
Speaker: So I definitely appreciate commenting.
Speaker: comment like this being honest and giving us that reminder we are getting some powerhouse girl reps in the house we have that on the books we're going to get a few of them in here so I think it's important to get people of all different situations get the ladies here there's ladies that are closing deals galore and we are going to get them on the show so thanks for pointing that out thanks for being honest in the review
Speaker: Hey, solarpreneurs, real quick.
Speaker: If you've been in the solar industry any amount of time, you know that in order to take it to the next level, you need to always be recruiting.
Speaker: What is it, ABR?
Speaker: Always be recruiting.
Speaker: So if you need help with recruiting, I wanted to share with you something that helped me take my recruiting skills to the next level.
Speaker: We literally went from an office of less than 10 reps to 25 to 30 reps in less than three months.
Speaker: And we did this with reps that continue to sell with us.
Speaker: Two or three of them went on to become managers.
Speaker: Several of them were top producers in our office.
Speaker: And there are multiple reps that are still with us to this day, more than a year later.
Speaker: So what is it that helped me?
Speaker: I took up the services of Ryan Holman with Sells Recruiting University.
Speaker: He helped me develop a system to take my recruiting game to the next level.
Speaker: And he really helped me follow up with the recruits, schedule group interviews with them, get a huge pool of applicants coming in day after day.
Speaker: I wanted to share with you guys his link.
Speaker: If you are looking to take your recruiting skills to the next level, go to Calendly.com slash sru forward slash solarpreneur.
Speaker: Once again, that's Calendly.com slash sru slash solarpreneur.
Speaker: SRU is Sales Recruiting University.
Speaker: Ryan will help you take it to the next level.
Speaker: With that said, if you haven't left a review, please go leave us one.
Speaker: And you have some extra incentive to do that because guess what?
Speaker: This episode is actually the 100th Solarepreneur Podcast episode.
Speaker: Oh my gosh.
Speaker: Crazy.
Speaker: So what we're doing, we are doing a giveaway.
Speaker: And if you have a friend of me on Facebook, go hit me up, Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: Also, go join the Solapreneur Facebook group if you're not already part of it because that is where the details will be posted.
Speaker: But what we're doing is giving away 48 boom boom sticks.
Speaker: If you don't know what that is, go see it.
Speaker: Go visit the group and you'll find out what it is.
Speaker: But basically, it's something...
Speaker: It is an essential oil stick that you can sniff.
Speaker: I know it sounds kind of crazy.
Speaker: And it gives you a burst of this essential oils in your nose.
Speaker: And I use these things anytime I'm about to go into the deal.
Speaker: Because I'm anchoring it to all the good thoughts, all the deals I've closed in the past.
Speaker: And it gets my brain alert and attentive.
Speaker: It's not drugs or anything.
Speaker: I know Wolf of Wall Street, other guys probably do drugs before deals.
Speaker: But I'm all about it.
Speaker: keeping it clean, doing stuff all natural.
Speaker: So if you want to get one of these, then go visit, again, the Facebook group, Solarpreneur Facebook group.
Speaker: All the details will be posted there.
Speaker: And all you'll need to do to get in on it is leave a review and then invite a few people into the group.
Speaker: So do that.
Speaker: And I want to send you something for free for our 100th episode.
Speaker: And thanks again for being a loyal listener and supporting us in this journey.
Speaker: Cool, so just to get transitioned, get into the topic today, before I do that, I wanted to also mention just a little update on my personal sales.
Speaker: We're getting into the summer, which is awesome.
Speaker: Obviously, we're dealing still with the coronavirus challenge.
Speaker: And luckily, I've been on a knock.
Speaker: I'm here in San Diego.
Speaker: I'm knocking every day, usually without a mask.
Speaker: And a little tip on that, depending where you are at or how the kind of COVID climate is, my thoughts on it are I'm just going to be cautious.
Speaker: I'm not shaking people's hands.
Speaker: I'm giving them elbow bumps, fist bumps.
Speaker: That's what I'm doing.
Speaker: Personally, I'm choosing not to wear a mask while working.
Speaker: Okay, and here's my thoughts on it.
Speaker: The reason I'm not wearing one is because in my opinion, it makes it tougher to get inside the home.
Speaker: It makes it tougher.
Speaker: It's reminding people of, you know, how serious the situation is.
Speaker: I know it is serious, and I know people might bash on me, might disagree with me on this, but it's my personal view is when people see the mask,
Speaker: It's getting them in their head.
Speaker: It's making them more worried.
Speaker: It's making it a bigger deal.
Speaker: And I think we all need to keep our cool.
Speaker: Obviously be cautious out there.
Speaker: But I think it's something if we're cautious, if we're not trying to keep our distance for the most part,
Speaker: then people are really going to see you as a human being.
Speaker: They're not going to see you around as a walking virus.
Speaker: And I think, honestly, that's partly what the masks do is gets people nervous again.
Speaker: It's like, oh, yeah, I should be worried about the virus.
Speaker: What are you doing at my door?
Speaker: I'm definitely not letting you in the house.
Speaker: So that's what I think about it.
Speaker: I personally don't knock with a mask.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: And I'm starting to carry one in my pocket.
Speaker: So if people bring it up, yeah, I can bring it out.
Speaker: And if I have to, I'll wear one.
Speaker: But that's my suggestion is just have it on hand, but I don't think it's necessarily necessary to wear one at all times when you're in the neighborhood.
Speaker: And again, it might be different, different areas.
Speaker: San Diego, obviously all California, it is pretty intense with the COVID situation here.
Speaker: So I would doubt that there's too many other states that are, that have more restrictions than California.
Speaker: I mean, out here, we can't even go into a store without a mask.
Speaker: My gym just opened up and I go in there the other day.
Speaker: I'm working out.
Speaker: All of a sudden I get one of their managers saying, hey, we had two people say that they don't like you working out without a mask.
Speaker: So I'm going to ask you to put on a mask or else leave the gym.
Speaker: Like, are you serious?
Speaker: I'm like, I'm going to pass out.
Speaker: I'm doing squats here.
Speaker: How am I supposed to do a workout with a mask on?
Speaker: So even my own gym is requiring masks, which is pretty crazy.
Speaker: So anytime I'm doing sets, I slip it down.
Speaker: And because I do think I would pass out if I'm working out the whole time with a mask.
Speaker: But it's pretty crazy here.
Speaker: So I'm hoping, obviously, I'm praying every day that things get better.
Speaker: And shout out to any of you who have caught the virus.
Speaker: I hope you guys make a speedy recovery.
Speaker: And I hope you're still able to close deals in this whole situation.
Speaker: But last thing on this, and then we'll get into the topic.
Speaker: Another thing that happens is my Facebook ads got shut down.
Speaker: And it sucks because I was getting quite a few leads over Facebook.
Speaker: But then, like I've talked about in...
Speaker: A couple other episodes, Mark Zuckerberg decides to snap his fingers.
Speaker: Same thing that Thanos does in Avengers, and we get shut down just like that.
Speaker: So guess what?
Speaker: I got no online leads coming in through that platform right now.
Speaker: So just to emphasize with that, if you are not getting leads from multiple sources, then this is very likely going to happen to you.
Speaker: Most of you that have been running Facebook ads, it probably has happened to you at some point.
Speaker: So I just want to emphasize the importance.
Speaker: Put your eggs in multiple baskets.
Speaker: That's why people should be knowing how to knock.
Speaker: That's why you should be able to get leads from multiple platforms, not just Facebook.
Speaker: You should be looking into YouTube ads.
Speaker: You should be looking on multiple platforms because if not, then something like this will happen to you and it's going to shut down your whole business.
Speaker: So get your eggs in multiple baskets.
Speaker: And that's just a reminder.
Speaker: I wanted to give people on that.
Speaker: Okay, so the topic today of the show is lies I've told while selling.
Speaker: Boom, boom, boom.
Speaker: Taylor Armstrong has told lies.
Speaker: Okay, so this is something, there's a couple of things I'm going to share on here that I am not proud of.
Speaker: A, I've tried my best to repent and turn away from some lies.
Speaker: Some are...
Speaker: Some lies were not intentional at all, and some were things that I just stretched the truth.
Speaker: So I'm sharing these things because I consider myself a really honest person.
Speaker: I go to church.
Speaker: Well, right now it's shut down, but I go to church, did a two-year mission for my church.
Speaker: I always strive to be as honest as I can, but unfortunately it gets to all of us, and I know hopefully I didn't speak to more people
Speaker: for more than just me that we get excited about selling.
Speaker: Sometimes we stretch the truth a little bit to get that sell.
Speaker: We're all commission based.
Speaker: So I'm going to tell several stories here and then just kind of illustrate
Speaker: what went down with it, and then hopefully you guys can learn from some of the lies I've told, whether they've been intentional or unintentional.
Speaker: And then just give a reminder to people to never lie, because I think in every one of these stories I'm going to tell, it's come back to haunt me.
Speaker: It's caused negative reviews.
Speaker: It has, yeah, just made things generally more difficult.
Speaker: So I want you guys to learn from mistakes that I have made.
Speaker: So before I get into some of these stories, just a couple of things I want to just review.
Speaker: Why do we need to be honest?
Speaker: There have been some pretty shady sales reps that I have heard about.
Speaker: Some even have gotten fired from companies I've worked for.
Speaker: But with that, I mean, first thing is it's just good karma.
Speaker: think anyone most people believe that as you put good things into the universe good things will come back to you if you're not being completely honest then trust me 100% of the time even if customers don't find out I believe it's karma is gonna come back for you something's going to happen even if the customer never finds out it will hurt you in one way or another if you're not being 100% honest
Speaker: And then there's some obvious things with it.
Speaker: It can cause lawsuits.
Speaker: Being honest, it can increase referrals.
Speaker: It can increase confidence.
Speaker: It's going to avoid bad reviews.
Speaker: And here's the thing.
Speaker: If you are caught on even a small lie, your credibility is gone completely.
Speaker: Nada.
Speaker: You have zero credibility.
Speaker: And the first story I want to tell with this is actually a good example of that.
Speaker: I think it's a story I may have told in previous episodes, but there was a time when this was probably about a year into me selling solar, and I was trying to improve as much as I could.
Speaker: I think I was listening to a lot of Grant Cardone at the time, and some of his suggestions are record yourself and then always listen to your recordings, listen to what you can do better.
Speaker: But here's the thing with that recording thing.
Speaker: cells recording other people without their permission here in California is illegal.
Speaker: You can't do that.
Speaker: I actually found out that in some states it's not illegal.
Speaker: As a matter of fact, some of our managers, some of our owners of our company went to Nevada for weekends to actually record videos of door approaches because apparently it's legal there to record without people's permission.
Speaker: But in California, it definitely is illegal, okay?
Speaker: So maybe you can check the laws in wherever you're at.
Speaker: But what happened is I went to a appointment and I started recording.
Speaker: I'm like, okay, I'm gonna get some great feedback on this.
Speaker: I'm gonna be able to listen in to what I'm saying, to maybe what I'm not saying, to the things I'm doing wrong.
Speaker: It's gonna be awesome.
Speaker: I go on there, it's this Hawaiian guy.
Speaker: and we start going through the deals, go through all the details of the deal, talk about solar.
Speaker: This is about 15-20 minutes into it, I get out a notepad to start writing on and when I do that, I bump my phone a little bit.
Speaker: It's actually on this table and if any of you have an iPhone, you know that when you press the record on voice memos, it shows a red bar at the top for recording.
Speaker: I bumped my phone.
Speaker: This guy, he sees the red bar.
Speaker: He's like, hey, is that recording?
Speaker: And I'm like, what?
Speaker: And I'm like a deer in the headlights.
Speaker: I'm just caught there.
Speaker: I'm like, what are you talking about?
Speaker: He's like, can you show me, can you tap your phone one more time?
Speaker: And I'm like, uh, and then I kind of like tap it again.
Speaker: And there's the red bar again.
Speaker: He's like, dude, are you serious?
Speaker: You're recording me?
Speaker: And I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess we're just doing some training stuff.
Speaker: He's like, you know what?
Speaker: I didn't give you permission to record.
Speaker: We're done here.
Speaker: We're done.
Speaker: And this guy flips out and I'm going to leave out some choice words.
Speaker: He started kind of yelling and freaked out and basically just kicked me out of his home.
Speaker: He caught me red-handed recording and told me to delete it.
Speaker: This guy was not happy.
Speaker: I can't remember if he did leave a negative review.
Speaker: Hopefully not.
Speaker: But honestly, this is something that's in California could probably cause like a lawsuit or someone suing the company.
Speaker: Some people take these things very seriously.
Speaker: And that's something that I forget is that to me, most stuff isn't a big deal.
Speaker: But sometimes we do things and it is a big deal to other people.
Speaker: That's the first story, that's the first example, and my credibility was gone off the table, had no chance in this deal anymore.
Speaker: He did, he was being pretty short on me, so it probably was kind of a long shot that it would have closed, but the second he saw that recording going, just all trust was lost.
Speaker: I was doing something without his permission, and he freaked out.
Speaker: So there's story number one, don't do that.
Speaker: And if you are going to record people, I would suggest asking their permission.
Speaker: This would have avoided a lot of pain for me.
Speaker: If I would ask them, hey, just for training purposes, our company just does it for training, do you mind if I record this?
Speaker: And they're just going to make sure that I'm explaining everything correctly, something like that.
Speaker: And I would bet that most people, if you bring it up like that,
Speaker: then you're probably gonna have a good chance at them not even caring.
Speaker: So bring it up, figure out the laws in your state.
Speaker: But don't do that, you're gonna lose credibility.
Speaker: And then I'll get into a few other stories, but another question to ask yourself is why are we tempted to lie?
Speaker: People, well in commission sales, we all know that we're not gonna make any money unless we close that deal.
Speaker: So I think that's the big thing.
Speaker: We're always tempted to get that next commission.
Speaker: Maybe it's a huge deal.
Speaker: Maybe we want to stretch the truth a little bit.
Speaker: I went to Door2DoorCon, which I've talked about in previous episodes.
Speaker: That was in February.
Speaker: And one of the guys that talked on solar, his name was Tyler McAllister,
Speaker: And I get this question all the time, but he brought up this question that he gets asked a lot by homeowners.
Speaker: And if you've been selling, you pretty much guarantee that you've been asked this.
Speaker: But the question is, what happens if we don't like the solar and want to take it off next year, later down the road?
Speaker: And what I thought was cool was Tyler McAllister.
Speaker: instead of kind of beating around the bush with it, he just goes straight for the kill.
Speaker: He says, oh, yeah, no, we don't take it off.
Speaker: You won't be able to take it off later.
Speaker: And that's why we make sure it's going to benefit you and that it will be a good thing.
Speaker: Okay, this is something that I appreciated is because I think most cells are absent.
Speaker: Well, especially me.
Speaker: Whenever I get asked this, in the past, I would kind of beat around the bush, be like, oh, um,
Speaker: Yeah, well, you wouldn't want to take it off and then just kind of like avoid the question.
Speaker: But I think people appreciate the honesty.
Speaker: And the other thing is if you don't know something, you don't need to pretend.
Speaker: You don't need to make stuff up.
Speaker: And that's something that's gotten me in trouble as well, which I'll share a story about.
Speaker: Don't make stuff up.
Speaker: Admit that you don't know things.
Speaker: And that's going to help you.
Speaker: It's going to help you build trust.
Speaker: If anything, it'll help the sell.
Speaker: It'll help you get more referrals.
Speaker: Because people will know that you, even the hard truths, even questions you ask them, or that they ask you, they know that they're getting the honest answer.
Speaker: And they can appreciate you saying things that maybe aren't the easiest truths to tell.
Speaker: So I really like that.
Speaker: So even if it's a tough question, don't bend the truth.
Speaker: Don't stretch things.
Speaker: and make sure you're being 100% honest.
Speaker: Another thing, here's a story that happened with that.
Speaker: I had a customer, this was about six months ago, that needed a main panel upgrade in order to get the solar up.
Speaker: They were super excited about the solar, but one of their important questions that they wanted to ask in order to go solar is, hey, will you guys pay for
Speaker: the panel upgrade, because it's probably going to be needed.
Speaker: And the way it worked, our company, they did panel upgrades, but only if it was needed.
Speaker: And obviously, we're just betting on most people not needing it, so we don't have to do it.
Speaker: But the customers that do need it, then, yeah, we just take the hit on it.
Speaker: So the lie I told, well, I should say the truth that I bended for this, and I would say it was a little bit unintentional, but I should have been watching what I was saying back then, is I said, oh, yeah, if it's needed, they'll do it.
Speaker: And the customer responded, okay, well, this home is like 80 years old, so it's a super old panel.
Speaker: And my response was, oh yeah, you guys will definitely get one then.
Speaker: You'll for sure get one.
Speaker: Don't worry about that.
Speaker: And then guess what?
Speaker: Our guys went and did the site survey, the inspection, after I closed the deal.
Speaker: And sure enough, the customer didn't need a main panel upgrade, which was surprising to me.
Speaker: He didn't need one.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, shoot.
Speaker: And then what happens next?
Speaker: I get a call from the wife.
Speaker: She is just...
Speaker: Super pissed.
Speaker: She's super mad.
Speaker: Saying, you promised us that we'd get the panel upgrade.
Speaker: Now you guys are saying we're not going to get one.
Speaker: And I'm like, oh, well.
Speaker: And at that point, I had nothing to say.
Speaker: I tried to defend myself.
Speaker: Honestly, I couldn't remember really what I said.
Speaker: But she reminded me that I told them they would need one.
Speaker: This got me in a lot of trouble.
Speaker: Unfortunately, had to basically take from my commission.
Speaker: to help them get the panel upgrade.
Speaker: Otherwise they were going to freak out.
Speaker: But yeah, this caused me a huge headache.
Speaker: I did several calls with them, basically just listening to them, cussed me out, listening to them super furious on the phone.
Speaker: And then they also called our owners.
Speaker: Yeah, they just caused a whole fiasco.
Speaker: So there's another example of a reason you shouldn't bend the truth.
Speaker: And then last story I'll tell.
Speaker: Let me see how many other stories we got.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then another thing that I've done in the past going on with the admitting to things you don't know.
Speaker: It's another problem I see, especially with newer reps.
Speaker: And here's a story of when I was super new.
Speaker: This was about two months into me selling solar.
Speaker: It was one of the, I think it was maybe the fourth or fifth deal that I had closed.
Speaker: I was just starting to go to deals myself without taking another closer to the deal.
Speaker: And at the time, I thought I knew all the details that I needed to share with the customers.
Speaker: I thought I knew how to answer all the questions.
Speaker: And this was an unintentional lie I told.
Speaker: But the question I got in this appointment was, hey, if the power goes off, will we still have electricity?
Speaker: And guess what?
Speaker: I told them, oh yeah, you'll still have electricity.
Speaker: You're powered by the sun.
Speaker: Sounds logical, right?
Speaker: They got solar.
Speaker: If it's during the daytime, then they should have power.
Speaker: but in California and I would assume most other places if the power goes off the panels don't work I mean the electricity goes off too and I did not know that at the time and I told him with a hundred percent confidence yeah you guys will have electricity you'll be good and then sure enough
Speaker: About four months down the road, there was a power outage, and I heard it from these people.
Speaker: They called, they were so mad, their power was off, they thought they were gonna be the one person on the street that had electricity still.
Speaker: They were mad.
Speaker: They emailed our owner, they emailed all our upper management, and I was in pretty big trouble.
Speaker: And then the other lie I told with the same person,
Speaker: which was a mistake, I told them that the loan would be transferable.
Speaker: And this is another thing that came back to haunt me.
Speaker: About three months ago, I got a call from them saying that they were moving and then that they wanted to transfer their loan.
Speaker: This solar loan, it was done by Green Sky at the time.
Speaker: And I think for a while, their loans were transferable, but they changed it pretty soon that the loans were not transferable.
Speaker: to the homeowner coming in.
Speaker: And then this again caused me a huge headache.
Speaker: I had to, and I wasn't even sure to this day that Green Sky had changed it.
Speaker: But once we figured that out, I had to admit to them that their loan wasn't transferable.
Speaker: I was on the phone with their realtor, probably several hours of just pain, just listening to them angry, upset, and then back and forth with
Speaker: with our upper management it just caused a lot of unnecessarily screaming and upset customers.
Speaker: So that's the thing with that.
Speaker: If you don't know something just admit it.
Speaker: If you're not 100% on something
Speaker: then don't even say anything.
Speaker: Just make sure you figure out.
Speaker: I would definitely suggest reading your company's contracts, whatever finance companies you're working with.
Speaker: Read their contracts.
Speaker: Know the facts.
Speaker: There's going to be people that ask very specific questions, that ask tough things.
Speaker: If you don't know the answer, then just don't say anything because trust me, it will cause bad reviews.
Speaker: If it turns out that one of those things you said was a lie, it will cause bad reviews.
Speaker: definitely some problems down their own.
Speaker: So don't be like that.
Speaker: Cool, so last story I wanted to tell, and this is the one that tops all of their stories.
Speaker: This is the thing I have the most forget about that probably cost me more than any other live told.
Speaker: intentional that I did and I might get called out for this but this is me just sharing a mistake I made hopefully others can learn from it hopefully no one will do anything like this and I have a ton of regrets for what I did with this last story I'm going to tell but this definitely tops anything so here's what happens our company this was about two years ago maybe three
Speaker: We started running people's credit on the door, and it was just a soft check.
Speaker: So we didn't do hard checks, but we started doing soft checks.
Speaker: We're working with Dividend Finance, which many of you have probably worked with them.
Speaker: But to my knowledge, they still have a soft check that they do for their customers as you're running credit for them.
Speaker: So what we did, our company thought, okay, well, we might as well start
Speaker: running people's credit, we might as well do this soft check while we're booking appointments on the doors.
Speaker: And then we can just be able to know for sure what they're qualified for.
Speaker: That way it's going to reduce the number of failed credits when we get in the home.
Speaker: We already know if they're qualified or not.
Speaker: And if they didn't pass credit, then we know the PACE options.
Speaker: We know other options to be able to present them once we go to the appointment.
Speaker: So what happened with it was I was
Speaker: Before they didn't require that, so it did make it a little, well I would say much more difficult for us to set appointments.
Speaker: Because now instead of just getting like the electric usage, name, email, phone number, now we're doing a soft check on their credit.
Speaker: They had to sign a form.
Speaker: They had to get lost for the social and it made it a lot tougher to set an appointment.
Speaker: But it also made the appointments more solid.
Speaker: we got back if they went through that whole process there's a much higher chance of closing
Speaker: It lessened the number of appointments we booked, though.
Speaker: So what happened was we had just started doing this for a month or two, and then we entered in our summer competition.
Speaker: It's called Ironman, which I've talked about.
Speaker: It's like a tournament style.
Speaker: We go through, and it's kind of March Madness single elimination for sweet prizes, trips, stuff like that.
Speaker: Obviously, during their time, under that time, we're...
Speaker: We have a lot more pressure to sell more.
Speaker: We want to win.
Speaker: We're pushing hard.
Speaker: We're grinding.
Speaker: We're working more hours.
Speaker: And so unfortunately, what I decided to do, and this wasn't my idea.
Speaker: I actually heard it from another rep.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: It wasn't just me, but I thought it wasn't a big deal.
Speaker: What this rep told me is he says, hey, man, I found a way around this.
Speaker: If customers don't want to give you the last four of their social, then there's another way to get it.
Speaker: They said, oh, really?
Speaker: How do you mean?
Speaker: And he's like, yeah, so when you call in to the SDG&E, that's the utility coming to you down here,
Speaker: to get their electric usage, they have to give the last four of their social to confirm the account, to confirm it's them.
Speaker: So you can just get it straight from that and plug it right in.
Speaker: And I'm like, oh, well, what if they decided they didn't?
Speaker: What if they see you typing it in there and get mad with that?
Speaker: And he goes, dude, I figured I'd wait around it.
Speaker: Just take the months.
Speaker: What happens is on our call cards, on our usage cards, we had every month, January through December.
Speaker: And we're supposed to write the usage for the last 12 months that they, as far as kill watts, that they use in their home.
Speaker: So he's like, yeah, I created a little code.
Speaker: All you do is just put a number next to the month that matches the last four of their social.
Speaker: So if their last four is three, seven, two, one, then you put a one next to March, a two next to July, a three next to February, and then a four next to January.
Speaker: And then you can just get it later.
Speaker: And it's just a soft check.
Speaker: It's not like it's affecting them.
Speaker: So it's not a big deal.
Speaker: So I took this bait and I'm like, oh, wow.
Speaker: That's actually going to help me book a lot more appointments during Ironman, during this competition.
Speaker: And that was a huge mistake.
Speaker: So you can see where I went wrong already.
Speaker: You can see that this was just a disaster waiting to happen.
Speaker: I did this.
Speaker: I did book more appointments because now I was booking the people that were hesitant to give out the last four of their social.
Speaker: I was booking it still.
Speaker: And I started booking a lot more appointments, just like my buddy who had told me this.
Speaker: We're both in the wrong, and he didn't get caught with it.
Speaker: But guess who did?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So here's the story with it.
Speaker: Maybe two months after we started doing this, I had a customer or an appointment I booked.
Speaker: It actually didn't end up sitting down.
Speaker: And we kind of scheduled this for a follow-up appointment.
Speaker: And I left our usage cards with them.
Speaker: And on that card, I had done what I just talked about.
Speaker: I'd put that little code on the back to get the last four of their social to do the soft check on their credit.
Speaker: And I thought nothing of it.
Speaker: I mean, no way anyone's going to discover that little secret code, right?
Speaker: But what happened two weeks later, out of the blue, this customer, he hadn't even showed up for his appointments.
Speaker: But this guy, he had kept that qual card.
Speaker: I had left it at his house.
Speaker: And I don't know if he's just picking it up to throw it away.
Speaker: But he looked on the back of it.
Speaker: He put two and two together.
Speaker: And he found out my dirty little secret.
Speaker: He found out what I was doing.
Speaker: So he called me immediately.
Speaker: He just calls me out on it.
Speaker: He says, hey, I know that you have the last four of my social.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: what's going on here, what's being done, and I just, kind of like in the story before, I was just a deer in the headlights, had no idea what to say, he caught me in a huge lie, pretty serious, could get me in a ton of trouble, and I just pretty much said, oh, sorry if I did that, yeah, I honestly don't, I just, I don't remember, I just didn't know what to say, I was just kind of fumbling around,
Speaker: And he's just like, whatever, man, I'm calling your company.
Speaker: This is some pretty serious stuff.
Speaker: This could be like identity fraud.
Speaker: I'm not happy at all.
Speaker: And said some choice words, was super upset.
Speaker: He called into our office, ended up talking to the owner.
Speaker: And also he left like,
Speaker: one star review was just super mad so now everyone that looked at our Yelp page they saw this review that I had done the shady thing and it was just a disaster so this was something that could have probably got us in a ton of trouble legally it's definitely not legal to take the last word someone social and even if it's just a soft check that's not something that anyone should be doing
Speaker: Okay, so I have a ton of regret with this.
Speaker: What happened is our company, they had to, luckily we did get them to remove this review and basically we had to, it didn't go to anything legally, but we had to kind of settle with them in a way.
Speaker: And I know our company, which is super grateful to them for being patient with me and not firing me because honestly that's something that probably most companies wouldn't fire her up for.
Speaker: But they ended up paying this customer out, bought him a whole new fancy security system, I think paid him out some just so that he would not make a bigger deal of it and then know that he was secure.
Speaker: So guys, don't tell lies.
Speaker: Now I've gone through a lot of stories here.
Speaker: Don't want to ramble on.
Speaker: But just don't tell lies.
Speaker: Learn from mistakes that I've made.
Speaker: And I've heard definitely bigger lies too.
Speaker: So if you know that reps are lying in your company, just make sure they knock it off.
Speaker: It's going to hurt your company.
Speaker: It's going to cause negative reviews.
Speaker: It's going to hurt the industry altogether because, let's be honest, the reason why people are so skeptical of door-to-door people is because of things like this, because of that story I just told.
Speaker: I did something shady because of other reps that have done shady things.
Speaker: So if we're all honest as an industry, it's going to help people trust just the industry in general more.
Speaker: It's going to help us all get more sales.
Speaker: So don't lie and...
Speaker: I have again I have repented of this lie okay try to be as honest as I can now and try to definitely not stretch any more truths but learn from my mistakes don't stoop down to the level that I went to and that's the show today guys so let me know what you thought about it okay if you want you can bash on me for
Speaker: That's a lie I told.
Speaker: I've learned from it.
Speaker: So learn from mistakes you've made.
Speaker: That's the most important thing.
Speaker: Don't tell lies, and let's crush it as an industry.
Speaker: So I hope you guys enjoyed the episode today.
Speaker: Again, go and get in on our giveaway.
Speaker: I want to send you something free, and I want you guys to continue getting value from this show.
Speaker: Let me know if you have guests that you want on specifically.
Speaker: and we'll continue to strive to drop the best contents in the solar industry, help you guys close more deals every week, and take it to another level.
Speaker: Thanks, guys.
Speaker: Wow, what another value-packed episode of The Solarpreneur.
Speaker: Guys, if you couldn't tell, we spend a lot of time and energy to put these episodes out to hopefully give you just one strategy, one golden nugget that's going to launch your solar career to the next level.
Speaker: And we do it all for free.
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Speaker: so that we can help more solopreneurs like you to change the world.
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