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. 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? 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. Hey, what's going on, solarpreneurs? Today, we're going to be talking about a secret technique you can use on the doors today, if you are out knocking, to instantly turn the homeowner's no into yes. All so let's jump into it. My name's 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, wherever you are selling. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. We are recording this. It's 2026. can't believe it.
Speaker: 10 years now I've been in solar and just flies by So whether you are a new rep or a seasoned rep, I hope we bring value to you and hope we bring something that you can share with your team, share with other people that may be struggling out there. And if you have not left us a rating or review, please share the show. Please go leave us a comment or a review on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. That is how we grow the show. We don't ask for money here. Care to bring value. And that's how you can spread the love. All right. So please go do that if you have not yet and you've listened to a few episodes. And so I'm going to give a little tactical tip today. It's going to be a shorter episode, but this is something that ah we got a training from one of my favorite people in the solar industry. If you've been in solar, you probably know the name Ashton Buswell. He was actually one of the first guests, if not the first guest we had on the podcast. And I always joke, he's one of the reasons I started the podcast.
Speaker: So I always heard he was just this incredible legendary sales rep. I wanted to get in front of him at first gave me kind of a hard time. i wasn't with this company. But when I said I had a podcast, then he opened up a little bit more. okay So shout out to Ashton.
Speaker: But ah he is one of the greatest sales reps I've seen in solar, a great trainer, friend of mine as well down here in San Diego. And so he came and gave a training for our team.
Speaker: And he ah gave a great little tactical tip that I thought I'm going to share with my friends on the show here today. So stay tuned till the end. You don't want to miss um at this secret. It's kind of a ninja way to overcome people that have looked in the solar before. And particularly, we geared this towards reps in Southern California. Almost everyone out here has looked in the solar at this point. Very rare to find people that have not looked in the solar in Southern California. And if you've knocked out her, if you blissed out her... you know that you got to be able to overcome these people that say, oh I looked in the sword, doesn't make sense.
Speaker: And they pretty much send you out the door. if you don't have a good response, if you don't have a good rebuttal, if you don't handle it the right way, of course, there's all the factors that go into it, like body language. Can you stay calm in the situation?
Speaker: ah But we're going to talk about something you can say that i um hadn't heard much before. um you know I had my way of overcoming if people had looked in the solar before.
Speaker: But Ashton, he added a little twist into it. And so he asked us a question, like, what do you guys say if someone and says, you know we've looked in the solar before, we don't want it And you get all the classic responses like, oh, that's exactly why I'm here oh But this is different. ah Don't worry, you don't have to pay anything.
Speaker: You know, ah people gave the classic responses, which those can be good. Don't get me wrong. But ah Ashton was just like, you know, kind of drill in the room. And he's like, no no no no, no, no, no. That's that's not the best way to work overcome it. And even experience, even myself, I said of the things I've used and he's like, no, there's a better way.
Speaker: And so um got us thinking, finally, we kind of got to the bottom of it. and You know, there's kind of two parts to this, but ah people guess the first part, but the second part, no one had no one really on our team came up with.
Speaker: right So maybe you know the answer to this. Maybe you're thinking yourself, what could it be? But it goes in two parts, right? And so he said the first part is... just figuring out what happened. Why didn't they go solar? Okay. And so that's something I've talked about on the show. Probably could have guessed that part. That is the piece that we did get to the bottom of. Right. And so Ashton's just like, you know, they they say, oh, really? What happened? Why didn't you end up doing it?
Speaker: Right. um And, you know, my my thing is a lot of people may hold back some information. So just to kind of extrapolate on what Ashton said, what I like doing is just assuming you get this from the book, Never Split the Difference.
Speaker: Right. But, um you know, there's a lot of cases where people will not tell you the reason they think that it they didn't go solar. right And so if they tell you, great. But it's just to add to Ashton's training.
Speaker: I would say. you know a lot of times you got to throw on them, toss them the bone, be like, okay okay, I'm guessing it was just because of the costs. They're going to charge you a big out of pocket cost when you looked into it.
Speaker: Right. And then that's how you get the answer out of people. So some of you already know that I run my own door 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. 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 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. 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.
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 two solar scout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up. But I told them, hey, I'm going to talk about solar scout 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.
Speaker: Okay, back to the show. All but the second piece, this is what we... didn't really get to the bottom of. And this is something that you can go out and try today that I really liked. And instead of just, um you know, taking their answer and using it to go into your presentation, which I don't think is necessarily bad or wrong. But one thing that he added is just asking them, what made you interested in solar in the first place?
Speaker: I love that. And it's something I haven't done, something I didn't think about asking them, what made you interested interested in the solar in the first place? Right. And then you're forcing them to kind of like give up the reason that they wanted to look into it.
Speaker: Right. Because if they looked into it before, there was a reason they were interested in it. Right. And so great response he had to that. Just digging into it. And then, you know, if you think about it, the first question tells you what stopped them. Second question tells you what originally and motivated them. Maybe it was price. Maybe it was a bad experience.
Speaker: Confusing loan or salesperson who never followed up. And then, you know, a lot of times, think if you do this right, I have had people say this, they just said, oh, um they're going to charge us a lot of money out of pocket. It didn't make sense. Could be something extremely simple that you know you can overcome.
Speaker: And all of a sudden, these people that were just totally turned off because they looked into one option, you can bring them to the light and show them there are different options for solar. So many times it happens just to where it's something could be ridiculous. The reason they didn't go solar. Oh, we didn't like the person who came. oh The person was extremely pushy. Oh, they were trying to do sell us a lease, whatever.
Speaker: Could be a number of reasons. And then the good thing about solar is there's always changes. Some people view it as a negative thing. that there are changes in solar. But there's so many incredible products right now, depending on your market. you know In California, time in this recording, we got leases, PPAs, prepaid PPAs, which are a great option. Might do an episode on that.
Speaker: We actually have a guest come in here soon that's going to dive deep into some kind of alternative options for going solar. But there's so many great options to where I think a lot of people have not looked into.
Speaker: So our job is just really bringing people did the realization that even though they looked into it before, there's something new that they probably haven't looked into, right? Just like Green Eggs and Ham says, the book Green Eggs and Ham, the best sells book written of all time. They said, no, I don't want i don't want Green Eggs and Ham, Sam I am.
Speaker: But page 17, can't remember what what page it is. He says, you know what, I'll try it. he ends up liking it. So our job is the same thing. We just have to get them to try the new option that they haven't looked into. Then chances are they're probably going like it. right You can even use that on the doors. Got that from Taylor McCarthy. Okay.
Speaker: But ah yeah, so try that today. Number one, get to the bottom of why they didn't go solar in the first place. If people are defensive, then you assume, right? I'm guessing it was because of XYZ. I'm guessing it was because there was like a huge loan involved. I'm guessing there was a big out-of-pocket cost that you guys had to pay.
Speaker: them to open up. And then second, get them to ask them, why did you guys look into solar in the first place? Oh yeah, the well, the bills that keep going up. Bills are high.
Speaker: Right. And they're going to tell you really how to sell them. And then step number three that I like that I would add to this, too, is just using that against them. Asking the hypothetical question, Mr. Homeowner, hypothetically, at the time you didn't have to pay that out of pocket cost. do You think you guys would have done it?
Speaker: oh yeah, we probably would have been more open to it. Boom, they just told you how to sell them, right? So don't sleep on these things. You can use these techniques at the doors today. Hope you got and try them. Let me know your experience. Let me know if you have any other ways to overcome people that come at your heart and say, no, it looked in the solar, it didn't make sense.
Speaker: right, so I hope that helped. Go close some deals this week. Thank you for listening to the podcast today. I love you and we'll see you on the next episode. 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.
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