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Should I Start A Solar Company In 2024? - Jared Gillespie
88 Plays2 years ago
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Transcript
Taylor Armstrong's Success Story
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
00:00:08
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
00:00:10
Speaker
I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail.
00:00:19
Speaker
I teach you how to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
Introduction to Solarpreneurship
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a Solarpreneur you might ask?
00:00:33
Speaker
A Solarpreneur is a new breed of Solar Pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.
00:00:42
Speaker
All right, what's happening, everybody?
00:00:43
Speaker
I'm excited to be here.
Meet Jared Gillespie, CEO of Fusion Power
00:00:45
Speaker
We have someone that is doing incredible things over in Arizona.
00:00:49
Speaker
And we actually had his business partner, Tyler McAllister, on a couple, I think it's been a couple years back.
00:00:56
Speaker
So I'm excited to hear from the other side of the business.
00:00:58
Speaker
We got Jared Gillespie, who is CESO of Fusion Power.
00:01:03
Speaker
Did I say that right?
00:01:04
Speaker
That's right, yes.
00:01:04
Speaker
Okay.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:05
Speaker
Perfect.
00:01:07
Speaker
So, yeah, man, I'm excited to just jam on, you know, how things are going in Arizona.
00:01:12
Speaker
And for our listeners, if you have not listened to Tyler's podcasts, this guy dropped some heat.
00:01:17
Speaker
You definitely want to go listen to what he's saying.
00:01:20
Speaker
But I think you're going to be even better than Tyler.
00:01:23
Speaker
I know about that.
00:01:23
Speaker
Tyler, he is very, very good at what he does.
00:01:26
Speaker
Okay.
00:01:27
Speaker
Yeah, he's a stud, but I know you got some different angles.
00:01:31
Speaker
Hopefully I can add some value.
00:01:32
Speaker
Yeah, we'll see.
00:01:33
Speaker
Should be fun.
00:01:34
Speaker
So, yeah, first thing I'd like to ask our guests that come on, Jared, is just like how you got into solar, maybe some of your background being door-to-door and all that.
00:01:46
Speaker
Sure.
00:01:46
Speaker
Do you want to?
Jared's Entry into Solar Sales
00:01:47
Speaker
Yeah, so I got home from my mission, and I was at BYU, and I got a flyer that said, come to an info meeting for free pizza.
00:01:53
Speaker
I'm like, heck, yeah, I'll do that, right?
00:01:54
Speaker
That's what I had to do.
00:01:55
Speaker
And it was one of those things.
00:01:56
Speaker
I go out for the summer, and so I signed up to go do timeshares.
00:02:01
Speaker
And we got out there.
00:02:02
Speaker
This was in Denver, and this was the summer of 2003.
00:02:05
Speaker
So this is, you know, we're talking 21 years ago now.
00:02:07
Speaker
Nice.
00:02:08
Speaker
And it wasn't working.
00:02:10
Speaker
We weren't making money.
00:02:11
Speaker
And I ran into some guys that were doing DISH and they were making like $120 a commission.
00:02:15
Speaker
And that was crazy because we were making like $20 going door to door.
00:02:19
Speaker
And this time I thought that was amazing money just by itself.
00:02:22
Speaker
So we did DISH and it was awesome.
00:02:25
Speaker
And we had a great experience.
00:02:27
Speaker
The next summer I recruited all my buddies, went out and did DISH again.
00:02:29
Speaker
And then I found out there's this thing where you could go sell alarms door to door.
00:02:33
Speaker
And that alarms was paying even more than DISH.
00:02:34
Speaker
And so I did that with Apex Alarms that turned into APX and then turned into
Transition from Alarms to Solar
00:02:40
Speaker
Vivint.
00:02:40
Speaker
So I was with Vivint for nine summers.
00:02:42
Speaker
Oh, geez.
00:02:44
Speaker
And then in 2013, by that time, we had a couple kids.
00:02:47
Speaker
And taking the kids and moving them across the country every year, it was getting a little bit heavy.
00:02:50
Speaker
So I wanted to get into something more permanent.
00:02:53
Speaker
And Vivint had just launched Vivint Solar.
00:02:57
Speaker
And they were not in Arizona at the time, but SolarCity was, and they wanted to get into the door-to-door space.
00:03:02
Speaker
And they'd kind of heard about my experience doing door-to-door for a long time with Vivint.
00:03:07
Speaker
So they said, hey, do you want to help us start up this door-to-door solar thing?
00:03:10
Speaker
And I'm like, sure, let's do it.
00:03:12
Speaker
And so I did that for about four years.
00:03:15
Speaker
And then in 2017, I met Tyler and a couple other guys, and we started Fusion Power.
00:03:20
Speaker
Okay.
00:03:21
Speaker
Wow.
00:03:22
Speaker
And Fusion, yeah, we've been, so this is our, I guess we're going into our seventh year now.
00:03:26
Speaker
We were a sales only company for the first few years and then we've been installing for the last three years.
00:03:32
Speaker
Okay.
00:03:32
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:03:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:33
Speaker
You guys have been through a lot and it's cool.
00:03:35
Speaker
I know Tyler, he came from the alarm background and everything too.
00:03:39
Speaker
And I think that's where a lot of the greets came from.
00:03:42
Speaker
A lot of the OGs.
00:03:45
Speaker
And especially those like vivid days and everything.
00:03:47
Speaker
It's like so many heavy hitters that came from that.
00:03:50
Speaker
I feel like was everyone just was their training like super good or why is that you think?
00:03:56
Speaker
I think culture, right?
00:03:57
Speaker
And it's fun to, you know, we're at door to door con right now.
00:03:59
Speaker
And it's fun walking around the floor and bumping into these old people that, you know, I knew from 15, 20 years ago.
00:04:04
Speaker
And we're still in the same door to door space.
00:04:08
Speaker
Most of us, like you said, have kind of migrated to solar or maybe
Vivint's Influence on Entrepreneurs
00:04:11
Speaker
other things.
00:04:11
Speaker
But that Vivint culture that Todd Peterson put together is just something that I just think it's incredible.
00:04:19
Speaker
I mean, he has spawned off tens of thousands of entrepreneurs from that summer sales thing that we all got into, right?
00:04:29
Speaker
That our parents are like, well, what are you going to go do?
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:32
Speaker
And it's just turned into this just massive industry across all these different products.
00:04:36
Speaker
And so, but yeah, they were, they were so good at building this culture of competition and accountability and excellence and leadership and self-development.
00:04:46
Speaker
There's just so much good and positive out of it.
00:04:48
Speaker
I think that a lot of us that kind of came from that have been able to at least try to replicate that with our own companies.
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:54
Speaker
I love seeing people progress.
00:04:55
Speaker
I love seeing people buy into company culture and what it does for them.
00:04:59
Speaker
It's very, very rewarding for sure.
00:05:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool.
00:05:02
Speaker
And I had a few months back now, but Jeff Mendez on and you probably know Jeff too, Poppy Mendez.
00:05:11
Speaker
And it's just like all the leaders that came from that.
00:05:13
Speaker
You could put all those people in a room and that's going to be a pretty powerful room to be in.
00:05:18
Speaker
There's a lot of them.
00:05:18
Speaker
And a lot of those guys have gone on to just do some pretty amazing things.
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah, I know.
00:05:23
Speaker
So, yeah, shout out to Vivint.
00:05:26
Speaker
We owe lots to Todd Peterson, all you guys that were kind of the forefathers and pioneers of our industry.
00:05:32
Speaker
Well, it's funny to think that, you know, like I said, that's 21 years ago.
00:05:35
Speaker
I'm like, damn, the guys that are doing this right now were like not even born yet when I started this thing.
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, seriously.
00:05:41
Speaker
Especially solar.
00:05:42
Speaker
Well, yeah, you were in other things, but it's funny.
00:05:44
Speaker
Like I say, I've been in solar since 2016 and people are like, holy cow, that's like forever, man.
00:05:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:50
Speaker
Like it's only been like seven years.
00:05:51
Speaker
It's still a young industry.
00:05:52
Speaker
There's a long way for us to go.
00:05:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:54
Speaker
Yeah, no doubt.
Challenges in Adapting Sales Techniques
00:05:56
Speaker
But yeah, so how was your initial experience being in solar?
00:06:01
Speaker
I probably asked Tyler a lot of these same questions, so I need to go back and listen to that one myself.
00:06:05
Speaker
But yeah, from your perspective, what were maybe like some of the challenges?
00:06:09
Speaker
Well, for me, the biggest challenge was, you know, I'd been doing nine years of alarm sales, which is a pretty like aggressive sale, right?
00:06:17
Speaker
Not that you need to be aggressive and rude, but it's a transactional sale.
00:06:21
Speaker
I knock on your door and then I'm gone within 45 minutes with a signed contract.
00:06:24
Speaker
And so I had that same kind of mentality that I'd go in, sell people on this idea of solar, get a contract and bounce.
00:06:30
Speaker
I had a 75% cancellation rate.
00:06:34
Speaker
And so, and that probably lasted for, you know, one or two months.
00:06:38
Speaker
I'm like, okay, I got to do something different here.
00:06:40
Speaker
Like my way of selling, and I was pretty good.
00:06:42
Speaker
Like I was usually top 10 at Vivint, right?
00:06:44
Speaker
So I thought of myself as this really good sales person, very, very competent, which I think I was, but it's a different kind of a sale.
00:06:52
Speaker
And so for me, that was the hardest part is adjusting to this is a slower business.
00:06:56
Speaker
kind of a sale.
00:06:57
Speaker
And this is not a push you to make a decision right now, kind of a sale.
00:07:00
Speaker
This is we're meeting, we're setting up an appointment so that both spouses can be there.
00:07:05
Speaker
And we're going to go over this very, very thoroughly.
00:07:07
Speaker
We're going to go over all of the, you know, ifs, ands, and buts.
00:07:11
Speaker
We're going to go over future scenarios.
00:07:13
Speaker
We're going to really get into consulting and educating rather than selling purely on emotion.
00:07:18
Speaker
And what if something happens like, like we were doing with alarms?
00:07:20
Speaker
It's just, anyway, it was, it was a very different thing.
00:07:22
Speaker
But once I, once I caught on,
00:07:26
Speaker
it was fantastic.
00:07:27
Speaker
Like I absolutely loved and fell in, fell in love with the product that I'm able to give you something that's going to save you money.
00:07:33
Speaker
That's going to give you a tax credit.
00:07:34
Speaker
That's going to lock in your rates.
00:07:36
Speaker
That's going to get you away from reliance on, on the grid, so to speak.
00:07:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:40
Speaker
And you're not having to come out of pocket for it.
00:07:42
Speaker
Like it's just such a practical and easy sale.
00:07:45
Speaker
And because it works so well, it's a very much a referral game based business.
00:07:48
Speaker
And so, yeah, I, I've loved it.
00:07:51
Speaker
I think it's such a cool product to sell.
00:07:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:53
Speaker
100%.
00:07:53
Speaker
Yeah, and well, because that's interesting.
00:07:57
Speaker
You said you had a lot of cancels because I have some guys come in and do, basically, they treat solar like an alarm cell.
00:08:05
Speaker
And, you know, maybe some people don't talk about their cancels too, but see some of these alarm guys, they'll just go in like same day, all these solar cells, and you're going to have more cancels.
00:08:14
Speaker
But what do you think?
00:08:15
Speaker
Do you think there's a lot of things that apply from your alarm days?
00:08:18
Speaker
Like, are you guys big on...
00:08:20
Speaker
Same-day and people?
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think you can do a same-day sale.
00:08:24
Speaker
I just think that it's really important when you're doing such a big contract where this is a home addition, right?
00:08:29
Speaker
This is something that's going on the roof.
00:08:30
Speaker
This is a permanent fixture.
00:08:31
Speaker
It's not a couple like window contacts that can be, you know, clipped off really, really quickly.
00:08:36
Speaker
This is a big deal.
00:08:38
Speaker
And they're expensive contracts.
00:08:39
Speaker
And so I think it's just really important that you have both decision makers there.
00:08:42
Speaker
Not to say that you can't do a one-legged sale, but certainly the cancellation rates are going to be a lot higher.
00:08:50
Speaker
My thought is if you're going to be working as hard as you are doing door-to-door because it's a hard job, give yourself the highest likelihood to sell in the first place and then make sure that that's also giving you the highest likelihood that it's going to pull through so you actually get paid for what you're doing.
00:09:07
Speaker
It's about the glass on the roof.
00:09:08
Speaker
That's right.
00:09:09
Speaker
The signing.
00:09:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:12
Speaker
And so now you guys are doing your own installs.
00:09:15
Speaker
I want to talk about that.
00:09:16
Speaker
Sure.
00:09:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:19
Speaker
I also want to jump into how we can take some of the things you do in the install, apply it in cells, and learn from that.
00:09:26
Speaker
But yeah, for you guys, what made you decide to start the installs?
00:09:30
Speaker
Because...
00:09:31
Speaker
Um, we're here at door to door con.
00:09:32
Speaker
I've talked and I've been talking to actually a few buddies who some had started installs.
00:09:37
Speaker
Some are like thinking about it, but a lot of them are like, okay, why would I even start installs?
00:09:41
Speaker
Cause like the margins are so low on it.
00:09:44
Speaker
I can go out and sell these things, make way more.
00:09:47
Speaker
It's way less work than having to go hire install teams and all that.
00:09:51
Speaker
So what's your like, I don't know if things have changed.
00:09:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:54
Speaker
So I would say there was a couple of things, right?
00:09:56
Speaker
Um,
00:09:57
Speaker
One, we thought that there was more margin in it.
00:10:00
Speaker
We, you know, when you're only in sales, you just assume that, well, if we're making this much, then the installer must be making that much as well.
00:10:08
Speaker
And so it's like, wow, you know, how much is, you know, we were with a different installer before that.
00:10:11
Speaker
It's like, how, how, think about how much money they're making.
00:10:14
Speaker
And so that was part of the motivation getting into it.
00:10:17
Speaker
Um,
00:10:18
Speaker
Had I known that beforehand, I don't know if I would have.
00:10:20
Speaker
Right.
Profitability in Solar Sales
00:10:21
Speaker
Because it's, uh, the money's not there for installers.
00:10:24
Speaker
And I think that's, you know, you're talking about what to take back to salespeople.
00:10:27
Speaker
Like, I think it's really important to understand that it is the rep in solar that makes the most money period.
00:10:34
Speaker
If you can go out and knock doors and create your own leads and close those deals, you will make far more, um,
00:10:43
Speaker
Far more margin and far more just overall money than any other position within the solar industry.
00:10:50
Speaker
But anyway, so yeah, money was – we thought that there was an extra margin for us to make.
00:10:55
Speaker
The other thing though is that we wanted to be able to have an opportunity for possibly having an exit sometime in the future.
00:11:01
Speaker
As a sales-only company, that's not really a thing.
00:11:04
Speaker
You're not an asset, right?
00:11:06
Speaker
You are to that company, but you're not to a PE firm or a venture capitalist or something.
00:11:10
Speaker
that.
00:11:11
Speaker
So we knew that we needed to have an enterprise value with assets and with an organization and a history of growth and increased revenues and things like that.
00:11:21
Speaker
So those were kind of the two main reasons that we got into it.
00:11:24
Speaker
But I'll tell you, the amount of work and the complication of setting up an EPC was far beyond what I could have ever expected.
00:11:36
Speaker
And we were really lucky to pick up some people that had done it before.
00:11:40
Speaker
The gentleman that helped us start our install side of the business had been doing it for 10 or 15 years and worked for some big companies.
00:11:46
Speaker
And so thank goodness for him, he was able to assemble a really good team.
00:11:50
Speaker
So right from the beginning, luckily, we already had the sales, right?
00:11:53
Speaker
Because we were a sales-only company.
00:11:55
Speaker
So we were able to feed the engine really quickly.
00:11:57
Speaker
And all he had to do is make sure that, you know, from the install side, we had...
00:12:01
Speaker
everything taken care of there but it is so involved and there is so much organization and so much process that you have to link together yeah like it is a puzzle and so a lot of times i think you know because we'll talk to a lot of a lot of guys that are like hey yeah you know maybe we'll come on as a sales dealer but we really want to become an installer yeah and the idea is like you think about this this table just full of puzzle pieces like those all have to hook together for this thing to work yeah
00:12:28
Speaker
And it takes a long time to figure out how does this piece hook to this piece, does this, right?
00:12:33
Speaker
And it's a chain of different things because you're having to figure out, okay, you know, everybody understands the sequence of a solar sail, right?
00:12:40
Speaker
You've got your sail and then your site survey and then your design.
00:12:43
Speaker
And then if you have a QC process and engineering, you have your permitting and your utility applications all the way up until install.
00:12:50
Speaker
And then your post-install stuff with quality review and everything.
00:12:54
Speaker
And paperwork submission so you can get PTO.
00:12:56
Speaker
That whole process, we all know the milestones, but nobody realized, you think about like, I'm handing the baton off after I'm done with my job.
00:13:03
Speaker
You do yours, then you hand it to another person.
00:13:05
Speaker
It might be 50 different touches between the whole process.
00:13:09
Speaker
And that requires a lot of organization and making sure that once it's handed off and given back that people are aware that it's back in their queue again and they need to act on that.
00:13:18
Speaker
So every single time there's a change of, you know, from one step to the next.
00:13:25
Speaker
there's an opportunity for that job to get delayed by another day.
00:13:30
Speaker
And so you get into these really long timelines and cash flows hurt and these companies that try to start up not really understanding a lot of these things or having it worked out, that's where they get in trouble really quick.
00:13:40
Speaker
So long answer, but there's a lot of work that goes into it.
00:13:46
Speaker
I know.
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's why I'm like, nah, I'm good.
00:13:48
Speaker
I don't want to start an install company personally.
00:13:51
Speaker
But I'm sure you've learned a lot of like good lessons that helped you, you know, and like, yeah, you think about that.
00:13:57
Speaker
But yeah, for people, like, yeah, if they want to start their own, would you in knowing like today's conditions and everything?
00:14:04
Speaker
Do you think it's changed versus like when you started it?
00:14:07
Speaker
Do you what you say?
00:14:08
Speaker
It's harder, easier?
00:14:09
Speaker
It's harder now.
00:14:11
Speaker
And there's a couple of reasons.
00:14:12
Speaker
I think, you know, the climate that we just got through within with 2023 is, you know, just the at the very base level, you have to have a product to sell.
00:14:22
Speaker
And so with the banks having had to tighten up their their requirements with dealers or with EPCs, it's actually pretty hard to get lending partners right now.
00:14:34
Speaker
Like when we started.
00:14:35
Speaker
You know, luckily we had a lot of history and so banks were willing to say, yeah, come on in.
00:14:39
Speaker
We'll, you know, we'll give you an account.
00:14:40
Speaker
But, you know, if you try to go to a good leap or a dividend or, you know, a lot of these groups right now and you don't have install history, they're like, sorry, we just can't take the risk because they've been burnt so much, right?
00:14:50
Speaker
There's so many poor installers that went out of business in this last year.
00:14:54
Speaker
These banks are bleeding.
00:14:55
Speaker
They can't take the risk.
00:14:56
Speaker
And so I think trying to start an EPC in 2024, right?
00:15:01
Speaker
That's that as an uphill climb for dang sure.
00:15:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:04
Speaker
So what do the people even do?
00:15:05
Speaker
They just have to sell purely like cash deals or something until they can build up.
00:15:09
Speaker
That's about all you could do.
00:15:10
Speaker
And then you could go and say, hey, look, you know, we've done several hundreds of installs and here's our quality, here's our reviews and things like that.
00:15:17
Speaker
And then maybe you get a bank to take a risk on you.
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:20
Speaker
They're going to want to look at your financials too.
00:15:21
Speaker
And that's the other thing is as the industry has kind of developed and as we've seen more installers fall apart and have to close their doors, the financial reviews on the front end are getting more and more required.
00:15:35
Speaker
And so you're going to have – and a lot of these companies don't even have financials.
00:15:38
Speaker
It's like, well, we have money in the bank account and we have QuickBooks and we kind of know how much our equipment costs and we kind of know how much we're paying people.
00:15:46
Speaker
But they don't know how to job cost.
00:15:47
Speaker
And it's like you've got to get pretty sophisticated.
00:15:50
Speaker
This is a construction business.
00:15:51
Speaker
And that's something that I didn't know when we started this is like –
00:15:54
Speaker
You really got to understand your cost per watt across the board.
00:15:58
Speaker
And there's a million different line items that you got to go through.
00:16:01
Speaker
You need to understand those costs, why those costs are where they're at and what you need to do to drive those costs down.
00:16:07
Speaker
And without that insight, you're kind of just flying blind.
00:16:10
Speaker
And all of a sudden one day you're like, oh my gosh, we just ran out of money.
00:16:14
Speaker
We can't pay our reps.
00:16:15
Speaker
That's happened to you, right?
00:16:16
Speaker
Yeah, it happened to me, yeah.
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:18
Speaker
And it's really, really sad.
00:16:19
Speaker
And it's nobody's intentionally doing it.
00:16:20
Speaker
Nobody's a bad guy in the situation, but it's just like, there's so much money that goes out and you're waiting for that money to come back in again.
00:16:27
Speaker
Right.
00:16:28
Speaker
It's that cycle.
00:16:28
Speaker
And so if I've, if I'm paying installers and I'm buying all of those tens of thousands of dollars of equipment, I'm paying my sales advances and I'm paying my staff and all that stuff.
00:16:37
Speaker
I'm more talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars a week going out.
00:16:40
Speaker
Right.
00:16:41
Speaker
Well, I don't get reimbursed for that for five or six weeks until the job gets installed, as long as I can get it in with that time frame.
00:16:48
Speaker
You multiply that by six or seven weeks, it's a massive cash requirement.
00:16:52
Speaker
So if your systems aren't locked down really, really, really tight, then all of a sudden that extended timeline, if it's not installed quickly, you're out of money all of a sudden.
00:17:02
Speaker
It's just like, okay, reps bounce, no new engine, and we're done.
00:17:06
Speaker
Wow.
00:17:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:08
Speaker
That's scary.
00:17:09
Speaker
Happens fast.
00:17:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:10
Speaker
Well, yeah, and I was telling you before we hit record, especially when there's changes with, like, net metering, things like that.
00:17:17
Speaker
Like, California, we're seeing companies drop, like, flies left and right.
00:17:21
Speaker
And it's probably because they didn't have a lot of these, you know, maybe systems set up.
00:17:25
Speaker
They didn't think about all of these things.
00:17:27
Speaker
And then, yeah, all the reps suffer and we're all mad and frustrated.
00:17:32
Speaker
But, yeah, I get there's, like, you know, two sides of the story and we don't know everything.
00:17:36
Speaker
It's a tough situation, right?
00:17:37
Speaker
And it's...
00:17:40
Speaker
Anytime there's a deadline where you know that NEM is changing, that metering is changing, or you know that there's going to be a buyback rate change, anytime you have that, there's going to be a huge influx of volume, which is really exciting on the sales side.
00:17:53
Speaker
And it's somewhat exciting for the EPCs as well.
00:17:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:56
Speaker
Anytime you have more all at once, what does that mean?
Challenges with Net Metering Changes
00:18:00
Speaker
More cash requirement.
00:18:02
Speaker
And so if all of a sudden you outgrow your cash like overnight because of this deadline, you know, again, you're putting yourself in just a very precarious, precocious situation.
00:18:12
Speaker
And that's what we saw in California.
00:18:13
Speaker
It's rough.
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:18:15
Speaker
And yeah, I've heard some people talk to that, you know, got buddies of mine that have owned dealers and everything, just like talking to these EPCs, figuring out like, hey, what's the amount of volume you guys can do?
00:18:27
Speaker
What do you set up to do?
00:18:28
Speaker
Because that's another thing we see too is I've been with a lot of dealers now in California and we find this installer that's like, okay, we're two week installs, low red line, this, that.
00:18:39
Speaker
And then we're like, sweet.
00:18:40
Speaker
And we give them 100 deals.
00:18:42
Speaker
And then all of a sudden, these two-week installs turn into like four-month installs.
00:18:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:47
Speaker
Plus.
00:18:48
Speaker
So do you guys take on like dealers and stuff right now?
00:18:52
Speaker
Yeah, we do have a dealer program.
00:18:54
Speaker
And because we have been so obsessive about our processes, we know exactly how much additional volume we can take at one time.
00:19:03
Speaker
And I'll talk to a dealer.
00:19:03
Speaker
Let's say a dealer comes in.
00:19:04
Speaker
He's like, hey, I can give you 50 deals a month.
00:19:06
Speaker
I can say, hey, we can handle that.
00:19:08
Speaker
But I need to understand that's going to slow our process down by whatever, two weeks or something like that.
00:19:13
Speaker
Like we know that.
00:19:14
Speaker
Say, so I only want 30 a month.
00:19:15
Speaker
You need to keep your other 20 with somebody else right now unless you're willing to have longer timelines.
00:19:19
Speaker
But that's the kind of like honest talk that we're really – we want to be upfront about because otherwise it's like, yeah, bring them in.
00:19:24
Speaker
Well, no problem.
00:19:25
Speaker
Well, they're just going to be frustrated and they're going to be like, dude, that guy lied to me.
00:19:27
Speaker
He didn't know his stuff.
00:19:28
Speaker
And so you have to have the data, I guess, to know that and you have to understand your processes to be able to make those kind of promises.
00:19:37
Speaker
But, you know.
00:19:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:39
Speaker
Well, and that goes both ways.
00:19:41
Speaker
Like probably a lot of EPC installers, they don't know.
00:19:45
Speaker
Maybe they're a new installer.
00:19:47
Speaker
They don't even know what they can handle.
00:19:49
Speaker
For sure.
00:19:50
Speaker
But then, yeah, a lot of these dealer guys, they don't know what to ask those questions, I'm sure, either.
00:19:54
Speaker
If I'm a sales company, especially going into 2024, like knowing how hard it was on all the installers in 2023,
00:20:03
Speaker
If I'm looking for a new installer right now, I want to know that they've been in business for several years.
00:20:10
Speaker
I want to look at their stats.
00:20:11
Speaker
I want to see what their timelines have been.
00:20:13
Speaker
I want to know that they have a lot of different lenders because that shows that they've been healthy financially in order to keep their contracts with the lending companies.
00:20:21
Speaker
I want to take a look at...
00:20:24
Speaker
Staff, I want to look at number of crews.
00:20:26
Speaker
There's a lot of things that I want to find out before I'm going to sign on with them.
00:20:30
Speaker
If my goal is just to get the best red line because I think that's going to make myself the most money, I'm going to be sorely disappointed.
00:20:36
Speaker
Because who's going to give me the lowest red line?
00:20:38
Speaker
If the guy that doesn't know what his costs are and his only sales point is, well, yeah, come in and I'll give you a low red line.
00:20:45
Speaker
He's buying your volume, which I understand.
00:20:47
Speaker
I get it.
00:20:47
Speaker
But...
00:20:49
Speaker
He also doesn't understand that it requires money to run his business.
00:20:52
Speaker
And if he's not retaining a certain amount, then he's not going to have enough money to fund the business.
00:20:58
Speaker
Yeah, true.
00:20:59
Speaker
And so they just in the effort to grow and recruit, sometimes the installers will give up way too much.
00:21:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:08
Speaker
And again, it makes it makes it it ruins it for everybody.
00:21:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:21:12
Speaker
No, I agree.
00:21:13
Speaker
And what about, because another thing is just, I don't know if you guys have dealt a lot with this, but just of the dealer, you know, maybe setting improper expectations for the people they're selling or like saying stuff that's not true that reflects back, because I've heard a lot of that from installers, like, oh, we used to accept anybody, but now we don't expect, we don't accept anyone as a dealer because they screwed us.
00:21:36
Speaker
It's tough, yeah.
00:21:37
Speaker
You know, unfortunately, the solar world, um,
00:21:41
Speaker
Got a little bit dark.
Integrity in Solar Sales
00:21:42
Speaker
You know, there's just so much money.
00:21:44
Speaker
And we simplified the solar sail to be the same simplicity of an alarm sail, and it shouldn't be.
00:21:51
Speaker
This is a sophisticated product with a bigger decision that should require a higher education for the reps, and it should be a consultation.
00:22:00
Speaker
And if it's not going to make sense for the customer, a rep needs to have the integrity to say, I'm sorry, but if your goal is savings, I can't do that for you, and so I'm going to walk away.
00:22:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:10
Speaker
You know, obviously you don't need to sell on savings, but my point is, is, you know, if your recipe is I'm going to come in, I'm going to cut your bill in half, or I'm going to get rid of your bill altogether.
00:22:18
Speaker
You don't have to pay anything in the government's going to write you a $50,000 check.
00:22:21
Speaker
And that's what I heard my trainer say.
00:22:23
Speaker
And that guy was trained by his trainer to say that.
00:22:25
Speaker
And that's the message that's being, you know,
00:22:28
Speaker
Well, there's a lot of disappointed customers when they find out, well, wait a minute, I'm retired.
00:22:33
Speaker
I don't have tax liability.
00:22:34
Speaker
He told me I was getting a refund.
00:22:36
Speaker
How am I even going to get him?
00:22:37
Speaker
Like, that's, I don't have, I don't even have tax liability.
00:22:40
Speaker
There's no credit available to me.
00:22:41
Speaker
And he told me that I'm getting a check.
00:22:43
Speaker
Like, you're just going to get a lot of very unhappy people.
00:22:45
Speaker
And so we've gotten a little bit of a black eye over the last couple of years because of this kind of wild, wild west.
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:52
Speaker
You know, the situation that's going on.
00:22:53
Speaker
So I think that we're seeing a tightening there.
00:22:55
Speaker
I think the industry is going to correct itself a lot because EPCs have had to deal with the angry customers and the angry attorney general complaints and the bad BBB reviews.
00:23:04
Speaker
And they're trying their best to have a good name.
00:23:07
Speaker
But it's their dealers and those reps that have been untrained that are now destroying their company from a reputation standpoint.
00:23:14
Speaker
So I think that.
00:23:16
Speaker
The same way that Fincos have had to be more, you know, tight on who they're going to allow to be their installers, installers are now going to need to be more tight on who's going to actually come sell for them.
00:23:27
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah, no, no.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's solutions.
00:23:31
Speaker
Well, yeah, California, you know, you probably know we have the whole consumer protection guide that we have to go through, which, yeah, like that wouldn't happen in the first place if we didn't have all these issues and over promising things.
00:23:44
Speaker
So that's why, I mean, just look at California.
00:23:46
Speaker
I think everyone in every other state should try to like sell ethically and not have these issues because we have a whole 25 page document.
00:23:54
Speaker
we have to do with people.
00:23:55
Speaker
A hundred percent.
00:23:56
Speaker
If we don't regulate ourselves, the state will, and they're going to bring in regulations that we don't like.
00:24:02
Speaker
So it's much better just to have everybody commit to integrity and living by good values and principles and put our customers first and think of them as, as people and understand that like, look, I,
00:24:14
Speaker
I want, I want you to give you the same deal that I want my own parents to get.
00:24:17
Speaker
Like, I want to treat you the same way that I want my, my own parents to be treated.
00:24:20
Speaker
Like if everybody would have that kind of mentality, we wouldn't have any of the issues that we have.
00:24:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:25
Speaker
I know.
00:24:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:26
Speaker
Hopefully.
00:24:27
Speaker
Exactly.
00:24:28
Speaker
So yeah, everyone listening to this, I mean, it starts with, with all of us, right?
00:24:31
Speaker
We got to be the ones to course correct and make sure none of this monkey business is going on anymore.
00:24:36
Speaker
But yeah, for you guys at Fusion, have you had any, I don't know, like nightmare situations with dealers like, you know, I don't know, rubbing your name in the dirt?
00:24:46
Speaker
Well, you know, we have had things, yeah, where a customer calls back and they're just like, hey, you know, I just got my bill.
00:24:53
Speaker
And between my solar bill and this bill, like I'm paying way more than I was in the past.
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:58
Speaker
And we're like, okay, cool.
00:24:59
Speaker
We'll look at that.
00:25:00
Speaker
And usually the customer is just mistaken because they're not realizing that they actually doubled their usage once they got solar, which is common, right?
00:25:05
Speaker
But there's been times where like, oh my gosh, you should not have gotten solar.
00:25:08
Speaker
Like your usage is not nearly enough to justify A, the size of that system and B, the rate plan that you're on.
00:25:16
Speaker
Arizona's weird.
00:25:16
Speaker
There's a lot of weird...
00:25:18
Speaker
demand charges and stuff that solar can't actually get rid of yeah and it's like your demand charges alone are taking you over where you were before it's like you should have never gotten solar in the first place and so for those customers said you know what we're just going to pay your bill for you wow like okay you know we we just i are one of our company core values is family first and we take that down to our customers and it's like it's good if we when i say we you know whether it's a dealer rep or whether it's an internal rep
00:25:44
Speaker
hurts a customer like that, we're going to, you know, sometimes we've had to take care of that.
00:25:50
Speaker
And it's painful, right?
00:25:51
Speaker
It's very expensive.
00:25:52
Speaker
That's something you can't afford to do at scale.
00:25:56
Speaker
That said, yes, most of the time the customer is simply mistaken and they didn't quite understand this or that.
00:26:01
Speaker
But there are a couple of blatant ones out there where we've just, you know,
00:26:04
Speaker
to avoid having those kind of complaints on the news or try to avoid bad reviews and stuff like that.
00:26:10
Speaker
We've had to step in and try to keep our name clean.
00:26:13
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's good, man.
00:26:14
Speaker
I mean, hopefully it can't be happening too often.
00:26:16
Speaker
I hope this will be tough.
00:26:18
Speaker
But yeah, so I'm sure you've learned from that.
00:26:20
Speaker
Have you changed anything how you communicate with the dealers?
00:26:23
Speaker
I mean, yeah, if people are doing that, you probably got to make some sort of action against them.
00:26:28
Speaker
I think it's just, you know, re...
00:26:30
Speaker
Reminding everybody, right?
00:26:31
Speaker
The same stuff that we're talking about right now.
00:26:33
Speaker
Just like reminding everybody that this is an incredible opportunity and it's only going to last as long as we allow it to.
00:26:40
Speaker
And we have to do it the right way.
00:26:42
Speaker
And if one bad player messes it up, he's lighting a stick of dynamite in the mine and it's going to destroy all of us.
00:26:49
Speaker
So don't be selfish.
Ethical Standards in Sales
00:26:51
Speaker
Go out and do things the right way.
00:26:53
Speaker
There's more than enough income.
00:26:55
Speaker
There's more than enough money to make doing this job, doing it the right way.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:26:59
Speaker
No, I love that.
00:27:01
Speaker
So, yeah, I think that's super important.
00:27:04
Speaker
Again, hopefully everyone listening remembers those things.
00:27:07
Speaker
And, yeah, you don't have to deal with consumer protection guides like we have in California if you do it the right way.
00:27:13
Speaker
But, yeah, I want to transition a little bit, Jared, and ask you, like, I know now you're the CSO.
00:27:20
Speaker
It sounds like Tyler.
00:27:21
Speaker
He does more of kind of like the day-to-day training for teams and all that, right?
00:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, he does a lot of our training, yeah.
00:27:28
Speaker
Okay, cool.
00:27:29
Speaker
So for you, what's been, I don't know, what do you feel like is your focus helping the sales guys?
00:27:36
Speaker
Or what are some things maybe you wish sales guys knew more that you're seeing from like, I don't know, like the installer perspective?
00:27:44
Speaker
I know we're talking about a few of them already, but anything that you can think of that maybe we don't see as sales people as much?
00:27:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of what we've talked about is really important that I want our reps to see is that solar is a complicated process.
00:28:02
Speaker
And a lot of times a rep will say, why do you guys have this policy in place?
00:28:06
Speaker
Or why am I having to wait on this or that or the other?
00:28:09
Speaker
Why can't we just do this?
00:28:11
Speaker
And they don't like the answers a lot of the times.
00:28:13
Speaker
But I think that it's just really important that...
00:28:16
Speaker
Reps understand when an installer, when an EPC tells you that they can't do something, like trust that there's a really well thought out reason why.
00:28:25
Speaker
And that there's been discussions and probably hours of discussions at the top levels of the company really debating these things.
00:28:33
Speaker
You know, I want to be able to do a certain kind of job.
00:28:37
Speaker
Right.
00:28:37
Speaker
I want the business.
00:28:38
Speaker
I don't want a dealer to say, sorry, you're not doing it.
00:28:40
Speaker
So I'm going to take my business elsewhere.
00:28:42
Speaker
Like, I don't want to lose that business, but I have to preserve the financial health of fusion.
00:28:49
Speaker
And so we just have to say no sometimes.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:51
Speaker
And so I just, I guess I just say is understand that, um,
00:28:56
Speaker
Just because an installer says no, it's not that they're being stingy or greedy.
00:29:02
Speaker
It's because they're trying to preserve the company and they're trying to do things the right way.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah, I love that.
00:29:07
Speaker
Yeah, another thing I think about, me being someone that's been at a lot of dealers, something I've seen over the years.
00:29:16
Speaker
is every install company has a little bit different processes.
00:29:20
Speaker
Like some will communicate with the customers quite a bit.
00:29:23
Speaker
Some won't communicate at all with the customer.
00:29:26
Speaker
There's just different ways of doing things.
00:29:28
Speaker
And some of my lessons I've had to learn because like the first company I started with, they were really good.
00:29:35
Speaker
They had really good project managers communicating all the time.
00:29:38
Speaker
But then I remember the first time we started using other install companies, I found out the hard way that my customers now were getting zero communication.
00:29:47
Speaker
And I'm like, okay, wow, now I need to set up my own system and give my customers updates, all that.
00:29:53
Speaker
And if you're having to focus on account management, what does that do to your sales, your ability to recruit and train and all that, right?
00:29:59
Speaker
Yeah, so I didn't want to be doing it, but it's just like that's how some companies are.
00:30:03
Speaker
So for you guys, do you have account managers in-house or like what are some things in your opinion, what should reps be responsible for and what should install companies be doing?
00:30:14
Speaker
I love that question and kind of going back to that Vivint culture.
00:30:17
Speaker
I think one of the reasons that we all loved it so much is that
00:30:20
Speaker
they provided so much for us.
00:30:21
Speaker
All we had to do is focus on recruiting, training, and selling, period.
00:30:26
Speaker
Just very, very easy.
00:30:28
Speaker
And so at Fusion, we've tried to kind of replicate that and say, how can we take as much as possible off of the rep's plate?
00:30:34
Speaker
Once that job is signed and submitted, let us take the baton from there and run it across the finish line for them.
00:30:39
Speaker
So we'll do all the communication with the customers.
00:30:41
Speaker
We're going to text them.
00:30:42
Speaker
We're going to email them.
00:30:43
Speaker
We're going to live call them.
00:30:44
Speaker
We're going to clear steps if steps need to be cleared.
00:30:46
Speaker
Awesome.
00:30:47
Speaker
Unless we can't get a hold of the customer, we're just not going to bother the rep with it.
00:30:54
Speaker
You might get a call and be like, hey, we've tried calling this guy five times and we can't get his driver's license and this job is stuck.
00:31:00
Speaker
Can you go over there and see if you can get that for us?
00:31:02
Speaker
But I think that it's important that reps are focused on the things that are going to drive more business.
00:31:09
Speaker
which again is always recruiting and training and selling.
00:31:14
Speaker
If I can keep the company focused, the reps focused on that, that's where we're going to be able to get the growth that we're looking for.
00:31:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:20
Speaker
Yes.
00:31:21
Speaker
That's so important.
00:31:22
Speaker
And I think that's a good point too, is maybe people listening to this have their own dealers or shopping for install companies, whatever.
00:31:30
Speaker
But it's like, sometimes we just see this install company that has lower red line, but then maybe they're not going to do any of that.
00:31:36
Speaker
You have to do all your own account management.
00:31:39
Speaker
And that's what you give up, right?
00:31:40
Speaker
That's the trade.
00:31:40
Speaker
It's like, well, yeah, I'll take a lower red line.
00:31:42
Speaker
But the reason there's a lower red line is because there's a cost to do the stuff that you don't want to do.
00:31:48
Speaker
Right.
00:31:48
Speaker
I got to pay account managers and I got to pay these people to do that.
00:31:51
Speaker
And so if the red line is not as low, understand you're probably getting a better value.
00:31:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:57
Speaker
But that's part of your process when you're interviewing an install partner.
00:32:00
Speaker
It's like, what do you provide?
00:32:01
Speaker
What are those extra ad values that make it so that I can focus on income and building my company rather than having to account management and admin work?
00:32:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think I like I took it for it.
00:32:15
Speaker
I took advantage of having, you know, such good project managers and everything.
00:32:19
Speaker
One of the first companies I was with.
00:32:21
Speaker
But I think it is helpful to like, you know, you can't outsource everything.
00:32:26
Speaker
So I think for the reps listening, like, yeah, even if your company is really good at doing those things.
00:32:31
Speaker
For me, I've just found that I get more referrals to when I'm at least involved a little bit.
00:32:36
Speaker
It's like, I think we got to
00:32:38
Speaker
If we do want referrals, we've got to build relationships with them.
00:32:40
Speaker
We've got to follow up after the sale because, yeah, maybe you'll get referrals, but it might be being sent to the company.
00:32:49
Speaker
But, yeah, what's your take on that?
00:32:50
Speaker
Would you guys have, like, a referral process in place?
00:32:53
Speaker
We do, yeah.
00:32:54
Speaker
Would you train your reps on the help?
00:32:55
Speaker
I'll preface this by saying I think that referrals is the biggest secret that nobody is tapping into.
00:33:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:03
Speaker
So they're there.
00:33:04
Speaker
Everybody's so anxious about just getting the next sale, getting the next sale, getting the next sale, that they're not taking the time to get really, really low hanging fruit by just talking to a happy customer and be like, do you know anybody else that wants to save 50 bucks a month on their bill?
00:33:16
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:33:16
Speaker
Talk to Dan.
00:33:17
Speaker
Like, but we're so busy doing our thing that we're just not taking advantage of that stuff.
00:33:21
Speaker
And so, yeah, we have a referral program.
00:33:24
Speaker
And so we have automated texts and emails that go out to our customers and say, you know, we're glad to hear that you're, you know, enjoying your system that you're saving.
00:33:32
Speaker
Who else do you know?
00:33:34
Speaker
Let us introduce you to our referral program.
00:33:35
Speaker
We have a video and it shows different prizes they can get for submitting names.
00:33:39
Speaker
And if somebody sends in a referral, we find out who submitted it, send it back to the rep.
00:33:43
Speaker
And, you know, we've got our own thing set up.
00:33:45
Speaker
But I think it's really important as a rep.
00:33:47
Speaker
If your company doesn't provide that, create it yourself.
00:33:49
Speaker
Sure.
00:33:50
Speaker
Or have, you know, if you are a sales dealer owner, create some sort of a referral program because there's so much easy, easy, clean business that you can get that if you just put a little bit of effort into that.
00:34:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:02
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:34:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah, so it pays off a lot.
00:34:05
Speaker
And yeah, I had a guy just yesterday and he re-interviewed, but he sold Kawhi Leonard's grandma, Soler.
00:34:14
Speaker
Oh, nice.
00:34:14
Speaker
She gave him like 50 referrals and now he sells just purely.
00:34:19
Speaker
Just be like, let me get Kawhi.
00:34:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:20
Speaker
Let me get Kawhi.
00:34:21
Speaker
I know, yeah.
00:34:21
Speaker
That would be a great name to drop.
00:34:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:34:24
Speaker
So...
00:34:24
Speaker
They'll probably already be released by the time people are listening to this.
00:34:27
Speaker
So listeners should know what I'm talking about.
00:34:29
Speaker
But yeah, it's so powerful to just be able to add that into your arsenal, get the referrals.
00:34:34
Speaker
And like you're talking about, Jared, just if the company is not doing it, make sure you have some type of process to follow up with them and, you know, incentivize the referrals.
00:34:43
Speaker
And even if you're not getting referrals, just having the personal touch, it's going to make your job more likely to get to install.
00:34:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:48
Speaker
Right?
00:34:48
Speaker
If the customer feels like you've completely dumped them, there's no more loyalty or allegiance to you.
00:34:54
Speaker
And so if somebody else comes behind or if the installer is not communicating well, they might just quit.
00:34:59
Speaker
And so I think it's important that a rep's like –
00:35:02
Speaker
You know, you got to have a certain part of your day.
00:35:04
Speaker
It's like, I'm going to spend an hour a day just making contact with my pipeline.
00:35:07
Speaker
And then I'm going to take 20 minutes a day, you know, contacting all my installs, trying to get referrals or whatever that may be.
00:35:16
Speaker
But you never want to, you never want to jeopardize all the hard work that you put into getting sale.
00:35:20
Speaker
Like just put an extra five minutes a week on that guy and get him to install.
00:35:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:25
Speaker
It's pointless to sell it if he's not getting, getting installed.
00:35:28
Speaker
Exactly.
00:35:29
Speaker
Yep.
00:35:29
Speaker
No money on the deal.
00:35:30
Speaker
So good.
00:35:31
Speaker
And so Jared, before we start wrapping up here, a couple more questions that I'm thinking.
00:35:37
Speaker
I know you're in Arizona.
00:35:38
Speaker
You mentioned how there's a lot, there's a few different like jurisdictions.
00:35:43
Speaker
I don't know a ton about that market, but I know, you know, maybe what is it?
00:35:47
Speaker
SRP or something.
00:35:48
Speaker
It's like different than the other one.
00:35:50
Speaker
I've heard some stuff like that.
00:35:52
Speaker
So I know it can get complicated for maybe a new rep coming in there.
00:35:56
Speaker
Maybe they think, okay, solar is just the same way everywhere.
00:36:00
Speaker
And in California, I don't know, I feel like at least in San Diego where I'm at, it's pretty straightforward.
00:36:06
Speaker
Most people are just selling.
00:36:08
Speaker
Net meter is kind of the same for the whole state.
00:36:12
Speaker
But for you guys, and I know that's in other states, it's similar, I think, to maybe Arizona where there's different, I don't know, rules, regulations, things you got to know.
00:36:22
Speaker
So do you have any advice on like training your reps or like what a rep should know, how to like not overwhelm them, maybe for managers listening, how do you take a new rep and do you just stick them in one place, learn how to sell here before they go to a different place or yeah, what's your advice on like knowing?
00:36:40
Speaker
So good question.
00:36:41
Speaker
I think from a high view, I would say like understand that every jurisdiction could be different, right?
00:36:48
Speaker
Like we're in Texas and there's a million different rate plans out there.
00:36:53
Speaker
There's a million different retailers and they all have different rate plans and different buybacks and stuff like that.
00:36:58
Speaker
So, and then in Arizona, you've got time of use.
00:37:03
Speaker
And if you're not familiar with that, basically depending on the time of day, they charge you more per kilowatt hour than, you know, during on peak time compared to off peak time.
00:37:12
Speaker
And so when you're sizing your system, you have to know how to appropriately build that to maximize your production during the on-peak hours so that you're replacing their expensive energy with cheaper solar energy.
00:37:23
Speaker
That's how we save them money.
00:37:25
Speaker
And so, okay, that means that I have to put the panels on the west if I want to do that, for example.
00:37:29
Speaker
And so I think whichever market you're in, if you own a sales dealer, you really do need to be investing in the training.
00:37:37
Speaker
And if you're in a simple market where it's very straightforward and it's basically either one-to-one or if it's a 75% buyback like Nevada or something like that, those are easy to train on.
00:37:49
Speaker
And you can basically give some rules of thumb there.
00:37:52
Speaker
But if you're in a complicated market like Arizona, I think part of that training needs to be putting somebody with a mentor.
00:37:58
Speaker
And having a new rep sit in on several presentations, watch how they explain it and do offsite one-on-ones and explain that.
00:38:06
Speaker
I think that there should part of the boot camp and part of your weekly workshop should be talking about a lot
Comprehensive Training for Sales Reps
00:38:11
Speaker
of the intricacies of the utilities, of the buybacks, of the rate plan so that reps feel competent to sell it the correct way.
00:38:20
Speaker
Nice.
00:38:20
Speaker
Love that.
00:38:21
Speaker
Yep.
00:38:21
Speaker
And yeah, just I think having maybe like, I don't know if you guys do training videos or whatever, but just like a uniform training that people can go through.
00:38:28
Speaker
Because yeah, sometimes I've been with companies where it's like, like you're kind of talking about before one rep teaches one thing and then someone else teaches like something that's not necessarily true and kind of like all over the place.
00:38:39
Speaker
So yeah.
00:38:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's, yeah, as a leader, you've got to be able to put that training out and say, this is how we're training.
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:45
Speaker
So that everybody in the industry, in the organization knows what's, you know, what's expected.
00:38:49
Speaker
And so, you know, depending on what you're using for your training platform, if you've got a video training platform like we have, or if you have, you know, slide decks, or if you have workshops, you know, whatever it looks like, just make sure that you're very specific on those, those little details.
00:39:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:03
Speaker
That's good.
00:39:03
Speaker
That's good.
00:39:04
Speaker
Okay.
00:39:05
Speaker
And then last question or two here, Jared.
00:39:07
Speaker
You've been working with Tyler for a while now.
00:39:09
Speaker
I'm sure you guys get along great and all that.
00:39:13
Speaker
But do you have any advice for working with a business partner?
00:39:16
Speaker
How do you guys, I don't know, divide up the...
00:39:19
Speaker
Responsibilities.
00:39:20
Speaker
What's some tips I'm working with?
00:39:22
Speaker
I think, you know, having a business partner is it's one of those things that's like any other relationship that you have is understanding each other's strengths and weaknesses.
00:39:30
Speaker
And I think living by agreements is a really important thing.
00:39:35
Speaker
you know, with Fusion or before in other situations where I've had co-managers, if you don't have clear expectations and clear agreements between the partners involved, all that does is lead you to a point where there's going to be disappointment.
00:39:49
Speaker
An unmet expectation leads to disappointment, leads to resentment, leads to wedges, leads to splittings, right?
00:39:56
Speaker
Leads to divorce.
00:39:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:57
Speaker
And so I think that it's really important that people understand
Communication in Business Partnerships
00:40:01
Speaker
what are the roles, what are the requirements, and setting out quarterly objectives and say, this quarter, this is what I'm going to do.
00:40:08
Speaker
And we're going to report back every single week.
00:40:10
Speaker
And at the end of the quarter, there's going to be an accounting for what we've done.
00:40:14
Speaker
And so, you know...
00:40:16
Speaker
That clear communication is vital.
00:40:19
Speaker
And I think that's the same with a manager and a new rep.
00:40:22
Speaker
It's like, here's what I expect to get done.
00:40:24
Speaker
And if it doesn't get done by that point, we have an agreement that this job isn't working out.
00:40:29
Speaker
I'm never going to fire you, but our agreement is going to determine whether or not, you know, whether or not this makes sense for you to continue on.
00:40:35
Speaker
So I think that you set these things ahead of time and it will largely reduce the likelihood of having conflict.
00:40:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:44
Speaker
That's good.
00:40:45
Speaker
And I'm sure you and Tyler have never like disagreed.
00:40:47
Speaker
Never.
00:40:47
Speaker
Always got hungry, right?
00:40:49
Speaker
No, but you know, sometimes that's good though.
00:40:51
Speaker
You know, having two different views and having opposing positions, um, sometimes passionately, you know, you come up with an even better result through compromise that going one way or the other would have.
00:41:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:03
Speaker
Well, do you have anything that you can think of off the top of your head that maybe you guys disagreed on that you guys had to kind of like work out or any like situations where maybe you're like, okay, this is
00:41:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think certain things with like, you know, maybe sales comp and stuff like that.
00:41:18
Speaker
It's like, hey, I think that we need to do this.
00:41:20
Speaker
And it's like, no, no, no, this is going to if we do that, then this is going to happen.
00:41:23
Speaker
Or if we do that, this is going to happen.
00:41:25
Speaker
So I think that we've, you know, we've had a lot of healthy debate on how to incentivize, how to comp adders and things that we want to require of reps.
00:41:32
Speaker
There's I mean, there's a million different things that we disagree every day, to be honest with you.
00:41:37
Speaker
I mean, there's there's probably more that we disagree on than we do agree on.
00:41:41
Speaker
But.
00:41:42
Speaker
We keep talking until we find something that works both for us.
00:41:44
Speaker
And luckily, it's resulted in what we think is a healthy company where we're growing year over year and reps are doing well.
00:41:52
Speaker
So we'll keep trying to do that.
00:41:54
Speaker
But I don't think that there's a magic wand solution to that necessarily.
00:41:59
Speaker
At least I haven't found it.
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:01
Speaker
Well, cool, man.
Opportunities at Fusion Power
00:42:02
Speaker
So if people want to, before I forget, if people want to reach out to you, maybe, I don't know, maybe connect, maybe they're looking for a place to link up in Arizona, sell with you guys, hear more about what you're doing.
00:42:13
Speaker
What's the best way to get in touch with you?
00:42:15
Speaker
We've got an internal program.
00:42:16
Speaker
If you want to come on as a direct rep, we'd love to have you.
00:42:19
Speaker
If you want to come on, if you've got a team or you want to come on as a dealer, we've got a dealer program as well.
00:42:23
Speaker
You can contact me.
00:42:24
Speaker
I'm on Instagram.
00:42:26
Speaker
I'm at Jay Gilly.
00:42:27
Speaker
All right.
00:42:28
Speaker
Maybe we can put a little thing on there.
00:42:31
Speaker
Or you can just go to the website and there's an application where you can fill out a form there and we'll contact you and take you out to lunch or take you to Topgolf or whatever.
00:42:39
Speaker
And we'll talk about the opportunity and see if we can be a good fit for what you're trying to accomplish.
00:42:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:43
Speaker
Okay.
00:42:44
Speaker
Well, we all know California is the best market, but if you want to go to the second best market, then hit Jared up.
00:42:49
Speaker
I'm just kidding.
00:42:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:50
Speaker
Arizona is awesome.
00:42:52
Speaker
It is still a fantastic market.
00:42:55
Speaker
Yeah, no, there's some killers there.
00:42:58
Speaker
I've never sold in Arizona, but I've actually checked it out.
00:43:01
Speaker
I know it's a good place to sell for sure.
00:43:04
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, last question here, Jared, what's next for Fusion Power?
00:43:07
Speaker
I know you guys are, I think you're one of the big sponsors of SolarCon coming up here, right?
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, we are.
00:43:13
Speaker
This will be the third year that we've done SolarCon, and we're looking forward to that.
00:43:18
Speaker
This year, we're really focused on solidifying.
00:43:23
Speaker
We've kind of come through this major storm, and I don't think that it's maybe quite over yet.
00:43:28
Speaker
And so we just want to make sure that everything is still tight and battened down as we kind of go into this next year to see what's going to happen.
00:43:34
Speaker
But we really want to just make sure that
00:43:37
Speaker
operationally, we continue to be sound, that we continually try to drive down costs as much as possible and be smart about what we're doing, want to continue to build up the different markets that we're in, and then adding extra services as well.
00:43:50
Speaker
One of the big things that we're focused on this year is adding
00:43:54
Speaker
uh home improvement services before the solar install takes place to give customer value right away which obviously increases increases retention right it allows reps to make even more money and then it's going to be able to give a little bit more margin and and profit to the company to be healthier as well so those are kind of the things that we're that we're really focused on this year that's cool what do you guys um if you're okay sharon what do you what's one of the things you're doing to like sell on the front end to
00:44:20
Speaker
So we do insulation and aeroseal are the two big ones.
00:44:25
Speaker
And then we also do smart chips and coil cleaning.
00:44:28
Speaker
And so those are the three things that we can kind of get done within a week of sale to, like I said, be able to have that customer see some instant value.
00:44:36
Speaker
Yeah, so smart.
00:44:37
Speaker
We just got our roofing license, so we're going to start doing roofing in-house as well.
00:44:40
Speaker
But we are going down the road here.
00:44:44
Speaker
We want to continually add more and more home improvement and energy efficiency products.
00:44:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:49
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:44:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:50
Speaker
Huge fan of that.
00:44:51
Speaker
Cause yeah, it just helps so much with their attention.
00:44:53
Speaker
It really does.
00:44:54
Speaker
You can just get them, you know, something right away like that.
00:44:57
Speaker
And I thought that was the last question, but I did think of one more thing I wanted to ask you before we wrap up.
00:45:02
Speaker
Okay.
00:45:03
Speaker
So you guys, I know expanded to Texas,
00:45:06
Speaker
And that's obviously not super close to Arizona.
00:45:10
Speaker
So what was it like expanding to a new market?
00:45:12
Speaker
Because that's another challenge I've seen in companies I've been with.
00:45:15
Speaker
They try to expand in these different markets, sometimes really far away.
00:45:19
Speaker
And they just send one guy out there and kind of say good luck to try to support them.
00:45:23
Speaker
And I've seen it crash and burn a lot of times.
00:45:24
Speaker
The only thing that's harder than setting up an installer where you live is installing, setting up an install where you don't live.
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:32
Speaker
It's hard.
00:45:32
Speaker
And again, we've been very fortunate to get some good leaders out there to set up operations, but managing it remotely is not easy at all.
00:45:39
Speaker
It requires a lot of travel back and forth.
00:45:42
Speaker
And unfortunately, on the sales side, there's a lot more fall off.
00:45:45
Speaker
You know, we've gone through a lot of different reps there and it's been difficult.
00:45:51
Speaker
So we really want to put a big focus on this.
00:45:53
Speaker
And we've hired some really good people recently that are going to be able to go out there and spend a little bit more permanent time to work with.
00:45:58
Speaker
The reps out there and the managers out there and recruit dealers and try to really get that market solid.
00:46:05
Speaker
But yeah, remote management is it's difficult.
00:46:09
Speaker
It's difficult.
00:46:10
Speaker
Operations are very, very sound because we run them all out of home.
00:46:13
Speaker
And so we're very, very confident in that.
00:46:15
Speaker
But making sure that there's, you know, that you got body temperature where you're at is important.
00:46:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:21
Speaker
Well, yeah, and it probably helps that you just expanded to one market first because my first company, they decided to open like six new offices all in different states at the same time.
00:46:31
Speaker
And I think they all crashed and burned pretty quick just because it was so hard to give them the support they needed.
00:46:36
Speaker
And it requires, there's a learning curve everywhere you go.
00:46:39
Speaker
And so unless you've just got a massive bandwidth to do that and a lot of money to do that, like slow and steady, I think.
00:46:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's good.
00:46:49
Speaker
Okay, well, we appreciate you coming on the show today, Jared.
00:46:52
Speaker
And guys, go reach out to them.
00:46:54
Speaker
Maybe you're in Arizona, go hang with these guys.
00:46:57
Speaker
And if anything, just shoot them a DM, let them know you appreciated them coming on the show today.
00:47:02
Speaker
So hopefully we can have you on in the future when you guys are in like 20 different states, Jared.
00:47:05
Speaker
I'd love it.
00:47:08
Speaker
But yeah, we appreciate you coming on the show.
00:47:09
Speaker
And yeah, we look forward to hearing more about what you guys got going on at Fusion Power.
00:47:14
Speaker
Sounds good.
00:47:15
Speaker
Thanks, Taylor.
00:47:15
Speaker
Okay, thanks, man.
00:47:16
Speaker
See you.
00:47:18
Speaker
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00:47:19
Speaker
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