Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
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 fell.
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.
Speaker: What is a solarpreneur, you might ask?
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.
Speaker: What's up, solarpreneurs?
Speaker: Taylor Armstrong here.
Speaker: And as usual, here at this podcast, we're here to take your solar cells to another level, help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and
Speaker: and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: Thanks for making the Solar Printer podcast the first listen of your day.
Speaker: And just want to say how grateful I am for all the listeners.
Speaker: This podcast, we have been going for, I think, about three years now.
Speaker: Obviously, there has been times where we have not been quite as consistent, but the past year, we've been bringing the episodes almost every single week, two episodes a week.
Speaker: So if you haven't caught on, typically it's Tuesday and Friday that we are bringing the heat for you, shining the sun on the powerful techniques to help you close those deals.
Speaker: But let's be real.
Speaker: Sometimes there are busy times.
Speaker: Sometimes we got a lot going on.
Speaker: So it's not always that way, but 95% of the time, Tuesday and Friday, we're bringing in new, fresh content here.
Speaker: So make sure you are back every Tuesday and Friday to hear what we release for you.
Speaker: So today it's going to be kind of a random episode.
Speaker: We're going to be talking about a few things, some recruiting wins, some ways to set up your solar appointments,
Speaker: But before we get into that, we are almost, in case I get people asking, hey Taylor, how many people actually listen to this podcast?
Speaker: Am I the only one that actually listens to this?
Speaker: And sometimes in the beginning I felt it was that way.
Speaker: Obviously at the beginning we only had, you know, sometimes 50 people a week listening.
Speaker: Luckily we have grown the podcast and that's why I'm so appreciative because thanks to our awesome listeners, we
Speaker: I know we've got people leaving reviews.
Speaker: We've got people sharing the podcast.
Speaker: We've got people sending it to their teams, using it in their trainings, having it as a part of their onboarding experience.
Speaker: So for that, I'm extremely grateful.
Speaker: And the numbers, in case you're curious, we are doing around 15 to 20,000 listens a month.
Speaker: I think our most downloads in a single month was about 18 or 19,000.
Speaker: And what's crazy, I use a podcast hosting platform.
Speaker: It's called Simplecast.
Speaker: And right now on the plan I'm on, I'm on like the amateur podcasting plan through Simplecast.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Even though I feel like a pro, but I am on the amateur plan and it allows us to have 20,000 downloads max per month.
Speaker: So I am putting out a challenge.
Speaker: I want you guys to help me break that.
Speaker: I want you to make me pay more monthly because once we get past 20,000 downloads, I have to upgrade my plan and pay more.
Speaker: So please, please make me pay more.
Speaker: I would love to pay more than what I'm paying right now for the podcast hosting.
Speaker: So if you haven't already shared the podcast or left a review, that is the next step.
Speaker: Let's take this thing to 20,000 plus in a month.
Speaker: And that's how we're going to do it is by you sharing, you leaving your view and continuing to listen.
Speaker: So once again, appreciative to all our listeners and just love you guys.
Speaker: Thanks for supporting the show in all the ways that you do.
Speaker: So let's jump into the topics.
Speaker: First, I'm going to talk a little bit about recruiting.
Speaker: And the reason we are jumping into recruiting, I have had some recruiting wins that I wanted to share with everybody, with my solopreneurs.
Speaker: And if you haven't listened to the podcast on me talking about posting videos, a lot of you follow me on social media, on Instagram, Facebook, and you have maybe seen me post these videos with customers, kind of the client testimonials.
Speaker: I don't do it every single time.
Speaker: Sometimes you get rejected, but I did a podcast.
Speaker: We can, we'll share it in the show notes here.
Speaker: on how I get those videos and the reason I think it's so powerful to be doing video testimonials with your customers.
Speaker: So I'm going to post that.
Speaker: Go listen to it if you haven't already because I'm not going to talk too much about how I get it or why I think it's important.
Speaker: Well, I talk about kind of how it helps in the sales in that podcast.
Speaker: But really, the reason I wanted to bring it up is because surprisingly, it's been helping me a ton in recruiting efforts.
Speaker: Some of you see those videos and you might not think that, but I've been getting more and more people reaching out just seeing those videos saying, hey, Taylor, we notice looks like you're crushing it in solar.
Speaker: Can you tell me more?
Speaker: Can we help on a call?
Speaker: The past three months, I've probably gotten, I don't know, six, seven messages like that.
Speaker: And the key with it is it's not going to happen immediately.
Speaker: I've been doing these little videos, posting about solar for, I don't know, a year maybe now with those little testimonial videos.
Speaker: Sometimes they're kind of stupid.
Speaker: Sometimes people probably think I'm an idiot, but...
Speaker: Sometimes people are listening.
Speaker: People are paying attention.
Speaker: So if you are not posting about your solar journey, I just want to invite you, if your goal is to grow in this industry, to recruit a team, to build an empire, almost everyone that I see that's recruiting at a high level, they're doing this.
Speaker: They're posting.
Speaker: They're publishing.
Speaker: And you don't have to be obsessive with it, but just hop on there, post a little picture with your customers.
Speaker: And again, go listen to the podcast if you want to hear how I actually get customers to agree to taking a video with me.
Speaker: But yeah, however you can do it.
Speaker: A little picture, a little video.
Speaker: And as you show up consistently, people are going to start to question.
Speaker: And not only will you get people interested in about the job, but you will also get potential customers interested.
Speaker: If you are friends with maybe your mom's uncle's cousin or maybe your, I don't know, best friend's parents, whatever.
Speaker: Maybe there's someone that has been thinking about solar.
Speaker: They're seeing you show up.
Speaker: They're seeing you post about solar, post that you're saving homeowners thousands of dollars.
Speaker: And they're like, wow, okay, maybe I'll check this out.
Speaker: I have gotten a lead here and there from it.
Speaker: So last week, last two weeks, I actually had my buddy Micah out here.
Speaker: He came from pest control.
Speaker: He had a pest control background.
Speaker: He was actually the person who originally trained me in pest control.
Speaker: I did pest control back in 2012 and I did a two year mission after that.
Speaker: So 2012 and then also 2015 was when I did pest control.
Speaker: And Micah, he was with me my first year, Dallas, Texas.
Speaker: He trained me up.
Speaker: He taught me the ropes on pest control.
Speaker: And now come full circle, he eventually ended up starting his own pest control company, sold it, kind of got out of the game and just wasn't doing a whole lot.
Speaker: He sees me post these videos.
Speaker: He's like, you know what?
Speaker: Taylor seems like he's crushing it.
Speaker: I'm going to check it out.
Speaker: He calls me.
Speaker: Boom.
Speaker: Just like that.
Speaker: Got him out here.
Speaker: First two weeks, he got three deals closed in his first couple of weeks on the job.
Speaker: So you never know who's actually watching.
Speaker: You never know what impact you're having.
Speaker: And especially for those of you that have come from different industries, maybe pest control, alarms, meat, whatever.
Speaker: Hopefully you're all switching to solar because let's be real.
Speaker: It is the best thing to sell door to door.
Speaker: It's the best sell job, I think, in the world right now.
Speaker: Like, how could you be selling anything besides solar?
Speaker: So whatever connections you have, try and reach back out to those people.
Speaker: And that's the other point of this.
Speaker: Obviously, the videos are good, but even better, if you can stay in touch with these people, if you can stay in touch with your previous people you sold with, if you can network, that's one of the main reasons I go to events, not necessarily to recruit.
Speaker: But I go to marketing events.
Speaker: I go to obviously door-to-door con, which you're not supposed to be recruiting there.
Speaker: But you never know what connection you can make.
Speaker: And then as you friend people on Instagram, Facebook, whatever, they're seeing you reach out or they're seeing you, you know, have a ton of success.
Speaker: So we actually had in our office last week, a guy, um, he ran an entire pest control region.
Speaker: He was coming out to check out solar matter of fact.
Speaker: Um, and he's recruited hundreds and hundreds of pest control reps and
Speaker: And his advice that he gave us, he says, Hey, whenever you're out at a restaurant, whenever you're out in the mall, whenever you're out doing your thing,
Speaker: obviously connect with people, compliment people on the job they're doing.
Speaker: But instead of just getting their number, get on their Instagram, hop in their DMs, right?
Speaker: Because what's crazy in the past, I would just get people's numbers.
Speaker: Hey, hey, you're really good at waiting tables here.
Speaker: I can't promise you a job, but if I could get you an interview and what we're doing, it's a sell job.
Speaker: Would you at least check it out?
Speaker: That's kind of the line, you know, classic line you can use for recruiting.
Speaker: But the mistake I was making, I was just grabbing people's numbers, then hitting them with a random text, right?
Speaker: But what he shared with this, this regional, he's recruited hundreds and hundreds of reps.
Speaker: He said, get them on your Instagram feed, get them in your social media.
Speaker: And hopefully you have your social media set up to where you're showcasing your success.
Speaker: You're showing the type of lifestyle that solar gives us.
Speaker: People are going to see that and be like, whoa, is this guy for real?
Speaker: This guy lives this type of life.
Speaker: And whatever, you know, whatever recruit you're trying to attract, hopefully you can reflect that in your posts, right?
Speaker: And I'm no social media master.
Speaker: I'm still trying to get better at social media.
Speaker: But
Speaker: If you look at mine, you'll see, you know, events, you'll see some trips, you'll see some like inspirational quotes.
Speaker: And I know I need to go and beef mine up a little bit, but you want people to be seeing a successful person.
Speaker: And then you want to document your journey, you know, and your stories, get in the habit of posting stories every day.
Speaker: So enough about recruiting.
Speaker: That is just something that's been helping me.
Speaker: So I would invite you go publish consistently.
Speaker: You might have someone reaching out.
Speaker: You might have someone back in your past, maybe someone from high school, from your pest control days, wherever you came from.
Speaker: that you never thought would reach out to you, but they might see what you're posting and hit you up.
Speaker: And obviously with doing stuff like that, it's more organic recruits, but if you really want to take your recruiting to another level, then you do need to be active with it, not just on social media, but doing what this pest control regional guy does at restaurants, actively looking for guys that are good at what they do.
Speaker: As you're out buying shoes, whatever, that is how you really build an empire.
Speaker: When you couple it with the organic stuff, posting on social media, and then also looking for people that may or may not be good at what we do.
Speaker: So, and the second thing that we're jamming on today is
Speaker: We have next episode, Jason Newby is coming on the show.
Speaker: And if you don't know Jason, that guy is a crypto multimillionaire.
Speaker: He's made tons in crypto and he happens to be the guy who started the company I'm working with right now, Future Home Power.
Speaker: And just crushing it.
Speaker: They've got a huge team.
Speaker: And speaking of recruits, these guys are recruiting an empire off of pest control guys.
Speaker: Literally, I think I would say more than half our team came from pest control.
Speaker: So if you know guys in pest control that aren't happy, then maybe you should think about hitting them up because we've got guys that are making insane amounts of money that came from pest control.
Speaker: They make great appointment setters and they already know how to talk to people.
Speaker: So that is a great industry to recruit from.
Speaker: Just don't be taken from previous companies.
Speaker: We've actually got two people that are in lawsuits right now because they came from a specific pest company and then they're taking previous recruits with them.
Speaker: So obviously the company is not too happy about that.
Speaker: So be careful about how you do it.
Speaker: But pest control guys do make great solar cells, man.
Speaker: And so Jason, he is having a ton of success here and you're not going to want to miss out because on next episode, he talks about crypto, how to get started in that.
Speaker: If you're not already investing in crypto, he talks about lessons he's learned from building his dealer up from scratch just under a year now and already doing, you know, dozens and dozens of sales every week.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So crazy to see how quick the success has come from.
Speaker: So make sure you tune into that episode.
Speaker: But something I wanted to touch on real quick, and you're going to hear Jason talk more about this in the show, is just how important it is to set the expectations.
Speaker: Hey, we've done a few episodes on this, but one of the biggest keys to Jason's success and something he talks about all the time as he's training our teams is
Speaker: And as he's going to events, doing solar trainings, and as he's selling and closing deals himself, it's just how important you need to set the expectations with your potential clients.
Speaker: Okay, what do I mean by that?
Speaker: Just for one, setting the expectation on how much energy are they really going to get with their solar panels.
Speaker: Something that Jason talks about all the time is...
Speaker: Asking the customers, how much power do you plan to use in the future?
Speaker: Okay, in the previous episode, you've heard me talk about contrasting, comparing and contrasting.
Speaker: Jason, he does this all the time as he's in the appointments with his customers.
Speaker: He says, Mr. Homeowner,
Speaker: Something that has given solar kind of a bad taste, you guys may have even heard about it, is in the past people would go solar and they would still be getting bills from their utility company because these companies were only sizing the solar systems to what people are using right now.
Speaker: So what we're doing now with the program is we actually size it to what you use in the future and not just in the past.
Speaker: Because if we do it to just what you're using in the past and you use more energy, then you're going to get a bill to the utility company.
Speaker: Hopefully all of you are doing this.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But something we've learned is if you just ask people, do you plan to use more energy next year?
Speaker: A lot of people, a lot of people are just going to say, no, we'll continue using about the same amount of energy.
Speaker: But if you get specific with them, this is the mistake I've made is I have not gotten specific before I started hearing some of these trainings.
Speaker: So what I mean by that is you need to ask them, Mr. Homeowner, do you plan on getting an electric car?
Speaker: Do you plan on putting in AC if they don't have AC?
Speaker: Do you plan on having more people move in your home?
Speaker: Do you plan on putting in a hot tub?
Speaker: Any other reason you could see that you'd use more energy?
Speaker: And as you get specific, you'll see that a lot of times where people didn't really think they were going to use more energy, turns out they were planning to put in AC next summer.
Speaker: Or turns out they were planning on putting in a Tesla pretty soon.
Speaker: Okay, so make sure you get specific with these people.
Speaker: And we've got some pretty exciting guests coming up, but something that I learned is there are calculations depending on what people are doing.
Speaker: So if someone, for example, is planning to add an electric car, you need to add an extra three kilowatts onto your sizing of the system.
Speaker: So if it's a 6 kilowatt system, you should be getting them a 9 kilowatt system if they plan on adding an electric car.
Speaker: We're going to be having a guest coming up pretty soon, talk a lot more in depth about that, but something pretty cool I learned with that.
Speaker: So get specific with them and then compare and contrast.
Speaker: Hopefully you listened to the previous episode, but it was all about comparing old versus new.
Speaker: right?
Speaker: Taking something that was a bad experience and bringing them into a new opportunity.
Speaker: So that's what we're doing when we go through this little fact finding stage.
Speaker: It should be the first thing you do as you step in the appointment, obviously, you know, build some rapport, some relationship,
Speaker: But then you get into diagnosing, right?
Speaker: We are doctors as solar salespeople.
Speaker: If we do not diagnose the problem, we cannot offer them a solution.
Speaker: So make sure you're going through these steps.
Speaker: Get specific with them.
Speaker: What do they need?
Speaker: What do they plan to use on top of what they're using?
Speaker: And in general, people should get bigger systems than what they're using right now because almost everybody uses more energy when they have solar on the roof, right?
Speaker: And then last thing with this, another cool line you can use in your appointments.
Speaker: So after you diagnose the problem, after you figure out if they're going to use more energy.
Speaker: So Mr. Homeowner, so sounds like you guys will need a little bit of extra.
Speaker: If we could get you, I don't know, 30 to 40% more energy and keep your bill exactly the same as what you're paying right now, would that be a win for you?
Speaker: Okay, and get their expectations.
Speaker: Do they plan to save money?
Speaker: This is another question you should be asking as you're going through these fact-finding, diagnosed-type questions.
Speaker: What do you guys plan on getting out of solar?
Speaker: Um, what's your goal in going solar?
Speaker: Some people say save money, you know, depends on the market here in California.
Speaker: Pretty much everyone wants to save money.
Speaker: Some people will be like, help the environment.
Speaker: And then if they say save money, how much money, how much would you expect to save with solar?
Speaker: Then I love doing the percentage amount, right?
Speaker: It means they owe 20%, 30%.
Speaker: If you can get them to agree on a percentage, then you can kind of pre-commit them, right?
Speaker: It's all about setting those expectations, pre-qualifying the customer.
Speaker: So sorry for the random thoughts, but those are just two things that have been going pretty well.
Speaker: Number one with the recruiting, make sure you're publishing, make sure you're keeping in touch with your network.
Speaker: And then number two, just getting ready for this next episode coming out on Friday is, you know, make sure you're setting those expectations, make sure you're qualifying your customers and
Speaker: And then we're going to go much more in depth with that.
Speaker: You're going to hear Jason's specific line he's used in his appointments that have helped him get a Golden Door Award in his first year in solar and really train an entire team to just be savages and close pretty much every appointment they walk into.
Speaker: So don't forget to tune in the next episode.
Speaker: Again, share this with someone that could use help with recruiting or closing or getting their appointments set up better to close.
Speaker: And we will see you guys on the next episode.
Speaker: Peace.
Speaker: Hey Solarpreneurs, quick question.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: And it's called Solciety.
Speaker: This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give Solar Pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds for, are you ready for it, less than $3.45 a day.
Speaker: Currently, SoulCity is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled.
Speaker: So go to SoulCity.co to learn more and join the learning experience now.
Speaker: This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to SoulCity.co and join.
Speaker: We'll see you on the inside.
