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I Had My Best Quarter In 2 Years. Here’s What I Did Differently
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In this episode, I'll be sharing a training I did for my company that tackles how my team did their last two quarters. The automations we have in place and our methods establish trust are the most vital things we have honed as a team when doing solar sales.
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Transcript
Introduction to Leadership Training at DNA
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, Solarpreneurs, wanted to give a brief introduction for today's episode. This was a training I did for our upcoming leadership group. We have in our company a group called DNA, which is for leaders in training.
00:00:14
Speaker
Had the opportunity to give a little training on how to grow their teams and how to have the best quarters of cells in their careers.
00:00:25
Speaker
So I thought we went over some good stuff here that can be really useful. wherever you're at right now in your solar journey. So check it out. Hope you enjoy today's episode.
Taylor's Journey from Financial Struggle to Success
00:00:38
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 fell.
00:00:54
Speaker
I teach you 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.
Understanding the Solopreneur in Solar Sales
00:01:06
Speaker
What is a solopreneur, you might ask? A 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.
00:01:17
Speaker
Cool.
The Role of Accountability in Leadership at DNA
00:01:19
Speaker
So yeah, guys, I'm super excited to be here with you, and I'm actually stoked that we got back in the group. Some you probably noticed that myself, Hubert, Rene, we weren't in the DNA chat for most of this last quarter.
00:01:36
Speaker
And definitely missed it. It just adds an extra layer of accountability, ah extra layer of training. You know, Mike's trainings are fire. You guys got some of the best of the best coming on here. We just dropped bars with you.
00:01:53
Speaker
and And so hugh I got to give a shout out to Hubert because he's the one that was bugging Mike about letting us back in the group. And I find the mics like, all right, we'll let these clowns back in if they beg enough.
00:02:07
Speaker
So appreciate you, Hubert. And it just adds another layer of accountability for us because, to be honest, in the leadership chats, we all all the captains, we got added into the leadership chats for our teams.
00:02:21
Speaker
But ah funny enough, we were on like their accountability boards. So they had the spreadsheets. But for whatever reason, we weren't included in the numbers for them. So, and speaking for him for myself, I kind of got away with less accountability sometimes because I'd see the leader's numbers, but I was never on that spreadsheet.
00:02:40
Speaker
They still have us in the DNA one. So, we kind of, you know, snuck under the radar a little bit. But now that we're back in a DNA, no more sneaking under the radar because got the numbers showing up.
00:02:53
Speaker
And i luckily, out ah I had a bit big week last week. So, yeah. You know, don't have to make any excuses this week. But as a reminder, I've got to be showing up. Because I know at DNA, we've got some of the best people in all our in DNA.
Recruitment Strategies for Team Success
00:03:08
Speaker
So it definitely keeps me on my toes. Forces me to sell at a higher level, recruit at a higher level, do everything at a higher level. So that being said, um I wanted to just go through a few things.
00:03:24
Speaker
A couple notes that have been... helping me lately. let me see if this will let me share my screen.
00:03:35
Speaker
Okay, so, yeah, just wanted to go through, try to keep it, you know, about 10 minutes here. Respect their one's time. But, ah so the training today is how to get out of DNA until lights out this quarter.
00:03:48
Speaker
um as I'm doing this training, this has actually been my highest selling quarter since I joined Legacy. You know, glory to God.
00:03:58
Speaker
But definitely some factors that I think have helped this quarter, done a few things different. So I just want to share a few things that have been helping me. And then also for those of you that are trying to take the next step, get into the captain role, go over a couple things that helped me take the next step into the captain position.
00:04:16
Speaker
And maybe some of you guys that have been in dna for a while, um it's time to figure out what's the next thing you can do, step into the captain. Because if you move if you're an intentional about it,
00:04:27
Speaker
Really, it can happen pretty quickly. we shall be striving to take that next level in our career.
Overcoming Barriers to Team Progress
00:04:34
Speaker
So couple of things. Number one is just what's holding you back. Supposed to say what's holding you back.
00:04:42
Speaker
But ah so I think we all need to identify where were we at last quarter. And it helps getting on these calls, seeing our numbers, seeing how many sales, seeing how many installs we're after the quarter.
00:04:53
Speaker
But a lot of us, it's not. necessarily the sells and installs that's holding us back. It's the recruiting, right Because we know to tap then we have to have two other recruits that also do a minimum of two installs, I believe it is.
00:05:11
Speaker
Maybe it's three. Two or three installs. And we have to be hitting 20 installs for the quarter. think those are the right metrics as a squad.
00:05:23
Speaker
So, really, I think it comes down to figuring out, identifying what's the thing holding us back. There it is, what's holding you back.
00:05:33
Speaker
um And to do that, we can recognize what's your one thing. sure what's going with the formatting of these slides. And so there's a book I would invite you guys all to read. It's literally called The One Thing.
00:05:48
Speaker
um Will Brinley, he told us about this book. But it's It's just a good concept to go by In the book, he breaks it down that really there's one thing we can do every quarter, one thing we can do every year, one thing we can do every month, that's going to move the needle for us.
00:06:08
Speaker
So I think sometimes there's so many different things to focus on so on in our careers, right? and We can focus on sales, installs, ah getting lost to roof. ah recruiting, but ah we we want to take the next step, then it comes down to us identifying what's the one thing holding it back. So maybe we did really good on sales last quarter, but we didn't get in installs, right? So we're not even, we're not even hitting past the six installs.
00:06:34
Speaker
Then it's like, okay, we need to focus on that. But for a lot of us, we did hit the six in installs, right? So then what's the what's the next one thing?
From Sales to Leadership: A Successful Transition
00:06:43
Speaker
It's keeping the installs at the same level, but then getting,
00:06:48
Speaker
our recruits to show up, right? So how many people do we have on our squad? Is it recruiting the next one person? is it helping them to get their installs up, right? So for me, this it just required kind of a mind shift.
00:07:01
Speaker
yeah We get accustomed to selling, to installing, all that good stuff. But the one thing for me to step into the captain position was I had to focus on the recruiting, and then I had to focus on helping my guys get the installs.
00:07:16
Speaker
And I'll talk about a few things we did along the way to achieve that. But just for you guys, what's your one thing? So check out that book, get a copy of it, and then as we go into the next quarter, would invite you guys to think about what's the one thing that you're going to focus on for this next quarter?
00:07:33
Speaker
What's the one thing that you're going to focus on to move you into a captain position? And I think you'll do things a little bit different if you have that that kind of mindset instead of just being all over the place and trying to think focus on everything.
00:07:49
Speaker
So that's one invitation. um And so, yeah, and then here's another thing
Boosting Sales with Effective Systems and Setters
00:07:54
Speaker
to help me. Okay, so this dude, you guys might have seen him run around the office, but this is my guy Rosenberg.
00:08:00
Speaker
And so just speaking of uh, being my highest selling quarter. This is one thing that I focused on this quarter to get my numbers up. Okay, Rosenberg, he came in and he's been, im just probably the best setter that I've had in solar. I mean, this guy, he puts his head down, he goes out, he actually comes down from Beverly Hills. He's an actor.
00:08:23
Speaker
This is like one of his photos after one of his films or whatever. But he comes down and he just goes to work because he's coming down for four or five days at a time, stays like in our spare bedroom. We have a little casita he stays in sometimes.
00:08:37
Speaker
And this guy will just grind. Some you that aren't hitting your sales numbers, maybe your one thing is you need to focus on getting that next solid setter that's going to crank out leads for you. And we can all do the numbers we need through self-genning.
00:08:51
Speaker
And you never should get rid of self-gen bills. right You always should be doing it. a minimum of a few self-durban deals a month, in my opinion. But if you are i'm trying to do bigger numbers, then, yeah, see if you can get a setter producing.
00:09:07
Speaker
you don't have a solid setter, it's time to get to recruiting, right? It's a conversation, but how can you get more leads for recruits? Hey, I've had tons of recruits come in, but sometimes it takes, you know, 9, 10, 11, 12 good recruits.
00:09:20
Speaker
9, 10, 11, 12 recruits to your next solid setter. Right? So you got to be cranking them through and you got to be pouring into them as well.
00:09:31
Speaker
So that's one thing that helped me this quarter having a solid setter, a guy like Rosenberg. So some of you already know that I run my own door-to-door sales team here in San
Innovation with SolarScout: Leveraging Data in Sales
00:09:41
Speaker
Diego. And as we are gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results.
00:09:48
Speaker
But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage. Then we discovered an app called SolarScout. But it's not a door-knocking app. It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market.
00:10:01
Speaker
It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later canceled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given neighborhood. It's been working for a lot of teams across the country, and now I'm on board too.
00:10:16
Speaker
I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up. But I told them, hey, I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal. And they did.
00:10:26
Speaker
So go to solar scout. forward slash Taylor and book a demo with them. And you'll get 10% off your first month. When you sign up that's solar scout. App forward slash Taylor.
00:10:39
Speaker
Okay. Back to the show.
Strategic Team Building: Lessons from Chess
00:10:41
Speaker
Okay. And then, just as you're bringing bringing in recruits, here's something to think about as you guys are building your squads, uh, is building your team supposed to say the right way.
00:10:53
Speaker
a Um, So the analogy I use, this is a chess board, if you guys see that on the screen. We've been geeking out with chess a little bit lately. Will Brindley, got me and back into chess a little bit. i used to be like in chess club growing up, but then you know I didn't want to be the nerd and stop playing.
00:11:13
Speaker
And I recently picked it back up a little bit, so i guess I'm a nerd again. Yeah, don't don't make fun of me too much. But what you're seeing on this page... is it's an opening in chess. It's called the London Opening.
00:11:26
Speaker
And you'll see that the purpose of this opening is to control the middle of the board. yeah you can see there's a knight just controlling that dark square. There's a bishop controlling that dark square.
00:11:39
Speaker
and there's a pawn controlling all the same square. the idea is that if you can control the center of the board, can have all your pieces moved up and control it better than your opponent's.
00:11:50
Speaker
then that's going to give you a super solid chance at winning, and really you're in the lead, right? Because the person that controls more of the center of the board is generally in the lead. So the reason I bring this up is because if you guys are doing this in a similar way with your team, okay, where you're bringing all your pieces up, you're bringing all your team to the center, you're controlling how you want your team to build, then it's going make things way easier later.
00:12:18
Speaker
going make you make a winger to win the game sales, to win the games of our careers. If we can do it, we can build it the right way, same way that you would build the board and chess to set your set yourself up for a winning position.
00:12:32
Speaker
So I want to talk about some things that we have done that I feel have helped us build. that board in a similar way. Setting up systems with your squads. Okay, so for us personally, we do a squad call Monday at 10 Team building activities get together. We're about to do a team barbecue for team, get our guys together.
00:12:51
Speaker
We hold our guys really accountable to attending every correlation possible, right?
Fostering Growth through Communication and Social Media
00:12:57
Speaker
I feel like we've done a really good job with the culture of teams. getting guys that if they're not showing up for whatever reason, they should be letting us know why they're not a correlation.
00:13:07
Speaker
And if I see guys that aren't showing up, I'm, you know, every correlation at 99% of the time, And then it's just like, we're we're texting our guys. If they're not there, we're texting them, hey, where are you at? What's going on? um Because this is how you get them around the campfire, right? It's something Tyler's taught us, talks about all the time, being around the campfire.
00:13:26
Speaker
So really, it's our opportunity to check in with guys, see where they're at, see them in person. um Then just in general, calling your team members, texting them, checking in with them, get your group chats popping, whether it's if you're a smaller squad,
00:13:43
Speaker
Then, i you know, get the text group going. If you do have a bigger squad, we just started our Prano group chats. You talk with your DM about that if you do have a bigger squad.
00:13:54
Speaker
And then just daily, weekly accountability. So we're all about, we have spreadsheets for teams. The same way you guys have the spreadsheet in DNA, we do the exact same thing on our squad calls every week.
00:14:07
Speaker
hold our guys accountable. um We post the numbers, the knocking stats from Canvas. So we try to do those once or twice a week. And, ah you know, some sometimes I do slack a little bit on these. So as I was going getting this training ready, I'm like, okay, sometimes I am forgetting to do it.
00:14:26
Speaker
a few of these things consistently, but the more you can do these things, I feel like that's when our earth team has been popping off the most, that's when our team has been producing at the highest level, is when we're doing all these things correctly, when we're setting up all these systems, and when we're building our so-called so-called chessboard the right way.
00:14:44
Speaker
Okay, so, um yeah, if you're not doing these things, definitely think about that, is how can you i'm set up systems for your team. And if you're a small squad right now, maybe things look at a bit look a little bit different, right? Maybe if you're only two, three people, maybe instead of a squad call Monday, maybe you're just doing like a team huddle once a week after correlation, right?
00:15:07
Speaker
But however you can set it up, set build these systems now, set them up correctly now. So that way when you do get a lot of recruits coming in, it just makes things way easier. you're already built the right way. You're already set up.
00:15:19
Speaker
So it's not overwhelming when You know, maybe you get 10, maybe you get a small team integrating with your squad where you can have it set up at the right way. Okay. um And yeah, last couple things here, guys.
00:15:32
Speaker
And that's just to post your wins, document the journey. Right. I think back to every solid recruit I've had on my team. It's come from social media and from posting my wins.
00:15:43
Speaker
And that's how I built my squad. I've got my guy Javier that helps a lot with our systems. and That's one of our key squad members. He came from social media, posting on Instagram.
00:15:55
Speaker
My guy of Rosenberg I just told you about, he came from seeing me post my sales on Facebook. And he hit me up, hey, can I come sell with you guys? Another soldier crew we just got, David.
00:16:05
Speaker
he came partly from this, but he's a guy that did jiu-jitsu with me. And then he followed me, saw me post sales and, you know, stuff about their culture. And, ah you know, joined the team that way.
00:16:19
Speaker
So I would just ah encourage you if you're, you know, unless you don't use social media, would just all get on social media, be posting your wins, documenting the journey. Because I think that's the most solid way to get a recruit. um You know, every solid guy I've gotten has just come organically through that.
00:16:35
Speaker
So you can build it other ways, but um I think if you're not on social media, you're not posting your wins, your sales, your correlations,
00:16:46
Speaker
your training, your journey, but I think you're doing yourself a disservice. That's part of why I was, um'm you know, getting this call recorded because I'm to post this win, right? It's a win for me being on here training you guys.
00:16:58
Speaker
It's a win for me being in legacy, in valor, just being able to learn from the best of the best, love the culture we have, love the resources we have, love the leadership we have.
00:17:09
Speaker
So um that's about it, guys.
Focus and Documentation for Future Success
00:17:11
Speaker
So again, just number one, focus on what's your one thing. for this next quarter coming up. they Build your team the right way.
00:17:20
Speaker
Set your chessboard up the correct way from the beginning so you can make your make things easier as more recruits come in. Then number three, post your wins. Document the journey.
00:17:31
Speaker
um Enjoy the journey as one of our Valor values it says. so Enjoy the journey along the way. I promise you guys do those things. You're going to set yourself up for a winning next quarter.
00:17:42
Speaker
You're set yourself up to have success as we transition through some of the other challenges we all know we're going through right now in the industry. And that's going to be a much better experience. So thank you for allowing me to train again. Hit me up if you guys need any more support or have any questions.
00:17:57
Speaker
And it looks like we're running over time. So thanks for helping me go a little bit over time here today. And that's it, guys. So let's crush it this week.
Conclusion and Resources for Further Learning
00:18:07
Speaker
What's up, solopreneurs? Hope you enjoyed the episode.
00:18:10
Speaker
Before you run out and start selling more solar yourself, wanted to let you know about an exciting new cheat sheet we created specifically for you in mind. One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start?
00:18:28
Speaker
What episodes should I listen to in the podcast? You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes. So what we've done, we created the top 10 most downloaded, most listened to, and i would say widely accepted, most useful podcasts that we've done here on Solarpreneur.
00:18:48
Speaker
We put them together all in one sheet so you can go, you can hit the ground running, especially if you're new, you do not want to not have this sheet. So go download it right now. It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com. Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com. Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs. We will have that in the show notes. Go download it right now.
00:19:14
Speaker
And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them. That's going to show you how. So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.