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How To Give Your Reps The Recognition They Deserve
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In the midst of the push for more productivity and better results, it's important to reiterate that our team members are human too. This episode reminds leaders to acknowledge and provide intrinsic growth to the work of their sales reps by establishing awards and means of recognition.
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Transcript
Introduction to Solarpreneur Podcast
00:00:03
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.
Goals and Industry Insights
00:00:19
Speaker
I teach you avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
00:00:31
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.
Motivating Sales Reps
00:00:41
Speaker
Hey, Solarpreneurs, happy 2026 or whenever you're listening to this. Today, we're going talking about how you can recognize your top reps and motivate them to have their best year ever.
00:00:51
Speaker
So if you are not recognizing your reps or if you feel like you could do a better job about awards, recognizing performance, then make sure you don't miss this episode. So welcome to the show. My name is Taylor Armstrong. We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals and have a much better time in the solar industry. We're coming at you free and available on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you listen your podcasts every Tuesday and Friday.
00:01:17
Speaker
And I'm excited to kick off the new year. We had some ups and downs in 2025. lot of people left solar.
Solar Industry Changes in 2025
00:01:24
Speaker
There were some crazy things happening with Trump's big, beautiful bill and...
00:01:29
Speaker
changing financers, part of being on the solar coaster. But 2026 seems like things have, the dust has settled a little bit. We have a clearer path forward and I'm more excited than ever for the future. So if you're not where you want to be for this year,
00:01:44
Speaker
then I hope you can turn it around. Let me know. hit me up. We've got opportunities
Opportunities and Strategies
00:01:48
Speaker
for you. We do have some blitzes coming up. If you missed the last one, you are missing out. Make sure you go to the show notes or send me a message or an email and we can talk about getting you on future blitzes with our team. But that being said, let's jump into the topic today. We're talking about recognition, helping just really reps feel appreciated and carry momentum forward into the new year because it's something super important. If you're not recognizing your people, then it's how you lose reps.
00:02:17
Speaker
Retention is harder. They don't feel that personal connection. So we're going to talk about a few ways you can recognize your reps and make sure you stay till the end. I'm going go through the recognitions that we personally did At our company, we had an award ceremony. We actually did it on a cruise ship, which is pretty cool. So we'll talk about that a little bit. But we'll go through the specific awards that were given here at our company on our teams. And if you're not already doing this, you can get some great ideas just by some of the words we gave out and maybe some things you can tweak and improve. And don't worry, maybe you're a smaller team, maybe you're a rep that's you know not leading a team currently, these are still things that you can do on a much smaller level. And so I'm going to talk about some ways
Recognition and Team Motivation
00:02:58
Speaker
you can adopt this if you're a smaller team, or maybe you're just leading one or two people. How can you adopt it to smaller teams, smaller groups? We'll get into that as well. Okay, but first, before we talk about that, just a couple reasons why it's important to recognize your reps.
00:03:14
Speaker
few fruit A few different quotes. People don't quit companies, they quit feeling invisible. How many times have you seen reps leave because they felt invisible? Or worse, I've seen reps leave companies and then the team doesn't even know they're gone. If they're invisible to the managers, the people on the team, then pretty high chance that they just quit altogether. What gets recognized gets repeated.
00:03:34
Speaker
As you recognize things, that those are behaviors that people to to repeat. And this starts, you know, I got three kids right now. This starts at a very young age. And as much as we say it doesn't continue with adults, with full grown people, it's just human nature. if People want to repeat things that get recognized. okay If you're not doing that, how can you how can you create at rewards and how can you recognize the the behaviors that are driving success at your company. A couple points with this, when reps are recognized yearly, they don't just feel motivated, they see themselves as high performers. And we saw this at our rewards ceremony that we did. we were on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean
00:04:13
Speaker
a massive award ceremony pretty cool we went on a cruise was just a four day one to catalina islands ensenada mexico hung out with the whole team had i think three four hundred reps all on the ship hanging out it's funny because we we're doing it the same time as this pest control company i think it was fox pest control so felt like half the cruise ship was just like sales reps and just uh celebrating celebrating the year of sales but i will say it was a cool it's a cool way to do it good time um last year we did like a resort getaway i thought this was cool though because you ran into people all the time you know it was less of everyone doing their own thing because they're all on the ship together so unless you just stayed on stayed in your room you were pretty much bound to run into people And ah you know hanging out on the boat, got off on the islands. It was a great time. But what we saw is when we started that award ceremony, people took on that identity. We had a lot of repeat award winners. And these people, when they win it it's almost like they become, I'm the sales rep of the year. I'm the top installer. You could see, and that's how they talk. That's how they want to be recognized. And we had guys already planning to win awards the next year. Okay, so super important. These awards, they're in recognition, they create identity. It's not just shouting people out. A lot of people, when they get recognized like that and they get up on a stage, creates an identity with them within themselves.
00:05:36
Speaker
So it's one point that's really important. Number two, awards retain your best people. I know companies that pay way less. Okay, not saying you should pay way less as a company, but my first company I was with, we were getting paid quite quite a bit less than bigger companies. You know, a lot the companies at the time, but I stayed at this company for a long time.
00:05:56
Speaker
probably should have left sooner, but I stayed at this company because they did do a good job at recognizing people. They created a good culture and I was staying for that. You should reward your people. You should pay them well, but culture and recognition, it can go a long ways, even if you're not the best at other areas and maybe you are paying slightly less.
00:06:15
Speaker
Pay your
Culture and Employee Loyalty
00:06:16
Speaker
people what they deserve, but... recognize them. And that goes for people that are leading teams. How can you recognize your people? Maybe you're not a manager yet. Maybe you're not making you know overrides off of people on your team. Maybe you're just leading a couple appointment setters or whatever level you're at. You can recognize people without spending money and you can create that culture within your team. So it's something to think about whether it's your first day or whether you're manager with 50 people on your team.
00:06:45
Speaker
You can do lot as far as recognition. And some of it includes money. Some of it's things you're spending on. But you can give awards without necessarily spending money. Hey, and another couple ah points with this. Public recognition multiplies performance, right? One award, it can impact everyone watching. and we see this We saw this on our cruise ship is we had a lot of reps as awards were being given out. got them, like, man, i'm going to be that rep this year.
00:07:13
Speaker
going to get that. I was sitting next to a few other managers where they didn't win the installer of the year, which is one of our awards. And a couple of them like that, that awards my next year. They're already talking about how they're going to get the award for the next year. it creates that competition and it multiplies the performance.
00:07:30
Speaker
And ah just people, if you do it right, they start thinking of how they're going to win the award for the next year. And so many people that got on stage at our events, they talked about how three, two, three years ago, they couldn't imagine winning something like this. But every time they went to these little award ceremonies and you know all it was, it was funny, our company would bring like trophies and actually hand them out. But this year being on a cruise ship was a little bit different. They didn't have the actual trophies. i don't know what you call it, plaques or whatever they give them for recognition.
00:08:01
Speaker
But they just had one that they use for photos. So people literally were just getting a photo with a little trophy that wasn't even theirs. And then they had to go down. They took the trophy back. ah But still, it created the same effect is people felt that recognition and just being on stage. They wanted to repeat that behavior. People that didn't win it, a lot of them were like, man, I can see myself winning that. a lot of people on stage mentioned how they just felt that FOMO, the fear of missing out on the award. award And it's something they put on their goal boards, their vision boards for the next year. And that's how they got it. ah
00:08:36
Speaker
Just imagining themselves on stage winning it for the next year. So if you do your awards, right, you can create that similar situation, get people fired up to go hit big awards in the coming years. So I'm going to go through a few awards that were given out at our event. Cool. You know, we rented out just the the main stage on the cruise ship we' we're on. We did one of those carnival cruises.
00:08:59
Speaker
So they had the main stage where they did like the bigger nightly events. They had, you know, some food before it was just like little appetizers, stuff like that. But then they branded it with all our company logos and stuff like that. Cool. They got it all decked out, you know, had everyone showed up in like suits and ah nice clothes. They rolled out the red carpet.
00:09:23
Speaker
They had the big banner where we went and got like professional photos and all that. So it was they made it an event. And it's something you can replicate whether you're a company of 10 people or 500 people.
00:09:36
Speaker
I think anyone can do this to a degree.
Introducing SolarScout Platform
00:09:38
Speaker
So some of you already know that I run my own door to door sales team here in San Diego. And as we are gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results. But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
00:09:54
Speaker
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. 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.
00:10:13
Speaker
It's been working for a lot of teams across the country and now I'm on board too. I'm going to be one of the first to use Solar Scout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up. But I told them, hey, I'm going to talk about Solar Scout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal. And they did.
00:10:28
Speaker
So go to solarscout.app forward slash Taylor and book a demo with them and you'll get 10% off your first month when you sign up. That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
00:10:40
Speaker
Okay, back to the show. When I first started, we did events at the owner's house. And me, i I run a smaller team within our organization. So we do events at my house. I bring people over so you don't have to rent out an entire cruise ship. So here's some of the awards that we recognized for our company. And ah you can you can do the same type of recognition for your company.
Awards and Recognition Strategies
00:11:04
Speaker
Probably the bigger one was sales rep of the year. Some of these awards were a little more subjective. Some were like achievement based, based on percentages and all that. So sellers are up at the year. I think it was a combination of, you know, installs, sales, and then just, you know, leading and other people. I think a combination of a few different metrics.
00:11:25
Speaker
So that was one big award they gave. Another award is Setter of the Year. And this is very important. If you're running a team, make sure you're recognizing. You shouldn't just recognize closers or experienced reps. You need to have awards for maybe newer people. um You know, I like to think of it as Maybe you have like a JV division or whatever, right? You think of high school sports when you're starting out.
00:11:50
Speaker
I mean, if you just put everyone in the same division, they're going to get destroyed, right? So maybe create a few different divisions. Our company, when we're running bigger competitions, we have league for... for bigger offices and a league for smaller offices. Now we see the bigger office leagues, it has you know bigger prizes and stuff like that. You want people feeling like they have a chance at winning the award. So very important, make sure you're recognizing your setters and people that maybe they're not experienced reps, you need awards for them too. So set of the year was a big one. Third one was best install percentage. And that was just pure metric based who had the best signed install ratio. so that was a good one.
00:12:29
Speaker
ah Top office of the year was the other one. This was just most, I think it was most installs, office with most installs. Could have been a combination as well. Some of these I'm not exactly sure how they determined. The top new office, this is a good one, depending how on um you know how large your company is. do you have new offices? This is just any office that was started in the year 2025, which one had the best performance. So that was cool to recognize a newer office within our company. Most improved office, you know most improved metrics, the one that had the biggest improvements.
00:13:03
Speaker
year over year. a few more subjective ones here. We had a level up award. This one was just someone that's, I think it was kind of like most improved player type award. So someone from one year to the next, how did they level up the most? It's probably based on a few different things besides just sales and installs, but Also, you know running teams, running ah setters, running on other reps. We had a Newcomer of the Year award. So this is any new rep in 2025 who had the best production, who had the best numbers.
00:13:33
Speaker
We had an award that was given for that. We had Installer of the Year. That was the sales rep that had the most installs in the calendar year. And then Culture Award. This is one that's a subjective award just given to someone that they saw, a manager that they saw have the best culture.
00:13:49
Speaker
in their office. So in our case, it was given to one of our regional managers, you know just highlighted some of the things that he did to create a culture within his office. I thought it was cool, he does. And all the top managers, they're doing ah similar awards like this within their offices. So this was a company wide award ceremony. But I thought it was really cool. This particular individual that won it, he he did his own award ceremony within his office.
00:14:16
Speaker
And so like I was saying before, is um even if your company does a bigger award ceremony, maybe you're a pretty large company like myself. is you can do a smaller award ceremony within your office.
00:14:27
Speaker
Hey, because obviously, you know, company like ours, three, 400 reps, there are a lot of people that weren't recognized. Maybe you're doing a smaller award ceremony within your office at like a Christmas party. I know that i know that's what this guy did.
00:14:40
Speaker
it sounds cool. ah Culture award, we had a recruiter of the year. It's the person that just recruited on board of the most reps for the year. we had impact award. and This one was given to my buddy Mike Brand been on the podcast.
00:14:55
Speaker
But Mike, he made a massive impact just as far as like changing some um some operations around our installer and um helping us set up like a gifting system for our customers and getting people more bought into using our own installer.
00:15:11
Speaker
and We have a few different installers, but he yeah made a big impact around that. So he got that award. Last couple of awards, we had manager of the year. That one not exactly sure how they determined it. you know Recognize some of the top managers.
00:15:25
Speaker
And then another cool award that I don't see a ton of companies do is an install club award. So we had my guy Ashton Buswell. He's um you know just one of the longest standing guys in the industry. He hit a thousand installs with um the same company, which is super impressive. Shout out to Ashton.
00:15:45
Speaker
But our art company, they recognize, I think they do 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, a thousand installs. So they have awards and recognitions for those people.
00:15:56
Speaker
And then um the last couple of awards they gave were some Hall of Fame awards, which were pretty cool. And that's just recognizing um some managers within our company. and they had You have to be at the company four years minimum, have to have won major competitions at the company.
00:16:12
Speaker
and have to have made a big impact at the company. So I thought that was a cool recognition to give as well. Hey, so um hopefully that gives you some ideas for awards you can do for your guys.
Personal Motivation and Goals
00:16:23
Speaker
you're not already recognizing your reps, make sure you're keeping track of these metrics. I would do smaller quarterly recognitions, and do like a bigger yearly award ceremony. If you haven't done one for the year 2025, it's not too late.
00:16:36
Speaker
Even if it's just maybe youre recognizing people on a call, That's one thing I've learned from a lot of leaders I'm surrounded by is just recognition just builds so much great culture.
00:16:47
Speaker
People feel so honored and um they want to stay when they're feeling valued, when they're feeling recognized. So if you are leading people or if you're leading even one person, then yeah.
00:16:59
Speaker
right recognize your people. And even if you're leading nobody, recognize yourself. What awards can you set for yourself ifve if you out and hit your numbers this month, this week, this quarter?
00:17:10
Speaker
Set yourself some personal awards that you're going to give yourself. yeah um I know... and guys like, I heard this from Ed Mila, I think it was the first guy I heard of it, but he would when he was starting out in like financial sales, he would go stay at a five-star resort for a weekend when he hit his numbers for the quarter.
00:17:31
Speaker
And he was surrounded by people that had a lot of money, And he was seeing himself, you know, being like a high earner, even though he wasn't earning that much money back then. So I hope some of these things help. Go send this to your teams, people that need to be recognized.
00:17:45
Speaker
um I hope you can get some value from this. And please send me topics or guests that you would like to see on the podcast for this new year. So go out and crush it. Let's bill start the year with some momentum and we'll see you on the next episode.
Announcing Solcitee Platform
00:18:00
Speaker
Hey, solopreneurs, quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day.
00:18:11
Speaker
For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry. And it's called Solcitee.
00:18:36
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
00:18:55
Speaker
Currently, SoulCity is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled. So go to SoulCity.co to learn more and join the learning experience now. This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to SoulCity.co and join. We'll see you on the inside.