Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong. went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in the year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
Speaker: I teach you avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
Speaker: What is a solopreneur, you might ask? solopreneur is a new breed of solopro that is willing to do whatever it takes to defeat mastery, and you are about to become one. Hey, what's going on, solopreneurs? Today, we're going to be talking about the relation of Paul Revere with sales.
Speaker: It's a very important holiday today, Memorial Day. Shout out to all the people that have served our country. Great day. And we're going to tie in some American spirits with how we can sell a lot of solar accounts.
Speaker: yeah So welcome to the show. My name is Taylor Armstrong. We're here here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and have a much better time in the solar industry. I hope you're doing awesome, whether you're listening to this on Memorial Day today.
Speaker: after you're going to learn some great things today. Okay, so before we get started, please, if you have not yet, go leave us a review. um That is all we ask for the show, right?
Speaker: We rarely run bunch of ads. We're one not one of those shows where we spend 30 minutes of ads before you even get in the content. So ah please go leave us a review.
Speaker: That's what makes this show possible. share the show and it's going to bring some good karma, bring you some extra sales this week. So please go do that if you have not yet. So getting to the topic of today, this morning I was asked to do a little kickoff call for our team here in San Diego and i did it on Memorial Day, which many of us know it's one of the best days for sales.
Speaker: People are happy, people are home. It's a gifted ah free Saturday. It's like a repeat of Saturday. ah Everyone's home. a lot of people are doing barbecues and a lot of people are in the buying mood.
Speaker: So we talked about how we can get out there with urgency and spread the good word of solar. so I'm going to share with you a few stories that we told from the call this morning that I did for our team here in San Diego.
Speaker: Feel free to share this with your team so you can steal my training. Go get it to your team's. We like to do, ah we call them pump up calls. So Saturdays, maybe holidays, days where we want our team to get out there early and just kind of a wake up call for everyone. We do these calls at 9 a.m.
Speaker: And then we expect everyone to head right to the doors after, if not be, you know, parked in their area and ready to go. So this morning i was up for that call. Okay. And so I shared...
Speaker: um keeping on theme with urgency, right? If you haven't listened to the previous episode, you know, we got some stuff going on in the government here that could drastically be changing solar. So what better time to have urgency? What better time to ah spread the word to as many people as possible, because they may not have a chance to go solar as it is, right? We may be losing tax credits,
Speaker: We may be seeing drastically increased EPCs, um commissions going down. so we need to get out there. We need to spread the good word. And that's where Paul Revere comes in. Okay, so I told this story this morning, but a couple things i didn't even know about this guy. um So he was, many people know him as the guy that went and just yelled, British are coming, British are coming, British are coming. But there's a few, excuse me, misconceptions about that.
Speaker: So this happened in April 18th, 1775. And Paul Revere, he rode from Boston to Lexington to warn the colonial militias that British troops were on the move, signaling the start of the American Revolution.
Speaker: He didn't shout, the British are coming. Because most colonists still consider themselves British. Instead, he likely said something like the regulars are coming out. So fun fact, did not know that. Everyone thought he just yelled the British are coming.
Speaker: And um but you got to believe he was out there all night spreading the word. He didn't stop and he had extreme urgency. So the message to my team this morning and the message to everyone listening to this podcast is, are you spreading the urgency the same way Paul Revere is or did?
Speaker: ah do you feel like you're Paul Revere? Are you going out with such urgency that you're willing to go out all night long and spread the message of solar? Maybe don't dock doors all night long, but... It's the the right mindset to have. And that's what's going to allow you to work harder, the message to many these people possible, help as many people as possible before a lot of these incentives are gone.
Speaker: And so there's a couple principles that I think are extremely important that we can learn from paul Revere. Okay, number one, urgency. right As I mentioned, this guy, he wrote all night long. He knew that if he didn't get the message out now, it could be a matter of life or death for these people. And solar, although it's probably not life or death, it is like the question of okay, ah saving money now or not saving money in most cases, getting a really good tax bill. benefit tax credit, we're not getting it.
Speaker: So I love how Michael O'Donnell explains this. And actually, I think he was the first one that kind of gave this comparison of Paul Revere. But he likes to say that the utility is the government is pointing a gun to our heads and they're about to pull the trigger.
Speaker: So it's not us with the urgency. It's the utilities. It's the government. They're the ones that are cutting the incentives. They're the ones that are cutting the ways we have to help people. So use that to your advantage, right? All night long and use this external urgency urgency we have to close more deals than ever than you ever have before. Okay, the second principle, and this is another thing that I didn't know before, is when Paul Revere was out there, he was talking to the most important people first.
Speaker: yeah He didn't just go to every single door. He was talking to like people like John Hancock, Samuel Adams, specific leaders because he knew if you went to these people first, um it was going to have a trickle down effect.
Speaker: So for you and yourselves, are you talking to the people you should be talking to? How many times are you wasting the moments with, you know, maybe the 80 year old grandma that is no way never going to go slower?
Speaker: Or maybe the renters that they say they know the owner that they can talk them into that you just spent an hour with, but it went nowhere, right? So it's more important than ever to be efficient with your time.
Speaker: Make sure you're talking to decision makers. Make sure you're getting all people in the appointments, not just meeting with one-leggers, okay? Because just like... Paul Revere, you need to talk to the most important people.
Speaker: You need to talk to the people that will have the trickle down effects and spread the word, right? Because if you do it right, then this can be a domino effect. I had a a lady from today that I sold, actually. Today, Memorial Day.
Speaker: And we got her signed up. I explained to her the urgency of the situation and she understood it. She's now talking to six referrals that she gave. She's going to let them know the same thing.
Speaker: And um I thought it was great that it had a trickle down effect with her. So do the same thing. ah Make sure people understand the urgency of the situation and make sure you're spending your time with decision makers, the most important people. The third lesson is just be the be the person that people can trust.
Speaker: ah So Paul Revere, he was chosen because people trusted him. um Other people wrote, too. We don't hear about really other people writing, but we hear about Paul Revere because he was the trusted messenger.
Speaker: So be the rep that shows up, follow through with with with what you say. um it will build you a book of business and not just like a single cell. um And it's something I strive to do in my cells.
Speaker: um Some of you know that we have we have chickens at our place. We got 14 chickens that laying eggs. And so I tell a lot of my you know, people I meet with, hey, we got chickens. It's fun.
Speaker: They're laying eggs, all this and that. And, um you know, another a family I served a few weeks ago, they ah they thought it was so cool. We had chickens and um they're like, oh, that would be awesome get eggs.
Speaker: So I offered to bring him eggs, some eggs. And um I'll be honest, actually forgot. um But he called me and he's like, he asked about the chickens again. I'm like, oh, yeah, I promised him eggs.
Speaker: So I did go and bring him eggs the next day. But um it's just a reminder to me, if you say you're going to do something, follow through with it. And that goes for people that are leading teams. That goes for managers. Nothing worse than having to beg for incentives than having to beg your manager for something they told you they're going to do.
Speaker: It's just one of the worst feelings that I've had with managers that didn't follow through on their word. So make sure as a sales rep, as a leader, um as a person that's serving the families we're meeting with, follow through on your promises, just like Paul Revere did.
Speaker: and So I hope you used today. We're recording this after Memorial Day. now, but I hope you used today if you were out there on Memorial Day um to build some urgency, create some incentives around it.
Speaker: um I told my whole team this, but when we when I was selling pest control, we loved holidays like this because we would say, hey today's the Memorial Day special. If you do it today, we're actually doing it at a massive discount as we're helping a bunch of people. Most of the time was the same discount on um But you can create the same thing, create some sort of incentive because people know that around holidays, a lot of times a lot of times there are discounts, there are extra incentives that they're getting if they take action today.
Speaker: So maybe you're giving them a TV, maybe you're giving them three, four, five, six months of free power. Whatever incentive you want to create, that's the beauty of our job. That's our beauty. That's the beauty of being a sales professional is we can create our own incentives and we can make things happen. So get creative with it.
Speaker: Have fun out there. Be like Paul Revere. That's the theme of today's episode. Spread this message to your team, to anyone listening, especially as a you know the circumstances are changing with ah the bill that was passed. We don't know what's going happen. So spread that urgency.
Speaker: Be like Paul Revere. be trusted like him, ah spread urgency like him, create a domino effect like him, and ah talk to the most important people just like Paul Revere did.
Speaker: So I hope this message resonates with you today. Stay tuned. We got some incredible guests coming up and thank you for tuning in. Happy selling this week and we'll see you on the next episode. So some of you already know that I run my own door to door sales team here in San Diego.
Speaker: And as we are gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results. But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
Speaker: Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout, but it's not a door knocking app. It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market. It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later canceled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given neighborhood.
Speaker: It's been working for a lot of teams across the country and now I'm on board too. I'm going to be one of the first 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.
Speaker: So go to solarscout.app forward slash Taylor and book a demo with them and you'll get 10% off your first month when you sign up. That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
Speaker: Okay, back to the show.
Speaker: What's up, solopreneurs? Hope you enjoyed the episode. 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.
Speaker: One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start? What episodes should I listen to in the podcast? You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
Speaker: 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.
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.
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.
