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 fail.
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 solopreneur you might ask?
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: What's going on, Solopreneurs?
Speaker: Today, we're going to be talking about a secret that so many doorknockers that I see overlook.
Speaker: And you might know this, but a lot of people are overlooking this.
Speaker: So we're going to get into it.
Speaker: I'm going to tell you what it is, but welcome to the show.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: We're coming up on my favorite season of doorknocking, and that is October 1st.
Speaker: that is around Halloween.
Speaker: Love it because people think you're trick or treating.
Speaker: They answer the door.
Speaker: But more than that, I love it because you got like the people that have the insane Halloween decorations.
Speaker: Generally, I feel like people are just friendlier towards door knockers.
Speaker: The one downside is it does start to get dark a lot earlier, especially as we come up on daylight savings time, which I think is in November.
Speaker: But hey, we can knock in the dark.
Speaker: We can do hard things.
Speaker: I see a lot of people, they just give up when it gets dark.
Speaker: So you got to learn to knock in the dark.
Speaker: You got to learn to prospect when things are uncomfortable, even if you aren't door knocking.
Speaker: Never going to be perfectly comfortable to prospect.
Speaker: But whenever you're listening to this, hope you're doing awesome.
Speaker: Hope you're closing tons of deals.
Speaker: And remember, we are free and available on Apple, iTunes, iTunes,
Speaker: or Spotify, wherever you can find podcasts, also on YouTube.
Speaker: And we'd love to hear where you're listening.
Speaker: So shoot us a message.
Speaker: I know we've got some people that like the video YouTube content.
Speaker: So we're trying to grow that, get some more video content out there.
Speaker: But either way, hope if you have not, you can take the time to share the show.
Speaker: leave us a review if you haven't.
Speaker: And that is really the main thing we ask for the podcast.
Speaker: Hey, but so today's topic, the reason I thought about this is, well, it stems from an experience I had a couple years back was knocking with my boy, Nick Finger.
Speaker: Shout out to Nick Finger.
Speaker: He's listening to this.
Speaker: He's at a company called Voltaic and had a great time working with those guys.
Speaker: So shoot him a follow if you're not following him.
Speaker: But
Speaker: I was knocking with them.
Speaker: We're on a little blitz up in Victorville, California, out in the desert.
Speaker: And I remember we were driving in this Tesla.
Speaker: I'm thinking we've got our segues in there.
Speaker: We're about to get out, start hitting the turf.
Speaker: And then all of a sudden he pulls over in front of this house where the homeowner had just barely pulled in, was getting out of their car.
Speaker: I'm like, what are we doing?
Speaker: He's like, we're going to talk to this guy.
Speaker: He rolls down his window and just starts presenting to this guy, pitching this guy from his car.
Speaker: He rolls down the window and his first words were like, hey, we're waiting for you to get home.
Speaker: You finally made a bet.
Speaker: And I thought that was a great little...
Speaker: Break the preoccupation.
Speaker: Great little icebreaker.
Speaker: Homeowner is like, what?
Speaker: What are you talking about?
Speaker: All confused.
Speaker: Goes into his presentation.
Speaker: Doesn't end up getting too far with it.
Speaker: But this was the first time I'd seen someone just like roll up on someone that literally pulled up in their driveway and try to get an appointment.
Speaker: So the secret is...
Speaker: And the topic of this episode is we need to not be afraid to just talk to people wherever they are.
Speaker: And more specifically, as we're knocking doors, we need to not be afraid of people in the yard, people pulling up in their driveway, people outside, people watering their garden, whatever.
Speaker: Because so many times I see newer reps and even experienced reps, guys that have been knocking for a while.
Speaker: It's like they see someone just pulling up.
Speaker: They see someone outside talking to their friend and they skip these doors.
Speaker: Because they're like, oh, you know, I'm going to be bothering them.
Speaker: I'm just going to go to the other ones.
Speaker: And in the meantime, what happens is the person that was in the yard, they see you go knock all the other homes.
Speaker: And then they're like, oh, this guy's a door knocker.
Speaker: When he comes to my house, I know I'm not going to answer that door.
Speaker: True story has happened, I think, a lot of times to me.
Speaker: And so it took me a while to realize this.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: A lot of us, I would do it to an extent, but you got to be bold out there.
Speaker: You got to be not afraid to just roll up on people and show up.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And the other thing that reminded me of this, you know, I learned from guys like Nick Finger, another guy that kind of like made me realize the importance of this is Jason Newby.
Speaker: He was one of the greats in alarms, one of the old school Vivint guys.
Speaker: He would tell us stories all the time of when selling alarms and
Speaker: especially those like earlier afternoon hours.
Speaker: He would literally just drive to doors where people were out friends or where garages were open.
Speaker: So, you know, a whole multitude of reasons why it's a really smart idea to do it.
Speaker: As a matter of fact, let me just give you some of those reasons.
Speaker: Hey, some of these...
Speaker: You kind of obvious, but I asked chat GPT, chat GPT.
Speaker: I think it's four is the version they're on now.
Speaker: I asked like, what's why is it important to catch people outside?
Speaker: I did a little training on this and the slide I put was catch me outside.
Speaker: How about that?
Speaker: Maybe you guys have seen that YouTube video.
Speaker: If not, look it up.
Speaker: Catch me outside.
Speaker: How about that?
Speaker: But the reasons, according to ChatGPT, it's like you get higher engagement rates, right?
Speaker: People are already outside.
Speaker: They're in an open mindset, making them more approachable should be kind of obvious, right?
Speaker: Increased visibility and credibility.
Speaker: Feel like you're part of the neighborhood when you're out there.
Speaker: Positive initial impressions.
Speaker: You're not interrupting as much typically.
Speaker: It's a more positive impression when you just catch them outside rather than potentially interrupting their dinner or whatever they're doing inside.
Speaker: higher lead conversions,
Speaker: High community referrals.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, the stat here, it says studies and field sales show that casual interactions in a community setting can have a 40% higher lead conversion rate than cold door knocking alone because these interactions feel more natural and less forced.
Speaker: Okay, so sounds pretty legit to me.
Speaker: Chat's UPT, it's got to be true, right?
Speaker: But 40% higher lead conversion rate.
Speaker: How many of you want 40% more conversions on your leads?
Speaker: I'd take that.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market.
Speaker: It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later cancelled 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.
Speaker: I'm going to be one of the first to use Solar Scout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up.
Speaker: But I told them, hey, I'm going to talk about Solar Scout on my show.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
Speaker: Okay, back to the show.
Speaker: Hey, so if you are not catching people outside, if you are scared to just talk to someone that's out front of their house, if you find yourself skipping those doors, think again and train your guys on this.
Speaker: Train your people because I guarantee there's newer door knockers
Speaker: There's even experienced door knockers that are like overlooking this and they're just jumping to close doors.
Speaker: And I've trained a lot of guys where I've actually like seen what they're doing when I'm not shadowing.
Speaker: And some of these people will just clock in, feel like they're working in their head and they'll purposely go to doors where it seems like no one's home.
Speaker: I know it sounds crazy, but especially we were running like a setter closer program where people were paid.
Speaker: They were paid like a small amount hourly and they would do this.
Speaker: That's why I don't recommend paying people hourly, right?
Speaker: Paying per appointment or something.
Speaker: So you don't want people just like going door to door and feeling like they're working and, you know, purposely skipping homes, things like that.
Speaker: Okay, so yeah, and then it's like another strategy.
Speaker: Again, like going to homes with doors open.
Speaker: Yesterday, matter of fact, I actually got a deal where the lady was outside of watering her garden.
Speaker: So this is another thing.
Speaker: Maybe you're like on a side street.
Speaker: I was actually
Speaker: These were like townhome type things.
Speaker: And I was on the house.
Speaker: It was like a unit in front of it.
Speaker: But to the side, these fences weren't super high.
Speaker: So I saw behind the fence, this lady was just watering her plants, watering her garden.
Speaker: So I'm like, sweet, there you go.
Speaker: Free conversation.
Speaker: It's a free conversation.
Speaker: If someone's out there, you don't have to go burn through five doors to get that.
Speaker: So I go talk to her, turns into a great conversation, goes exactly how chat GPT said it would go.
Speaker: She's more open, ended up getting a deal out of it, locked and loaded.
Speaker: And this was like probably three hours worth of work, right?
Speaker: And set the appointments and closed her right after that.
Speaker: So, yeah, just goes to show, like, make sure you are having those interactions.
Speaker: Another thing that you can do is look for potential referral partners out there.
Speaker: Hey, I have another friend that I go knock with.
Speaker: from time to time.
Speaker: Shout out to Mike Ujoa.
Speaker: But he introduced this to me.
Speaker: He would go and we'd be in his truck, you know, driving to the area.
Speaker: And we would occasionally see people out, you know, like workers doing landscaping or handyman, stuff like that.
Speaker: And something I learned from Mike is he stops at all these people and
Speaker: all these workers, and he pitches them on becoming referral partners.
Speaker: So he has like some promotional material, he grabs a number, exchanges contact information.
Speaker: And I know he's gotten several referrals and created some great partnerships from doing this.
Speaker: Okay, so this is another thing.
Speaker: How often are we overlooking opportunities like that?
Speaker: Maybe there's people who are in front of homeowners all day long.
Speaker: that they could be your referral partner.
Speaker: But why aren't you presenting to them when you're out driving around?
Speaker: Why aren't you stopping for those people?
Speaker: So look for things like that and just be bold out there.
Speaker: Hey, I love something I coach my reps on.
Speaker: I was with a newer guy just a few weeks ago.
Speaker: And this guy, he's a pretty experienced door knocker.
Speaker: But we go up, we're knocking together for a little bit.
Speaker: one of the first doors, he saw someone outside and he's like, Oh, we'll come back to that one.
Speaker: I'm like, no, dude, let's knock it.
Speaker: They're out front.
Speaker: They're in the garage.
Speaker: I ended up setting this appointment.
Speaker: Didn't close.
Speaker: Um, but I had a great conversation with them in her garage and what, um,
Speaker: Well, my friend in this will, if you're listening to this, I know he learned his lesson.
Speaker: But what we'll learn is that I think he had it in his head that we're like interrupting people because this this lady, she was actually working on her car in the garage.
Speaker: So Will, he was thinking, we're going to interrupt her.
Speaker: She's busy right now.
Speaker: She can't talk.
Speaker: She's working.
Speaker: And sometimes it's these stories we tell ourselves in our head, right?
Speaker: Oh, they're busy.
Speaker: Oh, they're talking to their friends.
Speaker: Oh, they're on the phone.
Speaker: Oh, they're like, we create these stories in our head that just are not true most of the time.
Speaker: It's like whatever we tell ourselves in our head, it's going to be manifested.
Speaker: So instead of creating this image that you're bugging people, you're bothering people, what I tell all my reps is like, hey, think you're the UPS guy.
Speaker: Think you're the FedEx driver.
Speaker: Because have you ever met a FedEx driver that rolled up on a house and saw the homeowner out front?
Speaker: Like, oh,
Speaker: You know, it looks like they're busy.
Speaker: I'm going to come back to this house.
Speaker: No, they grab the package.
Speaker: They go out front.
Speaker: They get the signature, whatever they need to do.
Speaker: They don't think twice about it.
Speaker: And neither should we.
Speaker: And that's why I love using apps that have like the name, too, because you can have that same persona.
Speaker: You can have that same mindset.
Speaker: And it's like you walk up, even if it seems like you could be interrupting something.
Speaker: You got a job to do.
Speaker: You got an important thing, an important message to share.
Speaker: You've got something that can literally save them tens of thousands of dollars for
Speaker: over their time as a homeowner.
Speaker: So think of that next time.
Speaker: Be bold out there because you know you've got a product that can change their lives in a lot of cases.
Speaker: That's how I feel about this and that's how you need to feel too.
Speaker: So if you have that same conviction, I think it's going to eliminate a lot of this fear, a lot of these negative stories we tell ourselves as we're out door knocking.
Speaker: So I hope this inspired you.
Speaker: Stop skipping doors where people are outside.
Speaker: You're leaving money on the table.
Speaker: You're not talking to people that need to be talked to that need to hear the message of solar.
Speaker: And then speaking of referral partners, hey, we have someone coming up on the podcast this next episode that I think has mastered working with referral partners and just mastering the game.
Speaker: of getting leads and getting referrals.
Speaker: His name is John Brunazzo, Jonathan Brunazzo.
Speaker: He is, I think he's pretty much every year been one of the top reps over at Power.
Speaker: Everyone should know Power, solar company, great company.
Speaker: But a lot of these guys are really good at setting up referral partnerships and working leads like that.
Speaker: They're not as big.
Speaker: They do have people that knock doors, but they have a unique way of getting leads that I think some of us who only door knock don't do enough of.
Speaker: So you're not going to want to miss this episode with John Brunazzo.
Speaker: Make sure you tune in.
Speaker: It's coming up on the next podcast.
Speaker: Thank you for listening.
Speaker: Thank you for sharing.
Speaker: Send this to someone who needs help.
Speaker: with this or can use some inspiration.
Speaker: And remember, if you're looking for a team to join, we've got a few spots open.
Speaker: Click the link below to apply to join our team and sell with the best of the best in Southern California.
Speaker: We'll see you on the next one.
Speaker: What's up, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Hope you enjoyed the episode.
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.
Speaker: One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start?
Speaker: What episodes should I listen to in the podcast?
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: So go download it right now.
Speaker: It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs.
Speaker: We will have that in the show notes.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: That's going to show you how.
Speaker: So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.
