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The Power of Simplicity in Solar - Scott Hyde
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Transcript
Taylor Armstrong's Solar Success Story
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
00:00:08
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
00:00:10
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.
00:00:19
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.
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a solopreneur, you might ask?
00:00:33
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.
Introducing Scott Hyde
00:00:43
Speaker
All right, what's going on?
00:00:43
Speaker
We are here in the studio with the one, the only, Mr. Scott Hyde.
00:00:48
Speaker
Thanks for coming on the podcast with us today, Scott.
00:00:50
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:51
Speaker
Happy to be here.
00:00:52
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm excited.
00:00:53
Speaker
We've been planning this for a little while now.
00:00:55
Speaker
It's taking a little bit to get our schedules aligned.
00:00:58
Speaker
But Scott, if you don't know him, this guy is doing incredible things.
00:01:01
Speaker
He is running Sunobi, which is, in my opinion, probably the best solar design software.
00:01:08
Speaker
It changed the game for me.
00:01:09
Speaker
I'm just being able to do same-day accounts, sign people, get a design right off the bat.
00:01:15
Speaker
And it's crazy because you think back like, I don't know, 10 years ago, Scott, like people were waiting days for designs and there's no way you're getting it.
00:01:24
Speaker
And you guys changed all this.
00:01:25
Speaker
So I'm excited to hear how that idea formed.
00:01:28
Speaker
And also you're running Coda Energy, Coda Energy, right?
00:01:32
Speaker
Yep.
00:01:32
Speaker
Coda Energy Group.
00:01:33
Speaker
Yep.
00:01:33
Speaker
Coda Energy Group.
00:01:34
Speaker
Yep.
00:01:35
Speaker
So, yeah, we're going to be diving into all that.
00:01:36
Speaker
And you're CEO of both Sonobi and CODA?
00:01:42
Speaker
CEO of Sonobi and CRO of CODA.
00:01:45
Speaker
Okay.
00:01:47
Speaker
Pretty legit titles.
00:01:48
Speaker
Good stuff.
00:01:49
Speaker
I'm excited to jump into it here in the background.
00:01:51
Speaker
And, yeah, we'll see where this goes.
00:01:53
Speaker
And I know you've got experience just pretty much every aspect of solar.
00:01:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:57
Speaker
Let's do it.
00:01:58
Speaker
So, yeah, do you want to give us kind of the background, Scott, of your solar journey, how long you've been in this industry
Scott's Transition to Solar
00:02:05
Speaker
and all that?
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, so 2013, 2014, I was working for Protection One, which at that time was a division really of Pinnacle.
00:02:13
Speaker
So I came from the Pinnacle Tree.
00:02:14
Speaker
All those door-to-door guys who were wondering what side of the fence he came on, I...
00:02:18
Speaker
Okay.
00:02:18
Speaker
I was on the pinnacle side and I was living in Seattle.
00:02:22
Speaker
I was never the guy to go do summer sales, mainly because I had kids.
00:02:28
Speaker
I didn't really want to go to some random luck of the draw city.
00:02:31
Speaker
So I was just stayed put and worked year round selling alarms.
00:02:34
Speaker
And then one day, you know, my regional manager came and said, Hey, do you know that they're, they're, they're thinking about doing solar in San Diego?
00:02:42
Speaker
And I was like, what's solar?
00:02:44
Speaker
And, but I was like, San Diego sounds great.
00:02:47
Speaker
I just was tired of being rained on all the time.
00:02:49
Speaker
So we went down to San Diego and I was one of the first 10 guys to start a company called bright energy, which was a protection one's initial entrance into the market.
00:03:00
Speaker
Then they later got purchased.
00:03:02
Speaker
in a in a roll up there with ADT and so bright energy kind of fell apart I well fell apart probably not the right word but bright energy definitely was purchased in that in that roll up with ADT but they disbanded the solar portion ironically you know years later just now about a year ago you know ADT bought SunPro and now they're back in in the same management group who was in charge of that is now in charge of SunPro which is interesting so
00:03:27
Speaker
So from there, I, you know, I, I never left California.
00:03:30
Speaker
Once I got down here, I moved my family down and opened a few offices for bright
Founding CODA Energy Group
00:03:34
Speaker
energy.
00:03:34
Speaker
We were selling sun Edison leases at the time is the only thing we could sell.
00:03:38
Speaker
And since you brought up like same day designs and proposals back then, um, we would have to sell a site survey before we could get a design.
00:03:48
Speaker
So we'd go to the house and we'd say,
00:03:50
Speaker
Hey, you know, we want to get you going for solar, but in order to get an accurate proposal, we need to do a site survey on your roof.
00:03:58
Speaker
We'd have to get them to sign off on this thing that essentially we do roof penetrations during the site survey.
00:04:04
Speaker
It was nuts.
00:04:06
Speaker
So we get the site survey done and then we'd schedule an appointment for the next week because the site survey have to come back.
00:04:12
Speaker
You know, they do the site survey and they have to come back and do a design proposal for us.
00:04:15
Speaker
And, you know, we sold same day site surveys.
00:04:19
Speaker
Which is a really kind of an interesting approach where we had all these fans just waiting around for us to go slam site surveys.
00:04:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:27
Speaker
And then we'd go back and sell these leases.
00:04:29
Speaker
And that was the beginning.
00:04:30
Speaker
And then when that kind of fell apart and I was looking for a new place, I interviewed with a handful of companies, ended up with...
00:04:37
Speaker
uh, Vision Solar.
00:04:39
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:39
Speaker
Who later became ION and I was the director of sales for all of California for there.
00:04:43
Speaker
And, um, I worked with a couple of really great people, Christian Rohde and Jeremy call were guys I was working with.
00:04:49
Speaker
They were fantastic.
00:04:50
Speaker
And, um,
00:04:51
Speaker
And they left California.
00:04:53
Speaker
And when they left, I had this decision to either follow them somewhere else and go to a new market, uproot my family again, and I just didn't wanna do that.
00:05:03
Speaker
Or I had to find something else.
00:05:04
Speaker
And so I started a dealer program.
00:05:07
Speaker
I was a sales org.
00:05:09
Speaker
And that's how CODA began.
00:05:11
Speaker
So it was, you know, we didn't start it because it was just this itch that we had to go create our own business.
00:05:17
Speaker
We started because we had to, it was out of necessity.
00:05:20
Speaker
More than anything else.
00:05:21
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:22
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:05:22
Speaker
So when, how long ago was that?
00:05:24
Speaker
You started Kona?
00:05:25
Speaker
2018.
00:05:25
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:27
Speaker
Started.
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:28
Speaker
And again, we were just a sales org to begin with.
00:05:31
Speaker
We were, we were sending deals all over California to lots of different EPCs.
00:05:36
Speaker
And at the time we were kind of just testing everybody out to find out who was good and who wasn't.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:42
Speaker
And we learned a lot of things about what kind of EPCs we wanted to partner with.
00:05:46
Speaker
And obviously that led to what kind of EPC we want to create our own.
00:05:49
Speaker
But at the time we didn't necessarily know that it wasn't necessarily our plan.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:54
Speaker
And, um, at one point we represented something like 70, 80% of the volume for a company called ESP energy service partners.
Becoming a Fully Integrated EPC
00:06:03
Speaker
And, um, when we, we went to, well, what's now called RE plus, but we went to, it was, um, I don't know why I'm spaced the name of it now, but now it's called RE plus.
00:06:13
Speaker
And we went to the show in 2017, I guess.
00:06:18
Speaker
And, uh, we had dinner with Hayes Barnard.
00:06:20
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:06:22
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:22
Speaker
And, uh,
00:06:23
Speaker
It was in Salt Lake and we were having dinner and we were just going over kind of the way the industry was structured.
00:06:28
Speaker
And I remember he and I were having this kind of, what at the time felt like a really deep intellectual conversation.
00:06:33
Speaker
I'm sure it was just like surface level stuff for Hayes.
00:06:36
Speaker
But for me, it was like, yeah, I'm getting into the deep stuff.
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:40
Speaker
But we were talking about all, you know, the way the industry was going to go and how people would be successful, how it was going to change.
00:06:46
Speaker
And we realized in that conversation that, you know, for us, it made more sense for us to be an EPC, a fully integrated company.
00:06:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:53
Speaker
And so we made a decision that night that we were going to go pursue being an EPC.
00:06:58
Speaker
Wow.
00:06:59
Speaker
So we announced it to, uh, to ESP.
00:07:02
Speaker
That's what we were going to do.
00:07:03
Speaker
And, uh, that breakup was challenging.
00:07:06
Speaker
Damn it.
00:07:08
Speaker
Um,
00:07:10
Speaker
And then, you know, in 2020 is when we first started doing installs.
00:07:14
Speaker
Okay.
00:07:15
Speaker
I don't know if anyone remembers what happened in 2020, but.
00:07:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:18
Speaker
Tough time to start.
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:20
Speaker
And the best part was we started in the Bay Area, which was...
00:07:25
Speaker
Not like the most profitable center.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:28
Speaker
And man, it was brutal.
00:07:30
Speaker
I mean, you know, COVID started right away and we were trying to make it work in the middle of that.
00:07:35
Speaker
So to kind of come out of 2020 and start an EPC that same time, it really tested a lot of what we believed we knew and found out how much we just didn't know.
00:07:46
Speaker
And it was, it was a challenge, but I'm really grateful for that because it helped us kind of tighten our belt a little bit and
00:07:52
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:07:54
Speaker
How come you started in the Bay Area instead of down here in San Diego?
00:07:58
Speaker
We had a really, really powerful sales team up there that was doing a lot of volume for us.
00:08:02
Speaker
And so we felt like, you know, we wanted to be in a place where we had consistent installs.
00:08:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:08:08
Speaker
And we just had a really strong team there.
00:08:09
Speaker
And, you know, I wish that we'd had stronger teams on their markets.
00:08:13
Speaker
You know, in hindsight, it would have been great if we had a strong team in Dallas or something, you know, that just has massive system sizes and all the economics seem to be better.
00:08:19
Speaker
For sure.
00:08:20
Speaker
Anyway.
00:08:21
Speaker
So, yeah, do you have, well, were they still a strong sales team, like start of COVID?
00:08:25
Speaker
Were they still going strong?
00:08:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we had, you know, obviously we had to kind of change our tactics because you weren't, you know, California had the strictest laws or whatever around measures, I should say, around because they certainly weren't laws, but.
00:08:40
Speaker
measures around COVID.
00:08:41
Speaker
So a lot of our guys had to transition over to telesales type of things.
00:08:45
Speaker
And that was harder because our guys weren't used to doing that.
00:08:49
Speaker
We found success.
00:08:50
Speaker
And, you know, I think that like anything, once you find someone who does something that no one else has done yet, at least in your own company,
00:08:57
Speaker
All of a sudden, everyone's like, oh, I can do that.
00:08:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:00
Speaker
And it's the Roger Maris four-minute mile kind of effect.
00:09:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:04
Speaker
It was great.
00:09:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:06
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:09:07
Speaker
Well, that's cool.
00:09:08
Speaker
And, yeah, we heard, you know, Hayes Barnard talk at SolarCon, too, just barely.
00:09:13
Speaker
And, yeah, I mean, he
The Importance of Vertical Integration
00:09:14
Speaker
has a visionary.
00:09:15
Speaker
Pretty crazy stuff he gets into.
00:09:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:17
Speaker
But I'm curious, so what did he tell us?
00:09:19
Speaker
Was it something that specifically he said that's like, oh, this is something like ClickDrag.
00:09:23
Speaker
Okay, I'm going to start it based off something he said.
00:09:25
Speaker
Are we already kind of leaning towards doing that before?
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question.
00:09:29
Speaker
I mean, we, you know, for us, it was more about what our long-term goals were as a company.
00:09:34
Speaker
And we wanted to create generational wealth and a company that we could have, if they so chose, our own kids could be involved in.
00:09:43
Speaker
And that it's not impossible to do with the sales org, but there's less intrinsic value in an organization that's just based on sales because it's really just a band of merry mercenaries together.
00:09:55
Speaker
And if you create a vertically integrated company, it allows you to have greater value.
00:09:59
Speaker
as a whole.
00:09:59
Speaker
So, you know, if we wanted to create more opportunities, more jobs, more, you know, just real value in a company, you needed something more than sales.
00:10:09
Speaker
And so that's, he wasn't saying to us, Hey, go be an EPC.
00:10:13
Speaker
We were just talking about when you view the industry,
00:10:17
Speaker
You know, who has the greatest impact on the industry?
00:10:19
Speaker
How does that happen?
00:10:20
Speaker
And we talked about how there's really four different kinds of key components in solar.
00:10:25
Speaker
There's the finance guys.
00:10:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:28
Speaker
And there's the distribution on the other side.
00:10:30
Speaker
And then you have sales and install.
00:10:34
Speaker
And anytime any one of those four becomes vertically integrated, the kind of leverage and power they create to affect change, the industry grows.
00:10:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:42
Speaker
So if you're a sales org, your ability to affect change in an industry as a whole is limited in your size.
00:10:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:49
Speaker
So, you know, you look at these sales orgs that have the greatest influence and they're the largest, right?
00:10:54
Speaker
Like legacy certainly has an opportunity to create, before they were an EPC, they, you know, they could dictate a lot of moves and had power in the industry because of their sheer size.
00:11:03
Speaker
Same with Vivint Energy, right?
00:11:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:05
Speaker
So then you look at like EPCs that are large.
00:11:09
Speaker
You know, you look at a Freedom or a Titan and some of those companies, they're large enough that they're just the wake behind them, the decisions they make and the ripples that those decisions create affects quite a bit of change in the industry.
00:11:21
Speaker
And they can really dictate where the industry kind of goes to an extent.
00:11:24
Speaker
For sure.
00:11:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:25
Speaker
I remember watching Titan, you know, have large panel manufacturers white label their panels for Titan.
00:11:32
Speaker
That's a, you know, that's, that's someone who's thrown their weight around in a, in a pretty interesting way.
00:11:36
Speaker
So when we look at that and we're like, how do we actually affect change?
00:11:40
Speaker
You know, you have more ability to do that.
00:11:42
Speaker
The more things you control.
00:11:43
Speaker
Yeah.
Enhancing Customer and Rep Experience
00:11:44
Speaker
And so vertical integration was and is a choice that we make.
00:11:48
Speaker
And then when you look at those, if those are like the four legs of a stool, for an example, you know,
00:11:53
Speaker
When we started looking at the things from an overall industry perspective, Hayes was like, you know, don't worry about the software piece.
00:12:00
Speaker
That's kind of in the middle that connects everything.
00:12:02
Speaker
Just let other people kind of figure that out.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:04
Speaker
And I think we listened to every single thing he told us to do with the exception of that one.
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to say.
00:12:10
Speaker
That's the, that's the only one that we were like, I think we're going to do this.
00:12:13
Speaker
Cause we'd already made plans to do Sinobi and we're already starting.
00:12:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:16
Speaker
But you know, you're listening to someone like Hayes and you have to, you know, you take everything he says with a lot of weight.
00:12:22
Speaker
And so to discard something like that, we had to feel pretty confident about what we were doing, but at the same time it definitely caused us to pause and go, are we doing the right thing?
00:12:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:32
Speaker
So.
00:12:33
Speaker
No, that's awesome.
00:12:34
Speaker
Got to go against the green sometimes.
00:12:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:37
Speaker
But that's interesting.
00:12:38
Speaker
And it's true.
00:12:39
Speaker
Like I just had Doug Robinson, you know, CEO legacy on the podcast too.
00:12:43
Speaker
And he was just telling me some of those same things.
00:12:45
Speaker
It's like when legacy does something, if they want something, they can go directly like a Sunnova or Gridleap and say, Hey, I want this changed.
00:12:52
Speaker
And they're going to do it because they're so big.
00:12:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:55
Speaker
They're so big.
00:12:56
Speaker
Like the change where like you smaller dealers, you never get that, you know, attention and everything.
00:13:01
Speaker
So, yeah, it is cool to see, you know, just the, I guess, more control you have, more power you have when you do go to that point.
00:13:09
Speaker
So it sounds like it's like you guys were trying to do that, have that similar effect, but by kind of like doing your own installs and everything and not trying to like beat a legacy or something like that.
00:13:19
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, we just more things to have more control over what you guys are doing.
00:13:24
Speaker
Stuff like that.
00:13:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:25
Speaker
I think we just really felt the need to control our own destiny more than anything else.
00:13:30
Speaker
And you can be really, really good at sales.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:33
Speaker
And once it's closed, you hand it off to an installer and you hope that they take care of it and you get a referral.
00:13:38
Speaker
Because when we start analyzing this business, you know, what makes this business somewhat challenging from like an outside investment standpoint or a banking standpoint, it's that there isn't any reoccurring revenue.
00:13:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:49
Speaker
It's all transactional based.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:51
Speaker
And because of that, you know, every day you wake up as a sales rep and you start at zero.
00:13:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:57
Speaker
Right.
00:13:57
Speaker
Like you wake up and you've got to go hunt that day to win.
00:14:01
Speaker
Sure.
00:14:01
Speaker
And there's some really, really powerful and great things about that that affect what kind of salesman you are.
00:14:06
Speaker
Right.
00:14:06
Speaker
So on the same thread of legacy and some of those guys, like take a guy like Ashton Buswell, who, you know, that dude can close 20 deals in a day.
00:14:12
Speaker
It seems like because he, you know, but he's, he's mastered this ability to go out and close deals and start from zero every day and still win.
00:14:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:21
Speaker
And the, and, and there's more guys like Ashton out there.
00:14:24
Speaker
I'm not suggesting that, but since we're in the legacy vein, I brought them up, but, um, without, without reoccurring revenue, it, you know, this business becomes a little bit more challenging in, in all the financial ways.
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:38
Speaker
And so when you're a sales sales engine or a sales rep and you're creating new jobs from nothing, your best chance at creating what this closest you can get to recurring revenue is called referrals.
00:14:49
Speaker
And once you hand that over to an installer and you're hoping that they take as much care of your customer as you care about them so that you get referrals.
00:14:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:59
Speaker
And if they don't, you know, starting from scratch every day is harder than starting from scratch with the potential referrals that are on your plate.
00:15:06
Speaker
Right.
00:15:06
Speaker
So.
00:15:06
Speaker
We felt like if we could control that more than handing it off to someone else, then we had a better chance of creating the closest thing we'd get to to reoccurring revenue.
00:15:14
Speaker
Okay.
00:15:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:15
Speaker
I like that.
00:15:16
Speaker
No, it's so true.
00:15:16
Speaker
Like I'm dealing, unfortunately, with a customer.
00:15:19
Speaker
I had a little referral chain going.
00:15:21
Speaker
It was like the guy's brother or something gotten like four referrals from this one guy.
00:15:27
Speaker
But then now his brother is having a bad experience with the EPC we use and leaving names out of it.
00:15:32
Speaker
It wasn't code.
00:15:33
Speaker
I don't worry.
00:15:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:34
Speaker
but I had a bad experience and so now that referral chain is going to stop because he like he's gone and telling his brother that he had a good experience so now his brother doesn't want to refer anymore all the people he was thinking of referring it stops at that so yeah I think it's so important and um that's what's being working like under a dealer for the past three four years now that I've been doing um sometimes you don't have as much control on the process and just like the communication maybe we can talk a little bit about that too but just like
00:16:00
Speaker
I think it goes both ways.
00:16:01
Speaker
Sometimes, you know, us as cell drops, we're setting unrealistic expectations.
00:16:06
Speaker
We're not saying the right things are going to happen with the EPC.
00:16:09
Speaker
And then, you know, sometimes there's issues to do with the EPC.
00:16:12
Speaker
So for you guys, I guess shifting gears a little bit, like what are some ways you guys, I guess, differentiate yourself and try to solve some of those issues of working with the
00:16:24
Speaker
so many different dealers communicating better and not just being another EPC where it's like pointing fingers and having different expectations.
00:16:31
Speaker
How do you like manage all that?
Introducing Project Kronos
00:16:33
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's, that's obviously an important question and one that I think every dealer ends up asking at some point, right?
00:16:39
Speaker
Like what makes you different?
00:16:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:41
Speaker
Um, you know, our, our ethos at Coda has always been to create the best rep and customer experience on the planet.
00:16:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:48
Speaker
And so all of our decisions are based on that kind of guiding principle.
00:16:51
Speaker
Cool.
00:16:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:52
Speaker
So what does that look like for a rep to have the best customer experience?
00:16:57
Speaker
When we first started, we genuinely took the approach of if I was selling this to my grandma, what would I want to give her?
00:17:04
Speaker
And so from a product standpoint, we have made traditionally what has been an upgraded product as our standard.
00:17:11
Speaker
And so where we feel like most companies are saying, yeah, you can have that panel or you can have that inverter.
00:17:17
Speaker
It's usually an upgrade for us.
00:17:19
Speaker
It's the standard panel.
00:17:21
Speaker
Nice.
00:17:21
Speaker
Um,
00:17:22
Speaker
So from, you know, product wise, we want to make sure that we would give the very best we could get to our grandma and we'd give it to everybody.
00:17:28
Speaker
Right.
00:17:29
Speaker
From a, then the next thing about that we feel like is important about the product itself or the project is to recognize this as a construction project.
00:17:37
Speaker
Right.
00:17:37
Speaker
Which means there's a really good chance something's going to go wrong.
00:17:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:41
Speaker
No one, I mean, I grew up in construction and I don't remember a single construction project that went perfect.
00:17:47
Speaker
there's always something that goes wrong.
00:17:49
Speaker
Sometimes it's really minor.
00:17:50
Speaker
It's not a big deal, but it's very rare.
00:17:52
Speaker
So we start looking at, well, how do you prepare someone for that?
00:17:54
Speaker
And how do you make sure that someone's taken care of?
00:17:56
Speaker
And so if you set proper expectations with a customer at the beginning, and so this goes back to how do we educate customers at the front end?
00:18:03
Speaker
And then how do we manage those as we go forward?
00:18:05
Speaker
But the way the communication is, is not that you're not going to have a problem, Mr. And Mrs. Customer.
00:18:10
Speaker
It's
00:18:10
Speaker
There's a strong likelihood that something's going to happen.
00:18:12
Speaker
We don't know what it's going to be.
00:18:14
Speaker
But the greatest indication of a responsive and careful company with you is how well they respond and react to those problems.
00:18:22
Speaker
We will always take care of them.
00:18:24
Speaker
We'll always make sure that you are treated north of fair and that we make things right if they go wrong.
00:18:29
Speaker
So then from a communication standpoint, it's really, really important that customers are kept in the loop.
00:18:34
Speaker
They know what's going on and that reps are kept in the loop.
00:18:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:36
Speaker
And so everything that we've built from a tech platform allows some really, really good communication, really good integration.
00:18:44
Speaker
And, um,
00:18:45
Speaker
you know, Koda acts really as the sandbox for Sinobi.
00:18:49
Speaker
And so the things that we roll out with Sinobi have first kind of been battle tested to an extent inside of Koda.
00:18:55
Speaker
And so we find out things that we think are good ideas, maybe just really aren't.
00:18:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:00
Speaker
And other things that we think are good ideas turn out to be great ideas.
00:19:03
Speaker
And we get to test those inside there.
00:19:05
Speaker
So like one of the things that we have, they'll be coming out probably in a year or so with Sinobi is something that we internally call, I'll probably get in trouble if Titus ever hears this, but it's,
00:19:15
Speaker
We call it Project Kronos, but it's also, you know, just a part of what is going to be Synobi Ops.
00:19:21
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:21
Speaker
So Project Kronos, you know, essentially is, allows, you know, the operation side as well as the customers to be able to see milestone statuses as they progress through in a very visually stimulating way, right?
00:19:35
Speaker
So I'm not going to give too much of that away, but it's...
00:19:37
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:38
Speaker
It's pretty amazing.
00:19:39
Speaker
But the idea is that, you know, you should be able to, as a rep, to be able to log into Sonobi and see in real time where your project is and to communicate in real time to a project manager or whoever's responsible for the milestone at hand.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:51
Speaker
Instantly.
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:53
Speaker
And instead of sending emails or text messages and like that, you should be able to do it inside of Sonobi.
00:19:57
Speaker
So you can do that currently with Coda.
00:19:58
Speaker
Nice.
00:19:59
Speaker
So, you know, here's an interesting thing that happens that I think a lot of times sales reps don't know.
00:20:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:05
Speaker
And it's, it's not, it has nothing to do with intelligence.
00:20:07
Speaker
It's just, they're not on that side of the fence.
00:20:09
Speaker
So the inexperienced part is hard to understand if you're not living it.
00:20:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:13
Speaker
We, you know, we expect project managers to move jobs forward to take, you know, you sell, you sell a job and it gets project acceptance and then it moves forward with all the milestones until it gets to PTO.
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:24
Speaker
And you expect that project manager to take that job through the stages.
00:20:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:28
Speaker
But we also, because we don't have a way as an industry to showcase where the job is at in an easily digestible way, what ends up happening is reps call project managers for pipeline reviews.
00:20:42
Speaker
How many pipeline calls have you been on?
00:20:44
Speaker
Yeah, a lot.
00:20:45
Speaker
And how long do they take?
00:20:47
Speaker
I mean, depending on how many deals, but yeah, like half an hour, it doesn't take a while.
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah, and so if you're doing that and then the project manager, let's say the project manager has a dozen dealers or sales orgs underneath them, right, that they're dealing with, and now they're doing a pipeline review call every day or multiple pipeline review calls a day.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:05
Speaker
What it means is they're not moving the job forward.
00:21:07
Speaker
What they're doing is they're taking information that already exists in some CRM, hopefully, if it's not on a yellow pad of paper or Excel sheet.
00:21:16
Speaker
But they're taking that information and they're then giving it to you.
00:21:17
Speaker
Let me go through this really quick.
00:21:19
Speaker
And then they're walking through it.
00:21:20
Speaker
The worst case scenario is you're calling in and you hear the guy going like, hang on a second.
00:21:24
Speaker
Hey, Judy, Judy.
00:21:25
Speaker
Have you checked on that?
00:21:27
Speaker
Where's that job?
00:21:28
Speaker
And you're getting fined out.
00:21:29
Speaker
They're like, oh, that turns out we don't have that permit yet.
00:21:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:33
Speaker
You know, and that, unfortunately that happens a lot, right?
00:21:35
Speaker
So because project managers spend an inordinate amount of time actually doing pipeline review calls, they don't move the jobs forward.
00:21:42
Speaker
So we have these lagging timelines and reps are like, man, you guys suck.
00:21:45
Speaker
They're, you know, the jobs take too long to get to roof.
00:21:47
Speaker
And you're like, well,
00:21:48
Speaker
Yes, they've taken longer than we wanted to.
00:21:50
Speaker
And in part, it's because I'm spending a lot of time as a project manager chatting with you to tell you where the job's at.
00:21:55
Speaker
And I already have it in CRM, but you can't find it because the CRM, the way it was built, doesn't give you access to easily find things.
00:22:01
Speaker
Right.
00:22:02
Speaker
So we have, as an industry, a really kind of difficult problem to solve.
00:22:07
Speaker
And there's a handful of different software solutions that have come out that have tried to solve that problem.
00:22:11
Speaker
We still don't think it's been done right, which is why we're pursuing this.
00:22:14
Speaker
Nice.
00:22:15
Speaker
I'm bringing that up only to say, to answer the question of what makes CODA different to an extent, the focus is on how do we provide the best customer experience on the planet.
00:22:23
Speaker
Nice.
00:22:24
Speaker
And so from a product standpoint, we want to give the best from a customer standpoint and a communication standpoint to the reps.
00:22:29
Speaker
We want to make sure that we're communicating all the time.
00:22:30
Speaker
We have some of those solved with tech, but still we have more to go.
00:22:33
Speaker
And so in the meantime, we try and be as proactive as we possibly can about communicating everything we possibly can communicate to both the rep and the customer.
00:22:40
Speaker
yeah that's awesome yeah because so many deals have been lost by just bad communication and then like yeah i've been through some installers where they don't even want to talk to you like um you call them they won't give you an update you have to go through like five different people to get an update and then they don't want to tell you as a sales rep they have to tell someone from your organization that was over the project and yeah by the time all said and done it's like five calls you had to make to get one update and
00:23:04
Speaker
Yeah, so it's going to be tough for sure.
00:23:06
Speaker
So I really like what you're saying, just one central place where guys can go.
00:23:09
Speaker
And then also it's like typically we as dealers, you have, you know, your CRM, you have the proposal software, you have all these different tools.
00:23:18
Speaker
You got to know logins, everything.
00:23:20
Speaker
And it's like, you know, five different places to figure out what you're doing.
00:23:23
Speaker
So it sounds like with Sonoba, you guys all have it like in one place, right?
00:23:26
Speaker
Like you can get your design.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:29
Speaker
Getting updates.
00:23:30
Speaker
You're kind of doing everything from there.
00:23:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:32
Speaker
I mean, the goal there with Sinobi is to have everything in one ecosystem.
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:36
Speaker
If, if the goal is to, you know, API to everything, you're, you're going to lose some efficiency and then you spend all your time as a company being an API integration company, which is not what our goal is.
00:23:46
Speaker
Our goal is to be.
00:23:47
Speaker
you know, full ecosystem from the time you source a job, source a lead to the time it gets to PTO to all be in one app.
00:23:55
Speaker
Nice.
00:23:56
Speaker
And you know, the other thing, the other thing I'd say just for the sake of saying it is I think as an industry, we can't be afraid to tell the truth about everything, even when it's bad news.
00:24:06
Speaker
And I think because just human beings, right?
00:24:09
Speaker
Like the first governing rule of human behavior is that people are self-interested in
00:24:12
Speaker
No one wants necessarily to disappoint somebody.
00:24:15
Speaker
And so instead of telling the truth, they try and find a way around it because they're afraid of disappointing a guy.
00:24:20
Speaker
When in reality, just being transparent, we're like, yeah, dude, look, this job went sideways because of this.
00:24:24
Speaker
Here's what our plan is to fix it.
00:24:26
Speaker
Here's what we have going forward.
00:24:27
Speaker
I've never found a rep to be unreasonable when we have a real honest conversation.
00:24:31
Speaker
And I'm saying that because code has had its plenty of problems.
00:24:35
Speaker
We've had our fair share of screw ups and messed up.
00:24:37
Speaker
And I think that as, and, and Senobi has too, but as a whole, our goal is to be, you know, part of the best experience you can give someone is at minimum to be honest and to be transparent.
00:24:48
Speaker
And so we're trying to make sure that we approach the business as a whole with some radical transparency.
00:24:52
Speaker
That's like, yeah, that's
00:24:54
Speaker
Here's where it is.
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's good.
00:24:56
Speaker
I know.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yeah, the industry needs it for sure.
00:24:58
Speaker
It's been a big problem.
00:24:59
Speaker
But, yeah, what I love about Sunobi is just like we're talking about in the beginning, it just makes things so much quicker.
00:25:05
Speaker
It's funny, I was just talking with, you know, Mike Brand that I introduced you to before this, but he was selling, I think, in...
00:25:12
Speaker
Rhode Island or something somewhere back east and he was telling me that every job this is back in like I don't know 2013 2014 but every job had to get like notarized before you progress it you had to have like someone come notarize the account and so it's just like drag things out forever because imagine you sign them up and then they get a design back you'll get it yeah
00:25:32
Speaker
Customer has to get it notarized.
00:25:34
Speaker
And I know there's been like we haven't had to do that in California, but just like the improvements made since I've been out here since 2016, it's been like night and day.
00:25:43
Speaker
And I mean, I know it's just Sonobi's taking it to another level for sure.
00:25:48
Speaker
And so I guess just transitioning to that, for our listeners, do you want to maybe just give a little bit of background on that?
Features of Sinobi Platform
00:25:56
Speaker
I'm sure most people hopefully have heard of Sunobi at this point.
00:25:59
Speaker
But, yeah, why did you guys decide to start Sunobi?
00:26:02
Speaker
And what's the quick background with that?
00:26:04
Speaker
I mean, we started Synobi because we didn't feel like the existing tools solved all of our problems.
00:26:09
Speaker
And a lot of times we feel like the tools that we were using caused more problems than they solved.
00:26:15
Speaker
You know, we were, we used all the platforms that you've ever heard of.
00:26:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:20
Speaker
Every one of them.
00:26:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:22
Speaker
And I think had any of them solved the problem, we never would have built Sanobi.
00:26:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:27
Speaker
But so philosophically, so why, you know, why do we go here?
00:26:30
Speaker
Here's an interesting kind of exercise that we go through sometimes.
00:26:34
Speaker
Why does someone go knock a door and set an appointment for another day?
00:26:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:40
Speaker
Cause they need to get the purples already.
00:26:42
Speaker
Usually.
00:26:43
Speaker
Because we got to wait.
00:26:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:44
Speaker
Right.
00:26:45
Speaker
I mean, we have an entire ecosystem in solar that's based on the fact that we can't do a same day proposal or instantaneous proposal.
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:53
Speaker
Right now, there's a couple of platforms that have tried to solve that, but we're still waiting 15, 20, 30 minutes.
00:26:58
Speaker
And sometimes if the backlog gets too big, you're waiting longer.
00:27:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:03
Speaker
Um, that's still too long.
00:27:04
Speaker
So I came from alarms and alarms.
00:27:06
Speaker
You could same day anything.
00:27:08
Speaker
And there was no such thing as a return appointment.
00:27:09
Speaker
It's like you go to a meeting and someone would say like, how many did you close?
00:27:13
Speaker
You're like, I closed too, but I've got a couple of callbacks and people would laugh at you and be like, dude, there's no such thing as a callback.
00:27:18
Speaker
And you were not closing a callback because it was, it was nonsense.
00:27:22
Speaker
Right.
00:27:22
Speaker
But in solar, all we have are appointments, right?
00:27:25
Speaker
Like we've created a business on how do you make, I mean, I'll go to some trainings and people be talking about how to create solid appointments.
00:27:31
Speaker
That's the training.
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:33
Speaker
And, you know, as much as we may kind of chuckle about it, it exists because the platforms that are currently out there don't allow you to have same day closes.
00:27:43
Speaker
So if there was something that did exist that you could get accurate instant proposals.
00:27:50
Speaker
That's still just one part, right?
00:27:51
Speaker
So Sinobi is a platform.
00:27:53
Speaker
You're asking me like, what's the short background?
00:27:55
Speaker
Sinobi is currently what exists today is a sales enablement platform.
00:27:59
Speaker
It is not a design tool.
00:28:01
Speaker
It is not a proposal tool.
00:28:03
Speaker
It has a design tool in it and it also has a proposal tool in it.
00:28:06
Speaker
But it has those things because those things are necessary to close a deal.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:11
Speaker
Right.
00:28:11
Speaker
So if you go knock a door, why do you knock a door?
00:28:13
Speaker
Hopefully the answer is I knock a door because hopefully no one's saying I knock a door to get an appointment or get a utility bill for heaven's sakes.
00:28:21
Speaker
Of course you're getting utility bill and of course you're getting appointment.
00:28:23
Speaker
But the reason you knock the door is to close the deal.
00:28:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:27
Speaker
That's why we knock the door.
00:28:28
Speaker
Right.
00:28:29
Speaker
So do we need it?
00:28:30
Speaker
Of course you need a proposal.
00:28:32
Speaker
Of course you need a design.
00:28:33
Speaker
But that's not, you're there to close a deal.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:36
Speaker
So, Sinobi as a whole is a sales enablement platform.
00:28:38
Speaker
And if people use Sinobi the way it's intended to be used, then their close ratios jump dramatically.
00:28:45
Speaker
Right?
00:28:45
Speaker
So, here's some stats for you.
00:28:47
Speaker
We keep track of this stuff.
00:28:48
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:49
Speaker
We'll do a little test here.
00:28:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:51
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:52
Speaker
For the last 10 years or so, the average per rep close per month, right?
00:28:57
Speaker
Meaning how many deals per month is a rep as a regular average rep closing?
00:29:01
Speaker
What do you think the number is?
00:29:03
Speaker
I'd say like 2.5.
00:29:06
Speaker
you're high.
00:29:07
Speaker
It's like 1.6, 1.7.
00:29:08
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:08
Speaker
Right.
00:29:09
Speaker
And it's because you got dudes like Ashton that are, you know, screwing up the mean, but then, but then you have a ton of people that are bageling every month.
00:29:16
Speaker
Right.
00:29:16
Speaker
We're talking about a full month, not at a week, a full month.
00:29:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:20
Speaker
1.6 or so, 1.7 deals per month, per rep, per average.
00:29:24
Speaker
That's as an industry, we should be pretty embarrassed.
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:27
Speaker
That's our, that's our average.
00:29:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:29
Speaker
When people have used Sinobi correctly, the average jumps to like five to nine deals per month on average.
00:29:36
Speaker
Wow.
00:29:36
Speaker
So you start asking, well, what are you doing?
00:29:39
Speaker
It's the same guy.
00:29:41
Speaker
All he's doing is using Snowy the way it was meant to be used.
00:29:44
Speaker
And now you're taking people that were closing one or two.
00:29:46
Speaker
And here's the reason, excuse me, here's the reason why.
00:29:48
Speaker
If you hand someone as a proposal, a single sheet of paper that has some dynamic things to it, like, hey, here's a graph and some savings curves and things like that on a proposal...
00:29:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:00
Speaker
And that's all you give that guy.
00:30:01
Speaker
Please tell me when you've closed deals, you've had to say more than just here's the number.
00:30:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:06
Speaker
Like what else do you have to do?
00:30:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:08
Speaker
Like build value, show them panels.
00:30:11
Speaker
I mean, it's like tons of things more than just like, Hey, here's the number.
00:30:14
Speaker
Do you like it?
00:30:14
Speaker
You're ready to sign?
00:30:15
Speaker
Like that doesn't happen.
00:30:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:16
Speaker
Even though we're saving people money.
00:30:18
Speaker
Right.
00:30:18
Speaker
And even though economically you put this thing on a chalkboard and it always makes sense, but still people need more than that.
00:30:24
Speaker
And so if all we're doing is saying, here's a proposal, here's your numbers.
00:30:28
Speaker
then we're no different than anybody else.
00:30:31
Speaker
And that means the per-up averages stay the same.
00:30:33
Speaker
The challenge with not doing anything in addition to that is you're asking all of the sales orgs to provide the training that's necessary to close a deal.
00:30:40
Speaker
So you end up having training.
00:30:41
Speaker
You guys are going through training all the time saying like, got to go through closers academy or go through these closers training.
00:30:46
Speaker
I'm going to teach someone how to close a deal because they got to learn all the other things to say besides, Hey, your bill was 200.
00:30:52
Speaker
Now it's 180.
00:30:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:30:55
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's, I know for me personally, it like definitely made a difference.
00:30:59
Speaker
Just the amount of deals I get same day after that.
00:31:02
Speaker
And like, I'm sure you can agree.
00:31:04
Speaker
How many times are we as reps, we like go to a door and in the past is like, man, these people are ready right now, but I have to go back later.
00:31:12
Speaker
I have to wait on the proposal, the design and even times where you could go in with and like, like if you had it right then you just go back next 10 minutes or whatever.
00:31:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:20
Speaker
Even walk in the door, close them right there.
00:31:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:22
Speaker
But still, it's like some people, you go back in 45 minutes and then something came up.
00:31:26
Speaker
That's right.
00:31:27
Speaker
Gone or whatever.
00:31:28
Speaker
So.
00:31:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:29
Speaker
There's a reason why the phrase strike while the iron's hot exists, right?
00:31:32
Speaker
The longer we wait for that iron to get cool, the harder it is to make fire, right?
00:31:36
Speaker
Like, or spark.
00:31:37
Speaker
You want to be able to take advantage of the situation when it presents itself.
00:31:40
Speaker
And if you're waiting too long, then all you're waiting for is more and more opportunities to come up to make it harder for you to close.
00:31:47
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:31:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:49
Speaker
Yeah, well, was that like, so was that the biggest problem you saw with all these different softwares?
00:31:54
Speaker
Was that the main thing you guys were thinking of when you started Sonobi?
00:31:57
Speaker
Or were there other things like, oh, I don't like this design.
00:31:59
Speaker
I don't like that.
00:32:00
Speaker
This doesn't explain as much.
00:32:02
Speaker
Or was it pretty much that one thing?
00:32:03
Speaker
Yeah, there's a few of them.
00:32:04
Speaker
I mean, definitely speed was one, right?
00:32:07
Speaker
So that we tackled that one.
00:32:09
Speaker
The other one was that, and you mentioned something kind of similar to this and that the amount of things you have to log into.
00:32:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:15
Speaker
Right.
00:32:15
Speaker
To find information.
00:32:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:17
Speaker
Training new reps, scaling your company.
00:32:20
Speaker
So one of our issues that we were trying to solve was I need to scale.
00:32:23
Speaker
I want to get bigger.
00:32:23
Speaker
I want to move into other markets.
00:32:25
Speaker
I want to go in Vegas and Texas and Florida and Colorado and Arizona.
00:32:29
Speaker
All these other places we wanted to go.
00:32:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:32
Speaker
And we realized that when we're doing that as a sales org, number one, you need to find an installer.
00:32:37
Speaker
Right.
00:32:38
Speaker
Right.
00:32:38
Speaker
So the, the largest installers that exist, they're really, really good in the places where they're from.
00:32:44
Speaker
And then it almost seems like the further they get away from their home base, the harder it is to be good.
00:32:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:50
Speaker
I've heard that.
00:32:51
Speaker
Right.
00:32:51
Speaker
It doesn't mean that's always the case, but it's possible.
00:32:54
Speaker
So what ends up happening is you're going, I'm probably going to find regional installers or someone close in this area.
00:32:59
Speaker
Who's, who's got a reputation for being good in that state or in that area.
00:33:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:02
Speaker
Once you do that, all of the variables that are about selling for that installer change.
00:33:07
Speaker
You might have a different, certainly you're going to have a different login.
00:33:09
Speaker
Hopefully they use the same sales proposal tool.
00:33:12
Speaker
Right.
00:33:12
Speaker
But then you're going to have different lender choices, different panel types, all the adders change.
00:33:17
Speaker
So the scaling portion becomes as much academic training as it is solar training.
00:33:21
Speaker
So you go through this thing like, okay, I'm going to teach you how to sell solar.
00:33:24
Speaker
Here's power one-on-one versus solar one-on-one that you're going to have to learn.
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:27
Speaker
But then once you change states or change geographies, all the variables that surround that now change too.
00:33:33
Speaker
So it's like, well, I know I taught you how to do it over here in California, but in Texas, you got to use this installer and this installer has these panels are different and has this login and they use this other proposal tool with this up.
00:33:44
Speaker
Like it becomes, you know, complexity is the enemy of execution.
00:33:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:49
Speaker
And so the more complex something is, the harder it is to scale.
00:33:52
Speaker
Yeah, true.
00:33:53
Speaker
And if we're trying to scale, Sinobi's other goal was how do I simplify something that's very complex?
00:33:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's fire.
00:33:59
Speaker
Because, yeah, I mean, different market.
00:34:00
Speaker
Well, that's another thing I was going to ask you because there's so many different variables, like in California versus Texas.
00:34:05
Speaker
So, like, I've only used Sunobi out here, but you guys have people nationwide now using Sunobi and you have to, like, make all these adjustments or how do you, like, simplify it based on different markets and everything?
00:34:16
Speaker
Yeah, so one of the things that we strongly delineate ourselves from other people and draw the line is, is that we do not do the negotiation of contracts between you and the installer.
00:34:26
Speaker
Okay.
00:34:27
Speaker
Right.
00:34:27
Speaker
So we're not going to get in the middle of that.
00:34:28
Speaker
We feel like that's a really sacred relationship that you need to foster and care about.
00:34:32
Speaker
And we're not going to go in there and make a cut between those two things.
00:34:36
Speaker
We're just not going to do it.
00:34:37
Speaker
Okay.
00:34:37
Speaker
What we will do is simplify that process.
00:34:40
Speaker
So if you said, Hey Scott, I need to move to, I'm going to scale in Texas.
00:34:43
Speaker
Who do you have on the platform?
00:34:45
Speaker
I have no problem giving you all the people on the platform in Texas.
00:34:48
Speaker
You then create the relationship and structure your deal.
00:34:50
Speaker
And then when you're logging in to Sinobi and that person becomes part of your network of installers, for example, then everything that they have that's specific to them is at your fingertips and at your disposal.
00:35:01
Speaker
So once you choose them as an installer, it spins up all the variables you have to think about it.
00:35:05
Speaker
They're adders, they're panel type, they're loan products.
00:35:08
Speaker
Everything's already done for you.
00:35:09
Speaker
You're just now going to do the same thing that you're supposed to do, which is sell solar to a customer.
00:35:13
Speaker
Nice.
00:35:14
Speaker
You're not necessarily going through and going, well, I mean, in California, it's this way, but in Texas, it's like this.
00:35:18
Speaker
And you got to tell them because you're trying to work through the story in your head.
00:35:20
Speaker
You don't have to do that.
00:35:22
Speaker
It's just you're logging in.
00:35:23
Speaker
You choose.
00:35:23
Speaker
Once you put the address in, it pulls up the installers that are available for you.
00:35:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:28
Speaker
Once you've done that, you go through the process like you normally would.
00:35:30
Speaker
You choose your product that's available.
00:35:32
Speaker
Now you pitch it.
00:35:32
Speaker
You know, you do your design, you pitch it and you close it.
00:35:35
Speaker
Yeah, I like it.
00:35:36
Speaker
And as we've been using it too, something I noticed, I don't know if you guys have run into this more now, but some newer reps we had, because if you don't, if you haven't used Sunobi before, you can get on there, you can draw the design yourself.
00:35:50
Speaker
You know, you just pull out your Apple Pencil, put on the little pins and all that, and you draw the roof planes.
00:35:56
Speaker
Something I saw somewhere new reps doing is just like making the roof planes way bigger than they
00:36:00
Speaker
we're supposed to or just like slap on like 20 panels on there when it's like obvious like yeah there's no way that many panels up and then uh occasionally we did you know they close the deal that way and then it go back to our people in the bag after site survey like hey that doesn't work there's no way you can fit 20 panels on this like you have a design so do you guys have anything new or um i don't know if that's something you guys have gotten a lot of feedback on but or like any tips suggestions like what's the yeah what's the solution with that where you get some of these like
00:36:29
Speaker
Just knucklehead new reps trying to slap like 50 panels on a roof plane.
00:36:33
Speaker
I don't know if it's so many.
00:36:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:35
Speaker
So that's a fantastic question.
00:36:36
Speaker
And I think that if we were to look back and go, what was the biggest knock on Sanobi?
00:36:40
Speaker
This was it.
00:36:41
Speaker
Okay.
00:36:41
Speaker
Right.
00:36:41
Speaker
Is that because you, again, philosophically, we basically were saying we believe that reps are good and true and honest and smart.
00:36:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:50
Speaker
Where the industry we feel like, because I've been the rep on the other side of that, who's had this experience where I've said, why don't you let me do the designs?
00:36:56
Speaker
Right.
00:36:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:57
Speaker
And they're like, nah, I mean, look, dude, why don't you do what you're good at and just keep your silver tongue going and then you just go sell.
00:37:03
Speaker
Okay.
00:37:03
Speaker
Let the smart people do the designs.
00:37:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:05
Speaker
And I was always like, what?
00:37:06
Speaker
You mean you're telling me that intern you got who's still in college right now, that's the smarter person than me?
00:37:11
Speaker
Like it just means that person's been trained, but I always took offense to that.
00:37:14
Speaker
Like, what do you think?
00:37:14
Speaker
I'm not smart enough to do this.
00:37:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:16
Speaker
Or the other thing that they'd say to me would be like, well, if I do give you the control of doing it, you're probably going to be doing something that's dishonest and screw the customer for your own commission.
00:37:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:26
Speaker
And I was always like, so you think that I'm a liar and I'm stupid.
00:37:30
Speaker
Perfect.
00:37:31
Speaker
That always really bothered me.
00:37:32
Speaker
Right.
00:37:32
Speaker
So we tried to create Snobby in a way that, that enhanced those things and put some guardrails in place to allow people to still be good and true and honest because if they had the right framework, we feel like they could be.
00:37:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:44
Speaker
And, and the large majority of what's happened in Snobby is that's, that's proven to be true.
00:37:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:37:51
Speaker
However, there's still this thing where people will say like, yeah, but the rep isn't actually trained.
00:37:58
Speaker
And there are people who are dishonest and they've done some things that have made it hard for us to use it.
00:38:03
Speaker
So we heard that and for the last two years we've been working on building this new app or this new version of the app and we were really happy to show this at Solarcon.
00:38:13
Speaker
And we call it Turbo Mode.
00:38:16
Speaker
But essentially what happens in Turbo Mode and we're really, really excited about it, we're using NearMap as our aerial imagery.
00:38:24
Speaker
And all the LiDAR tech and everything else that comes with it.
00:38:27
Speaker
And what happens is, is a rep can literally just go click a house, touch it with their finger, and then it automatically detects roof shape, roof plane, azimuth and tilt, all the shade, everything.
00:38:41
Speaker
And then it does an auto panel placement mode, which means it fills the roof to its full max potential.
00:38:47
Speaker
Wow.
00:38:47
Speaker
Now a rep can look at it and go, okay, this house can fit this much.
00:38:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:52
Speaker
And now there's a couple options.
00:38:53
Speaker
You can say, well, and the, you know, the demo is pretty cool.
00:38:55
Speaker
You can see where you can drag a guy, like a little video game character and drag them anywhere around the house and turn on something called out of sight, out of mind, which is essentially a rep putting a homeowner on the street level view or somewhere else.
00:39:07
Speaker
So someone says, I don't want to see any panels in the front of my house.
00:39:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:10
Speaker
You can drag that guy to the front and now anything that a six foot person could see from that vantage point will make those panels disappear.
00:39:16
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:39:17
Speaker
And then you can say, okay, give me optimal fit based on those criteria.
00:39:22
Speaker
And you can have multiple views on there.
00:39:23
Speaker
You can have like three or four people stay on the street at different angles.
00:39:26
Speaker
Then it will take off all the panels from those viewpoints and still do the most it can possibly fit.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:31
Speaker
So that question that you asked is a fantastic question because it's been, in our opinion, up until this point, one of the knocks on Sonobi.
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:39
Speaker
And so we feel like we've solved that and we've still addressed it in terms of speed.
00:39:45
Speaker
So when you think about if I could create the dream scenario where you get anything you want in a proposal tool and you start thinking about what is you'd want.
00:39:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:53
Speaker
And most people are going to say, I want something to be really fast.
00:39:58
Speaker
I want it to be super accurate.
00:39:59
Speaker
That doesn't require change orders.
00:40:01
Speaker
I want it to be something set up where I can basically get it for free.
00:40:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:04
Speaker
Right.
00:40:05
Speaker
Right.
00:40:06
Speaker
Um, and I want it, I want it to look rad.
00:40:09
Speaker
We've done all of those things in Snobie.
00:40:11
Speaker
So now if you just hit that, you touch the house, your finger inside of 10 seconds, the whole thing's done.
00:40:17
Speaker
Wow.
00:40:17
Speaker
And it's accurate.
00:40:18
Speaker
Wow.
00:40:18
Speaker
A hundred percent accurate.
00:40:20
Speaker
I shouldn't say a hundred percent accurate.
00:40:22
Speaker
It's accurate as far as near maps is imagery is accurate, which is like 97% of the United States.
00:40:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:40:27
Speaker
So it's really accurate.
00:40:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:40:30
Speaker
Shade and everything's all done.
00:40:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:32
Speaker
So all the things I'm talking about that make it hit those points are all done.
00:40:37
Speaker
And so now someone asked, well, is it free?
00:40:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:39
Speaker
The answer is no, it's not free, but neither is something that's an adder.
00:40:42
Speaker
Like, you know, an MPU is not free either.
00:40:44
Speaker
Right.
00:40:45
Speaker
But how do you make an MPU not cost you as a rep?
00:40:48
Speaker
You put it in the loan.
00:40:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:50
Speaker
Same thing with Sinobi.
00:40:51
Speaker
Like, you build it in, and since you're not paying for this, we don't charge until the job is signed.
00:40:57
Speaker
It's a success-driven model.
00:40:58
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:41:00
Speaker
You should never be paying for it.
00:41:01
Speaker
It should just be a pass-through cost.
00:41:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:03
Speaker
Still money in it, but the homeowner paid for it.
00:41:05
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:41:09
Speaker
And that's huge because to be honest, that was like our company is not going to do it.
00:41:12
Speaker
They're like, because we had a lot of new reps.
00:41:15
Speaker
They're all slapping all these panels up.
00:41:17
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, the EPC we're working with was come back and be like, you know, this is like way different than what we can actually do.
00:41:24
Speaker
And then it was just added more time, more headaches to it.
00:41:27
Speaker
So yeah, I mean now you can do that and can you is is that like standard with every Like every company just does that now just clicks on the roof and it comes up like that.
00:41:36
Speaker
You just get rid of the old option.
00:41:38
Speaker
Yeah, that comes out in In about 30 days we debuted it for solar common because not three days.
00:41:43
Speaker
So nice I think for us we some of the things that we heard with stuff like You know, cenobis for more experienced reps.
00:41:51
Speaker
Yeah, and I hated that
00:41:53
Speaker
Because I want every rep to have it.
00:41:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:56
Speaker
And so as Titus and I and the group were all talking about, how do we make Sinobi so that it's the easiest tool to use in the plant, the most accessible, the simplest tool to use?
00:42:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:06
Speaker
We knew that we had to make something where it was as non-athletic as it could be.
00:42:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:11
Speaker
I like that.
00:42:12
Speaker
So if all you're asking your rep to do is touch a house with their finger and it automatically places the panel inside of 10 seconds and it's...
00:42:20
Speaker
And accurate?
00:42:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:22
Speaker
That's pretty easy.
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:24
Speaker
Okay.
00:42:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:25
Speaker
I hope the reps can do that.
00:42:26
Speaker
If they can't learn how to do that, then maybe fire that rep.
00:42:29
Speaker
I mean, they have to.
00:42:30
Speaker
So here's the thing is what other platform do you have that doesn't require a rep to put an address in?
00:42:35
Speaker
Every one.
00:42:36
Speaker
You have to have an address.
00:42:37
Speaker
So if they can't put an address in, that's not a proposal problem or that's a literacy problem.
00:42:43
Speaker
And we could talk about that another time.
00:42:45
Speaker
But all we're asking people to do here is say, here is the house.
00:42:49
Speaker
Confirm it.
00:42:50
Speaker
Click the button.
00:42:50
Speaker
Nice.
00:42:52
Speaker
Builds it up.
00:42:53
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:42:54
Speaker
And, yeah, if you're doing, like for me, I do a lot of condos, townhomes, things like that here around San Diego.
00:43:00
Speaker
So if you have something like that, does it just, it kind of like puts panels on the whole section, say it's a shared roof space or something, and then you as the rep just have to kind of like deselect and kind of recognize it's only that section.
00:43:10
Speaker
Yeah, because it can't recognize imaginary lines on a condo.
00:43:16
Speaker
And it's still like the manipulation you've had in the past where you've been able to manipulate an array, you still have the ability to do that.
00:43:24
Speaker
But you can't change it beyond what's available.
00:43:28
Speaker
If you're going to shrink it, it still allows you to turn panels on and off and constrict things like that.
00:43:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:35
Speaker
The ease and feasibility of just clicking on something and having it auto-populate is like magic.
00:43:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome.
00:43:41
Speaker
That's way cool.
00:43:42
Speaker
Well, just to kind of start wrapping up here, Scott, I know a ton of features, and we probably talk all day about this stuff.
00:43:48
Speaker
Pretty incredible what you guys have done.
00:43:50
Speaker
But another big thing that I know you guys were talking a lot about at SolarCon.
00:43:54
Speaker
With just all the stuff coming out with the batteries, as we know, it's like, you know, NEM 3.0 out in California.
Selling Batteries with Sinobi
00:44:00
Speaker
Batteries is the big thing.
00:44:02
Speaker
And, yeah, I watched some of the videos you guys were doing with that.
00:44:04
Speaker
And I know you launched a bunch of features, cool things that were helping a lot of people out with that.
00:44:10
Speaker
So, and you can go watch a demo of this too, guys.
00:44:13
Speaker
Like, this stuff is super cool to see.
00:44:16
Speaker
So I'd suggest go checking out.
00:44:17
Speaker
It's, like, on your website.
00:44:19
Speaker
You guys have, like, demos and all that on your website?
00:44:21
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:44:21
Speaker
Okay, okay.
00:44:22
Speaker
But yeah, just for like people listening to our cell more batteries, what are some of the problems you recognize with that?
00:44:29
Speaker
And what are, yeah, what's like the solution you guys put together with Sanobi to help sell these batteries?
00:44:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:36
Speaker
Great question.
00:44:37
Speaker
And for the record, the battery tool is out currently and people are using it and it's fantastic.
00:44:44
Speaker
I think that we have to start to recognize there's kind of two different profiles of customers.
00:44:50
Speaker
There's the customers who want full home backup and customers who don't know anything about batteries but have to have a battery because of NEM 3.0.
00:44:57
Speaker
Right.
00:44:58
Speaker
Only 2% of all deals sold in the United States historically have had battery attachments.
00:45:05
Speaker
Wow.
00:45:05
Speaker
Which means that only 2% of the people are actually asking about batteries because sales reps are not pitching batteries.
00:45:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:11
Speaker
Right?
00:45:11
Speaker
But for the last 10 years, people haven't been going like, dude, let me hook you up with a battery.
00:45:14
Speaker
In fact, we've done everything we can to say like, ah, you don't need a battery right now.
00:45:17
Speaker
It's just...
00:45:18
Speaker
backwards compatible.
00:45:19
Speaker
You're going to use it in a couple of years.
00:45:20
Speaker
It'll be fine.
00:45:20
Speaker
Prices are going to come down.
00:45:21
Speaker
Like everything that we've ever said.
00:45:24
Speaker
So if you look at NEM 3.0 in the same light as I just need to replace the grid during the time when it used to be beneficial for me, which is really just from the hours of dawn to dusk when solar is no longer producing, then the only thing you need a battery for is to replace that portion of the usage.
00:45:42
Speaker
Right.
00:45:42
Speaker
So instead of people thinking I need to sell batteries as full home backup, like only 2% of people need that.
00:45:52
Speaker
Those are the people who are asking for it.
00:45:54
Speaker
What you need to be selling or what we all should be selling is how do I replace the usage at night?
00:45:58
Speaker
And so if you're sitting there with a customer and you're like, dude, help me understand this just so I have a better understanding of your usage profile.
00:46:04
Speaker
What things do you have on at nighttime?
00:46:06
Speaker
Right.
00:46:07
Speaker
And the customer is going to go through it and they're all going to be fairly basic things.
00:46:10
Speaker
Like the only anomaly you're going to have, or that's going to cause you to have multiple use batteries is stuff like this.
00:46:15
Speaker
Sounds like I'm charging my car or if I'm cranking my AC all night, those are probably more than likely going to require you to have more than one battery or a bigger size battery.
00:46:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:25
Speaker
But otherwise your night usage typically isn't that high.
00:46:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:29
Speaker
And so one battery sometimes can do it.
00:46:32
Speaker
Hmm.
00:46:33
Speaker
The tool in Sinobi allows you to go through there and showcase that in a really, really simple, easy way.
00:46:39
Speaker
Nice.
00:46:39
Speaker
And I'm happy to report that we've had the battery manufacturers that everyone's ever heard of and some of the other ones that people haven't all been through Sinobi and looked at it and given their stamp of approval on it.
00:46:49
Speaker
Nice.
00:46:50
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:46:50
Speaker
So it's not like we just made some stuff up.
00:46:52
Speaker
Like we created a story to help you sell it, but it's accurate.
00:46:56
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:46:57
Speaker
And I don't think that there's another tool on the planet that even comes close.
00:47:01
Speaker
Yeah, I know.
00:47:02
Speaker
Because batteries are like, as we know, complicated stuff to explain.
00:47:06
Speaker
A lot of reps out in California are freaking out right now.
00:47:09
Speaker
And so.
00:47:10
Speaker
And they don't need to.
00:47:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:12
Speaker
And let's think about this.
00:47:13
Speaker
Like I've gone through and done some modeling of this.
00:47:16
Speaker
We got people saying, I'm going to leave California to go to another place.
00:47:20
Speaker
Why?
00:47:21
Speaker
What are they telling you right now?
00:47:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:23
Speaker
They're scared.
00:47:23
Speaker
They're like, Oh, it's not going to save people money.
00:47:26
Speaker
And they're going to go to which state?
00:47:27
Speaker
Every other state that doesn't really save people.
00:47:29
Speaker
It doesn't save anybody money.
00:47:30
Speaker
Right?
00:47:31
Speaker
Like it's the, it's the silliest thing to be like, I'm leaving California.
00:47:34
Speaker
That's been just this gold mine.
00:47:36
Speaker
I'm going to go to Texas or Florida and no share in those States because they're crushing it.
00:47:40
Speaker
But those sales reps are not selling savings the same way, right?
00:47:43
Speaker
They're selling value in a different thing.
00:47:45
Speaker
They're selling, you know, self-preservation and prestige and things like that.
00:47:49
Speaker
They're not selling profit.
00:47:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:51
Speaker
Like you do in California.
00:47:52
Speaker
And so now if you're saying to someone worst case scenario with the battery, it's a bill swap.
00:47:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:57
Speaker
That still has more value than the systems you're selling.
00:47:59
Speaker
Like, would you rather sell a system with a battery or that one for the same price?
00:48:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:03
Speaker
With the battery all day.
00:48:04
Speaker
All day.
00:48:05
Speaker
So like, it's not, you're not leaving California for a better place.
00:48:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:10
Speaker
You're leaving it because you don't know how to sell a battery.
00:48:12
Speaker
That's it.
00:48:13
Speaker
And if you do know how to sell a battery and it's not as complicated as you think it is, it's actually easier and you're still providing savings.
00:48:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:19
Speaker
Like, how's this a hard thing?
00:48:21
Speaker
Like we can do this.
00:48:22
Speaker
I know.
00:48:23
Speaker
I've never been more excited about solar than I am right now.
00:48:25
Speaker
I think, I think after any M 3.0, I am so stoked about it.
00:48:31
Speaker
I haven't been this excited since I started solar.
00:48:33
Speaker
Yeah, I know.
00:48:34
Speaker
Well, all the people getting out, I'm like, yeah, go ahead.
00:48:37
Speaker
You can leave the market.
00:48:38
Speaker
Like, maybe I should edit this part out because like, yeah, I'll take all your customers.
00:48:43
Speaker
So think about this.
00:48:44
Speaker
There's already way too much market for everyone in California.
00:48:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:48
Speaker
And so now you have people that are going to leave.
00:48:49
Speaker
Companies will go out of business, right?
00:48:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:51
Speaker
Because sales reps are going to leave and things like that.
00:48:53
Speaker
That means that all the customers that they would have got are now up for grabs.
00:48:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:57
Speaker
In addition, the ones that you would have gotten and the sales reps who don't want to leave that are forced to go because their whole team's leaving or their company's leaving are now ready to be recruited because they need a new home.
00:49:07
Speaker
Like NEM 3.0 will be the great divider of when people are going to stop being adolescents and start being adults.
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:15
Speaker
And we are finally in that place where we're going to see adult companies come to the forefront.
00:49:20
Speaker
I love that.
00:49:21
Speaker
As opposed to a bunch of adolescents.
00:49:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:23
Speaker
And I'm stoked for it.
00:49:24
Speaker
Like, I'm so here for it.
00:49:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:27
Speaker
I love it.
00:49:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:28
Speaker
I mean, let's get all the crybabies out of here and, you know, run with the big boys now.
00:49:32
Speaker
And it's like, and some of it isn't necessary that they're like, if a rep wants to leave, in my opinion, it's largely because they don't know that they can still do it.
00:49:41
Speaker
It's not that they're, you know, people, people will leave if something feels complicated.
00:49:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:47
Speaker
But if it's simplified and they can still sell and they can, they can still harvest the market they've been in and it doesn't have to be as hard as they think.
00:49:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:55
Speaker
then there's no reason to leave.
00:49:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:57
Speaker
And I guess I'm, I'm saying this as a voice to all of the competitors and all the people who are out there selling solar that are afraid you don't have to be like, you can still sell the same amount of accounts, the same amount of deals you've ever sold and provide even better value to your customer.
00:50:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:13
Speaker
And on top of that, like you're talking about homeowners that will actually have an extra benefit of like when the power does go out, they will have some backup and,
00:50:22
Speaker
Instead of that, that's a question that comes up all the time when you're selling.
00:50:24
Speaker
So my power goes out, I'm going to go back.
00:50:26
Speaker
Well, no, because it's tied to the grid and you got to tell them all that unless someone lied to them.
00:50:29
Speaker
But now you can actually tell them that, yes, you are going to have some backup.
00:50:33
Speaker
It's great.
00:50:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:34
Speaker
I don't know.
00:50:35
Speaker
Everyone wants that.
00:50:36
Speaker
Yes.
00:50:37
Speaker
It's funny.
00:50:37
Speaker
Like so many people, I get hit up from customers, you know, all the time that I sold four or five years ago that want a battery now.
00:50:44
Speaker
where I just convinced them so hard they didn't need a battery.
00:50:48
Speaker
So I'm almost thinking, go and save all these texts I'm getting from past customers.
00:50:52
Speaker
It's like social proof.
00:50:53
Speaker
Be like, look, even if you don't want a battery, look how many people want a battery now.
00:50:57
Speaker
I mean, I've modeled it out.
00:50:58
Speaker
You can still show people savings with like, and I've, you know, for the record, it's I'm, I'm modeling out $4 a watt as your base price, right?
00:51:06
Speaker
With the reps.
00:51:07
Speaker
So whatever your Delta is between four bucks, whenever you're getting paid, four bucks before dealer fees, before adders, everything else.
00:51:13
Speaker
And you're still saving money in PG and E and STG and E. It's a bill swap in SCE.
00:51:19
Speaker
Like, yeah.
00:51:20
Speaker
This is not impossible.
00:51:22
Speaker
And let's also not forget that homeowners don't know the difference.
00:51:25
Speaker
It's not like they're comparing quotes from before.
00:51:27
Speaker
Like what existed before isn't available.
00:51:31
Speaker
And so now you're saying to them, this is what it is.
00:51:33
Speaker
The only thing a customer understands is your confidence.
00:51:37
Speaker
Right.
00:51:37
Speaker
So if you show up at the door and you're in the house and you feel unsure about what you're selling, the customer is going to feed off that all day long and be like, oh, this is...
00:51:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:45
Speaker
Probably not what we should do, honey.
00:51:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:47
Speaker
But if you're like, yeah, this is a no brainer.
00:51:49
Speaker
You get this and this and this and this, and it's all these benefits one after another.
00:51:54
Speaker
The customer won't think twice.
00:51:55
Speaker
Okay.
00:51:55
Speaker
This sounds great.
00:51:56
Speaker
Well, let's do it.
00:51:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:58
Speaker
A hundred percent.
00:51:58
Speaker
And I agree.
00:51:59
Speaker
I think it's more of the sales reps, us that have been out here.
00:52:02
Speaker
It's more like what we believe about it and confusion around it.
00:52:05
Speaker
We're telling ourselves it's harder, that people don't want to do anymore.
00:52:09
Speaker
And so it's like what you think is what's going to happen typically.
00:52:11
Speaker
It's like the objections we have ourselves as sales reps, they're going to be reflected in what we're telling these customers.
00:52:17
Speaker
It's the six inches of real estate between your ears that need the only changing.
00:52:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:21
Speaker
That's it.
00:52:22
Speaker
I know.
00:52:23
Speaker
I agree.
00:52:23
Speaker
Well, so important.
00:52:24
Speaker
So anyone listening to this for our solopreneurs, guys, make sure, and even if you're not in California, all this stuff, you know, you can apply this to any markets.
00:52:33
Speaker
Like, I think that's probably where things are headed.
00:52:36
Speaker
You probably have more insight in this, Scott, but you think things are going to change like this in other markets?
00:52:40
Speaker
Yes.
00:52:41
Speaker
Like Texas, Florida.
00:52:43
Speaker
I think that the entire United States will go towards battery-operated.
00:52:47
Speaker
Okay.
00:52:47
Speaker
Okay.
00:52:48
Speaker
So, and I think that the pivotal thing that we'll be selling the most is batteries and that, that the conversation will be less about, Hey, these are the panels I'm using.
00:52:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:57
Speaker
Although it will still come up.
00:52:58
Speaker
I think it'll be more about what are my batteries and how many am I getting?
00:53:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:02
Speaker
And I think that if we're moving towards this, as I mentioned this at solar con, this industrial revolution that's happening, we're moving away from a grid tied home to an autonomous home, right?
00:53:13
Speaker
And to decouple from the grid requires batteries.
00:53:15
Speaker
True.
00:53:16
Speaker
we'll get to a point where sadly for the utility companies that exist, but not for all the homeowners, we will, we will start to unplug and decouple from those and we will have an autonomous grid.
00:53:30
Speaker
And that only happens with the batteries.
00:53:31
Speaker
And I think that's probably the next five, 10 years of the industry.
00:53:35
Speaker
And so again, when we're looking at, is this a gold rush or not?
00:53:39
Speaker
I would tell you that if it is a gold rush, the gold rush lasts for decades and we're just at the beginning.
00:53:45
Speaker
And yeah,
00:53:46
Speaker
We are here to have careers and retirements and create generational wealth, not something that's just a short-term gig.
00:53:54
Speaker
And if that is our mindset and our view, then we make decisions that are based on long-term views as opposed to get in and get out.
00:54:01
Speaker
The get in, get out creates shortcuts.
00:54:03
Speaker
It creates dishonesty.
00:54:04
Speaker
It creates problems, right?
00:54:05
Speaker
If we look at this and say, I'm here for the long run, I want to be here during the whole thing.
00:54:09
Speaker
We make decisions that reflect that.
00:54:11
Speaker
Yeah, true.
00:54:12
Speaker
And I mean, yeah, what I'm hearing is what's going to separate the contenders from the pretenders, right?
00:54:18
Speaker
It's like people are here to contend.
00:54:20
Speaker
They're going to stick it with the long run.
00:54:22
Speaker
They're going to treat it as the careers.
00:54:23
Speaker
And I think that's just what separates really like, you know, the anyone that has success in this job versus anyone that doesn't.
00:54:30
Speaker
I got look at guys that have quit this career.
00:54:32
Speaker
It's like they just they start driving uber on the side They go do other things.
00:54:35
Speaker
They just treat this like a side gig So I think that goes yeah, it goes without saying again a lot of different aspects of solar So Scott's been awesome having you on and you just to kind of wrap up here I think the last pressing thing on my mind was I'm just like man.
00:54:50
Speaker
How does this guy run?
00:54:51
Speaker
So no we how does he have time to also have his own EPC?
00:54:54
Speaker
And then on top of that, he's coming and doing a podcast, which has been awesome.
00:54:58
Speaker
And so I know I asked you a little bit before you hit record, but just for people maybe that are like feeling overwhelmed and solar, like for me personally, I've run teams and I'm trying to grow a podcast.
00:55:08
Speaker
I also have a little coaching program with this.
00:55:11
Speaker
And sometimes it's like, man, it's impossible to, you know, grow both.
00:55:15
Speaker
And just on top of that, focus on my personal selves.
00:55:18
Speaker
So do you have any advice from someone that's like, you know, leading so many organizations, companies,
00:55:24
Speaker
And maybe stuff you've seen with your own like sales managers, things like that.
00:55:28
Speaker
How do you like manage all this time and focus and be able to grow all these different things and keep it going all at once?
Balancing Responsibilities & Leadership
00:55:35
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:55:37
Speaker
That's a that's a tough one.
00:55:38
Speaker
I mean, I've thought a lot about, you know, work life balance and thought a lot about what leadership looks like and.
00:55:45
Speaker
You know, work-life balance, I think sometimes is, is misinterpreted in that I don't think you have to have work-life balance every day.
00:55:53
Speaker
I think that maybe it's a balance of your life and that sometimes you're, you're in the grind and that grind may be a decade.
00:56:01
Speaker
It may be two, but because of that, it gives you balance where you're not in the grind after.
00:56:06
Speaker
And so the work-life balance may just be periods of time.
00:56:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:11
Speaker
It doesn't always have to be like, well, I've allocated this amount of time to this and this amount, but you know, that, that only can really work if you have a family or a support system that believes that too.
00:56:19
Speaker
And they're in it for the long haul.
00:56:20
Speaker
Right.
00:56:21
Speaker
So don't take that as gospel truth.
00:56:23
Speaker
Cause I have no idea if it works other than that's what I'm doing.
00:56:25
Speaker
And I'm telling myself cause I believe that the other thing that I would say just from a leadership standpoint and how you run your organizations or how you run your life, the thing that I find that I value the most is
00:56:39
Speaker
over and over and over again is effort.
00:56:41
Speaker
Okay.
00:56:42
Speaker
Um, when I'm looking at the organization that we have and I'm looking at the leaders that we're growing and things like that, I don't even care how many mistakes the guy makes or how bad the mistakes are.
00:56:52
Speaker
I really don't.
00:56:54
Speaker
What I care about is the amount of effort they put in and how consistent the effort is.
00:56:58
Speaker
The only thing that you can ever really give is your effort.
00:57:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:03
Speaker
That's it.
00:57:04
Speaker
Like,
00:57:05
Speaker
And if as an organization or you as an individual and you're trying to grow something and you look at the way you want to measure success, if success is measured based on simply a metric, right?
00:57:17
Speaker
Like you're leading a team and you say, well, what I care about most is I want to hit this number.
00:57:23
Speaker
How many sales we're going to get?
00:57:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:25
Speaker
Well, then you're probably going to find a way to hit the number.
00:57:29
Speaker
But if instead the goal is, I want everyone I work with to be better and to give as much effort as they can, then the natural consequence and result of the effort given is the number and.
00:57:41
Speaker
Something else.
00:57:43
Speaker
The end part is always the more fulfilling part because someone's become something better.
00:57:47
Speaker
They've become greater.
00:57:48
Speaker
If the only goal is to hit a number, then we'll only get the number.
00:57:52
Speaker
Right.
00:57:52
Speaker
But if the goal is I want your very best all the time, then the failure part doesn't matter.
00:57:57
Speaker
And if you don't hit the number right away, it doesn't matter because along the way that transformation that happens on the journey, the person becomes better.
00:58:05
Speaker
And that's so much more rewarding than just hitting the damn metric.
00:58:08
Speaker
True.
00:58:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:09
Speaker
So I would say effort.
00:58:11
Speaker
Never, ever quit.
00:58:13
Speaker
I love that.
00:58:15
Speaker
Yeah, and I agree.
00:58:16
Speaker
I think it's about the seasons.
00:58:17
Speaker
You know, like sometimes you're going to be pushing harder than others.
00:58:20
Speaker
I got two kids now, and, you know, sometimes I'm comparing myself to guys with, you know, no kids and just going.
00:58:28
Speaker
So, yeah, I've just learned that, like, if you start comparing yourself to others, then that's just downhill.
00:58:34
Speaker
Comparison is the thief of joy.
00:58:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:37
Speaker
Like, just don't.
00:58:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:38
Speaker
The only thing you should be thinking about more than, you know, is, is if you're going to compare as you to you, right.
00:58:45
Speaker
Which you've heard this before, but if you give a hundred percent effort every day, like at the end of it, you know, you did your best, you know, and you learn how to win.
00:58:54
Speaker
It's like your failures over and over and over again, just teach you what to do differently so that you win.
00:58:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:59
Speaker
No one comes out of the gates and wins every time without failing.
00:59:02
Speaker
Like everybody has failed.
00:59:04
Speaker
And the difference is recognizing that no one who's successful is any better than you.
00:59:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:09
Speaker
They just failed more than you have.
00:59:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:11
Speaker
That's it.
00:59:12
Speaker
I love it.
00:59:12
Speaker
Like if they failed more than you and they kept trying, it just means that they found less things to fail at because they've learned all the things not to do.
00:59:18
Speaker
Yeah, that's true.
00:59:21
Speaker
Was it Thomas Edison said he found 700 ways not to create a light bulb or something like that?
00:59:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:29
Speaker
It's true.
00:59:30
Speaker
We'll love it.
00:59:31
Speaker
And, guys, if you're listening to this, yeah, live by that.
00:59:35
Speaker
Don't compare yourself to others.
00:59:36
Speaker
focus on the seasons at a time that you can make improvements and always, you know, give max effort, like Scott said.
00:59:43
Speaker
And so if people want to hear more, you know, about Sunobi, connect more with you, Scott, just to wrap up, what's the best way to do that and to be able to reach out to you?
00:59:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you can go to the website, sunobi.com.
00:59:57
Speaker
I'm pretty excited about the website.
00:59:58
Speaker
I think it looks rad.
00:59:59
Speaker
We just had a little facelift to it.
01:00:01
Speaker
I think it's awesome.
01:00:02
Speaker
Then you can email me.
01:00:03
Speaker
It's scottatsunobi.com.
01:00:05
Speaker
Okay, perfect.
01:00:06
Speaker
So go give him a shot.
01:00:08
Speaker
Are you on like social media or anything?
01:00:09
Speaker
Yeah, Instagram?
01:00:11
Speaker
Yeah, but I'm private.
01:00:12
Speaker
So that's a harder one.
01:00:14
Speaker
All right.
01:00:15
Speaker
Okay, well, shoot him an email or go check out the websites.
01:00:18
Speaker
And Sun Noby's changing the game.
01:00:20
Speaker
So if you haven't checked it out, go get a demo.
01:00:22
Speaker
And I mean, I guess last question, if it's just like a sales rep that wants to like get, I mean, Sun Noby, you just have it basically for like dealers and kind of organizations, right?
01:00:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, a sales rep can do it, but it's just more challenging because they have to have the relationships with the installers and things, but we can walk them through it.
01:00:39
Speaker
Okay.
01:00:40
Speaker
So guys, at least definitely go check it out.
01:00:41
Speaker
And even if you don't use it, I mean, there's still a lot of things that can be taken away from it that you can implement in your own sales process.
01:00:47
Speaker
And, you know, just things you can see pass on to possibly your leaders or other people.
01:00:51
Speaker
So thanks again for coming on the podcast with us today, Scott.
01:00:54
Speaker
And yeah, can't wait to see what you guys do next with Koda and Sanobian.
01:00:58
Speaker
Thanks for changing the game for us.
01:01:00
Speaker
Thank you very much for having me on.
01:01:01
Speaker
I appreciate it.
01:01:02
Speaker
Okay.
01:01:02
Speaker
Appreciate it.
01:01:04
Speaker
Hey, solarpreneurs, are you sick and tired of spinning your wheels every month and not seeing your sales increase?
01:01:10
Speaker
Well, so was I, and the truth is I was never able to improve it until I figured out what was going wrong.
01:01:16
Speaker
So that's why I'm excited to announce for a limited time, we are doing a free sales diagnostic.
01:01:22
Speaker
We'll break down your sales process, figure out the holes in your business and see how we can help you improve.
01:01:30
Speaker
so at now we have six bucks for this month so book a call now don't miss out what you're going to do is send an email to taylor at solarpreneurs.com that's taylor at solarpreneurs with an s.com i'll send you out a calendar link and we will figure out the time that works best so shoot that email and let's increase your sales