How Top Solar Companies are Building Culture

Speaker 1 (00:03):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and 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. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery. And you are about to become what's up Solarpreneurs Taylor Armstrong. Back with another episode here

Speaker 2 (00:45):

To help you dominate the sales industry, close more deals, generate more referrals and leads and see success as a Solarpreneur, as solar professional. So hope you're having an awesome week. Hope you're having a great start to this quarter. Something that I've gotten a lot of great feedback from just a few episodes back we had on Zack Bassett. He talked about these ERC COVID relief funds, and then also just some, um, you know, just some general finance advice, gotten a lot of great feedback on the episode. So if you haven't checked that out already go back should be two episodes back from this current one, you can hear him, but guys, if you don't have your finances in order, we're all making. We should all be making awesome money. Now it's time to handle it, to create that long-term wealth. So go listen to that episode, it got a ton of good feedback and then get that COVID relief fund made some money for businesses.

Speaker 2 (01:47):

We're all our own business here. So what Solarpreneur being a Solarpreneur is about. So take advantage of these funds and use them to invest. You. Don't just get that nine, 10 grand. And I mean, don't take it to the casino. I guess if you're good at gambling, you can do that, but go invest in something awesome. And let's double that money. So I'm point is go listen to the previous episodes. We've had a lot of awesome guests on, so if you're not taking advantage of these, these are guys that charge normally thousands and thousands to listen to them, hear from them. We're getting the best on the show. So take advantage of these awesome guests we're getting on and then share it with your teams, share it with the people you're trying to help improve. Okay. So speaking of the guests, next episode, we had privileged to have, uh, my friend Sam Taggart back on the show.

Speaker 2 (02:40):

And, um, I actually did a show with him too. So if you're not already subscribing to his podcasts, go check it out. And that shouldn't be dropping here in the next week or two week or two. The interview he did with me on his show, talked about some strategic door-knocking tips and some cool little hacks to help people out their areas on the doors. And just some other general solar advice, things that have helped things that I've learned from interviewing the best. So go check that out. But in our episode, I just want to give you kind of a little demo of what we talked about. And then just an epiphany I had as I was talking to him is Sam. He's worked with, um, he's helped dozens of solar companies just, you know, double their revenue, um, increase the production of their reps and just have a lot more success than they were having before.

Speaker 2 (03:33):

So I was asking him, Sam, I'm like, what are you doing? What is it? You change with these companies? How do you help them? Um, go from good to great to go from average to good. What are you doing? So one of the biggest things, and you'll hear it in the next episode, we're gonna, we dig deep into it. But number one, he talks about how these companies, um, figure out their why basically their, um, why do they want to have that product top production? What's the goal with their company? Why did they actually start it? Where do they want to take it? And he said, most of these companies, they don't, they don't have a good answer for this. They don't know why they started a solar company. Some of them say they want to sell eventually. Um, some of them don't even know where they want to take it.

Speaker 2 (04:21):

He said, that's the problem. And it's a big problem. Not only with company owners, but with all solar sales professionals. Why do you want to be in this industry? Where do you want to go with it? What do you, what are your future goals? If you had to write down what's, uh, two years in advance looks like, what would it look like if you look two years in the future? So I thought that was a good exercise and you're going to hear it gave you the second thing is sort of that epiphany I had that's what I want to focus on today is just what companies are doing to have great culture. It's something that we've been talking a lot about here in our, the dealer that I'm helping manage a switch to solar down here in San Diego. It's something we're trying to build in something that I'll be honest has been a struggle with us.

Speaker 2 (05:09):

We've had a lot of reps come on. Um, but a lot of mediocrity, a lot of people not producing up to their potential. And then, you know, you get guys coming in from local ads, things like that. That's end of the day, just aren't really producing, selling themselves short and then just pretty much fizzle out after a month or two. So I'm asking Sam, what do you see? What's the difference in these huge organizations, these big companies, what are they doing to have great culture in the epiphany? I had something he told me is that as he's talked with, um, I think he told me, he's talked with someone that was basically overall the culture, it's a Vivint solar. And then it's something you've heard from other large organizations is that they essentially have a marketing department for their sales organization. And I didn't really think about this, but it dawned on me.

Speaker 2 (06:04):

I'm like, huh? Yeah. I've seen that across all successful sales organizations is that they are marketing hard to their sales reps. So what I mean by that, if you look at we'll take Vivant, solar, for example, obviously one of the largest direct sales organizations, um, grandfather's a door to door I've been to. I've seen how they run things and what they do. They have a whole basically TV channel set up that gets their reps excited about competitions that gets the reps, um, just highlighting who the top rep was for each week. And maybe we need to get someone on to talk about exactly what it is, but obviously these guys are, you know, have a huge marketing budget for their reps. And, um, they're just doing little things to get their reps super excited. It's their marketing, probably more to homeowners, um, or sorry, probably more to their sales organization, where to their sales reps than they are to homeowners or they are to customers are trying to attract because guess what, when they market and get their reps fired up, get them stoked to go out there.

Speaker 2 (07:17):

What are they going to do? They're going to bring on more revenue. They're going to bring on more customers for them. So it's a win-win. So think about that. How are you, if you were a sales manager, if you are, if you started, um, you know, a deal or whatever you are, if you're top dog at your company, are you marketing to your, to your team, to your sales reps? How are you getting them excited? You know, I think about at my previous company, I was at two. We, they really pushed hard on these competitions. We had them twice a year. I've talked about it in the show before we call them iron mans and what we did, the winter got a big, it was like, you see the UFC belts that puts the title champion on there. We had a big belts for the winner.

Speaker 2 (08:05):

So that was a huge thing. Let's get you to the top. You're going to get your name engraved on the championship belt. So everyone was like, ah, I want to get top rap. I want to win Ironman. And then we, at one point we had a truck that they would get a drive for the next six months, which was awesome. People were fired up about that. And then, um, what they did is they had weekly videos during the competition, invested a ton into designing, like, you know, the leaderboard, the turn of bracket that went out. Um, there were, there were daily videos on like the prizes and highlighting the top reps for the week. So think about that. And it's something that I realized we're not doing right currently. And we we've ran a few competitions, but we failed to market them. Like we should, we fell to get our sales teams really excited about it.

Speaker 2 (08:58):

And, um, we haven't really done videos. It's just been kind of reminder, Hey guys, remember when the competition don't forget to push hard, that's not gonna work. So what can you do? Remind your reps, shoot them out, videos, shoot them out, texts, um, market to them. Cause that's the thing that's going to change. Another guest we had on recently, um, Moe Falah, um, go back and listen to that episode too. But it's something my that's why I say it's an epiphany because, um, I think he talked about it a little bit, but he hires, he has basically social media managers. He pays people thousands and thousands to help him run his social media, help him run his team, social media, and then just do graphic design for all his team incentives for anything they got going on for, um, you know, comp competitions tournaments. He has, um, you know, do a suite design for it.

Speaker 2 (09:52):

He has them do the videos and then he's just spreading it like wildfire on social media. Hey, our top rep this week was so-and-so. He did this many accounts and number one, it's helping his team just want to be that top guy. And then seeing them highlighted on social media seem the production that all social media guys are doing the graphic design. And then number two, it's helping them a ton in recruiting because if guys see how this rock solid culture of, if you're posting out on social media, if you're sharing it, then I know Mo he has recruited dozens of guys just off of the presence he has on social media. Okay. So something to think about, if you are leading a team, just think about that. How can you increase your awareness for your reps? If you're leading a sales organization, what are you doing to really market to your team?

Speaker 2 (10:42):

Get them fired up because I think it's a key part in the culture, getting your reps excited and then, um, helping them, um, have that excitement to want to be the best. And then also helps with recruiting Jay, and then for, uh, in the next week or two, we actually have an Instagram expert that is going to come on. His name is Brock Johnson. So we're gonna talk more about the social media and that's something that I need to approve improve on big time that I've been thinking about do, but those are all things that help a lot. So keep tuning in. We're going to have more experts come on, but if you're not taking advantage of the marketing opportunities, you have to your own team do that. I would say it's more important than marketing to your customers because the more you can market to your team, get them fired up. The more they're going to produce your results and the more success you're going to have. So that's my thoughts. Hope it helped go out and lead your teams, go out and be great. Never be satisfied. And we will see you on the next show.

Speaker 1 (11:41):

Hey Solarpreneurs. Quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode.

Speaker 3 (13:09):

[inaudible].

The SOLARPRENEUR podcast is here to help you close more deals in the solar industry, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully, have a much better time and situation.