What They Don’t Tell You About Knocking Doors (Not What You Think)

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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 one what's up everybody. Should you knock doors?

Speaker 2 (00:44):

Should you be out grinding every day? How should you be getting your leads? That's what we're going to talk about today on the podcast, but I'm, [inaudible] Taylor. I'm Sean. Back with another episode here to make your life as a Solarpreneur, easier here to help you close more deals here to help you generate more referrals and hopefully make it all around. Easier to be in the solar industry. I hope you like my intro. Trying out a few different intros. Okay. So hope you enjoyed trying to work on my little, uh, drum drum roll intro. There. Maybe we should get an actual drum. I know it doesn't really sound like a drum roll starting off the episode, but let's jump into the episode today. So should you knock doors? What I want to talk about is the importance of knocking doors. Why? I think everyone should be hitting the doors, grinding out there in neighborhoods.

Speaker 2 (01:39):

If you were already hitting doors everyday grinding in super hard. Maybe this episode isn't for you. Maybe you've got it figured out it's okay. But if you're anything like me and I know a lot of people in this industry, we struggle to get out on the doors. Sometimes we struggle with motivation. Sometimes we wonder why should we knock doors? Why don't we just follow up with people? Try to get referrals, try to do other methods of lead gen. Okay. So I'm going to tell you why. I think it's so important that you get out there on the doors that you make it part of your general routine and get out there multiple times a week. Maybe you have a setter closer model in your company. Maybe you have other ways of generating leads, but I want to tell you right now that if you're not knocking doors, you are selling yourself short on those other lead gen methods.

Speaker 2 (02:28):

Why? Because being out there on the doors, it's going to make you that much more effective, have a closer, it's gonna make you that much more effective at overcoming objections. It's gonna make you that much more effective at just the mental game. Being out on the door is it's a mental battle out there. And if you learn to master the mental side of things, how much more effective are you going to be as your colon online needs? How much more effective or are you going to be as you're closing deals, as you're in homes, it's going to be a huge difference. Okay. So hopefully I can convince you today that you need to be knocking doors. Even if it's just a couple of times a week, you should be getting out there. You should be grinding. It's going to make you way more successful. Okay.

Speaker 2 (03:13):

So I want to tell you a little bit about my start in the door to door. And I know I've gone over this a few times. Hey, but what some people don't know is that growing up, I was insanely shy as a kid. And part of it was, I wouldn't talk, I didn't want to express myself. Um, I felt like no one paid attention to me and even, uh, my parents at times would say, um, yeah, he doesn't talk very much. He's a shy kid. So I took on this identity. I was shy. I didn't talk to people. I didn't express myself. And what happens? Um, I had my close friends. Okay. Had the people I was hanging out with, I would try to talk to them. But as we got into middle school, early high school, I saw that they were kind of taken off into the more popular friend groups.

Speaker 2 (04:03):

And we're talking about Canab Utah. My school, um, was like 250 kids. Okay. So pretty tiny, pretty tiny crowd of kids there. But I saw some of my buddies they're progressing into these cool kids groups. They're starting to hang out with the core guys. They were starting to, you know, get the girlfriends hanging out with girls and I was getting left behind. Hey, I was so shy. I didn't want to express myself. And I remember the breaking point of it was, or one of the things that was kind of this straw on the camel's back. I tried out for the freshmen basketball team made it. I'm not seeing that much in the school, 250 kids. They practically begged you to come on the team if you have any athletic ability whatsoever, but made it on the freshmen basketball team was stoked and got a little bit of playing time here and there.

Speaker 2 (04:56):

I remember after one of the games, the star of our team on the freshmen basketball squad, um, everyone was kind of just saying what they thought of the game. I think we lost that game. Um, didn't go well, everyone's kind of talking about it. Strategizing, what could we change to win the next one? And as we're all talking this star of our team, he straight up looks at me and says, well, don't ask Taylor. He's not going to say anything. He doesn't have opinions. He never talks anyways. And he calls me out in the middle of the rock locker room and I just feel destroyed. I get this sunken feeling. I'm like, man, I'm a part of this team, but the star of the team doesn't think I have anything valuable to say he doesn't, he doesn't even hear me talk. Doesn't know what I'm going to say.

Speaker 2 (05:42):

So at that point I was pretty devastated. I'm like, man, how am I going to be successful in anything? How am I going to keep up with my friends that are getting invited to parties now that are hanging out with the girls? And I was devastated. So at that point I took on the responsibility to start to break out of my shell. I tried everything possible and that was an awkward kid too. So a lot of times when I made the effort to talk, more things came out awkward. Um, got made fun of being chubby, things like that. Just your typical nerd. I was more of the band geek. Okay. I was the music guy and that's what I was good at. That's what I wanted to spend my time on. But I knew that if I wanted to progress, even if it was in music, I knew I needed a break out of this shell of shyness to a degree.

Speaker 2 (06:33):

So at that, from that point on, I tried to do everything possible, to talk more, um, and always smiled a lot. I think that's one of the things I did to try to break out of that shyness is I would always smile at high school. I tried to turn it around, be happy, be positive, smile. And then what happened? I get made fun of for smiling and do, okay. People said, I smiled too much said, Taylor, why are you smiling? Why are you smiling in class? Everyone else is serious. Why are you smiling? Why do you always smile when you talk? Okay. So it turned into that. So I was like, man, how do I get out of this? Not only say I'm smiling too much. I'm finally starting to talk. And now it's the smile. Okay. Ans yeah. So that's, that was my high school experience.

Speaker 2 (07:17):

So I slowly broke out of it. Okay. I feel like I am. I'm still an introvert, definitely. But I try to interact with people and that's part of why I got into door to door. The reason I tell you that is because fast forward freshman year of college, I heard about this pest control company that was hiring. I saw their PA skills, how you can make thousands of dollars by going out and knocking on doors. And I'm like, okay, I've been shy all my life. I don't think I can be successful with. Wow. I am currently with not wanting to talk to people with having a nervous knot in my stomach. Every time I approach an adult. So why don't I just go out and do this? How else am I going to break this spell? How else am I going to break out of my shell, out of my shyness?

Speaker 2 (08:02):

So that was the first time I started tried to do something that I didn't think I could do. And that's why I got in to door-to-door sales in the first place. It helped me break out of that shyness. It helped me really just conquer my fears of talking to anyone. It helped me control my emotions better, help me express myself. And it's a work in progress. I tell everyone I was never a natural salesman. I stopped to work extremely hard. And that's why you hear this podcast created today is because I want to surround myself with the best of the best. I know guys like me. I'm not the natural sales guy. I'm not the guy that's going to go out and get, you know, 10 sells in a day. Okay. I know I've had a good amount of success now, but that's because I've gotten mentors.

Speaker 2 (08:50):

I've sought out coaching. I've sought to surround myself with the best of the solar. And I credit that with the success that I have been old attain. Okay. So if you are like me, if you feel like you need to break out of your shell more, if you feel like he need to have that success, um, or find that extra success, even more reason for you to get out on the doors, even more reason for you to get out of your comfort zone, do something that challenges you. And so that's the first point I wanted to make is it's going to help you develop your communication skills. If you can get out there, if you can make it a priority to go out and knock those doors, garden, getting areas it's going to help you develop that better. It's going to help you again, like I mentioned in your closes game.

Speaker 2 (09:40):

The second reason is if you are trying to get into online Legion, I know the purpose of this podcast is to help people conquer all aspects of the soar game. Okay? So we're talking online leads, we're talking the follow up, we're talking the referral getting. So if you can knock on doors, it's going to make you that much more successful with all these other things with online lead gen, even more. So if you can knock on doors, how much easier is it going to be to recognize those patterns of how people communicate to what makes people tick? You look at any online marketer, they're taken a lot of similar techniques and they're applying it into online Legion. So if that's something you think you'll do in the future is dive into online leads, dive into marketing more online, go out and knock doors. It's going to help you.

Speaker 2 (10:28):

And it's going to help you make that jump. Okay. A good example of that was Steve Larson. He was on the podcasts. Um, geez is probably a year and a half ago. So you can go back and listen to that episode, but he's one of the top online marketers today. And, um, in the episode we had on with him, he talks about his experiences, starting off in door to door, sells and pest control. And he has stories all the time where he's talking about how things applied when he's knocking doors and how they're helping them now in online marketing, um, making millions online, one of the top online marketers, I would say today, and he's taken these drawn from those experiences he's learned in knocking doors, pest control. Okay. Another, um, example just recently in door door Fest, um, talked about it. In the previous episode, we had a kid during a Q and a, um, he was asking the speakers.

Speaker 2 (11:21):

There is a question panel, um, where everyone is asking speakers, their questions. And one of the kids he asks, um, Hey, I have a, um, I have a call center. You guys are talking a lot about door knocking techniques, but how can I apply this to my call center? How can I apply these same lines? The same concept you're talking about to the call center. And guess what the answer was, the answer was that you don't need to change really anything. Okay. The same techniques that they're talking about on the doors, you can appeal directly to your phone, uh, to your call centers, to your leads, to when you're talking to people on the phone, it's going to work across the board cells, the cells gain. Yeah. Granted there there's tweaks. You make there's little things. You adjust. There's a lot of things you change, but you don't need to reinvent the wheel.

Speaker 2 (12:11):

If it works on the doors, guess what? There's a really good chance. It's going to work on the phones in your telemarketing, in your call. Centers can all be applied. And um, even more reason to say that Chris Lee, he was actually the one more than anyone that was saying they can apply Chris Lee. He has, that's how he does his business. Um, is one tons of entrepreneur of the year award stuff like that. He's got his call center in Washington. That's how he gets, um, he gets online leads and they close them on the phone. They close them on, um, video chats on calls and he was one of the biggest, um, yeah, biggest contributors to that answer. He said, look, man, you need to change anything, just apply what you learned and dump it into the call center. Okay. So it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (13:02):

Door to door is going to help you. Okay. And then last point, it's going to help you closing the deal. And my example of this is when I closed 150 deals in a year in 2019, got my golden door award. Okay. If you're watching the video version, you can see it right behind me here. And, um, this award, the majority of these deals were from our setters. We had a set or closer program. Okay. So I did get a lot of the leads that closed from, uh, these centers that we had knocking for us. Okay. Um, but the point I make with this is I remember all of the leads that closed when I was at my best closing when I had my big days. The big reason I had success closing was because I was trained to knock at the same time. So anytime I would go knock on my own, even though I had my pipeline pretty much full, a lot of days with preset leads.

Speaker 2 (14:05):

If I made an effort to go out and knock to go out and warm up, if you will, before my closes, it gave me so much more success as I got in the homes. Okay. Cause I was warmed up. Think of Steph Curry, shooting his free throws, going through his crazy routine. It's the same thing with knocking doors and going to deals. If you can get that up phase, if you can overcome those objections, it's gonna make you way more resilient in deals. I remember anytime I would go to a deal where I'd warmed up knocking, I just felt like way more empowered to overcome objections. I felt like I couldn't be phased by anything in a close cause. Usually if you can get an appointment on the doors, usually a close is going to be easier. A lot of times then the efforts you have to put in to an appointments, not always, but a lot of times it will.

Speaker 2 (14:57):

If you can get in the door, if you can take someone from not really interested on the door, getting their home, get the appointments, then it's going to help you develop that skill even more. Okay. So just a couple of thoughts I had. Okay. And hope you don't think I'm too big of a loser I'm trying to improve. I'm trying to bring you guys the best, but at the same time it's helping me improve. It's helping me be better. It's helping me break out of my shell. What's another purpose of this podcast. Another selfish reason that I do this podcast, but I just hope that I can share some value with my Solarpreneurs, with my peeps, help you guys achieve the level of success that you haven't been able to attain. Yet. You can go share this with someone. If you know someone that is struggling to get out on the doors, encourage them, motivate them and set your targets high.

Speaker 2 (15:44):

Hey, the reason I'm doing this, uh, podcast today is we're actually having an old debate in the next episode, um, with, um, James Swiderski, who is, um, the previous cohost of the podcast. He's actually, we've been fortunate enough to convince him to come do some, um, yeah. Kind of guest episodes come out and drop some value on the podcast. So I'm doing this today's cause actually next episode, we have a little debate coming up. We'd debate online versus offline needs. And I'm a huge proponent of the door knocking. He, uh, you know, he appreciates it, but that's not his background. It's not where he came from. So that's the topic of our little debate we have. Yeah, we agree on some things we don't agree on a few other things. So if you want to hear more on the online versus offline leads, make sure to tune in to next episode, but wanted to give you guys a little preview and hopefully convince you of the importance of going out, hitting those doors. Remember the hardest Ord open is the corridor. So get out there, run to the first door if you need to. And we'll see you on the next show piece.

Speaker 1 (16:54):

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 (18:23):

[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.