Online or Offline Solar Leads? Solarpreneurs Debate

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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 is going on on

Speaker 2 (00:42):

Solarpreneurs. We are back with another show. We're doing something a little bit different, and we have a familiar face on the show. And for those of you watching, we're going to be start doing some video too. So we've got us both in our home studios, but we have today back on the studio, uh, James Swiderski what's up, James? Thanks for coming back on the show. Yeah, man, it feels like home feels like, yeah, you're good house. Thank you. Appreciate it. And so for our solarpreneurs, some of you are probably wondering what the heck is James doing back here? Um, we had him on probably a couple months back. Just kind of told your story, why you ultimately left the podcast and started doing some different things though. Um, for those that are wondering why James is back, I'll just tell you why. Um, so we have been working together.

Speaker 2 (01:30):

I actually hired James, um, around the time that we had him back on to tell his story of kind of what went down, why he left the podcast. I actually hired James after that. Cause now he is working, um, primarily with coaches, consultants, helping them build their brands and helping them launch courses, things like that. So I thought, well, James he's he's, he knows the solar stuff and he's good at helping coaches and everything. So why don't we figure out a way we can work together? So since then we've been working together, have some excited things, exciting things coming out. Um, he helped me kind of put together the Solciety, which we'll be talking about more it's in a beta testing right now. So for those that are on the wait list, go join the wait list. If you haven't already solciety.co.

Speaker 2 (02:15):

But after that, I invited him to actually be an instructor in on the course. And obviously you have a ton of insight to have done solar online Legion. So I'm had some valuable stuff to share. So that's why he's back on. We're going to be doing just a little bit content here and there. And I think there's still a lot of value he can add. So yeah. So happy to be here. Yeah. So James, today we're jamming on, um, just, you know, the lead gen, we're talking about a whole lot just over the past couple of days, just online versus offline. And so can you give us like your background? You did the online lead gen. You basically had an agency with for years. So I don't know. You want to give your background in that role. So yeah, I've done. Um, I've done it all for lead gen.

Speaker 2 (03:07):

So started out as a sales rep, a solar rep, like everybody and did not do online leads. Uh, a lot of people think I just came out of the gate in my solar career, started doing social media, all that good stuff, but, uh, it's completely the other way around for the first three years of my career, I never generated a single lead online. It was all in person, uh, strategies, which we'll talk about, um, whether it's door knocking. I did a little bit of that, but mostly it was like kiosks movie theaters, things like that, that my company had set up. Um, so my background is actually very similar to Taylor and most guys in the industry, it's just jamming on the traditional lead gen strategies, but I really started getting into kind of the internet marketing side of things from an early, um, exactly early, but it was somewhat early perspective on my career.

Speaker 2 (03:57):

And that's when I just kind of hit that bug. I got that social media, uh, internet marketing type of bug, uh, entrepreneur bug, and started looking for ways to generate leads besides just being at the movie theater or the kiosk or any of that stuff. Um, and it's not that they were in effective. Um, I easily closed probably a hundred deals just from like kiosks, for example, at a mall or a movie theater on a weekend. So like it was very, very effective. Um, but I just didn't enjoy it and it just didn't capture my attention the same way, like online lead stuff. So, uh, that's kinda like how I got started. I just want to go into this before we kind of go into this debate. Like I have done all of the offline stuff. I'm not just coming in and saying like, ad sucks, don't do it.

Speaker 2 (04:45):

Like there's a specific type of person. I think that should. Um, and then what you just said about the lead gen side. So after I, uh, briefly kind of put my solar rep career on hold, they went out and started a consulting and advertising agency for solar professionals. Um, maybe some of you have worked with me. I know we have some past clients that have worked with us. Um, and we just did lead gen Facebook ads, Google ads, all of that stuff for, um, different companies. And we've worked with companies like Sunrun, vivid, uh, some of the big players within the industry. And I've made a lot of people, a lot of money. So I've got a lot of thoughts, a lot of opinions. Um, my general opinion is I'm more on the pro online lead gen strategy for solar. Then Taylor is, and kind of our purpose of this step is to kind of go head to head, provide some perspective to see what you should be doing.

Speaker 2 (05:37):

Yeah. So before this, we were thinking of bringing in like a town hall debate, moderator give us like the full experience here. Like Trump buy it in. Let's get it on. Um, who's who's, who's Biden. Who's Trump on the trout man. That's a bunch of crap, man. Lead gen. Great. Again. I'm going to get out, make it great again. Yeah. All right. Um, but so we didn't get that this time. Maybe we'll bring someone on for the next one. So for our listeners, let us know. You didn't tell him what it actually was. It was iron man versus captain America. Oh, that's what it was. Yeah. And we all know who's iron man here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You can be an Ironman like captain America, like whatever, unless it's the new captain America, did you watch the new Falcon winter soldier show yet? That was a show.

Speaker 2 (06:28):

Okay. You need to watch that. But the new iron sucks for sorry. The new captain America sucks basically replace captain America. Spoiler alert. Yikes. They're never going to do that with iron man that you can't, you can't, you can't replace. Dude. If anybody came in and replaced, uh, RJ dude toast, they put a sign. I was reading, they they're making a campaign. They have a billboard in LA sing and bring a Tony stark back. So good happen. Who knows? We'll see. But yeah. Anyways, so I'm captain America, your iron man. All right. So Taylor, bottom line. Why door knocking bro? What's your background? Well, yeah, so my background is just, I think online leads are just such a distraction for people. And this is what I've been telling. You guys spend all this money, um, from what I've seen, just leading teams, time after time, reps just want to go to do these online leads basically because they're lazy.

Speaker 2 (07:30):

They don't want, they want to work less. And what do you mean by online leads? So that's a, that's a broad topic. What do you mean? Yeah. Well, I mean, just like mostly like paying someone to generate your leads because yeah. These people don't put in the time. A lot of times they just want to get off the doors and then it's tough for like leading a team. Cause I'll give you an example. We had a dude that worked with us. Um, and then he, he closed like, I don't know, six deals in a week. And a lot of them were just from kind of like networking online leads. So he stepped into a manager role, but then he didn't want to like actually go out and knock. So then our whole team that was, we were trying to train to knock. They just wanted to be like this dude.

Speaker 2 (08:16):

And after that, he, he saw like intermittent success. He closed a ton in a week and then he would have to go network a ton and try and sift through all these online leads. And then it was just like up and down, like crazy where we're just like, dude, get out and like lead, go out and just knock some doors and get some consistent leads go out there. So that's always been kind of my take on it. It's just like you're trying to lead door to door teams. There's so many people that are just, I don't know, want to do it to take the easy way out. Don't want to knock doors ins. Yeah. They're just lazy, man. So I don't know. I guess I kind of have a, a bad taste in my mouth just after seeing all these lazy on the doors. So interesting perspective having, so you've, you've never done online leads before successfully.

Speaker 2 (09:03):

Well, I have, in fact, in fact I have a guy. Yeah, I have. So I think it's like, if you're not lazy, if you're going to knock doors, do both. But like my argument is, I don't know. I don't think people should go out and try to do online leads unless until they have success in door knocking, then you can go to all my maids and doom combination. Yeah. So that's my take on it, but I don't know. What did you see when you were in your company? Did you have like lazy dudes, your, where was your company even pushing door knocking or what was your here's what, here's what, here's what I think. Uh, no, we did not push door knocking. So the, the original company I worked with, they were called FLR solar. They've actually been out of business for a few years now, but you could still look them up and check them out.

Speaker 2 (09:47):

This is back in Utah, but, um, they were actually strongly against door knocking. We actually almost had a policy against door knocking in this company and you can see why I'm not like super pro for it. It's because we'd like to keep our brand a certain way. We were going for a very kind of pristine apple valley type of customer centric brand where we cared about the experience. We didn't want to look like pesky sales guys, like the rest of the people out there. Um, which is why we hit so hard on kiosk and movie theaters. Um, if you guys have never tried those, you haven't tried those right tailor, like movie theater kiosk. How about like a trade show? Um, I've tried that maybe once, once or twice and it didn't go that great. So super good. And there was those three, right? There were like 90% of our leads at this company.

Speaker 2 (10:41):

And this was on multi eight figure company too. Like this is a big solar company. Um, so like those of you who do have companies out there to look into those strategies and give them a shot because at first glance, um, I will tell you that it's not like a plugin play. Like let's just go book a kiosk at the local mall here and see if it works. There's a lot more to it. I would say it took probably a solid year for this company to get the momentum going and these offline strategies. But I will agree with Taylor on this point. I think that you're going to find the lazy reps on both sides of the coin. In other words, if you're too lazy to generate leads, knocking doors, or you're too lazy to generate leads, uh, generating on social media or online strategies, right?

Speaker 2 (11:33):

I think they're one in the same. I think the guys who are really good at door knocking, they could also be good at lead gen. I think the guys who are not good at door knocking or not good at online leads, they're going to suck around the board. So I don't think it's an and or, or necessarily I think if you're lazy, you're lazy, right. Could be, could be, well, my question is this like in Utah, um, I don't think there were, I mean, a ton of solar companies at the time you tell me, but I don't think it was super saturated. San Diego. No, no. Yeah. So like the trade shows we've tried to do, um, my feeling was that they didn't work just cause like everyone's heard about solar, it's super saturated. They've had their door knock 20 times. The last thing they want to do is go talk to someone, you know, at a trade show when they're already in like the home depots, the Lowe's stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (12:24):

So did you see that that works or with people you work with, did you hear that? That stuff works even in like saturated markets, like counseling, there's a, there's a, uh, work, smarter work, harder strategy when it comes to trade shows and this type of in-person stuff. What worked for us was not stand behind the booth. Let me just paint a picture. Okay. You've seen it before. So you're at a mall, you're at a kiosk or something. What do you see? Usually you're going to see two types of salespeople. You're going to see one that is behind the booth on their phone, doing nothing, right? Cause they get paid by the hour that did not work. It did not work for us. And our company is still hired hourly appointment set or reps. I told them so many times, and this is one of the reason I left out on my own is because I'm like, dude, these reps literally never set a single appointment.

Speaker 2 (13:13):

They're just sitting there burning cash, right. It was the commission sales reps that thought a little bit smarter, got a little bit more out of the box with their thinking they were more effective. So when you're doing like this offline stuff, what really worked well was going to in our trade show example was actually going to the other trade show booth, uh, founders and company owners and representatives and networking with those people. That's where the real money was because when you go and you talk to them, Hey, we're at our booth. It's not going super great. What do you do? Boom, you got instant rapport going with those people. So it was like that combined with actually getting out there and working the floor, not just sitting behind the desk. So I mean, there's a right and a wrong way to do everything, but, uh, I'll a hundred percent agree with you.

Speaker 2 (14:01):

I would say 90% of reps, uh, at our company did not generate with these strategies at all, but the 10% made up for it. Hmm. Gotcha. So basically you're you wanted these people to be like the sales guys in Mexico. This is fresh on my mind. I just got back from Mexico and you know, I know you've never been there. I don't think. But like if you're in the streets, people hound you for everything. People hound, you buy other jewelry, you can't walk to one place to another without something. Yeah, dude. Okay. Makes more sense. I think it's the same spread man. 90% of people are not going to produce the results, but that 10%, isn't it the same in door knocking, right? Yeah. That's fair to say, like those top 10% they make up for all of it. Yeah. 80, 20 rule, 20% of the you, what are those top 10% guys have that the other guys don't the 90%?

Speaker 2 (14:57):

Um, well I think just the combination of the work, they're working more. Number one and then the knowledge, I mean they know all this stuff. They know how to overcome the objections. Um, so it really comes down to that. I think these guys know how to work hard and they know how to like resolve the objections. Then they're going to have success because what I see in door knocking guys will work hard for like a week. But since they don't have the knowledge, yet since they suck at knocking doors, suck at overcoming objections, they're not getting the results. Um, so then they stop working hard and then they get less results. Even though their knowledge is increasing by a little bit, they're not working hard. They don't have the work ethic anymore. So it just like kills them. And that's why people, so many people quit because they don't put in that consistent work.

Speaker 2 (15:44):

If they did it for like a couple months, I think they would get past that learning curve. But it's like few people are willing to put in the hard work and then have the knowledge, like get to the point where, you know, you don't have to work as hard. That's I think, but let me ask you this. What, what is the once the last time you talked to like a guy on your team or something that was considering online, lead strategies, buying leads, something like that. Like what's that? Tell me about the experience last time you're talking to a guy like this and what did you find? Is it just, they're trying to not put in the hard work and they think that this is a better alternative or like what do you think about that? Um, yeah. I mean, that's, that's my opinion. Like I was saying in the beginning.

Speaker 2 (16:28):

Yeah. There's a few guys, you know, that I work with currently. They think sometimes have that mindset. They want to work less hours. So they go out and, you know, do leads and yeah. I mean I've, I do all my needs currently right now, too. So I pay someone, get some online leads. So like I was saying, I don't think it's a bad thing, but especially for newer guys, they're trying to jump into it too early then. I don't think that's a good combination. We had a guy that was out here, came from Texas, sold with us for like a couple of weeks. And he was already trained to jump into online leads. He may be generated like, I don't know, maybe what did he do though? Well, he was knocking doors, but he'd only generated like three or four appointments from knocking doors that don't want to be like a jerk to him.

Speaker 2 (17:16):

But I'm like, bro, you can't, you've only gotten like four appointments from knocking in like two, three weeks now. Like why don't you focus on that rather than already chained to dump money into online leads. Cause I think you would agree that if people are good at knocking, well, yeah, I think you already said it. If they're good at knocking, then they're going to be able to set better appointments with online needs. Cause this is, you got to overcome the objections. You're still calling these leads. You still got to have to set that appointment so that you can do it on the doors, then it's way easier to do it on the phone. Would you agree? Yeah. So what if you were to summarize your case on door knocking, you think that if you're new to the industry door knocking is for you, are you saying just door knocking or what do you think about other offline strategies?

Speaker 2 (18:01):

Like networking events, stuff like that? No, I think just door knocking, man. All door knocking. I think if you can do that, like do it hard for two to three, I would say minimum three months. Even if you hate it, just cause like, yeah. See, I know you're talking about, if it's not your favorite thing to do, there's other ways to January leads by the end day, there's going to be a lot of things that people hate that we're not hanging around. So like, why not go knock doors hard for three months? Even if you hate it, just grind through it, get good at it. And then you can start to work on these other strategies. Then you can start doing them more long-term things. Cause it's going to get you past that learning curve and it's only going to help you and all the other lead gen strategies you need, it's going to help you with the communication and networking.

Speaker 2 (18:48):

It's going to help you with the overcoming objections. It's going to help you with the persistence. Not taking no for an answer, but I think, but yeah. Let me ask you this James, you coming from not knocking doors much. How do you feel like, um, I don't know. How do you feel like you developed those things to actually be successful in your kiosks and everything? Do you think it was like a slower learning curve with you not knocking as many doors or? Yeah. So this is where I got my experience. This is where I had a bit of an advantage that I used to not talk about enough on the previous podcast, because I mean, frankly like when I would tell people I'd like LinkedIn was one of my most profitable lead sources like LinkedIn, right? Nobody talks about LinkedIn in this industry, but I can tell you the skill set to do that is ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (19:35):

It makes it looking like knocking doors, like a piece of cake. Like you got to learn how to knock doors. You have to learn how to write hook a copy that hooks right? In one, two sentences, you gotta be able to hop on the phone, add value to the person and exchange, right? You have to be able to network with them, get along with them. Then you have to set an appointment with them and overcome objections, just like door knocking. Right. And if you've got to do that over and over and over again, so the skill set to do online lead gen is a lot more significant. And um, where I think I really set my foundation, my roots, correct, was actually on a church service mission, similar to what Taylor did as well. We both went on one of these, not same place, not at the same time, but on these missions.

Speaker 2 (20:19):

Right. And I'm sure a lot of you guys have heard like Mormon church, church missions, right? We all know who these guys are. Right. You're going around door knocking for two years. Right? Pitching people on why they need to like change their lifestyle, quit addictions, quit drinking, coffee, quit drinking, alcohol, quit all this stuff, right. Pitching them. Jesus. Right. Closing a deal with Jesus. That's way harder to sell than solar. I can tell you, is that a million times harder? Right. Um, and this is where I kind of got my first taste of door knocking, absolute and I first tasted door knocking. So like the first, I would say year of this mission, it was all door knocking, all grinding 10, 12 hours a day. Right. You could relate with this tailor. And that's just where I developed the skills. One to handle rejection, two to communicate and develop rapport with a complete stranger communication skills, discipline.

Speaker 2 (21:14):

All of this stuff was developed at this point. That's why I really had a leg up because honestly my first day at the solar company that I joined, when I, I did join a couple of years after that mission, um, I came in and was instantly the top lead setter in the entire company. Like I said, 10 appointments my first day, like in a couple of hours, people are like, what the freak? What? It's the stuff at the mission. So I vibe a tailor on that. The skillset, uh, I had, I had an advantage for sure. So yeah. Good point. Well, yeah. What about like, um, because another one of my arguments is all these networking strategies, the kiosks, like you were saying, they take quite a bit of time to have success with and like set up and be consistent money. That's the thing with kiosks and boosts.

Speaker 2 (22:01):

It's a lot of money we spent. I'm trying to remember. I think we spent 20 grand a month to be at one of our kiosks. Yeah. Yeah. So expense plus, plus we had to have people at the kiosk. I didn't even say this when you're doing a mall kiosk, you have to have a man at the kiosk at all times. So you've got to pay for an hourly appointment set or to be there if your closers aren't there too. So it's, it's closer to realistically with payroll, like 40 grand a month for something like that. Yeah. So it was, it was always profitable. Yeah. Yeah. But not for a long time. Not for a long time. And as for some of the stuff I'm talking about too, like if you're ever doing a kiosk thing to maybe I shouldn't even talk about it in society trainings as well.

Speaker 2 (22:47):

Like there's a lot to learn there that when we started blowing up, we actually hired a guy, a VP of sales from a solar city. At the time he was an ex guy from solar city, any help, solar city develop all their kiosks around the country. And at the time these guys were cranking probably 60 to 75 deals a month average per kiosk. And they had multiple dozens of kiosk locations across the country, just from kiosks. So, uh, don't knock on them. I mean, and they are really offline strategies to begin with. It's kind of like door knocking, but they come to you versus the other way around. Yeah. Well, yeah, you gotta hand it to these guys. Like the sun runs and all that, that have booths and Costco and the home depots they work. Yeah. Those things are working for sure. I don't know how they set that up. I wish I had that set up because what makes me mad is people think some run and all that people think they're Costco that I go, I got my solar panels from Costco and like Costco. They don't even sell solar panels.

Speaker 2 (23:48):

Not yet. Not yet. They don't Amazon, Amazon. Who's going to be everybody's lunch. I'm putting my money on. Eventually Amazon's getting into solar game and it's game it's lights. Yeah. Baby could be. Yeah. Or Tesla with these rock bottom prices. These guys are killing us man. Oh. And Bezos is the king of rock bottom, bottom prices. He will slash Teslas if he does solar, which I think he will, he will slash what Tesla's lower prices. He will take a loss on his panels. Like it does this with everything that the Kindle, by the way, every time you buy a Kindle on Amazon, Amazon loses money upfront. This has bayzos strategy. He will go underwater. And because he has such big reserve tanks, he can just suffocate everybody. So anyway, not to get to business strategy, but bayzos, McDonald's sell McDouble for a dollar don't they lose money on that and they have to make it back on the drinks and the yep.

Speaker 2 (24:52):

Yup. That's why it's not a big tie back to lead gen a little strategy for companies doing online leads. The more you can afford to pay for a customer, the better you're going to do. Long-term so some of our clients that did really well, they, instead of asking, what's the cheapest cost I can afford to pay, to buy a customer, right? Because for those of you guys would like leads, right. If I want to go and generate some Facebook ads, I've got, what's called a cost per acquisition, a CPA, right? What's it cost? What do I have to spend to go and get a new solar customer? Right. Um, and the average right now, CPA, somewhere around a thousand to 1500 for most solar companies cost them about a thousand bucks. Whether it's an ad, whether it's in hiring an appointment setter, an hourly appointment guy, right.

Speaker 2 (25:41):

Um, to, to get a new customer, uh, the long-term strategy companies who really think long game three, five years, this is why Sunrun and vivid. These guys destroy is because they don't focus on being profitable today. They don't focus on making five, six, seven, $10,000 a deal. And they say, can I go get a customer at break even? And if you can break even and get customers, um, for the same price you're spending, you might be saying, dude, you didn't make any money on the customer, but the lifetime value of that customer, their referrals, the reputation, getting more, installs, more reviews. That's when you can crush the competition. And this is also another key point. Why I think online lead strategy is so much more powerful is because I can literally wave a wand, right? With some skill. It's not like total magic. We'll get into that.

Speaker 2 (26:32):

But let's say figuratively, I can wave a magic wand and get customers for free worst case scenario. Right? Worst case scenario. I get new customers. I didn't make any on them. I am now getting more customers with this strategy because I'm not involving human power and I can leverage referrals and things like that. Call them up later on and you can grow exponentially. This is why those big guys are big companies invest so much money in online leads because you just cannot compete with it from a long-term perspective. Hmm. Interesting. It's like Dan Kennedy says, whoever can spend the most to acquire the customer wins. Right. People don't think like that it's solar is such a weird industry because guys, I, I, I do stuff in like every industry now. Right. And this is like one of the only industries I see where everybody's like, dude, I gotta make freaking $10,000 on a deal or 6,000 bucks on it.

Speaker 2 (27:25):

I'm like, you're missing the point. And then they won't get those deals because they're afraid to spend $2,000 to acquire a customer and make four grand. Oh God forbid I make four grand instead of six. That's terrible. We're just going to do door knocking because it's, it's traditional. Like it, it works. It's cheap. Right. Um, I just think, I just think companies that focus all their, they put all their eggs in door knocking alone. They're just not thinking long-term. Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree with that. I think you got to diversify at the end of the day, but here's my other question. Like my argument is at the point I'm at, I can go out and knock for four hours and usually get two to three leads. Um, so like for people, for sales reps that are listening to this, that's like, haven't done any of these things.

Speaker 2 (28:16):

What's your argument? Like why would we go out and try these offline strategies? Like it's probably going to take us more than online or yet online. I'm like, why would we spend the time to set this up? Or why would we go set up like a kiosk for example, or I don't know, set up ads or something. It's probably going to take us more than, you know, four hours. No, not, you're not going to knock on your argument here. Absolutely. If we pin new guy day one never sold solar in his life and we take new guy day one, never sold solar. And we say, you knocked doors. You go. And uh, we're not going to do the kiosk because I actually am going to put my money on the kiosk guy. If there's an established kiosk at the company, that's the, if we're going to say you go generate leads on Facebook.

Speaker 2 (29:03):

Okay? New guy knocked doors, new guy in Facebook. Every time I'm going to say the guy knocking doors is going to beat the guy doing Facebook instantly. Right now he is. But over time, the guy on Facebook, I'm betting my money on that guy. If he's willing to develop the skillset, he's willing to really commit himself to this. There's a lot of other variables, but the other big one is what's your priority and goal with solar. If you're just coming in for a summer. And I don't even know is the summer thing, like is still a, still a big thing with solar Taylor. Is that kind of old guys come in for like four months? Yeah. I think it's still big, especially with bigger, like the vivid solar's Sunrun. I think there's a lot of guys that still do the summer program. I bet. I feel like that culture of that is dying a little bit, especially with COVID but yeah, with we're definitely not as big if that's your jam and solar's not like your career, like you're in it to win this thing over the next three, five, 10 years plus right then.

Speaker 2 (30:02):

Yeah. I would say probably stick with door knocking and unless you've got the skillset and the chops like I'm talking about. Yeah. Well, I remember you even called me at one point a while back because you were considering starting up your door knocking team. Yeah. So even a guy like you, you know, recognized it and everything. I'm like, wow. James has called me for door knocking tips. Never thought I'd hear it a day. And here's why different reps have different strengths. Think of them like a, like, uh, a Pokemon card or something. Right. It's got, you've got your, your strengths and your weaknesses. Okay. So different reps, you in particular, I'm going to place if I'm like, like I'm placed in my Pokemon here right now, I'm playing a game. I'm not a big Pokemon guy, by the way. I'm just trying to, I wasn't as a kid, but I was definitely a Pokemon Yu-Gi-Oh guy. Oh yeah. I just got some Pokemon cards in my box of lucky terms. Yeah. I'm waiting for those records. I'm waiting for those Pokemon NFTs to draw. Oh yeah. Oh original. [inaudible]

Speaker 2 (31:09):

swiping those up. So anyway, if I'm there and I'm placing all my people where like chess, for example, I'm placing my pieces. I'm going to place a guy like Taylor as a door knocking guy and not like a LinkedIn networking JV type of thing. Because knowing Taylor, I know that he's better at consistent efforts. He doesn't mind grinding on the doors necessarily. Like, yeah, nobody loves it, but he'll do it right at the end of the day. And then he's motivated too. He's clear on his goals and he just wants a simple solution to do his thing. He just wants to straight line boom. Here's what I'm looking for. Here's what I'm going to do. So I would place him there. On the other hand, if you've got a guy like me, right. Who's very entrepreneurial. Even at the first company I was working with, I was, uh, what you call an intrepreneur right at this company.

Speaker 2 (32:03):

I was constantly having, I was showing up to the marketing meetings and the sales meetings, every meeting I could trying to find out ways how we could grow the company. I was the guy who was leading out the kiosks. Uh, I remember we'd booked an event at a Dave Ramsey event. Like Dave Ramsey showed up for a speaking event and we were like one of the partners there. Um, like I organize these things. Right. And uh, that type of person, they will absolutely go nuts if they're forced to be in a situation that is just, Hey, knock doors and get out. I could guarantee that guy is not going to stay. He's going to go and start his own. Company's probably going to end up beating you at some point as well. So you got to know your people, advice to advice to company owners, a VP of sales marketing is like, you got to know your reps where they're at.

Speaker 2 (32:54):

Yeah. Well, how would you, my question is how do you even recognize that though? Cause there's not that many guys like you that are, you know, super entrepreneurial and want to go start all this stuff that I see. Um, so like your own companies and stuff like w Unisphere reps or how you seen, are you just saying, Hey, this guy is lazy for knocking doors. Let's go put them on the different track. See if he does get along. Yeah. Because there's value in being consistent as a, when you're running a company. Right. You can't just have, there, there is a, we should talk about this too. Kind of the free for all self lead gen versus more organized models as well. But, um, I do think there's a, w what's your question? Repeat your question. I'm just saying like, how would you recognize that? Because when you were starting your teams, got it.

Speaker 2 (33:40):

How are you going to see, oh, this guy he's, he doesn't want to knock doors. He's not going to do good with that. Let's go set them on some kiosks, have him do some online lead gen, whatever. How do you recommend that? So as the company owner, I had to recognize that I needed to do all of the heavy lifting as I possibly could. So if you're a sales rep, I do not recommend an individual rep go and learn how to do Facebook ads for themselves, if you're talented enough and have the skill set enough to, and really just the ambition to drive through and learn how to do something like that, which it is difficult, then you've already got it figured out to begin with. I'm not worried about that guy, that guy's probably not even listening to this podcast, honestly. Um, but as a business owner, you have to set up a structure and lead systems in place.

Speaker 2 (34:27):

So it's not confusing. And you have somewhere that the reps could come in and actually play. So rather than, oh, okay, go do one of five strategies. No, no, no, no. I choose the strategies from my reps. Absolutely. And we were starting a door knocking team as well because door knocking works like, okay, I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent against it. I just don't think it's the best, all your eggs into that basket strategy. Um, for online leads, the company should be doing all the funnels and the ads and all of that stuff. The reps should never be doing that crap. I've never seen that work out well, it's so time consuming. It's like around the clock, we would have guys doing, especially as an agency owner too, we would do like, we literally have to monitor face Facebook ads, 24 hours a day.

Speaker 2 (35:15):

Right. Literally hiring people overseas to look at it two in the morning in case some negative comments come up like to do about solar and nipping them in the bud immediately. Like our rep can't do that. Like if you're on four or five presentations in a row and you're out for an afternoon and you're managing your ads, your ads are going to tank like not a shot, not a shot. So recognizing that is very obvious to answer your question, you know, when somebody got it and when they don't, for example, and the biggest sign is if your rep in your organization or your manager is acting like the position acting as if they have the position they want tomorrow, today, that's the person. For example, I became the VP of sales at that company. I acted like the VP of sales on day one instantly.

Speaker 2 (36:08):

I'm like mentoring guys on the first day. So, you know, when you have that person, that's my point there. Gotcha. Yeah, no, that's yeah. I mean all these and that's, I think a big thing that all these companies you'll see, especially down here in Southern California, a lot of these dealers companies that start up they're guys that just came from alarms have only had the door-knocking background. And their thing is like, if a guy isn't doing good at door knocking, then yeah. Just like firearm, go hire the new one. Um, so I think that is an issue. Guys can't recognize value and maybe someone that could help out in another role. Um, yeah. I may ask you to stay there. Why do you think people struggle with online lead gen, like doing it themselves or like hiring people in general? Uh, so you could do reps since you're most familiar with that.

Speaker 2 (36:59):

Not necessarily a company. Why would a rep have a hard time with doing online lead gen? Do you think? Why do people fail? Like if they're, if they did it themselves set up the Facebook ads and funnels and stuff. Yeah. Well, I can tell you my personal experience since that's perfect for it. That's just, I know the patients for it. It goes back to the same thing I was telling you before. Like, why am I going to set this up? If I can go generate a lead, if I can go out and knock four hours, usually booked two or three appointments, then at the end of the day, I'm like, why should I spend all this time setting this up? So when I first learned that, because I've set up my own Facebook ads, I've set up my funnels and stuff like that. So I think I have more Nolan's happen.

Speaker 2 (37:45):

Tell us about what's happened in that process. Um, yeah. So what happened is I set it up. I took my course, you know, figured out how to do my online lead gen. And I thought I was going to be set for life leads were just going to be pouring in. But, and that's how it was for probably like two weeks. I was getting pretty consistent leads, but then they just tanked after that. And I'm like, what the heck is going on? I'm not getting leads, nothing's happening. And then I go back through this course. I talk with the guy who helped me set all this up. I'm like, man, what's happening. He's like, no, you need to adjust it. You need to switch out the copy. You need to switch out the image. Um, you go look at what other people are doing. You need to do some testing, do split tests from the AB split tests to see which one is getting the best results.

Speaker 2 (38:30):

I'm like, holy tale. I thought this was just set to go. You're telling me after run split tests, I have like adjust the copy and I have to like brainstorm. What's gonna work best and everything. So that's when I started realizing I'm like, man, this is more work than I thought. Um, yeah, it's going to take me probably six hours at least to like adjust all this stuff and then maybe get it back up and running. And at that point, who knows if it's getting good results again, I'm not, I have to adjust them the next day. So that's when I kind of realized, I'm like, man, I could adjust all this. Um, but I'm just going to go out and knock some more doors, then I'll get consistent leads. Um, so ever since then, I, I mean, I still like know the basic stuff of it, but my preference is just have someone that knows either helped me with most of the process or just like I've hired to you at birds.

Speaker 2 (39:20):

Um, Joseph, Joseph Fu. Yeah. Yeah. Taylor used to work with our, uh, my, my old company. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, for me it was just like a time thing. And it's going back to like being an entrepreneur, like you said, it's like, you're not going to master all the skills. So you go do what you're best at and then have other hire out. Other people get help to do the things you're not good at. That's kinda the approach I took. Um, what do you think about longterm? What's a better move. Longterm online leads are. And let's talk about the future of solar. I mean, that's where we're company perspective, because like, look, the company perspective matters to the rep, right? We not be, we might not be saying, Hey, reps need to go learn how to do Facebook ads. Some of them should, some of them shouldn't right.

Speaker 2 (40:06):

But the reality is our world's radically different than it was even five years when I first got in the industry. So the future of lead gen, where is the best time investment resource investment to be my thing is it's still just, I think invest most of your time in the door knocking still. And I know we were talking about this off the camera before we started things can change in the future. Maybe it gets to the point where everyone has gates up. You can't even knock on their door. Um, like I live down in Columbia for my church mission thing in a lot of these doors, we couldn't even knock on cause you have gates up and they're afraid of people breaking in the house. So who knows, maybe it's going to get to that point where, um, you can't even get to people's doors.

Speaker 2 (40:54):

So my thought is just like milk it while you can, um, go out and knock the doors, generate the leads, get good at that and then transition when you need to. So that's why I think it's good. Yeah. Get a basic knowledge, like, um, go out and learn some of these concepts. Um, but then if it gets the point where maybe people are having more success with the online things, then you can transition at that point. That's what I think. And that's what I'm going to be. Cause Ben ain't broke, broke, don't fix it. I'm having success on the doors. I know all the most of the top guys in the industry are knocking the doors. Right? You look at the Mike O'Donnell's, you will buzz well as you look at, I mean, I had a guy that was in a coaching group with close 25 deals in a week.

Speaker 2 (41:40):

All of them came from knocking doors, at least. So I think all the top guys are knocking doors. They're hitting it hard. Um, but yeah, I know to your point and you'll probably talk about this. I think in the future, it might head more towards online thing, but, but I think I have a, I have a belief that if I can master the doors and I can master the online deal and do that one, it's going, but yeah, you start, you have to start at some point. So yeah, the skillset bottom line, you will never be good at online leads. If you are not capable of sending an appointment in person facts, truth a hundred percent. I see guys try to do lead gen all the time. I've consulted lots of lead companies in solar and the reason these lead agencies suck and why like 80% of them sucked too.

Speaker 2 (42:28):

Uh, for those of you guys who have hired them before, because they've never sold solar before hundred. Think about that. Your advertising is a higher form of sales. Okay. So say we got multiple levels here. Sales is at the bottom level. Being able to talk to somebody one-on-one in real time, handle objections, pivot, adjust your approach. Right. And that's valuable because I can read Taylor. Like if I'm talking to, I'm trying to sell them solar, I could see what's going on and change it advertising on the other hand. Not so simple because it's not interactive. Right? It's not interactive. I can't see what the person's reaction is on the other side of the ad. Okay. So with that being said, you have to know your customer better. You have to have better approaches, better creativity, right. To be able to do that because you're selling to many people at once, right?

Speaker 2 (43:20):

It takes a certain level of skill. It's just, it's common sense to sell. One person takes a certain level of skill to sell thousands of people at the same time takes more skill. It's more people, right? So if you can't generate a lead in person, like good freaking luck with lead gen, that's my, that's my 2 cents on that. So I am a hundred percent of the Taylor there. I think the future of Legion does not involve knocking doors. I think knocking doors will be completely gone. I think it's almost dead right now besides California I'll even go that far. I think, I think California is basically the only place that's really, is it happening? This K close 25 deals in Texas, Texas, Texas is your other place. Right. But like, uh, Nevada now VAT is out. That metering is out Florida. It's mostly online leads. Like the majority of our clients are in Florida. It's mostly online leads. Um, but as time progresses and other five, 10 years, man, like I don't think we're even going to connection. Yeah. Can you hear me?

Speaker 2 (45:01):

Yeah. I'm here. Can you hear me? Hello? Hello? I can see you. Can you hear me? Test, test, test this thing on. Yeah. Can you hear me? Hello? Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Oh, you back? Yeah. Okay. We're back. Somebody died. Yeah, but that's why online leads not going to work then where do we cut off? Where did we cut off? Uh, last I heard. I think you're just saying in Florida, they're not working. Um, jeez. You're just saying why the doors are dead or why do you think door knocking? Did you hear me? My comment about sales reps being dead. No, I didn't even hear that. Okay. So that cut out. That was the best part, man.

Speaker 2 (46:06):

There's two guys in this industry. They're the guys who just want to ride it out and they think it's going to be gone. Okay. You hear the companies. And you know, when you're in one of those companies, they think that this industry is going to be taken over tax credits are going to go away. So under the world, right, nobody's going to be able to sell solar, done the, writing it out to the tax credits here. That's type one. I'm not on that boat at all. When it comes to solar type two, those guys and they're out there by the way, they're the companies that like the company I originally worked with was that type of company where they're like, yo, we're in here for the next 20, 30 years. This is how we're going to take out vivid, Sunrun, Tesla. They have strategies to take out the big guys, right?

Speaker 2 (46:47):

Those are the guys who understand that sales reps are not a permanent position. I do not think the commission sales rep in solar is going to be around 10 years from now. I do not think it's going to be there. And I think a lot of sales positions in traditional jobs like that manual person jobs, I don't think they're going to be around in 10 years from now. I don't think it's going to be here in five years. Right? Um, all I'm saying is if you're that person, you owe it to yourself. If you're viewing this as a long-term career, like I think you should to start getting educated on different strategies because once you develop the skillset, which can take years, I'll be Frank. It could take years to develop the skill set, to set an online lead, to set with somebody on LinkedIn, to go to a networking event, to do a dinner seminar.

Speaker 2 (47:37):

We haven't even talked about kiosks. All that stuff could take years and years of time. Right. But you owe it to yourself to become a multi-faceted sales rep so that you're protected in the future. For example, my solar company, I, and we'll talk about this on another episode, but I was starting a solar company called the solar shopping network about, I'd say about a year ago, right? And our strategy was actually to completely eliminate the sales rep. We actually didn't hire traditional commission sales reps. Our guys who closed the deals were just hourly employees for like 15 bucks an hour. And they would close deals. We would use strategies like instant quotes. So where we actually send a virtual quote to somebody, the customer, and we don't talk to the customer. It's just an interactive quote. We send it out there. They could view it on their own time.

Speaker 2 (48:26):

It takes 10 minutes. Boom we're onto the next one. And we were able to generate enough leads to where we could just dish these babies out and the volume would work. Right. Um, that's where I think the future of this is look to guys like SunPower. SunPower is doing that. Sunrun's doing that where you could literally go get a quote, a virtual quote in real time with an artificial artificial intelligence, um, quoting machine chatbot type of thing, right. That's website. Yep. So those guys too SunPower's is pretty sweet. Um, that's our thing it's going. So I'm just a preacher of keep in mind the future of things, you know, who you are, you know, what type of rep you are. But if you're looking at this as a real longterm career, develop your skill, set out a little bit, start with the off offline stuff, develop your sales chops, then expand.

Speaker 2 (49:18):

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I can see that. Um, yeah. I mean, we're still, I don't think we're going to see a hundred percent on the whole door knocking thing. Obviously you're more about the offline stuff. Um, so by I agree with that to an extent I think guys need to at least have their knowledge in it. So at least go get competent and all this stuff. Cause probably we'll head that way. I mean, Tesla's already screwing us over. I can't tell you how many times even it's happened recently where I'm going into homes and I'm going through our pricing, everything and people have literally gotten on the Tesla website, gotten an instant quote and they're like, well, why is this? Why is Tesla like six grand cheaper than yours? And I'm like, oh my gosh. Now I have to say what's up. Especially with these, uh, yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:04):

I've talked about this in some previous episodes, but all these Indian referrals, I've been working a lot with the Indians and if anyone's stolen Indians, um, you know, they're all about like bartering getting the best prices, like shopping your house. So yeah. Tesla has, uh, made it extremely difficult with these bartering cultures because they go look this up and it's just, yeah, you try to build value. But it is an uphill battle after that. The, I think it's important. So you gotta know you gotta be competent in this stuff and you gotta develop, um, you gotta be ready for when this stuff does adjust. Cause yeah, I think I agree. There's a lot of people just say it all stay in solar until the tax credit ends. And then after that, I'm just going to bell. Um, which I've thought to myself, what's your opinion on that?

Speaker 2 (50:52):

If tax credit goes away, what are you doing? It goes away next year. Biden's like add, forget it. Nevermind. That was supposed to be the good, the one good thing by them was helping us with the tax credits. He's like, ah, just kidding. So what happens? I think commissions are going to get cut personally. There's too much fluff in the industry, dude. This is the only industry I see. That's got like, there's so much extra margin that should not be there. Okay. You might have to judge what the heck man. You're taking take away my massive commissions. Like cool. I'm down with making a lot of money, right? A hundred percent for it. But more than that, I want to expand an industry like solar forward. Right. I want to actually make it more affordable for the end consumer to get sort of easier for the end consumer to get solar.

Speaker 2 (51:42):

Okay. And that's, that's where I think your very top level guys are thinking. They're not, I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong. Taylor, do you know any guys that are cranking 25 deals a week that are like planning on leaving solar? Do you think those guys are gonna leave solar when the, the, the tax credit goes away? I haven't heard that. I mean, first of all, there's not that many guys can, can 25 deals a week. It's less than 1%. Yeah. Consistently. I don't actually, I don't know of anyone that's doing that many, but yeah, those guys out, I doubt they're going to leave it because I think anybody who performs that level of thinks longer than two, three years out. Yeah. That's all I'm saying. Even if you're only making a grand itself, you're doing 25 deals a week. That's pretty good money you're making right there.

Speaker 2 (52:30):

If you want to be in solar the next 10 years, 20 years, I think you can, but you got to start expanding your strategy. You've got to start learning. Yeah. A hundred percent. Well, James, we've got to wrap up here, got to run a meeting here, but, um, guys if you like this, give it a thumbs up. Um, and then let us know. Um, James and I, we're going to be doing more type of this stuff. Um, you know, try to do a little bit debate style. We don't agree on everything. So let us know who you think. Um, who, whose ideas, whose opinion, Julian Torah. What are we talking about next time? Let's let's tease them with what we're talking about next time. Good idea. I think we're doing the work-life balance stuff, right? The myth is balanced. A myth 20 hours a week, a hundred hours a week. Who's right. Who's wrong? What does it take to be successful in solar? That's what we'll. Okay, so guys subscribe. If you haven't, you don't want to miss out the next one, let us know what you thought. Thumbs up. See you on the next show. Thanks for coming on James. You got a man.

Speaker 1 (53:32):

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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.