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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. online 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 Solarpreneurs Taylor. I'm sure here to help you change the

Speaker 2 (00:45):

World by closing more deals, generating more leads and dominating the solar industry. How are you? I hope you're doing awesome. Hope. You're gearing up for the summer and getting ready to close deals galore. You should be doing already. If you're listening to this podcast, because this is where we drop that knowledge. This is where we get you on the right track to hit your goals and crush your outcomes that you want in the solar industry. It's been nice connecting with people. Um, I've said it before in a few episodes, but hit me up on social media, trying to be a little more active there. Um, so it's Instagram, it's Taylor J Armstrong. Um, Facebook, just Taylor Armstrong go shoot me a fall. Send me a message. I've been enjoying hearing from some of our listeners and just connecting with my solar printer peeps. That's what we're trying to do is create a community and it's been awesome just hearing from people.

Speaker 2 (01:44):

Um, another thing is we're looking for topics that people could use some help on guests that we, uh, want on the show. So anyone you would like to hear on the show or specific topics, send me a message. We got some great feedback on, um, some potential topics coming up. Um, just last week, someone sent me a message. They're struggling with negative reviews, online, losing deals because of that. Um, so we're going to do an episode soon on that. Anything you can think of, it's much, much appreciated. I'm sharing. What's helping me, I'm sharing, what's helping our team. I'm sharing what I'm hearing. That's helping other teams. But if you guys have specific problems or issues that you're facing, I would love to hear about it. Shoot me a message, shoot me a fall. And let's connect that being said, let's jump into the episode today.

Speaker 2 (02:36):

I want to talk about why you should treat every objection as only a complaint. Okay? So those that have listened to grant Cardone at all, this might sound somewhat familiar. He talks about this kind of a lot. If you've read the closer survival survival guide, this is actually one of the top 10 reasons that closers fell is they treat objections, um, or they handle objections that are only complaints rather. So what does he mean by that? At first, when I first heard that I was a little bit confused and the reason I'm actually doing this topic today is because I have a few experiences that happened last week. One was where I treated an objection, um, with, uh, with too much legitimacy, I treated, um, the objection more serious than I should've and the other one, whereas I, where I did treat it as a complaint and got two different outcomes, pretty interesting reminded me of why it's important.

Speaker 2 (03:41):

So that's what I want to share with you. But before we get to that, I want to actually read what uncle G grant Cardone has to say about the topic. So if you haven't read this book, I would highly recommend it closer survival guide. I've talked about it a lot on the show. Some things apply to solar more than others, but specifically the, um, like just, you know, general tips on closing everything. I think most of this stuff applies. The closes. They go a little aggressive and I've will say I've tried. Um, a lot of them in solar, some definitely work better than others. Some are a little aggressive. Haven't gotten me great results, gotten people, a little annoyed and everything, but grant Cardone, he has some good tips. So let's jump into it. Let's hear what he has to say. So if you look in the book, this is number eight.

Speaker 2 (04:33):

Um, it's the number eight reason why closers fell. So he says sales people unfortunately have been taught to handle objections for years that are not objections at all, but just merely complaints of all the sales books I've read. I've never seen this issue distinguished over years of research, I learned that most so-called objections from the client are not actually objections at all, but just simple complaints that people automatically make throughout life. So his rule is treat all objections as complaints until further validated. This honestly is one thing that's changed the way I sell a hundred percent and I've seen it time and time again, especially if you're knocking doors, that's basically the definition of a smoke screen, right? How many times have you knocked a door? First thing right off the bat. There's not interested. Um, you're the 10th guy here. Those are complaints. They're not projections be treated as an objection.

Speaker 2 (05:29):

Then you've already lost, especially at the beginning, it's a smoke screen, right? So you got to treat all of those as complaints. I just think of, I have a kid now he's 19 months now. And this kid will freak out. Sometimes when he doesn't get what he wants tonight, he was, um, screaming. He wanted to a Go-Gurt. We put our Go-Gurts in the freezer, some delicious stuff right there, but he's freaking out. He's not taking no for an answer. He wants a Go-Gurt. These kids are aggressive, but if you treat those as complaints, then it's going to go away. But if I validate it, I give them what he wants. It's gonna keep on happening. You're feeding that addiction, you're feeding what they want. So this is something that's very important. Um, especially on the doors, in the clothes in grant kernel. And he goes on to say, most of the time, the closer is handling a complaint that never required more than I understand.

Speaker 2 (06:29):

When you treat a complaint like an objection, you validate it and turn it into something that is, is not the more you validate it and handle it. The more real, the more solid and significant it will become to everyone. The first thing I do when I hear what appears to be an objection is treat it like a complaint until further validated as a real objection. And if it is a legitimate objection, you will know as soon enough, because when you try to handle as only a complaint, your prospect will make it clear that this is more than that. But trust me, most of what you hear in the clothes are not objections. They're just mere comments or complaints, no different than someone commenting on the weather. Boom. So there you have it. That's what grant Cardone says about this. So I want to tell a few experiences that happened to me last week.

Speaker 2 (07:15):

Um, the first one was I was knocking doors neighborhood here in Escondido, California, I'm knocking. And then I get to this home where it's, um, single lady answers the door and she's listened to my door presentation. I'm going through it. Um, I'm thinking, all right, this is a booked appointment, no doubt. A hundred percent. And then what happens about midway through the presentation? She hits me with, oh, you know what? I've got food on. I've got food cooking. I'm kind of busy. Um, can we hurry this up? Or can you come back? And then immediately I just jumped to, oh, I'm super busy, which is good. You know, I kind of flipped the script on her said, oh yeah, no worries. I actually need to get to a bunch of your neighbors. I'm busy too. And then I try to go back into it. But what happened for whatever reason I let this complaint get in my head so much.

Speaker 2 (08:10):

I treated as an objection. And I, I got so psyched out for whatever reason. I'm just like in my head, I'm like, oh, she doesn't have time, better. Hurry this up. I start speed in through the rest of my presentation. Guess what? She listened to me for another, probably two minutes. And I got through everything and it was obvious. She actually had times you stepped out. She's still listening to me. But what I did, I just psych myself out. I told myself that she was busy, even though I kept talking. And I said, uh, you know what? Um, yeah, so I, I got to run to a few homeowners, but let me come back. Um, tomorrow, I'll try to get you guys tomorrow. And I just like stumbled through it. Stuttered. I don't know what happened. Just had a mental breakdown on the doors. And I turned this complaint into an actual objection that she didn't have time.

Speaker 2 (09:03):

I didn't let her validate it. That's the key with these things. If people validate it, guess what's going to come up again. If she said, oh, I'm dizzy. I kept going, which is good. And it didn't come back up. So I already validated in my head what she didn't validate herself. If he was truly busy, she would know like, really I got food on the stove. I got to go right now. Okay. And that's a tough one. Obviously, if people really are busy, not a whole lot, you can do. But the point of it was she wasn't busy. I mean, she was maybe a little busy, but she wasn't busy enough to stop listening to me. Right that second. So I was mad. I lost that appointments. I didn't book it. And then yeah, I was kicking myself the rest of the night had that mental breakdown.

Speaker 2 (09:50):

So that was the first experience I had. I treated it as a foreign objection when it wasn't. So that's the negative, here's the positive experience I had though, this actually kind of finished today. And this experience was I closed the deal last week, the homeowner was, um, psyched to go solar at someone. I followed up with a gay couple, super excited him and his partner to get solar up there. And during the presentation, he actually mentioned that yet another quote, and it was cheaper than mine. I'm out here in California. We sell high, you get these inexperienced companies that basically don't have cells, or they'll just send out, you know, bottom of the barrel quotes. Just try to win people over. So luckily I know how to sell. I know how to build value my product. I told them about our product, our warranties, um, and they had, frankly, just, you know, misquoted them had no idea how much energy use using, just throw out some generic quo, which was weird.

Speaker 2 (10:51):

So I kind of like brushed over it and I treated it as a complaint. Okay. I didn't like put that much time into it just because I knew I've already built the relationship with this guy. He trusts me. I'm just gonna, you know, brush over it. Show him a few things of value. Why we're different. Hey, I showed them that we were given a better interest rate, a couple of things. And I had already, I already knew his needs, so it was no big deal. Okay. Um, but what happened was he reached out today and guess what? He further validated that complaint. So now it was an actual objection. Yeah. He said, Taylor, I'm still like, I'm confused. Like why was there so much cheaper and then, okay. I know. Okay. He actually had, he has an actual objection. Now I need to go through it.

Speaker 2 (11:40):

Now I need to see what's going on. Now. I need to overcome this objection. So I had already closed them. He came back to me. Luckily I built the trust with him. I got to know him and his, uh, partner. And it was all good. And he trusted me. I overcame his objections. I again showed them that we're given a superior product that we're giving him a better term that he wanted because he was looking to just get as cheap as possible monthly. So we gave him the 25 year term where the other people, they gave him a 10 year term with a higher interest rate. So I really just broke down his needs. I said, Maurice, this is what you're getting. You told me you wanted to pay as little monthly as possible. Right? Cool. So this is why we're doing this. This is why we're giving you the number of panels.

Speaker 2 (12:26):

And I really gave them an apples to apples comparison. I broke it down now, fully overcame his objection and then boom. He trusts me after that and had no more issues with it. And he called me in, didn't even bring it up after that, but it just goes to show, I didn't treat it as a full on objection in the presentation. Okay. And even though I could have made a big deal about it, I couldn't even after he came back to me with it, I just gave him what he needed to knew, need to know about it. I didn't keep bringing it up in the call because I sent him an email for a few texts. Just explaining it. Then when we had a call after that, I didn't say, Hey, here's why we're here. XYZ. I had already overcame that objection. So don't keep bringing things up.

Speaker 2 (13:15):

I think newer reps, especially we get in the tendency, um, or when I was new, I got in the habit of just like immediately dropping price. If people got cheaper, quote, how would immediately drop price? If people were hesitant, I immediately dropped price. People didn't want to sign today. A drop price. That's a problem. People just want to drop, drop, drop, drop, drop price, learn how to sell, build value, write them out. If you haven't done that. This is a great exercise. Write out all the specific things that you can do in your company to build value. And it's going to help you because guess what? Most people don't know how to sell. There's a lot of solar guys that aren't listening to this podcast that don't know these things that are going to be much weaker sales guys. So go share the podcast with them so they can learn not to give you more competition.

Speaker 2 (14:04):

But the truth is, if you are listening to this right now, you are most likely, much more committed than a lot of average sales reps out there. You were taking your learning seriously. You are trained to improve and that's, what's going to get you there. If you learn to treat these objections as only complaints, if you've learned to build value, it's going to be a game changer. So don't make the mistakes. I made a don't be on the doors, treating these time things, treating every little word that comes out of the customer's mouth, the homeowner's mouth as fallen objections, learn from my mistakes. And when you are in your closes, same thing. If people have a cheaper quote, don't draw price, figure out what's going on with it, figure out what product and you be, the expert, you be the one to educate them, know your product, differences, know how you can build value. And that's going to help you have success in industry and close deals. So I hope this helped go out and share it with someone that could use that tip of the day, gay and go read closer survival guide. It's a good book. Go look up point number eight in the top 10 reasons closers spell. Let me know what you think of this episode. Hit me up on social media and we will see you on the flip side.

Speaker 3 (15:20):

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.