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 I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps 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.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Two big mistakes I made last week and some golden rules that were broken, that in much more, we're going to be talking about in jamming today on the Solarpreneur podcast. What's up, what's going on? My name is Taylor Armstrong. I'm here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals. And as always, hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry. Hope you're doing well. We're coming up on Thanksgiving, the holiday season, depending on when you're listening to this and always a great time to get people in a better mood. Um, if you can get them some solar panels on their roof, what a great gift, what a great thing to be thankful for and what a great Christmas present, right? So hopefully it gives you some extra motivation to push hard something we've been talking about in, um, some of these Knockstar trainings and other mastermind groups I'm in right now is a lot of people use holidays to relax, to not push as hard, but you being a Solarpreneur, you should push even harder.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
If you know, you're going to be taken off two weeks for Christmas or 10 days, whatever, push as hard as you can go do a blitz, get out there and then you can rest easy knowing you crushed it, leading up to the holidays, Thanksgiving and all that. So we're going to jump into the topic, sorry to get sidetracked on the holidays, get thinking about Santa Claus and all that and, um, birth of Jesus and just gets me grateful. But let's jump into the podcast. Before we go into the topic today, just wanted to give a reminder. We have a solar training platform called society. You can go download the app and I'm getting messages on social media about, um, you know, other people's training platforms about Knockstar we'll. We might do some podcasts on just, you know, course reviews. I know there's some great content out there.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Some great courses that people have already put together for solar training and it's all good stuff. So whenever people ask me, Hey, what should I buy the D2DU the Knockstar, the Solar University, whatever. There's a lot of different ones. And you can ask me about those, but before you me to go download our soul society app, cause we have snippets of their trainings. You can go sample the different trainings because we are setting up partnerships with the people that already have courses out there. And also if you want to be, you know, if you want to be a member of society, if you want to get the exclusive content on there, we're doing it at a super reasonable price and you get discounts to everyone else's courses and a lot of cool tools and things like that on there. So anyways just is in my head because I've been getting a few messages about it.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
So if you want additional training first, go check out our society platform. And um, I say, go buy everyone's our training program, right? We're all doing different things. We're all adding unique value in the industry. And if you're listening to this, you should be trained on the things you've learned. Take what you learned from the podcast. Go teach it to other people. Go ask to give trainings at your correlations. Even just go on social media. I dunno, do a Facebook live, whatever. Go on Instagram. Talk about what you've learned. Tag me would love that. And guess what? If you do that, it's going to solidify the content more in your head. So anyways, go download society. Let's jump into the topic. So today we're going to be talking about two mistakes I recently made and two golden rules of selling that I broke. And I'm going to preface this by inviting you.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
If you haven't already read closer's survival guide by grant Cardone. I've talked about it many times in the podcast. And I know I've probably mentioned these same golden rules before, but I was reminded of how important there, because I broke them reasonably and it costs me time. It cost me money. It costs me, uh, deals. So I don't want the same thing to happen to you. You will learn from my mistakes. And that's what I'm trying to do is help you learn from my mistakes. You don't have to go out and make the same ones. So the first ones, and I have stories that happen with these. So you're going to hear the stories first, and then I'm going to read the little section, um, these golden rules they can come from, obviously grant Cardone's closer survival guide. So go read that. Um, especially the first section in there.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I think there's a ton of great things that can be applied. So anyways, the first rule that I broke, here's what happened. I was in a deal on Saturday. This was two days ago at the time that I'm recording this podcast and this, uh, you know, this appointment I had set up, it seemed a really solid, um, they let me in their house, we're chatting at their dinner table as was setting up the appointment. Um, next day appointment told me to come back. It's 2:00 PM. So I went back, I'm actually in the morning I was doing some knocking in the area. I saw the guy in the garage and I said, Hey, Manny, I'm looking forward to going over the solar design numbers here at two. And he confirmed in the garage, said, yeah, we're looking forward to it. We'll see you soon. Always a great sign.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
If you can catch them out, you know, weed in their yard or in the garage, always a good idea to double confirm it or to, you know, say what's up as you're walking by. So I had a good feeling about it, but what happened was I went back, went through the presentation, went okay. Um, his wife came out and she wasn't quite as excited as she was, as I was setting up the appointment. That's the other reason why I felt like it was more solid. Cause I talked to both decision makers, both husband and wife. They said they're going to be there. And they were, I'm like, okay, great. We're talking in his garage about his drones. He races, drones. He has like 50 drones hung up all over his garage. So we're talking about that. We're just, uh, you know, shooting the breeze, built a good rapport, good relationship.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
But as we start going through everything, the mistake I made was this. We were sitting in their garage the whole time and guess what? There was only one chair in their garage. So the one big rule that I violated here, I was not sitting down with them. And that was not in their house. If you're in a garage, it's going to be a lot harder to lock people down. We go through it and they're still interested. But at the end they say to her, yeah, we need to, you know, go over this. We might be moving next year. We need to really think about something we want to do. We don't want to like some applications. We don't want to do anything. We'll get back to you on Monday. Um, try it a few times, three, four times to, you know, loop around and go back into it, get them to Elise, uh, get the application in and all that, but nothing. So I'm like, okay, couldn't lock it down. But again, the big mistake I made and this is the rule, I did not have him sit down and I'm just going to read what grant Cardone says about this. If you have his book, it is on page 74. He goes through 20 rules of closing. And matter of fact,
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Rule number one always be seated when negotiating and closing. So here's what he says. He says, this is a policy that is frequently violated and miss. Even by seasoned professionals, you will hardly ever close someone. If you're standing up the same goes, present the product service or idea on your feet, but always negotiate the terms from your seat. In addition to making sure you're seated when attempting agreement closure, you want to have the prospect seated as well. Even if your a prospect stands up, remain seated, suggesting that you are not done, you are not reacting and that you are not calm, that you are confident of agreement going from a seating position to standing up, suggest that something has changed and allows your prospect to exit in, in the negotiations. So there you have it, uncle G himself, he's saying that you always need to be seated. You always need to negotiate and close, seated and preferably at their kitchen table. That's a second
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Key to this is if at all possible get them on the kitchen table rather than just sitting at a couch or sitting, I don't know, on the outside patio. And that's that works too, but ideally get on their kitchen table. Cause who do we have at our kitchen table? We have guests. We have family members. We have the people that are closest to us. Who do we have on the couch? In the front room. We have people that are visiting that are stopping by to say hello. But the people that we grow, the closest to that we trust the most we're having at the dinner table. Right? So that's step two of this. If at all possible, get them sitting down at the dinner table and make sure you get everyone sitting. And I did make an attempt at, so I'm not going to say I forgot this completely as it definitely went through my mind, I need to get these people sitting down.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
But my issue was I only made one attempt and I didn't play so much importance on it. They said, Hey, we're, uh, w we'll just meet in the garage. And I said, okay, well, um, do you have, I kind of started, I hesitated. And I said, well, do you have some chairs we can sit at? And they brought out one and they, and they said, oh, you can sit here. Just put your stuff here. And that was it. I didn't fight him on it. I didn't make an attempt to, you know, get inside the house again. And that was my big mistake, cost me money. And who knows what? I've, what I've closed. The deal buys at the kitchen table. Maybe not, but what I've had, what I have had a much better shot at it, much better chance, a hundred percent. So make sure whatever you do.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
You're getting them to sit down. You're getting on those buttons in a seat and it's going to build that much more trust. It's going to make sure you can hang in the pocket more. Cause guess what happened? As things started getting tough, they were already on their feet. As they were hesitant to submit an application, the wife, she just starts walking towards the door, walking in. They can escape. If they're sitting down, you can keep them there and you can go through everything you need to. So that's the first big mistake I made. Make sure you get people seated at all times. And here's the second one. This one is, um, not just a single mistake I made, but I've made it multiple times over a lots of deals. And I see this, especially with people that are new to closing, I see this one made all the time in people that are just starting out closing.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
So here's this mistake. Um, two deals in particular. The first one I had closed, this was about, um, three months ago, actually. And we had some issues with some documents. I had to go back a few times and the deal just kind of turned out to be, to be a mess. He ended up canceling in the second instance, um, I went to this house. I closed them, got them all signed up. They were super excited about it. And what happened was I closed this through SUNNOVA, which those who are familiar with SUNNOVA or have used them as a lender. You know that if you have a home, that's in a trust and write this down, if you are using SUNNOVA, because I didn't know this for a long time, so no, it can be a pain, but what happened was the home was in a trust.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
And if you have closed with Sonoma, you know that if the home is in a trust, you have to get the homeowner to sign the contract, but then they also have to sign the contract as a trust. So basically the trust is the co-signer on the loan and both sets of documents have to be submitted one through the homeowner and then one through the trust. So I actually knew this in the deal, but my mistake was, I was actually, uh, I think we're headed to, I dunno, um, like to go eat somewhere, or I told my wife, I was going to be back at a certain time and I was running late. So what I did is I thought, okay, well, um, I don't see the second set of documents it in his email. We'd finished that in the contract. And I thought to myself, well, this could happen, but I'm just gonna worry about a later, I'm gonna get out.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
I'm hungry and I want to go eat dinner. We have stuff planned, how I'm gonna get out of there. So the mistake I made it for these two separate deals is I put off getting documents in that were needed. And especially when I knew that there needed, I put it off and I went and did my own thing, came back to bite me because what happened on the second deal is homeowner called me, his name is Francisco. Um, we, he was within a week of install, already had a date and everything. And we get an email from SUNNOVA saying they canceled his account. And that's, what's super annoying about Sonoma do, if you've used SUNNOVA, they're going to just start canceling your accounts. In my experience, they don't really send you like notices or reminders. They just like straight up, cancel your account. You have no idea why, and you have to call in and find out all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
And it's people with, uh, you know, super broken English talking on the support lines. So if anyone from Sonoma is listening to this, give me a call. Let's get some stuff figured out because there's a lot of room for improvement on their end. But anyways, they cancel this account. And what happens is these are both older Mexican guys, and this is something to be aware of to older people or older people don't speak great English. They tend to not be great with technology. They tend to get sort of buyer's fatigue. The more things you need to have them complete, especially digital documents and stuff like that. And my experience, they start to go bananas over this stuff. So if they have to do multiple digital documents and it turns out to be a lot of effort for them, they'll just straight up cancel. It could be saving them a million bucks.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
But if they have to like put forth a bunch of effort and open their computer, figure out emails, they're going to cancel it. So what happened with this guy? He didn't cancel it, but he just, um, put it off, right? He was still super excited to get solar, but he put it off, put it off, put it off. I was trying to contact them. Couldn't get ahold of them. You know, three weeks go by of me contacting them, saying he was going to do it, but he didn't do it. And guess what happens at this point? It's already been, you know, almost two months, time has gone by because he hasn't been responding and, uh, permit took a little bit longer. Two months passed by. He opens up this document again and he forgot all the reasons that he went. So he forgot all the reasons that he was sold on solar in the first place.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
He forgot the benefits. He just opened the contract. He sees all these big numbers, staring them in the face. And since I wasn't there, guess what happens? He gets cold feet. He doesn't want to sign it. So he calls me up. He says, Hey, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. I explained to him, I'm like, Francisco, my home boy, you can't be canceling this word. We got the permit. We're going to be installing it here. And good news is silver lining. I'm meeting with him tomorrow. So I think we'll get Francisco back on board, but moral of the story is, and here's the second role. Whatever you can do today, don't put off until tomorrow. Okay. So grant Cardone, he calls this being reasonable. And if you have closer survival guide, it's on page 64, it's number six. It's one of the top 10 reasons closers Phil and the story grant kernel entails.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Um, I'll read it straight from the book here. He says, my sister had a friend who wanted me wanted to buy my first book from, and she asked me if we would send the book out and wait for her, wait for the check. I said, sure, I can do that. Or I can call her, get the money, send the book out and close it. Now my sister said, grant, you can't need $30 at battle. It's so urgent has nothing to do with $30. It has more to do with creating the discipline, to originally attack finishing things and going on in the next thing, don't be reasonable on this point of urgency. At closing practice, finishing everything. You start as a discipline to start closing more deals. Now the urgent desire to close the deal, any deal, no matter how the amount is, what I live by one close deal becomes a second close deal, be urgent and don't be reasonable ever.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Boom. So keep that in mind. And I think this is a huge lesson. If you leave loose ends, if you leave, leave things untidy, if you don't complete documents like is that I see this over and over from guys that just start closing deals, they'll get, um, you know, maybe they'll get most of the documents signed, but here in California, you need a utility bill to, um, be able to get it net metered. You need all their account information. Um, or they'll, you know, maybe forget to sign out of, you know, net-metering document or they'll just forget documents in you. What it's doing. It's putting, hold holds on your accounts. But number two, it's creating loose ends that are potentially gonna lead to cancels. Like happened to me. I already had one deal recently canceled. I added up all the deals that have canceled because of loose ends because of buyer's fatigue, just customers getting frustrated of incompleted, things that I, cause I guarantee you, it would be dozens and dozens of deals over the almost six years I've been doing this.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
So don't be like me. Don't create yourself loose ends just when you're inside the home, do everything you can to get the documents needed. Okay. And I did this pretty well actually because, um, another example is you're closing through Sonoma or pretty much any lender that I know of. If a home isn't a trust, you're going to need copies of their trust documents. And you're going to need, you know, specific pictures. The page that shows that their trust was notarized things to keep in mind. So if you know, you need a certain, I don't know, picture of a documents, or maybe it's a picture of their roof, just do it now. Don't procrastinate what you can do today and wait till tomorrow. So those are the two lessons and those were the two things I was reminded of. Hey, so I want you to learn from my mistakes.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Number one was always be seated when closing and negotiating preferably at their kitchen table, right then number two was, don't be reasonable, Hey, do everything possible to just get documents in, to get things completed, to not leave loose, get it all done. Make sure you don't procrastinate. When I was preaching the gospel, the word of a Lord, we would always say, don't procrastinate the day of your repentance. And we tell people, and you're doing all these terrible things now, but don't procrastinate the day of your repentance. Get things fixed now and turn away from them. So it's the same thing. When you're out there closing solar deals do not procrastinate. These things, just do them now. So send this to someone that needs to hear it. Maybe you've got some new closers in your office, send this tip to them and remember, um, shoot me a message on social media. Tag me, go out and teach these things to your team. Go out and do. I don't know, Facebook live Instagram, whatever tag me in it. Let me know that you got something from this. So we will see you on the next podcast.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
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