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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.

Speaker 2 (00:43):

What's up Solarpreneurs Taylor Armstrong here to change your life as a soar sales professional, we are back with another show today, got an exciting topic, and we're going to jump right into it. I hope you enjoyed the previous episode. We have Lenny Gray the master of door to door on. So if you didn't go listen to that, go check it out. He's written two books, amazing episode have gotten great feedback. So thanks again, Lenny, for coming on the show with us in this episode, we're going to do something that I don't think I've actually done before. And that is actually take a topic suggestion from our audience, from our Solarpreneurs. So guys, if you have a topic suggestions, people you want to bring on things you want to talk about things you want to jam on. Hit me up. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook trying to be more active on there.

Speaker 2 (01:37):

So I'm send me a message. Let me know if you have suggestions, feedback, just anything really appreciate the comments and tips that you guys give me. And it's nice to be able to interact with, with my crew, with my solar peeps. So this tip actually comes from, um, someone that doesn't actually have their name on Instagram and talk to him. So I apologize that I never got to your name on here, but Instagram is WVRRVN. Give them a shout out if you want to go follow them. One of our solar friends and he sends me a message. Um, so it was about three weeks ago. He says, Hey brother, been listening to your podcast over the past few months, getting tons of value, have an idea for a topic, no one discusses too much on overcoming negative online reviews. Is this something you can help the community discuss?

Speaker 2 (02:34):

Well, my man WVRVN I hope that's not your real name unless you're some kind of droid. Okay. But, um, that's his Instagram handle. That's what we're going to cover today. We're going to jump into it. And it's something that has at times come back to bite me negative reviews. I know a lot of people, especially guys with our bigger companies. Sometimes they struggle with these and it's something that, um, guys have to learn how to overcome. Guys, have to learn how to really turn in a strength. How can we overcome this objection? So I've got three tips. I want to share with you going to be quicker episode. We're going to jump right into it. Share three tips. Things that I do that have helped me and things that I've also heard from guys at larger companies specifically, specifically at Vivint Solar. I know that's a huge company.

Speaker 2 (03:27):

I have a lot of friends that are managers over there. Um, I guess I should say Sunrun now because they are now Sunrun direct, but they're a large company. Um, had some pretty terrible reviews. I know that I looked him up and one time I was considering going in selling with them and this was something I always came back to is like, how do you guys sell with so many negative reviews? Like I lose deals myself with negative reviews, but how are guys over a Vivint Solar, some of these larger companies they're selling dozens and dozens of deals every quarter. And I mean, they, they seem to be just fine with the negative reviews. So I'm gonna tell you a few things that I heard from these guys, a few things that have helped me and hopefully they help. Okay. So let's get into it.

Speaker 2 (04:16):

Tip number one is bring it up before they do. Okay. A lot of, a lot of guys have heard this. Hopefully you've had training in your sales organization that something we all should be doing is bringing up objections before our customers. Our clients can, if you have a great book on this, go read Sam Taggart's ABC's at closing. He has a whole section on this. He calls it eight. Milling your customers, right? It comes from the eight mile movie where a M and Eminem is, you know, bringing up all the objections. The rappers can throw out them that you grew up in a trailer park. They use white trash, all this stuff. So we need to do the same thing. And this is something specific specifically for this objection that I think works great. Bring up the negatives before they can. Cause if you bring it up and if you bring it up while you're in the home, they can't go look it up.

Speaker 2 (05:12):

Matter of fact, pull it up on your computer right there while you're in the home with them. Mr. Customer, I know we don't have the greatest review. Here's here's why. Um, and then you can explain to them what's going on. A lot of the reviews you see anyways, are just completely false. Like things that never happened. So, okay. It's that's another point is know your online presence. You should always know exactly what is written about them. You should always know exactly what potential negatives your clients, your customers could find about you. You should know what dirt they can dig up on you. So go look that up. I'm constantly Googling my companies, my installers I'm Googling. Cause I want to know exactly what people could possibly find negative. Okay. You gotta be in the know because if you don't know it, then it's going to be surprised to you when they bring up a negative and then that's when you're screwed.

Speaker 2 (06:07):

Okay. So bring it up. No, your views. A good example of this. I know a lot of guys, myself included are so on. Um, so Noah, right? So Noah as the financer, as the lender. So if you go look up Sunnova they don't have great reviews. Okay. And so you've got to know this people. When I sell a deal through some Nova PP, we are alone. I almost always will bring it up. Hey, so nowhere they're the lender for this, just so you know, you can look them up. Um, but yeah, unfortunately they've done, um, they've done their own installs. They've done deals all over the country. So they have a huge client base, but they are just the ones financing this case. You're not working with them and really stress that they're working with the installation company, they said no is simply the lender.

Speaker 2 (07:00):

Hey, and then focus it on the installation company on the installers. And so that's something I do when I deal with Sunnova specifically. Okay. So tip number two is bring up how many customers you have. Okay. This is something that comes from again. I mentioned my Vivint Solar guys, my, my buddies that sold with Vivint Solar, while these larger organizations they're going to have tons of negatives. Okay. Sunnova is a no way as an example of that. That's just the fact of the matter. When you get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of customers of clients, you're always going to have names. So what do you do? Bring up examples, do math with them right on the spot. Okay. So you can go. Um, I mean, in the Sunnova example, they have thousands and thousands of customers across the country, right? So if you look on there, you're going to see what maybe a couple hundred reviews, negative reviews.

Speaker 2 (07:56):

So for example, let's say there are a hundred negative reviews. Maybe you've done 5,000 installs. You have 5,000 customers. You do the math on that, a hundred divided by 5,000. What is that? That's only 2% of your customers, right? So, I mean, do the math, show them on the calculator? You look, Mr. Customer, this, um, represents about 2% of the people we've done. See, I understand there's going to be mistakes. Um, fortunately there's, um, issues that happened, but let me ask you, Mr. Customer, how many times have you had a positive experience and not written? Yeah. About it. Like you probably went to Starbucks yesterday. Got your coffee. Just fine. Did you write them a good review? Probably not. Right. So how many people are out there that had a fantastic experience, that everything went super smooth. Write about it. And guess what those, those people were working with, I'm going to take care of you.

Speaker 2 (08:57):

We're going to make sure everything goes smoothly. I can pinky promise you if you want you on pig. You want me to pinky promise you. Okay, great. So we'll make sure everything goes good. So right now we're just going to get a few documents submitted. Boom. That's how you do it. Okay. So bring up the math, bring up, um, ask them, ask them how many times they've written positive reviews and that's going to, that's going to call them out on the spot. I mean 99.9% of people do not go right in positive reviews about every interaction they've had. That's just the fact of the matter. So if you can do the math with them, if you can get them to realize that people do not just, you know, write pure positives, that it's a business, then that's going to help. Okay. So that's the second tip.

Speaker 2 (09:41):

Bring up how many customers you have do some math with them and then get them to realize that there's going to be negatives, but we're going to get it figured out. Okay. And then the third and final tip I have is tell stories of neighbors close by. And this is where testimonials come in. If you haven't listened to the episode from a couple of weeks back about video testimonials, go listen to that and that's going to change the way you sell. Okay? And that's going to probably prevent you from even having, having to overcome objections like this, because if you can solve, um, show them solid video, testimonials of neighbors, of especially people in the neighborhood they're in, then they're not even going to bring up these things because they're going to trust people in their neighborhood a way more than anything they can find online.

Speaker 2 (10:27):

Right? That's why I suggest getting a video testimonial with every everyone that you can. Hey, and then another thing I learned from a lot of my guys over at these bigger companies, Vivint Solar is pull up maps. If you can get your start tracking, have your company start keeping a spreadsheet or keeping track on a map of all your installs, okay? A reference sheet sheet, utilize them, make sure you have pins on a map, something where you can pull up, pay this, how many people we've done in the area. Do you think this many people would have gone with us? If things were terrible? Probably not. And that's, what's so powerful about some of the software that's Vivint Solar, or some of these other companies have access to Sunrun is on their proposals or in their knocking apps. They can see every past customer. Right?

Speaker 2 (11:19):

How powerful is that? If you're in a home mean, say, um, Mr. Homeowner, this is all your neighbors that actually are already on the program. So yeah, there is, uh, negatives, but look, there are six people just in your neighborhood that are already on the program. So rather than trusting all these online shenanigans that may or may not be true, why don't we drive by? We can go look at the people that are installed in your neighborhood and we can go off of that. Okay. Obviously, if you're a smaller company company, you don't have installs, then you're not going to say that, but I mean, still can use references in the neighborhood though. Even if it's from another company, you can say, Mr. Homeowner, do you think your neighbor across the street would have solar? If things were all terrible? Okay. You can talk to these people beforehand.

Speaker 2 (12:10):

I've gotten lots of times, people that aren't, even with my company that just have solar on the roof. Hey, would you recommend your solar to your neighbors? Great. Do you mind if I use your name as a reference? There you go. You got a name, you got a person you can use as a reference right there, and that's going to help out a ton. So make sure you're just collecting as much social proof as possible. Get pictures out as a last resort. Um, something I heard from, um, my friend river Skinner. If he's listening to this, uh, my referencing him from one of his, uh, Instagram stories, but what's really cool is he will send out a thank you card with his picture in the customer's in it. And this is kind of off topic, but that's something super powerful. You can do get pictures with your customers.

Speaker 2 (12:59):

Send out cards.com I think is a website where you can actually just create online cards. You can throw your picture in there, send your customers so sort of off topic, but make sure you're collecting all the social proof as possible. This is going to help reduce cancellations and help you continue to dominate out there. So thanks again for the topic recommendation. Let me know what you guys thought. Let me know if you guys have any other, uh, ideas on, um, overcoming negative reviews, things you have done and love to hear your feedback again, shoot me your topic suggestions. Let me know what you thought and send me your guest suggestions as well. If you guys know of anyone that is absolutely dominating that we need to have on the show, let's get them on. So hope that helped hope you'll tune in for the next show. And we will see you on the flip side.

Speaker 3 (13:53):

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.