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Speaker 1 (00:01):

Hey, Solarpreneurs. What's up. Taylor here just wanted to give you a quick intro to this episode. It's going to be James Swidersky on, and he's doing a little series on how we're implementing trainings for companies that would like to uplevel their sales trainings. As many of you may know, we launched our new Solciety training app were already getting great results with it. So James is going to talk about a few things that we're able to implement within the app and ways we're getting great results, whether you're on Solciety or not. You can go and implement these things today, but you can also go and book a demo at Solciety.co. So hope you enjoy the episode and we'll see you on the inside.

Speaker 2 (00:45):

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 3 (01:25):

Solarpreneurs. What is going on? My name is James Swidersky. And for those of you guys who don't know me, go back a few episodes for the intro. I don't want to bore you guys to death. I just want to dive right into the content today here. And I want to talk about how to hold your reps accountable. Now this is going to be primarily forward business owners, VPs directors, managers, on how to hold your reps accountable, get them motivated, and specifically my four step formula on how to do this. Just an absolutely killer formula on how to cut through the BS. Cut through excuses of, oh, I'm working 60 hours a week. I don't know. What's not working. Uh, oh, I swear. I'm putting a numbers. I'm working really hard. It's going to cut through all of that crap and just get straight transparency on the performance of each rep.

Speaker 3 (02:10):

So you can make critical training and hiring decisions on a regular basis to scale your company. Have you enjoyed that type of content? You know exactly what to do. So let's go ahead and dive right into it. What is the formula to hold reps accountable? First thing I like to do is identify my activities. That reps are supposed to be performing on a daily basis. You'd be very surprised how many companies don't have this clearly communicated within their organization. The best way I used to do this and currently do this with my team at epic as well. Although not solar, it's the same thing. And I learned how to do this in solar is I actually have flat screen monitors up in the office where we are projecting everybody's metrics. It is just a naked organization with metrics and metrics. I see every single as it's scrolling through how many appointments they've set, leads, calls, call time presentations, their close rate, everything transparent.

Speaker 3 (03:08):

The entire company can see what's going on. The entire company could see what kind of numbers we're doing as an organization. What's our revenue look like, right? What's our deal, uh, install rate. They see everything. Transparency is absolutely key here. Now that's just kind of a bonus, but we want to identify the activities that reps perform. So it's probably going to be a nine times out of 10 door knocking appointment setting, right? Presentations, okay. Follow up activities. And usually some type of referral activity, right? These are going to be customized for your business, map out your entire process, what activities they should do on a regular basis. We're going to play out an example, an amendment a minute. So you'll get some ideas from that step. Number two in this formula, identify how long it actually takes to do the activity. Okay. Again, this is, this is where it starts getting real spicy.

Speaker 3 (04:03):

Cause nobody does this and knows how long it takes. Go ask your reps individually. How long does it take to do an appointment? You're going to hear 40 minutes. You're going to hear two hours. You're going to hear it. Hour and half, right? You need to come to a conclusion what that average time is. All right. So you're going to ask all of your reps, do a survey, do whatever you got to do. Get the numbers, average amount, how long it actually takes to do what they do. Right? Sending out a proposal, adjusting a bid, right? How long does it take to adjust in a bid? 20 minutes, 30 minutes. How long does it take to send out a follow-up email? You got to get every activity on the board, mapped out. Okay. Step number two, three, take your results from last month for each rep.

Speaker 3 (04:49):

So you're going to actually go through this process with your reps on a one-on-one meeting. And you're going to take the results from their previous month, not like the previous week or days, cause that's not enough and more than a month too much. One month is going to give you a real good grasp of a rep's performance. This is also going to cut out all of those guys who were top producers a year ago and they haven't sold anything in three or four months. This is going to shine the light on that. Here's the deal. If you're a guys and you're hanging on and paying out payroll or uh, whatever, some kind of base salary or something rewarding guys and incentivizing guys who are not producing, you gotta cut that out ASAP. Okay? Only incentivize guys who produce results. Period. Cut the base commissions, cut the salaries, cut all that crap fire the lot, get rid of the old veterans who have been in the industry and who are just riding comfortable for 10 years.

Speaker 3 (05:48):

They are ruining your culture. They are bad apples in the barrel. Cut them out, get some fresh new young blood boom, rock and roll. Right. Again. I don't expect many of you guys to apply that because again, you've got to be willing to take a few steps back to go forward over the next several years. There's very few companies who are willing to do that. I know I'm sounding aggressive with this straight forward. I just really sick of seeing it. It's a super common thing in the industry. Any industry for that matter, you have to be willing to make some temporary sacrifices. If you want to grow okay. If you don't want to grow, I respect it. Right? Don't complain about your situation. If that's the case. All right. I'm off my soap box now. So take your results from last month for each rep.

Speaker 3 (06:32):

Hey Taylor, you close 10 deals. Last month you did 20 appointments. You did 500 doors knocked, whatever it is, right. Make sure they agree with their results when you're talking to them. Okay. And then next and the last part here is simply calculate how long they actually worked. All right. So let's play out an example. Let's say that a rep closed 10 accounts last month. And for math purposes, I know this is a small commission, math purposes. He made a thousand dollars per deal. He made 10 grand in commissions, right? Awesome. 10 grand. What activities made up those 10 accounts? Well, he had to go prospect and knock doors. It takes him about 30 minutes of knocking doors to get an appointment. We know how long it takes. Cool. 30 minutes equal and appointment. All right. Let's say he has a 50% close rate. He's just like on the ball.

Speaker 3 (07:25):

Okay. And it takes him 90 minutes driving to the appointment, having the appointment, following up at the appointment, it takes them 90 minutes to do a presentation. Okay. And he closes 50% of his presentations. And then let's say it takes him about half an hour to send out a proposal on a bid. All right. It takes 30 minutes to do a proposal, a bid. Um, that's not just the deals he closed the followup deals. And then let's say he takes about 40 minutes per account, total to close a deal. So 40 minutes of following up with calls, emails, texts, that is about what it takes to close one deal. All right. So after you map out each activity, how long it takes all of that jazz, right? You're going to come to the conclusion of the monthly results. You're going to find evicts example. Now he spent 30 hours running appointments for the month.

Speaker 3 (08:17):

He spent 10 hours setting appointments in the month, right? 10 hours sending proposals for the month and 6.6 hours following up for a grand total of 56.6 hours of work for the month. All right. Monthly, not weekly. And what you're going to find is most of your guys who say they're working their tail off, they're working like 15, 20 hours a month. When you do this math, I just did math for a guy who closes 10 deals a month. How many of your reps close 10? Right. Super rare. Right? You're doing pretty well. If you have a lot of 10 rep 10 deal reps, right? Most of your guys are going to be working like 15, 20 deals. I'm at 20 hours a month. Right. And what happens is for the first time with these guys, they're going to realize that they're full of.

Speaker 3 (09:09):

Pardon? My French. Right? They're just full of it. Right? They've been lying to themselves and you're going to find, your guys are just like, oh crap, you can't argue this. You can not argue this. And the way you make sure your reps are on page with this is you just make sure they agree with every number. So if they say it takes 90 minutes, do the math with them in front of them. For the 90 minutes. If they say they take 30 minutes to close an appointment or a 60 hours or whatever, it doesn't matter. The close rate is a hundred percent. Do the math with them on their level. Trust me. It doesn't matter how you do the math. It's always going to highlight and expose how little they actually work. And you can have a Frank conversation at this point. Now that the numbers are out in thin air, it could say, John, you wonder why you're making seven grand a month.

Speaker 3 (09:59):

Closing two deals a month. You're working 15 hours a month, right? What are we going to do about that? What can I help you with as your manager, your VP, or director, your CEO, whoever, what can I help you with to increase those numbers, right? What do you need help with? Do we need to hold these kinds of meetings on a weekly basis? What do we need? And have those conversations and make real decisions. The problem is it's difficult to make hiring recruiting or firing decisions or training decisions or whatever. If you don't have proper data. Okay? I preach a lot about data. The last couple of episodes, data's king, it's everything tracking is everything. That's the only reason I had two failed solar companies before starting my first successful one was purely because of tracking. All right? I had to learn the hard way.

Speaker 3 (10:49):

Do not do the same mistake that I did. And many others do start tracking. These things. Use this formula with each one of your reps, use this formula with yourself, with your activities, your daily pipeline, right? Whatever you're doing, this is the magic formula. So guys, that is it. That's how hold your reps accountable. It's a no BS straightforward way. It's how to hold yourself accountable. And I hope it serves you guys. Well, if you like that type of content, keep tuning in to, uh, this series I'm doing, I'm going to be dropping to fire for company owners. I know I'm calling my own stuff, my, my own stuff, fire, but I don't see anybody talking about it. So I gotta, I gotta call what it is. Right? All right. Well, it's been real guys. My name's James Swidersky and I'll see you in the next video.

Speaker 4 (11:38):

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 Solciety's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to solciety.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.

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.