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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 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):

What's up Solarpreneurs? Taylor Armstrong back with another episode here to make your life as a solar professional, more profitable, easier to do and more enjoyable. So if I can do even a fraction of that, you're welcome. Just kidding, but really that's what we're aiming to do. And hopefully we make it a lot easier for you to close more deals, get more referrals and have success in this awesome industry. But today I want to basically tell a little story, something that happened to me recently, that I think a lot of you, the listeners can learn some lessons from a big mistake I made. So I'm going to go through that story. But first, before I get to that, just wanted to give a shout out to, um, my boys over at, uh, knock star university. If you haven't checked out a knock star, it is a six week program I'm going through right now and they do.

Speaker 2 (01:40):

It's really cool. They have a competition for six weeks. They put you in a seating round, then they do weekly trainings. So if you're looking for some extra training for you or your team, um, great resources guys have over there, I'm going through it. And also just wanted to throw out a little teaser. We're also working on something super exciting that has to do is training. Uh, can't spill the details yet, but is going to be releasing very soon here. And I'm super stoked when it does to go over more details, but you can't say anything I want to, um, anyway, just a couple of quick shout outs for those that are looking for more trainings, go check out and rockstar. Um, so the story I have what's going on is, um, this is basically just to illustrate to you guys, what can go wrong with an account?

Speaker 2 (02:36):

The title is episode is called how I made negative $563 on a solar install. And I'm in San Diego. So especially people are familiar with the California market. You're probably thinking like, what, how do you make negative dollars on a account? Like people out here are making a thousand, 2000 at ridiculous amounts. I mean, guys are making 20, 30 grand on single accounts, even I've heard. Hey, so how can someone go to make making ridiculous money to making negative on an account? I couldn't believe it when happen to me. And I don't think I'm the first person that it's happened to. So I want to go through the mistakes I made with this particular account and hopefully help you guys avoid the same mistakes. So here's what happened in this. First of all, this was back about seven months ago, I get an online lead a which if you're not running on lane leads, why not?

Speaker 2 (03:40):

You should be running online leads. You should be knocking, should be getting leads from all sources. Okay. That's for another episode though, I was running an online leads that I get a lead. It's a solid lead. I go, um, set it up for next day appointment. I go, we're sitting outside. I find out it's actually a home that's hasn't been moved into yet. The dude had been renting it out and he was gonna move in with his family in the next few months is what he told me at the time. Okay. Um, unfortunately it didn't work out exactly how this guy was saying. Um, but I ended up closing the deal, um, closed it's a little bit higher. So I thought I was going to make an awesome commission on it, but here's the kicker with this account. This guy, before he moved in, he was doing a ton of remodeling on the house and he wanted to get a new roof along with this solar.

Speaker 2 (04:37):

And at the time I had just started working for, um, the dealer that I'm with now. I wasn't super familiar with their processes and S uh, their roofers. I didn't know exactly how you did a deal with a roof over there. This is the first deal I had. First, our roof solar combine had done with the new dealer. So I call, um, our office and I kind asked him how to do this. And I'm in the heat of the moment, which you guys should all try to close deals as quick, you know, quick as possible, not want to leave them hanging. Don't want to leave loose threads. So I'm like, all right, I'm just going to get this closed. Um, but tell me about what to price it out so we can be good to throw a roof in there because here we can, just, even if we don't have to necessarily add a roofing to the financing, you just price it high enough.

Speaker 2 (05:27):

We can pay for a roof with the commission is what we do a lot of times just price it high, make so much that you pay for a roof with it. So I price it pretty high. I think I'm okay. I'll be good. Pay for a roof with this. And I can figure out the details later. Right? And we were working with a roofer. His name was Juan, and he got us really good prices on roofs. So especially knowing about this guy, I'm like, okay, yeah, Juan's going to hook us up with an awesome deal. I'm going to have plenty in the commission to pay for all this. We'll be good to go. So fast forward, um, several months down the road, one does the roof and then the installer goes to install up there and they put up the system, they actually do the install.

Speaker 2 (06:19):

Okay. But the first problem that we encounter with as account is I get a call from the customer actually, after they had already installed the solar, they didn't do a full installation, which I'll get to in a second, they did a personal install and I get a call from the customer and the customer says, Hey, Taylor, um, I see that you didn't put gutters on with my roof. Um, you guys need to come finish up the gutters. And I'm like, okay. Yeah, I'll look into that. So I call Juan or roofer and he says, oh, I don't do gutters. The gutters that they had up there, they're rotting. They're just causing all sorts of problem when I was trying to do their new roof. So I had to take them off. So yeah, they're in the dumpster now we can't use those gutters and I don't do gutters.

Speaker 2 (07:05):

That's a separate thing. So I'm like, okay. So I actually don't know. Maybe some, maybe some of you listeners can tell me is that normally included with risks. I actually don't even know, but I took one's word with that. I'm like, okay. So I call the customer in, say, a Mr. His name was, uh, Z. His name was, uh, he was like middle Eastern. So he had a tricky name. So I just call him Z. I'm like, Casey, they actually didn't do your gutters because that's not included. That's going to be separate. Do you want to pay for it? And at that point, when the customer heard me even say that he was going to have to pay for something, this guy flipped the lid. He's like, are you kidding me? That is included with a roofing project. That is part of the project. I am not there on some expletives in there.

Speaker 2 (07:57):

So I am not paying for a roof. I'm not paying extra to put gutters in with my project, just super free. It's not listening to me, wouldn't have anything to do with it. And the good news is that he had solar on his roof. But, um, what ended up happening is we did a partial install on his home and with his other projects he was doing, he was adding like a wall around his property. And I don't know the full details on this, but the wall that he was building somehow interfered with us, being able to put, um, just the box for the inverter down by his electric panel. So we couldn't finish the installation because we are waiting for his other contractors to finish this wall. So the good news is he already had solar up there. So in my head, I'm thinking, okay, well, he can't cancel or anything.

Speaker 2 (08:54):

He has solar up there. So he can't cancel the project or say he doesn't want it anymore. Even though that's actually what he's threatening to do, saying I'm going to cancel. If you guys don't finish this. So it was calm from out that, but then the issue we ran into is we couldn't complete this installation. He needed to finish the other wall. Um, so what happened is he started using this as leverage. Basically he knew that he needed to finish the wall. So his, his side now was all, I'm not going to finish the wall until you guys come get my gutters from, come fix my gutters. So we were just locked in, essentially, it's still meat. I mean, we had leverage against him cause the solar is up there, but his leverage was, I'm not putting this wall in until you guys around. I'm not repairing this wall, whatever needed to be done until you guys come in, put the gutters up.

Speaker 2 (09:49):

So it turned into that, just a big nightmare. And the other issue is we had already actually paid one to do the roof. So Juan is paid. He's happy, he's taken care of. But in the meantime, our, you know, dealer is fronted all this money to pay one. And rather than just being locked into the stalemate, um, our office made the decision to just go ahead and pay for these gutters. So we hire another contractor. We pay the gutters, they come up and do it. That's that. And then I didn't really think anything of it until I see in my bank account. I see finally, after six, seven months find the I'm getting paid on this account about freaking time. It's been so long, been months and months and months, which we all hate waiting for. Installs. We all hate, we need to get paid on. Installs sucks. Have to wait, but find the AC it come in commission for Z. And then I look at it and this time it says 300, I think it says 300 something. I'm like, oh my gosh, 300 bucks. That's it.

Speaker 2 (11:10):

So you're probably asking, wait, didn't you say you got paid a negative amount on this account. So yeah, it gets worse. What happened was I got paid 301st, but then I, as time goes on, about two weeks after I got paid this 300 bucks, we get another message from the customer saying, Hey, you guys forgot to do you didn't do the back part of my gutters. You only did the front. You need to come back and do it. And our team schedules this. And by the way, I didn't really, at this point, I didn't really know what was going on behind the scenes. So, um, lock of communication and I'll get to the mistakes after this, but definitely like communication and our team just goes ahead and schedules the back gutters to be done. Not really thinking much of it. And we get this customer taken care of, but guess what?

Speaker 2 (12:08):

We get a bill from the contractor. We paid, I think 1500 for the gutters. Okay. Which again, I thought, you know, all this was included. Um, I thought all this was paid. I'm like, okay, 300 bucks. This is ridiculous. But then it gets worse. We end up, oh, extra money on the account. And yeah, that's why I say negative 500, whatever. It was 563 is because what happened was after we paid this contract and do the back cutters. Yeah. I am being now charge back money plus some, and this isn't even all that we owed on it. I mean, luckily our office is kind enough to front some of the money, but there's faults on both sides. Okay. So more or less moral of the story, there were a ton of mistakes made and I'm going to break down a few of them. And if you have a story like this, I'd love to hear it.

Speaker 2 (13:11):

Shoot me a message on Facebook, Instagram, whatever. Shoot me a message. Let me know if you've had anything like this happen to you before, but first of all, number one, know how much your roof is going to cost you. All right. Like I mentioned, at the beginning, I had no idea that the roof was going to be, um, well, as much as it was, this one was more than I was thinking we were using Juan or roofer. Okay. And here's the second mistake made is make sure you're working with quality contractors. Hey, because one, he was a great guy, but what we find out later, we actually found out one wasn't even licensed. Okay. That's why we're getting such good prices on his roofs. This guy wasn't even licensed and maybe you're fine working without a licensed roofer. Okay. Probably not in most of most cases, but if you are, um, or whatever the case may be, make sure that customer is in some type of an agreement with the roofer.

Speaker 2 (14:19):

Kay. And you, whatever you do, whether it's you working independently or your company or your office, make sure you're setting these things in place. What's the agreement. What's the standard of quality that you need to work? What can they do? Can they, what can't they do? Cause in our case one, he just ripped off these gutters, threw them in the dumpster. But if we would have had that set in place, what can you work on? What can't you work on? If we would've had that agreement set in place between him and the customer, then it wouldn't cause an issue. Cause guess what? That would have been once issue. He would have been dealing with the angry customer saying, you didn't do my gutters, but what did we do? We just paid it directly out of our profits. And so we had to deal with all these issues.

Speaker 2 (15:03):

Cause the whole time, I mean, basically the customer hired us to do the work. We just outsourced it. Right. So set some type of agreement in place. What is your roof we're going to do? What are the expectations? You can't just rip off the gutters and then get blamed for it. Right. Have that in place having in place what's going to happen. Okay. And the fourth mistake that was made and make sure your communication is super clear. Again, I mentioned that, um, we had a lot of things being paid for all of the things being scheduled that weren't clear. And a lot of it's my fault because after six, seven months of the same account for me, it got to the point where I'm just like, whatever, just do whatever. I'm not going to look at it. If it gets installed. Great. Um, out here where I'm at, I mean, I'm used to a month, one to two month installs.

Speaker 2 (15:57):

So after that it starts getting pretty, uh, pretty what's the word? Redundant. Yeah. Pretty redundant stuff to sit and look at these accounts that aren't going through. So make sure you have communication and don't be like me be patient with it and always look at what's going on. Okay. Cause I didn't really look at the updates that were happening with this deal. Cause I just got so tired of it, but it's important to go back and see what happened with it. See what updates were left by your team. We use a sauna personally, just like a, yeah. You know, projects management. I mean you use it for a lot of things, but in the sauna our team members would basically go on leave comments. Hey, we talked to this contract or this happened, this went down and I didn't really look much at what was paid, what happened.

Speaker 2 (16:50):

So you need to be looking at your team, can communication, whatever you're using, make sure you're in the loop and make sure your team isn't scheduling stuff without your permission. And I, I think I did give him permission, but again, I was just sick and tired of it. So look at what's happening. And then you as the independent contractor, which most of you should be, I highly recommend you being an independent contractor. We're Solarpreneurs. Right. We're building our own businesses. So we're taking control of all this. Okay. But if it's not, you have your having an assistant or have someone that's keeping track of all this stuff because you can't just authorize everything and not know what's been paid, what hasn't been paid. Okay. And messaged me. Um, I know some people have made like spreadsheets to keep track of adders on deals and extra costs because the last thing you want to happen is, and go negative on a deal like this.

Speaker 2 (17:47):

Okay. And then the last thing is just figure out a resolution with everything. I talked about how we are in a stalemate with this customer. Um, things didn't really come to a resolution, but figure out a solution on both sides. Kay. I was sick of talking to the customer too. I didn't want to hear from them, but yeah, you need to be willing to have those tough conversations with your customers, admit when you've made mistakes and then come to a resolution. Okay. So those are just a couple of things I've learned and still working on being better with complicated accounts, you got to pull out all the guns, you got to be ready for the long fight. Okay. Cause there's some complicated accounts out here, whether they need main panel upgrades, whether they need roof work. I know lots of people, um, especially out here an hour adding in AC units, they're adding and maybe even paying jobs.

Speaker 2 (18:49):

Um, for, I talked to guys that companies doing all sorts of things at an installation. So point is keep track of all this stuff. Okay. Depending on how your office is set up, it's very likely that you gotta keep track of this. And even if your company is organized, even if you have project managers or managers that are on top of everything, I would suggest still just being in the loop. Okay. Cause that's another thing I know for me, I've been hit with adders and things that our back offices have, uh, has done that aren't weren't right. Either where if I would have been keeping track and things like that when it happened. Okay. So just wanted to share this story. Let me know if something like that's happened to you would love to hear it love to learn from other people's mistakes, but don't get hit with a negative commission. It is the worst feeling in the world in the world and it's definitely a momentum killer. So let me know what you thought of this. Let me know if you liked hearing from the mistake and with that, learn from it. Let's move forward and let's crush it this month. Peace Solarpreneurs.

Speaker 3 (20:00):

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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.