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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):

Today's episode. You're going to hear about the mistake that cost me over 30 grand in commissions and how you might be losing money without even realizing it, all that and much more in today's episode of the Solarpreneur. Let's jump into it. My name's Taylor Armstrong. I'm here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much more enjoyable time in the solar industry. It's a great day today. It's raining outside here in San Diego, California. Hopefully wherever you're at, don't let the rain scare you away. We get some of this winter weather. I'll admit I am a sucker for not for not wanting to, you know, work in the inclement weather. That's why I live in San Diego because let's be honest. San Diego has pretty much the best weather in the 60 to 70 degree range, basically all year round.

Speaker 2 (01:36):

So if you're sick of knocking in that brutal heat or those winter storms, then come on over, we got a job for you, but in all seriousness, sometimes it is an advantage to knock in those inclement weather conditions. I've got friends that are out in Colorado, friends in Arizona, knocking, knocking in snow, snow storms. And the advantage you have with it is people are usually going to be more sympathetic and let you inside the house. And I was talking with one of my friends in Colorado saying that when they're knocking in the winter, it's so cold outside that people just let them right in half the time. So that's your advantage if it is raining or if it is hurricane weather or whatever, then people are probably going to let you inside either that or tell you you're crazy and not listen to you at all.

Speaker 2 (02:26):

Right? But with that being said, let's jump into the episode. So before we get into that, I wanted to just remind everyone that I was on the solar objections live stream. If you didn't have a chance to go check that out, go head on over to the solar objection, Facebook group, and obviously join the Solarpreneur Facebook group. We actually posted a copy of it in there, but make sure you're part of both of those Facebook groups. Cause we got some cool stuff going on. You don't want to miss out on them and you can see every play of yours, truly dropping some heat for y'all. So go check it out. Let me know what you think. Let me know if you liked the content we had in there and maybe we'll start doing more stuff like that. So that's once again Solarpreneur Facebook group in the solar objection group with my friend, Solar Joe over there.

Speaker 2 (03:20):

So today's episode, hopefully that got you a little intrigued. I did lose out on about 30 grand in commissions. And I want to tell you guys some mistakes I made with that, how I could have probably prevented it. Nothing's hunted a hundred percent preventable and just some steps that you should be taking yourself to ensure that you are getting paid, what you're worth. Okay. And so I'm going to preface that with a little story. When I first started out in pest control, as many of you know, started out my first summer in Dallas, Texas, this was back in 2012. So while back I'm one of the old guys here, back then, we, it was all paper hay. We carried around our clipboards. Um, I assume the pest control guys have like digital stuff. Now, digital contracts, um, been awhile since I've been in the pest control game, but that's how it was back then we literally carrying around paper contracts, just stacks of them in our clipboards.

Speaker 2 (04:21):

And then we had just this chunks of chalk. There was no sales rabbit. There was no canvas. There's no knocking app like that. We're carrying around chunks of chalk. Every time someone rejected us or was a follow-up follow-up we'd put an X on the sidewalk. If it was someone that said no, not interested. And then we put just a straight line down the middle, um, of the sidewalk, if it was someone who said to come back and then I'd put the time next to it that go, husband's not here, come back after five, I put 5:00 PM next to it. So you got a lot of people looking at you. Like you're crazy walking around with a piece of chalk, just drawing all over the place, but that's besides the point. Um, anyways, what happened back then though is we had one of the reps in our office.

Speaker 2 (05:10):

His name was Corey. He was our top rep. And he was getting, I don't know, like usually four to six deals a day in pest, which is pretty decent. I know there's guys bowling numbers like that out of the park today in pest control. But back then is pretty phenomenal what this guy was doing. And he had already, I think two kids, he was one of the more mature kids on the team, mature guys on the team. He's probably like, you know, I don't know, 28, the age I am right now. So I don't want to call him an old guy because that would make me old, the old guy right now. But Corey, he was having a ton of success. He was closing a lot of deals. Number one thing that stood out to me is he always was insane. The organize with these deals, every single contract he signed, he kept a copy of the paperwork and he put it in these folders.

Speaker 2 (06:05):

He had stacks and stacks of these copies of the contracts. And once he put that copy of it in a folder, he would, um, make a spreadsheet. I think it was a spreadsheet or I dunno, some sort of binder. And he kept record of the name of the customer, their contact info, exactly how much you sold them for and exactly how much you supposed to make on this deal. So one time I saw him doing this and I said, Corey, why are you keeping track of all this stuff? What's the deal. I mean, you sign up a deal and you get paid. Why are you keeping track of this? That's for the office people and what you told me. He said, Taylor, you'll learn in this industry. People make mistakes, no matter how many deals you think you closed, no matter how organized you think the office, people are, mistakes are going to be made and you're not going to get paid on things.

Speaker 2 (06:54):

If you don't keep track. And if you don't keep records yourself, it's that kind of brush to the side. I'm like, eh, I've always gotten paid. You do your work and you get paid for it. Whatever. And I only closed, you know, hundred pest accounts, whatever. So what do I know? Right. But I didn't listen to them and what happens? I didn't get paid as much as I thought I did, but I had no proof of anything. Hey, when they went to pay me, they said, Hey, you had deals, cancel this. And this happened, I had no records. So I'm just like, okay, well I'll take whatever. And they probably were right. But I learned an important lesson. That's going to transition into how I lost 30 grand in commissions. And that is that you need to be keeping records of your accounts. You need to be keeping track of who you signed up.

Speaker 2 (07:45):

You need to keep track of their progress. You need to keep track of they're still active because if you don't, you're going to get short cut. You're not going to get paid. And inevitably, you're not going to get paid at some point, what you thought you were owed. You're going to have people mess up on a commission. Maybe you're supposed to get paid 20 grand. You won't get paid two grand. Hopefully not that drastic, but things are going to be inaccurate. At some point. I don't care how organized your company. It is at this time I was with, uh, Aaptiv, which bigger company, but they're, you know, probably the biggest door to door pest control company at the time. So I thought there's no way they can mess things up, but come to find out, lots of people had things that weren't right with them selfish and happy.

Speaker 2 (08:32):

The big companies. I don't care if you're with a big company, if you're a well established dealer or whatever, you should be keeping track of your accounts. Okay. And so here's what happened to me. Here's how I lost about 30 grand in commissions. So I signed up two accounts. One was a, um, they're both around 15 kilowatt systems. Okay. And so out here in California, for me that equal about 30 grand in commissions. So pretty huge systems, the Wells as we call it, and one was a referral from the other. So there's several problems with this. And like I mentioned the beginning, even if I would have done the deals perfectly, I don't know if, I mean, who knows if they necessarily would have gone through, there's a couple of issues, but I'm going to talk about the things that I could have prevented. And if I would have been organized, then I probably would have at least one out of these two accounts installed.

Speaker 2 (09:36):

Okay. So the first one, his name was Hutch, signed him up. Everything was good. He was super excited to go solar. He said he checked it out once before, but the company couldn't help them. For whatever reason. They said they didn't like his roof type. I don't know, but it was fine. Um, we got them approved, but the issue was we had switched to a new installer. Um, we're a dealer here in San Diego, future home power. I'm working with, we switched to a different installer. Obviously we have multiple installers we can choose from. But our primary installer, we had switched to a local one that had really great reviews, uh, great warranties, 25 years on everything across the board, including like the roof, the workmanship flavor, all that stuff, something, man, that's pretty awesome. And they got good reputation. They're a local company. So we all start slinging deals through this.

Speaker 2 (10:30):

But the problem was all of us thought that they're going to be smooth as butter, just deals fighting through installs happening. What I didn't know behind the scenes is that there were a lot of issues going on that they didn't know how to handle all this new business. We were giving them, I close these accounts probably like the first week we started using these guys. And so all of a sudden they're getting dozens and dozens of deals sent to them. And guess what? They didn't know how to handle the volume. I didn't know this at the time. I just thought, okay, if I sign them up, it's just going to be about like the same as all our other installs. They'll go quick. They'll do their thing. They get installed and no problem at all. But what happened was pretty much the opposite. It didn't go quick.

Speaker 2 (11:16):

There were mistakes made and come to find out about two months after I signed up Hutch, the first customer they had gone and they didn't even have the correct site survey pictures. I found this out two months after, after they did their original site survey. And after I signed all the documents, so Hutch was a chill guy, but the other mistake I made the other, the second account that I closed, that was part of this whole thing. It was actually hutches girlfriend. And he had referred her and she liked me when great. She was a little more skeptical. She was a single mom. So she was pretty hesitant to sign up, but apply it a little bit of pressure. Um, soft, closed her and boom. She was good to go. But then what happened with her is they went and they missed again. They miss pictures on the site survey.

Speaker 2 (12:18):

So the first mistake made is I call her back. She was already, you know, a little bit on the fence. So I called her back and I'm like, Hey, um, so the missed some pictures. We're going to need to come back and go through this. This was probably two and a half weeks after I had closed her. Which at this point, anyone that closes a deal, you should, it should be a done deal. You shouldn't have cancels unless it's maybe in the first couple of days, because everyone has the three-day or cancellation. But after that, you should not be having cancels. So I'm thinking for both of these smooth selling, they're not going to cancel. It's going to be good to go, but she hears me say this and just cause the fact she's already on the fence. She's like, you know what, Taylor, um, yeah, if I'm going to have to do this, I just, like I told you from the beginning, I still feel like I should just take it a little slower, get some more quotes.

Speaker 2 (13:13):

So why don't we just put it on pause? So that's why I say it wasn't a hundred percent because of this, but the fact that I had to call her back, I had to try to schedule a site survey again. She cancels and this was kind of the first domino that falls. And then of course Hutch, the one that I closed originally that was a lot more saw, a lot more excited about it. We go through the similar stuff and I don't know this for sure, but I assume that he probably talked to his girlfriend and um, you know, maybe she was in his chirping in his ear a little bit, but similar thing happens only with Hutch. It was two months after the fact, right. Two months after the fact, we had to try to redo a site survey and similar thing happens. He says, Taylor, yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:59):

You know what? Um, I just feel like nothing's really happened. And it's been taken a long time and site survey that was already done. Seems like there's mistakes being made. So yeah. Why don't we just go ahead and put this on hold. I want to go ahead and get some more quotes due to deals lost cause this stuff. So here's what I could have done better. If I would have been number one, checking in with the installer, making sure they were doing their stuff, making sure we had all the right pictures two months wouldn't have gone by, um, because two months the site server, that should be like the first thing that happens. Right. And after two months, we're back to square one. We have to redo a site survey. Ridiculous. Okay. And obviously a lot of this, you know, the installer had to figure out some stuff and we've helped them improve their processes.

Speaker 2 (14:53):

So I know I'm probably going to get messages from people saying, why, why are you using this installer? Okay, well, they look good at the time. And most installers I've dealt with know how to figure that stuff out, but people make mistakes. So what I should have been doing is I should have been keeping track of the progress. What I've since done is I've created a spreadsheet of all my accounts that I've closed. And I've got my assistant doing check-ins every week, just following up on the progress, getting an update on this. So do you think that would have happened if I would've been having her do that from the beginning? Checking on my accounts. Probably not. You don't necessarily have to have an assistant do this, but for me it saves me time. It's something I've talked about before getting a virtual assistant. That's my first suggestion I would make.

Speaker 2 (15:45):

No matter how organized you think your company is, maybe you don't need to do weekly check-ins on your accounts, but just create some sort of system. Okay. I use a app called Trello is a good one. Maybe you can put your accounts in there or just a good old spreadsheet. Google sheets, put your accounts in there. Just keep track of them. Okay. Even if you haven't had any mistakes in the past, keep track of them because who knows maybe one day he switched companies for whatever reason, at the very least, you want to be keeping track of all your customers. Hey, because think of how many referrals you could be getting, think of how much follow you could be doing. That's important data that you just want to keep track of in general. So that's the first tip. But then the second thing is in the story that goes with, this is actually last week we had a rep in our company.

Speaker 2 (16:40):

Um, I closed an account for him about yeah. A couple months back got installed. Things were good. I got paid on the account, but the rep didn't okay. The rep in our company didn't and he was the one that said it wasn't our company. We do splits, you know, he said the deal, I closed it. So we split it. So this deal for whatever reason, the people in the office didn't keep track. I don't know what happened. I got paid the full amount. He got paid nothing. And this rep, he actually wasn't even keeping track. So it went by probably about a week and a half before I even like dug into the numbers. I was like, oh, well I got paid a lot more than I thought I was supposed to on this. And then come to find out he didn't get anything. A N S I dunno, hopefully you're the kind of rep that would, you know, report this.

Speaker 2 (17:30):

Obviously, if you're getting overpaid, you know, report it, you want to make sure your guys are getting paid. Okay. So definitely don't just take the money and run with it. Obviously. That's a thought that probably crosses everyone. My know they paid me extra. Um, yeah. I don't know what happened, but I wanted to make sure this ref got fade. So I told her office people and they had no idea that it was this rep's account. So luckily we got them paid. We got to figure it out. But imagine if I hadn't reported that he probably forgot about it altogether. He wasn't getting paid on an account. This was like three grand that he got paid. That if you know, I hadn't reported it, he might've forgotten about it. And yeah. Who knows what happened? So lesson learned, and this has probably happened to me. Okay.

Speaker 2 (18:20):

Cause there's been lots of times where I haven't been organized and keeping track of this stuff, but that's the lesson here is just keep track of your accounts. Keep track how much you're supposed to get paid. Because again, people will make mistakes. Things will happen. And if you're not going to keep track of it, who will, okay. So you need to be keeping track to the dollar, the commissions you're owed, and then make sure you get paid. What you're worth. That's the lesson today. Don't be like me. Don't lose the 30 grand in commissions. Number one, make sure you're keeping track on the progress of your accounts. Okay. If I would have been doing this, this deal probably would have been installed. I mean, our installed time usually takes like a month, a month and a half here in San Diego. So the fact that took two months any cancel up that cause the issues we were having, I would have got that one installed at the very least, because I mean, any other deal would have been like a month and a half and you're not canceling after it's installed.

Speaker 2 (19:18):

Right? So keep track of your progress and then keep track of how much he need to get paid. If you want a spreadsheet I've been using to keep track of that stuff, hit me up and send you a copy of it. But don't be like me. Don't lose 30 grand in commissions and send this to someone that needs to be more organized. And we're going to be having more trainings about this, on how you can implement an assistant if you need to or ways to be more organized, but it's costing you money. I'm telling you. So get organized. Don't forget. And we will see you guys on the next episode.

Speaker 3 (19:54):

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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.