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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 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 3 (01:24):

What is going on Solarpreneurs. This is James Swiderski back with another train to win, where we are giving you the tools, strategies, techniques that you need to train world-class solar teams. And in this episode, I'm going to be talking about the lessons I've learned the hard way from training over a thousand reps, personally, in the same room with them through my own companies, through my clients and giving you some of these key tactics and mistakes to avoid so that you can build a world-class sales team yourself to scale your company to the moon. And if you like this type of content, stay tuned because I'm going to be coming back for more episodes. Um, right now you're going to be hearing a lot of me over the next couple of weeks, but after that, we'll dial it back to like a monthly visit I'll pop on and Taylor will be the primary guy as always the guys you liked, you liked the most, right?

Speaker 3 (02:16):

We all want to talk about Taylor. We all know he's the man, the myth, the legend, he's the guy, the head honcho. So I don't want to steal the light from him here. So here we go. Let's go ahead and talk about some lessons I've learned from training reps. And I want to give you my background on this too. So you see where I'm coming from and where some of these methodologies and strategies I've learned have come to pass. And the reality is my method of training reps is pretty different from what's happening, not only just in the solar industry, but any industry altogether. Um, I think that the solar industry is a little behind the times when it comes to training, developing, uh, teams marketing. So one of my core strategies and my, and how I adopt these philosophies and have gotten really great results with clients in the past is actually looking outside of solar, looking in more established industries, like real estate, um, and applying those methodologies to my team.

Speaker 3 (03:14):

Uh, and some of them are right, but some of them don't, and I'll be very Frank with you. What's working. What's not, um, we're only talking about what has worked well here on the show here. So, uh, how I really got into training here, which is the first important thing I want to talk about, um, is I actually was running daily meetings, right with the first company I ever worked with. This was, uh, five years ago, Evel our solar over in Utah. They are no longer in business, but, um, at the time, uh, we were doing, I would say about eight, 8 million per year, um, about a year into my career. And we were running daily sales meetings came out about 11 guys. And these sales meetings were a couple hours long. They were going really well. And our company was looking for additional sales training, right.

Speaker 3 (04:03):

My team. Um, and me, my time was running thin as a manager spending so much time with my reps. We didn't have a scalable system. We didn't have a, uh, course or anything like that. So our company was looking for something a little bit more scalable. So we went out and hired and bought, uh, the Sandler training. If you guys have heard of that before. Um, I think they're based out of Utah too, which is where we were added at the time and why we went with them. But anyway, we did this and they had a three day kickoff meeting. Okay. And we're sitting there and the group up, all of my guys and myself, uh, for these three day bootcamp style things, eight hours a day. And we're sitting there through these trainings and I kid you not, everybody's just bored out of their mind.

Speaker 3 (04:52):

You, you know exactly what I'm talking about too. If you've done anything of the sort with your team, half, the guys are messing around in the back. There's a couple of guys that are attentive. People are trying to take notes, but the stuff's just way too complicated. And the biggest overarching question, that's just hanging in the room, the elephant in the room is how the heck do we apply this to solar? Okay. Because we know that Sandler training guy, he was definitely not applying it to solar. We're just like, dude, how does this apply to solar? How's this going to actually get me to the next deal? Right? How's this going to get me the next lead? That's all my guys are thinking. It's all I'm thinking. And I'm just like, what the heck? And after we're done with this training, right? And they have a debrief with me and the other management of the team at the company here.

Speaker 3 (05:41):

And we're just like, what, what actually comes from this? We felt like we just wasted our cash on training that our guys are not even going to use. And that's exactly what freaking happened. Um, and this is absolutely crazy in my industry. Um, in, for enterprise sales is what I do with my company, epic. Um, there's a stat ed tech university did a study with this out of the $1.5 billion spent per year on sales training for companies. That's an average of $1,500 a year per rep, 87% of the content in sales training, live boot camps, courses, you name it, it's forgotten within 30 days. Think about that for a second, almost 90% of sales training or any it's any training as well, not just sales it's forgotten within 30 days yet we continue to do things the same way. Just simply putting our guys into courses and hoping some miracle is going to happen or doing one-on-one trainings with them where we know we just don't have time at the end of the day to do this with everybody at scale and expecting a miracle to happen.

Speaker 3 (06:50):

Again, miracles are not going to happen here with training guys. You need to have a proven system and process to really make things scale. And this is what I learned the hard way. So here's what happened after we invested in this training, I realized and had an epiphany moment during this training, as my guys were saying, well, Hey James, your training's way better. I knew my training was better. Right. But I couldn't be everywhere all the time with all of my reps. So this is where I decided, Hey, what if I were to go put together a process and a system like these guys did Sandler training for solar, for my guys and put it in a online learning platform. A course, I think I was doing like teachable or something at the time. And I'll just put some of my best teachings on there and make my reps go through it on a regular basis.

Speaker 3 (07:41):

Okay. So that's exactly what I did. And this was before, like everybody was blasting off a course on social media or anything like that. Um, I was a super early guy on this, especially in solar. I was the only guy in solar doing this. Um, so I pulled this out right? And the results just started flowing with my reps. All of a sudden I had guys that were doing a couple deals a month upwards of 12, 14 deals a month. Within 90 days, I had one guy like he starts closing big commercial contracts. All of a sudden him decides he's going to go into commercial sales, right. Just stuff started popping off with my team. Um, and this is when our company started to scale and I realized that I was onto something right. Systematizing training and having a way for reps to personally train on their own time, gave me the time to make critical decisions, update the training, lead my team, closed big contracts and make sure that I was making the most use of my skillset as a manager and a VP.

Speaker 3 (08:46):

Right? So some of the things I really stood out as I was scaling this team up is first. And I'm going to give you four tips. First reps needed to be engaged personally and taught at their own unique level. Okay. This is something we kind of intuitively know as we're training people that we want to tailor the training to them. But this is the problem with a third-party training ad Adam, uh, Adam Sandler with Sandler training system, Jordan Belfort, Kardon you write all great programs, great content, right? The only problem is it's not personalized to the rep. They're wondering how the heck does this apply to me? Or, Hey, I've got this problem or this limiting belief. I don't know if I could do that. And then they don't apply it. Right? So you need to be engaging your reps personally, um, making sure that your tailoring every single strategy to them and helping them on their individual levels.

Speaker 3 (09:49):

Right. If they're a super advanced top producer guy, like, uh, Taylor was just having a guy on the show. I can't remember. He was doing like 35 deals. It's a guy at Taylor's company. If you haven't heard yet. Um, he did like 37 deals in a month. Absolutely nuts. Right. That guy is at a whole different level than someone who's brand new. Okay. And he's going to require a totally different type of training than a brand new guy. So you've got to make sure that you have a way to personally engage and train those reps at their unique level. Just like a video game would, right. If you go and play a video game, super Mario brothers, first level, it's going to be easy. Second level, a little bit more challenging. We only learn as people when we're actually being challenged at our unique individual level.

Speaker 3 (10:33):

This is why, um, Taylor's, uh, platform that he's built Solciety in partnership with my, uh, company Epoch, um, is so unique because we actually use gamification and, uh, artificial intelligence to customize training difficulty for every single rep with solar specific content. Um, I'm going to do a huge promo on that, but guys go to solciety.co it's a freaking ridiculous revolutionary system. We built, um, we do a results guarantee. We guarantee you're going to sell 20% more solar or your money back within four months. So you really have nothing to lose. Go check it out. Solciety.co anyway off the soap box here. So you have to engage in personalized training. Second is having a system for reps to train on their own time. All right. People really learn best when it's behind closed doors. Okay. I know I personally do. That's my preference, but even extroverts, I've seen, like you need to have that alone time with your thoughts.

Speaker 3 (11:38):

If you're constantly just consuming information in the form of a personal training or boot camps or whatever, you have no time to process this and think how it applies to you. You need to give reps that alone time to do so without overwhelming them with three hour long videos, bite-sized content is key. So that's step number two, step number three, realization. Number three, here is reps need to be held accountable as many times as possible. And my goal was multiple times per day. Now you're probably thinking I'm freaking nuts right now, right? Because you're holding your reps accountable maybe twice a week. If you're really on top of the game once a day, if you're really on point, but multiple times a day, what the hell I'm telling you guys it's common sense. The more often you hold your reps accountable on their training and their results, the better outcomes they will produce.

Speaker 3 (12:35):

It's very simple. Okay. Reps, especially when they're beginning, usually are not driven enough, motivated enough to hold themselves accountable like this. Yeah. Your top producers, like the guy had talked about 37 deals in a month. He's holding himself accountable, right? Nobody gets those results without holding themselves accountable. But the majority of your reps are not at this level. They are not equipped with the mindset and tools yet to hold themselves accountable to high standards like this in order to get them there and develop leaders on your team that do that type of accountability. Self-accountability you've got to guide them. You gotta be their training wheels, right? So my suggestion is multiple times a day. And one way we do this with our clients and how Solciety helps is with what we call a pod check. So a pod check, and whether you sign up for Solciety or not, I don't care.

Speaker 3 (13:31):

I'll give you the tool here for pod Jack. Here's all it is, right? Execution is everything. The ideas don't matter. The pod check is dividing your reps, your team into individual groups and pods of five to seven members. Okay. So big problem companies have is their teams are too big. They're like 10, 15 reps, right? Um, that doesn't do well because it's just too many people at the end of the day. So you divide your pod into five to seven reps, preferably five. And you put in charge of that pot of pod leader. This could be the manager, but it could also just be another member of your team. I actually prefer that use members of your team because it builds culture and morale. And that's a real cool hack to actually develop. Your next set of leaders is start giving some of your regular reps more responsibility.

Speaker 3 (14:19):

Um, and in these pod checks, what you do is you have a quick five minute check-in with your pod multiple times throughout the day. And what you do is the first pod check in the morning. You do a quick check on your goals for the week, right? Where are your goals for the week on each individual rep, they give a report, Hey, I'm going to close two deals this week, I'm going to do 10 appointments. And I'm going to do five appointments a day, set, knocking doors, whatever it is, I'm going to knock three hours. They all have their individual goals. And they report those to the entire pod group. So everybody knows what everybody's numbers are. Right? And then the pod leader will actually check the CRM and the metrics and say, Hey, John's at two. He wants to get to 10. John, how are you going to get eight deals in two days, man?

Speaker 3 (15:05):

He's like, uh, right. John's gonna feel a little embarrassed. He's going to feel yeah. A little humiliated in front of his peers in the pod, right? This is why it works so well because extreme transparency is lacking in most sales teams. When everybody's numbers are just present and you could see who's slack on off you mark my words, what happens with your team? All of a sudden they start moving. They just start taking action because they are embarrassed. They're whatever they're uncomfortable and that's good. Your sales team should be uncomfortable every single day if you want them to grow. So that's the first part. And then they say what they're going to do for the day. What is the goal for the day? And they discuss any challenges, issues they need to overcome. And they do these little check-ins throughout the day and the pod leaders in charge of initiating these check-ins constantly in the morning.

Speaker 3 (16:01):

First thing, obviously 11 and morning, right before lunch one o'clock two o'clock after lunch evening, right? Making sure everybody's updating their metrics. You're quite literally outsourcing that babysitting that managers hate doing you're outsourcing that to your team and creating an organized way for your team to get involved. It's kind of like a mini networking or a business networking group, like BNI, where it's member led. You want your team coaching and pushing each other to the next level. So that's a pod check. That's how you hold your reps accountable. So consistently. Um, and then the last part I want to give you here is about motivation. Okay. So how do you actually motivate reps consistently? There's a lot of ideas on this and I'll go more in depth on some other episodes. But the biggest thing I want to talk about is action led motivation. And if you listened to my first episode with Taylor, where we introduced this series, I kind of alluded to this, but the biggest mistake that companies make with contests and incentives is that only, uh, incentivize the deal, right?

Speaker 3 (17:06):

The problem with this is the only guys who are, we're really motivated for. The deals are already your five, five, top five to 10% of your reps, your top producers, the rest of the guys just say, ask Gruet Taylor, Johnny, James, they're just going to get it because they're on the top of their game. I'm not even going to try it, right? This is a mistake. And quite literally, if you perform this way, it was almost no reason to even hang on to the bottom of 90% of reps. You might as well get rid of them if you're not going to incentivize them and motivate them as well. So the solution to this actually comes down to tracking, right? Um, if you know how many appointments it takes to close deal on your average rep and you know, how many leads, how many doors need to be knocked to set an appointment.

Speaker 3 (17:55):

And you know, these metrics by heart and you actually know them, you're not just fudging them, right. Then you will have the confidence to place an incentive or a prize or whatever. On some of these actions that create a sale, like an appointment set or a door knocked, right? Some of the top companies I've worked with, they will create their own banking system. Quite literally they'll create like a Venmo card for their reps and reps are rewarded. Every time they set an appointment, they're literally paid out instantly 50 bucks, a hundred bucks, whatever it is into their company bank account, where they could pay, pay themselves, instantly withdraw it to their own bank. Right. And start using those funds that incentivizes the action. Okay. Um, Miko, Donald's been on the show, right? He talks about the mini habits. This is mini habits, right? Whatever you want to call it, incentivizing the actions that create the results.

Speaker 3 (18:50):

This is how we get ourselves to do uncomfortable and difficult things as rep CEOs, founders, whatever right? Human beings. You need to give yourself a reward in your reps or reward for the first step. The second step, the third step. The only way you could do this with confidence that you're not going to lose money. You need to have the systems in place. So guys, to review here, lessons I've learned from training. A thousand reps, reps need to be engaged personally and taught on their own unique level and challenged individually reps need to be able to train on their own time and have clear tracking and expectations in place. Third reps need to be held accountable multiple times a day. Pod check is one of my favorite way to do that. Favorite ways to do this. And then lastly, reps need to be motivated with action led results, right?

Speaker 3 (19:40):

So the last thing I want to leave you here is the core lessons I know today as someone who's coached a thousand reps scaled multiple solar companies past eight figures per year. Um, who's personally sold over 500 deals myself. Um, these are some truths that can not be faltered with. These are things that all of the sales greats, all of the sales gurus leaders top guys in any industry will tell you are a matter of fact. And if you adopt these four principles, I'm about to give you no matter what sales training process you have, what products you have, your reps will be ahead of nine out of 10 of your competition. So here they are. Number one, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Okay? You can not expect all of your reps to want to train. If you do not have the proper culture in place, this is a mistake that nearly every sales team I see makes they have a culture against training, right?

Speaker 3 (20:54):

They buy a training program. And the reason they buy a training program is because their sales are poor. That's a mistake, right? One of the worst times to buy sales training is when your sales are poor cam, second, the founder and CEO just doesn't want to train their reps and they buy a training thing. It's going to fix it, right? This is the wrong mindset. You've set the culture that we are a lazy organization, essentially. Now, whether you like that or not, I don't really care, but this is the culture and what it communicates to your reps. Um, your mindset personally, around training and self-development you as the founder VP director, that mindset will bleed down to your sales reps. Um, whether you want to or not, this is how people learn. This is how parents raise kids, right? They say one thing, Hey, don't do this.

Speaker 3 (21:47):

But if the kid sees you, the parent doing whatever, watching TV, playing video games, eating junk food, whatever it is, the kid's going to do exactly what you just did. Right? So if your reps don't know about you learning, they don't know you're reading books. They don't know you're taking courses training. Then they're not going to want to do this. This is not a culture of accountability, uh, when it comes to learning and training, right? And then the last part is you need to cut the fat. Okay? If you've got reps that refuse to log onto their training and you've held them accountable for it, you quite literally need to fire them off your team, even if they're producing revenue. And this is the part where it takes a lot of courage, takes a lot of balls to do this quite honestly. Um, and the way that I have found that's easiest to muster up that courage to fire somebody for not training is to know your metrics, um, and know that you've done all you can to create the culture of training.

Speaker 3 (22:50):

And quite literally, that conversation goes very upfront, very aggressive with your team. And you say, guys, we are making a radical change to a training environment and training, obsessed culture with our team. I want you guys to do the very best you can perform at your highest level. And I've invested in the tools, training, technology, mentors, to help you get there. And I put everything on the line for you guys. Okay. And what I'm asking you is that you jump ship with us and you cut off all options and you fully commit to training and developing yourselves. And we're going to hold you guys accountable on this. We're going to answer your questions. We're going to personalize the training for you, but we ask that you do this and those of you that do not comply with this, this is going to be a true Testament.

Speaker 3 (23:39):

If you're a right fit for our team or not. And that's okay if you're not, if this sounds too intense for you guys, you guys can leave. That's all right, we'll give you a recommendation for the next job. I'm just letting you know our culture. We're about to make some radical changes here. And I want you guys to be fully onboard and committed to this. And after you have this talk with the team and you rally the troops, right? You go and you talk to each one of them personally, and you say, is this a good fit for you, John? Right? Like, are you on board with this? Right? And you have these conversations and you get them to commit. And you're going to find that some of your reps are going to say, this is a little too much for me. I'm not in on this.

Speaker 3 (24:15):

This isn't what I signed up for. And you've gotta be willing to let that person go. Now, today, it might be scary to let that person go. But what you're not seeing is this second, third, fourth order consequences of this decision by deciding to be a training organization, a self-development led organization, you are building a new culture, a new mentality, a new energy around the office, a new dedication, motivation your reps will have. You're going to start attracting better talent. You're going to start seeing better results, but you will not be able to do this. If you have stragglers who are not on board, you have to cut those guys or get them on there's no in-between so that's step number one, you can't lead a horse to water, but you, uh, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink it.

Speaker 3 (25:05):

Principle. Number two, mindset and personal beliefs are almost always the sales training problem for reps. Okay. It is like almost never is skill issue. Okay? Your reps don't have an issue with their script on the door. That's not why they suck on the door. Okay. You might be saying, well, what do you know, James? Like, listen, if your reps had zero fear of what anybody thought about them, they would have no issue knocking doors because after five, 10 attempts, 2050, a hundred reps, right. Of just going at it and learning from rejection, they would have the best script in the freaking world. Okay. Think of it like an artificial intelligence algorithm. Okay. The way AI learns, if you're not familiar with it is quite literally learning from failure. It's just like humans. AI learns by going out there implementing a algorithm is solution to a problem and it tests it and it bounces it.

Speaker 3 (26:08):

Right. It bounces it back and it usually fails. And it starts doing absolutely crazy things. When AI starts, uh, working in a system, okay. It starts just failing, doing dumb stuff. If a human was a algorithm, right. An artificial intelligence algorithm, it would be like a rep walking around and pitching like people's mail boxes instead of doors. K just doing stupid, stupid stuff. Right. But every single failure leads that algorithm to learn from its mistake. And it just looks at it as testing. It's not a personal failure, right? It's just testing. It's just another way not to do it. It's just like Thomas Edison and the light bulb a thousand ways not to do it right? If your reps didn't have fear or personal beliefs or mindset issues, they would do it just like this. They would just keep showing up and showing up refining, iterating their, their, their abilities.

Speaker 3 (27:03):

And boom, they'd make it happen. So that's my proof skills are not the issue. Okay. Personal development is the problem with almost all of your reps, right? They have too much baggage. They have fear over what others are thinking of them. They want to be liked more than they want to make a sale. Kay. There's quite a few of these objections. They have money, mindset issues. They have issues with following up. They don't believe they could close a one-leg or appointment because they wouldn't want their spouse. The list is endless, right? So 90% of your time and your training should really be spent in this area. That's what I'm trying to get across here. So principle number three, you need to be growth minded and developing your own skillset. As a leader, right? Culture is passed down. I talked about this already. I won't go into it any further, but if you're not consistently developing yourself as a leader, it is affecting your culture.

Speaker 3 (27:57):

Mark. My words, principle, number four, tracking is everything. All right? And this is a big one. I hated tracking. When I was selling full time, never wanted to use a CRM. My company was always telling me to use the CRM, but you know, they didn't tell me they didn't tell me why it was important. And that is not something I learned until I tried to start my own solar company three times before having a initial success. I realized that tracking was absolutely everything. I'm not even exaggerating with this tracking and numbers just equal results. At the end of the day, business is math. The company is I've seen that survive or go under it's the ones who understand their numbers and those who don't. Now, when I say tracking, what does this mean? Right? This is not just tracking sales. This is tracking everything you possibly can in the sales process.

Speaker 3 (28:54):

So exactly how many emails were sent. Follow-up emails are sent by each rep. How many calls were done? What was the length of each call on the appointment setting call? How long did it take to get to setting the appointment on each phone call? Right? How many leads are set? How many doors were knocked, right? How many appointments, how long was each appointment? How long was each appointment until the credit was checked? Like you can go really in depth here. And I can tell you that the big guys, the big companies, you see the 50 to a hundred million dollar companies, they are maniacal about tracking, absolutely obsessed about tracking. So how do you get your reps onboard with tracking? Right? Cause you're probably saying my reps won't even use the CRM. Same thing as the training culture, we are a CRM tracking culture. Now get on board or get out.

Speaker 3 (29:50):

You don't have to be that blunt obviously, but that's what this is. At the end of the day, you have to make some very critical decisions with leading your team. If you want to scale and grow past the seven figure to low eight figure range, that's kind of where most companies plateau after the figure out their leads and whatnot, they're hiring on reps and they're getting stuck there. And it's because of these two things that do not have a training culture, they do not track properly and they do not train properly tracking culture. Absolutely key. So guys, that is it. That is what I've learned. Training a thousand reps, pretty in-depth stuff. Um, again, I don't expect a ton of people to apply it, but for the few companies out there who are saying, like I am missing a couple of these things go and apply them.

Speaker 3 (30:36):

This is a hundred percent free stuff. Um, I used to pay, um, charge clients tens of thousands of dollars a month for this stuff. I don't do it anymore. I don't do consulting for solar companies anymore. I'm 100% in on just training and scaling a company is through Taylor's program Solciety and my company epic outside of solar. So I'm quite literally spilling the best of the best stuff on this podcast. You guys, please go apply it. Please go use it. Um, I don't just put it out for free. I'm doing these episodes 100% free of time because I care about you guys. And I want you guys to benefit from my knowledge and experience in the industry. So I'll see you guys in the next episode. Again, if you want to check out what it be like to scale your team past eight figures per year with results guaranteed, a 20% increase guarantee in four months or less with Solciety, go to Solciety.co S O L C I E T Y dot C O or hit up Taylor Armstrong on Facebook or me on LinkedIn. And we'll set you guys up. All right, guys, I'll see you soon.

Speaker 4 (31:42):

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.