Door to door solar sales is quite popular amongst solar sales professionals. Why? Because it works—as long as they implement the strategy effectively, of course.
In this article, we’ll give you a 10-step process you can use to boost door to door solar sales for your company. By the end, you’ll know exactly who to approach and how to approach them. Here’s a taste of what we cover in the sections below:
- Identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)
- Use ICP data to prospect efficiently
- Map and assign sales territories
- Perfect your pitch
- Don’t educate, showcase the value
- Enable canvassers to send leads to reps
- Integrate your CRM data
- Track sales activity and performance
- Prepare for objections
- Always follow up
If you do these 10 things, selling solar door to door will be much easier. Read on to learn more about each of these steps and how to implement them the right way.
10 Steps to Increase Door To Door Solar Sales
Want to learn how to sell solar door to door? We should warn you, it will take time and effort. But once you learn and implement the 10-step process below, you’ll start to see results. So let’s dive in with step number one!
Identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)
Success in sales starts with an in-depth knowledge of the people you’re trying to sell to. Always. So before you do anything else, build an ideal customer profile (ICP.)
An ICP defines the perfect customer for a company’s products and/or services. In your case, it will be a description of the person (or company, if you sell solar panels to other businesses) who is most likely to invest in your company’s solar systems.
The ICP you create for your company should include customer location data, financial details, and information regarding specific problems you can help solve.
Once you have access to these details, you can use them to inform your prospecting efforts. That way you don’t waste time on bad-fit leads. Speaking of…
Use ICP data to prospect efficiently
It doesn’t matter how good you are at door to door sales; you won’t be able to close every deal. There are a variety of reasons for this.
Some people, for example, don’t get enough sun on their property to make solar a worthwhile investment. The last thing you want to do is waste your valuable time talking to a prospect who has no intention of making a purchase.
To avoid this, use your ICP data to only connect with potential customers.
Tools like SPOTIO make it much easier to prospect efficiently, thanks to features like Lead Machine, which allow users to filter prospects using 200+ data points. The result? Tons of red-hot leads that anyone can generate for rock bottom prices.
Map and assign sales territories
At this point, you know what your ideal customer looks like and you’ve identified a few of them in the field. Now it’s time to map and assign territories so that your canvassers and/or reps don’t waste time visiting the same prospects.
Once again, software can help with this. Take SPOTIO’s Territory Management tool, for instance, which enables users to cut territories based on geographical boundaries or by drawing on a digital map. Sales leaders can then assign territories to the most qualified reps on their team and monitor the results in each.
Also of note, Territory Management provides data-backed insights into territory history and performance so that you always know what’s going on and why.
Perfect your pitch
What do sales reps do once they’ve been assigned a territory? They hit the road and go talk to people, of course! When they do, they need to be ready to pitch.
Here are five door to door solar sales pitch examples your reps can use:
- The Opener Pitch: This sales pitch example aims to build connections with prospects as quickly as possible and nail the first impression.
- The Elevator Pitch: This sales pitch example is short and sweet, giving prospects a wealth of information in a quick, 20-30 second burst.
- The Storyteller Pitch: This sales pitch example uses the power of story to build trust with prospects and deliver information in an entertaining way.
- The Pain-Based Pitch: This sales pitch example helps reps uncover prospect pains so that they can pinpoint how their company can help.
- The Close Pitch: This sales pitch example is used when reps have built rapport with prospects and are ready to ask them to make a purchase.
For more information on these five pitch examples and how to use them to fuel your door to door solar sales strategy, read our blog post on the topic.
Don’t educate, showcase the value
Here’s the thing: your prospects don’t need to know the technical details of solar.
How each panel works might be interesting information to you. But prospects only care about smaller energy bills, higher home values, and (maybe) environmental factors associated with the solar system you can install on their properties.
So, don’t delve too deep into education. Tell prospects what they need to know; then spend the rest of your time promoting the benefits they care about.
Enable canvassers to send leads to reps
If your solar sales department is like many others, it asks different employees to do different things. Canvassers, for example, are asked to pinpoint leads, make initial contact with them, and schedule future appointments.
Closers, on the other hand, are asked to attend the appointments their canvassers make, explain the benefits of solar, and convince prospects to make a purchase.
To make this system work, we suggest technology, which will keep prospects from feeling confused during the handoff from canvasser to closer.The right tech will also ensure important information doesn’t fall through the cracks.
Fortunately, there are plenty of technological solutions on the market.
SPOTIO, for example, makes these kinds of transfers smooth by automatically transferring canvasser notes to a company CRM, documenting all communication channels that canvassers use, and automatically capturing lead data.
Integrate your CRM data
Your sales team acquires a lot of data. Make sure your reps have access to it so that they can consistently close more deals in less time.
You can do this by integrating your preferred CRM with SPOTIO. Once you do, your reps will be able to access all of your company’s important sales data from any device, including their phones, which is super handy when out in the field.
More importantly, said data can be organized on a digital map, filtered based on the needs of individual reps, and manipulated in a variety of other ways. All of these things make door to door solar sales much easier and more effective.
Track sales activity and performance
You can’t help your sales reps improve if you don’t know how they spend their time in the field. That’s why it’s so important to track sales activity and performance.
Guess what—you can easily track these things with SPOTIO, too!
Quickly see each of your field rep’s travel paths in real time. And easily track sales rep activities so that you know exactly who they contact, when they contact them, and the communication channel they use.
These two bits of information will tell you whether you need to retrain your reps or motivate them to work harder. They’ll also build accountability and trust between new reps and management, which will help boost team morale.
Prepare for objections
Prospects always have a reason not to buy. Because of this, the best door to door solar sales reps have learned to handle objections the right way.
Here’s what we suggest:
- Be Prepared: Help your reps understand that objections are part of the game. Study past sales encounters and pinpoint the most common objections. Then brainstorm ways that reps can overcome them.
- Use the LAER Model: The LAER Model stands for Listen, Acknowledge, Explore, Respond. Basically, it means that sales reps should listen to prospect objections, acknowledge that they hear and understand them, explore the reasons why these objections have come up, and then reply in a sincere way that may help prospects see past their objections and make purchases.
For more information on common sales objections and how to handle them, read through our blog post on the topic.
Always follow up
Selling solar door to door is a numbers game. The more people you talk to, the more sales you’ll make. This applies to follow-ups, too.
Just because a prospect says “No” doesn’t mean they’ll never buy from your company. A “No” today could easily turn into a “Yes” next month or next year. But you’ll never realize that potential if your reps quit after the first “No” they get.
The hardest part about following-up is keeping track of who you contacted, when you contacted them, and when you need to contact them again.
With a tool like SPOTIO, your reps won’t have to worry about these things. Instead, they’ll use the platform’s Autoplays feature to automate follow-ups at the cadence of their choosing. This ensures leads don’t fall through the cracks.
Start Selling More Solar Panels
Selling solar door to door is definitely possible. The key is having the right strategies, processes, and technology in place so that your reps can thrive.
Speaking of technology, have you tried SPOTIO yet? Our platform enables solar sales reps to become more productive and hit higher sales numbers thanks to a host of helpful features. Here’s how SPOTIO can empower your sales force:
Lead generation: Find leads that fit your ICP using SPOTIO’s unique Lead Generation tool, which will quickly pull up a list of prospects for your reps to contact. Said prospects can then be filtered by homeownership status, age, credit capacity, and a host of other things to make sure they’re a good fit for your brand.
Appointment setting: Whether you employ a team of canvassers or ask reps to source their own leads, they can do it more efficiently with SPOTIO’s Appointment Setting tool. Users can instantly set appointments from the field, pass them off to other team members, automate time-consuming tasks, and more.
Activity management: Where have your reps been? How many times have they contacted Prospect X? Come to think of it, where are they right now? SPOTIO’s Activity Management feature will tell you exactly how your reps spend their on-the-clock hours. (Note: this feature can be turned off if desired.)
Territory management: You can cut, manage, and assess territories inside SPOTIO, too. Use our intuitive suite of tools to divide geographical areas by zip code or by drawing on a digital map. Then assign the territories you create to specific sales reps. Once a territory is assigned, monitor it to improve performance.
Route planning: Door to door solar sales is effective, but not always efficient. SPOTIO helps reps maintain peak productivity by automatically planning the most efficient routes between prospects. That way reps spend more time in meetings and less time behind the wheels of their cars. Win!
CRM integrations: Every solar sales team needs a CRM solution. One of the best things about SPOTIO is that it integrates with just about all of them. It doesn’t matter if you’re a loyal Salesforce user, a HubSpot enthusiast, or something else. You can connect your CRM of choice to SPOTIO and reap the benefits.
Tracking and reporting: SPOTIO does a lot for solar sales reps. But what about the folks that manage them? SPOTIO was built for you, too. Enjoy detailed tracking and reporting features that will help you keep your finger on the pulse of your department at all times. Even better, SPOTIO reports are easy to create and read!
Does SPOTIO sound like the right tool for your door to door solar sales team? Then what are you waiting for? Request a free demo of our platform to see it in action.
