Want to succeed in the solar industry? You need to optimize your company’s solar sales funnel. If you don’t, you won’t be able to attract qualified prospects, close deals, and drive revenue.
Of course, wanting to improve your solar sales process and actually doing it are different things.
To help, we’ve put together this comprehensive guide, which will help you understand the unique aspects of selling solar products, the four distinct stages of the solar sales funnel, best practices you can use to close higher-value deals, and much more. Let’s dive in!
Understanding Solar Sales
Before we discuss the various stages of the solar sales funnel, let’s zoom out and analyze the industry as a whole. Specifically, what makes selling solar products and services different?
First, solar has become quite popular in recent years. In fact, experts claim that 15% of American households will have solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in place by 2030. This indicates enormous potential for solar companies—but competition for business is fierce.
Also worth mentioning, residential solar systems can cost upwards of $25k per installation. Tax credits, financing options, and annual energy savings make the cost of solar panels more palatable. But asking anyone to spend $25k on a thing they don’t actually need is a big ask.
That’s why effective solar sales is about educating prospects. If your reps can show prospects the money your solar panels will save them, and why they should hire your company to install said panels rather than the competition, your company will succeed. If it can’t, it won’t. Simple.
Stages of the Solar Sales Funnel
So, what are the stages of a high-performing solar sales funnel? There are four of them: awareness, interest, decision, and action. Let’s take a closer look at each:
Awareness
First up, the awareness stage. This is when prospects first learn about your company and the products/services you sell. After all, people don’t buy from businesses they’ve never heard of.
There are plenty of ways to drive awareness for your solar company—we’ll talk about a few of them in the next section of this article. For now, just know that prospects don’t purchase things at this stage of the solar sales process. They’re simply introduced to new brands.
Interest
A prospect makes it to the interest stage when they start looking for solutions to their problems.
In our case, their problem might be a sky-high electricity bill. Or a voice in the back of their mind that says they need to do more to protect the environment.
Interest-stage prospects spend their time researching solutions, comparing products or services, and otherwise deciding which company they want to give their hard-earned money to.
Decision
In the decision stage of the solar sales funnel, prospects assess their options. Your company will be compared to the competition to see how it stacks up. As such, potential customers will review your pricing, available discounts, reviews and testimonials, and quality of content.
At the end of the decision stage, your prospects should have narrowed their list of solar companies to a few options. (Hopefully your brand is one of them!)
Action
All of the work your reps have done has led to this moment: the action stage. This is when prospects make a final decision, pull the trigger, and purchase solar panels.
The best solar sales funnels are easy to navigate. With this in mind, make sure your action stage is simple. That means seamless purchasing workflows and flexible payment options. (Note: we’ll talk more about these things in the “Strategies” section below.)
Strategies to Optimize Each Stage of the Funnel
Now that you know the stages of the solar sales funnel, you need to learn how to optimize them. That way you can guide potential customers through the entire sales process and close deals at a consistent clip. Here are a few tips and tricks to make that happen:
Awareness
The goal of the awareness stage is to introduce prospects to your company and its products/services. There are many ways to do this. A few of the more popular ones include:
- Cold Outreach: Take the initiative and reach out to potential customers. You can do this by calling them on the phone or visiting them at their homes or businesses.
- Blog Posts: Write articles that answer the questions awareness-stage prospects have
- Social Media: Create engaging content that will show up in your audience’s social feeds
- Paid Ads: Use Facebook, Google, etc. to meet your target market where they are.
You want to educate potential customers at this stage of the solar sales process, not sell to them. Give them the information they need to reach the next step of the sales process.
Interest
The goal of the interest stage is to show the value of your products and/or services.
Selling expensive products like solar panels is often a lengthy process. As such, plan to nurture your leads over an extended period of time. To help with this, consider creating:
- Email Campaigns: Stay in touch with potential customers via email. You can send them your latest articles, discount offers, and other kinds of content.
- Ebooks and Whitepapers: Publish in-depth pieces that educate prospects on the many benefits you provide to customers. (But don’t ask for a sale yet!)
- Influencer Marketing Campaigns: Partner with influencers in the solar space to build trust in your products/services. This will help your reps close deals in future stages.
You still don’t want to sell to prospects in the interest stage of the solar sales funnel. But you do want to present your solar company as a viable solution to their problems.
Decision
The goal of the decision stage is to convince potential customers to buy solar panels from your company. To succeed in this mission, you have to show prospects why you deserve their business more than your competitors. Here are a few ways to do that:
- Reviews: Ask past customers to review your company on relevant websites
- Testimonials: Promote clips from top reviews on your website and social media
- Case Studies: Interview past customers to show how they benefited from your services
Remember, prospects still aren’t ready to buy from you during the decision stage—but they’re really close. Put in the necessary effort to make your company their number one choice.
Action
The goal of the action stage is to close the deal. You’ve worked hard to build deep relationships with your prospects. Now it’s time to cash in on the trust you’ve built. Here’s how:
- The Sales Pitch: Make sure your solar sales pitch is personalized and benefit driven
- A Seamless Experience: Streamline the buying process so that it’s quick and easy
- Flexible Payment Options: Allow customers to pay for solar panels in multiple ways
It all comes down to this. Don’t lose a sale because your pitch is subpar. Rather, get all of your ducks in a row so that prospects can become customers as quickly as possible.
Leveraging Technology to Streamline the Solar Sales Process
We won’t lie to you. Guiding prospects through every stage in the solar sales funnel is tough. Fortunately, the right technology will make it a lot easier for you and/or your sales reps.
Tools like SPOTIO, for example, will help you generate a list of leads, which reps can then cold call or visit in person. All you have to do is define your target audience using 200+ data points, such as “Homeownership vs Rentals” or “Home Purchase Date” or “Prospect Age”.
SPOTIO can also be used to automate tasks. Allow our platform to automatically log sales activities, send emails and texts, and record data in your CRM of choice.
Other important features include territory management, sales routing, document storage, customer mapping, and detailed reporting. In other words, SPOTIO has everything your field sales team needs to close deals. Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO today to learn more!
Best Practices for Solar Sales Teams
We know what you’re thinking, “What’s the best way to guide potential customers through the solar sales process?” It’s a great question! Here are eight tips to help you make more sales:
Use Targeted Marketing Campaigns for Lead Generation
Do not try to sell solar panels to everyone. Instead, define your ideal buyer, then create marketing campaigns that target people who match that profile. For example, you might target homeowners between the ages of 25 and 54, who live in the Baltimore suburbs. If so, don’t run ads that will be seen by folks in Philadelphia, or even pitch your products to renters in your area.
Build Strong Relationships With CRM Tools
What do you do with leads after you’ve added them to your CRM? You need to nurture them! Solar panels are a big investment. Very few people buy them on a whim. So stay in touch with prospects via email and social media. That way you’ll be the first company they think of when they’re ready to buy. If you can build strong relationships with leads you’ll make more sales.
Offer Quality Content to Educate and Inform Prospects
Quality content can be used to generate leads and nurture prospects into paying customers. So make sure your content is optimized for SEO, which will help it rank higher in Google search results. Share it on social media, too, where it has the potential to go viral. Oh, and feel free to share your content with prospects via email to help stay top of mind, as previously mentioned.
Analyze Market Trends and Customer Data for Insights
Customer preferences change. Sales strategies that worked two years ago might not work today—especially in a fast-moving industry like solar energy. That’s why it’s important to stay on top of market changes and mine your customer data for insights. Doing so will help you meet your customers where they are, so to speak, and build a solar sales funnel that actually works.
Develop and Implement a Structured Sales Process
What’s the difference between a struggling sales rep and your department’s top seller? In many cases it comes down to process. Above average salespeople almost always deploy a structured sales process, which helps them stay productive, reach out to prospects at the right times, and close more deals. Learn how to build a winning sales process for your team in this free ebook.
Invest in Ongoing Training for Solar Sales Teams
The best sales departments invest in their reps. There are plenty of ways to do this. For example, you could purchase high-quality solar training resources for your team. Or invite your reps into your office for private coaching sessions. Whatever you decide to do, make sure you help your reps sharpen their skills on a regular basis. The investment will be worth it.
Maximizing Cross-Selling and Up-Selling Opportunities
Want to supercharge your solar sales funnel? Look for ways to upsell and cross-sell your customers. Battery storage, monitoring software, electric vehicle charging stations, and the like can turn average deals into major money-makers. We’ve even heard of solar companies who offer roofing services to customers. Get creative and look for ways to increase deal value.
Monitoring and Improving Sales Performance
Last but not least, monitor your sales strategy. Is it working? How can you improve it? You may need to target a different kind of customer. Or rethink the way you assign leads to reps. Or increase certain sales activities. Or invest in better sales tools. You won’t know until you track your results and crunch the numbers. Once you do, you’ll be able to make more sales.
Optimize the Solar Sales Funnel With SPOTIO
Ready to build a solar sales process that runs like an oiled machine? The tips, tricks, and best practices in this article will help. You just need to implement them. Doing so will enable you and/or your reps to guide prospects through each stage of your funnel consistently.
Know what else will help? The right software. For field sales teams in the solar industry, the “right software” is usually SPOTIO. Our platform was specifically designed to meet your needs.
Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO today to see our solution in action and learn about pricing.
