A team is only as good as its leader.

If you want your team to get your pipeline overflowing with exclusive solar leads and closing out dozens of deals a month, you need to be a model for them to follow.

Too many managers and business owners expect their team to come into work and put in 110% all on their own.

That’s not how it works.

And expecting it to is only going to hurt your business and keep it from growing.

That doesn’t mean you should micromanage them or free them from any accountability.

But as the leader of your company, you need to give them a leader they’re willing to trust.

I didn’t scale Better Earth to 9 figures in 2 years by expecting my team to be perfect all on their own.

A lot of the work I put in during that time was optimizing our team management practices and laying the groundwork for them to succeed.

Without that, there’s no way we’d currently be pulling in hundreds of solar leads a day or on track to smash $250 million in sales this year.

Below are some of the most important things I did to get my team to peak performance so they did everything I needed them to do:

1- Be the Best

You have to be the best on your team if you want them to do what you ask of them. Full stop. There cannot be anyone outperforming you.

The reason for that is it’s hard to respect and obey someone you don’t look up to.

If you’re a sales manager, then you better be the best sales person.

Otherwise if someone else on your team is better they’ll think “Why should I listen to this guy if I’m better at selling than him?”

This doesn’t mean you have to be the best at every single function in your company if you’re the CEO.

If someone in your company is better at social media management and engaging with solar prospects online, that’s fine.

But whoever directly manages an employee should be able to do it better than them.

Otherwise not only will your employees have a hard time listening to you, but you won’t be able to tell when something is not being done properly.

If you’re not the best at what you’re doing then work hard to become the best. There’s simply no other way to earn your team’s respect.

2- Audit Your Team

There’s a major difference between the solar company that relies on solar lead providers, and those that are able to generate their own.

And it’s not just a solid marketing plan. Simply put, you need driven people who know what they’re doing.

If your team is filled with C players, it’ll be hard to get some serious production out of them.

Even the best management practices and comp plans can’t motivate someone lazy or uninterested in improving themselves to go above and beyond.

This doesn’t mean you should automatically fire them.

But give them a chance and a deadline to improve their performance.

Let them know you’re there to support them for anything they need. But if they fail to improve, then it’s time to replace them with a stronger team player.

Ideally you want to fill your team with A players.

This makes your team a hundred times easier to manage because you don’t have to constantly whip them into action. A players listen to authority (if you’ve earned it) and are self motivated, making them low-maintenance.

They’re easy to guide because they’re able to pick up on new and complex concepts quickly.

And if they’re not already a top producer, then they’re fully committed to becoming one.

Search for A players wherever you can, and soon the solar leads will start to roll in all on their own.

3- Your Relationship With Your Team

Yes, it’s important to keep it professional at work. But that doesn’t give you free reign to act like a slavedriver to your team.

If your team sees you as arrogant or a jerk or unwilling to acknowledge their perspective, they’ll quickly stop listening to you and come to resent you.

To prevent this, you’ll want to keep an open line of communication with them and make them feel understood.

Make sure you’re hosting constant team-bonding activities to keep the team in sync with each other.

If you ask them to do something that involves team collaboration and they have a bad relationship with each other, the task won’t get done.

Even if it does, the outcome is likely to be poor quality.

A team that’s out of sync and doesn’t trust each other won’t be able to work efficiently. And that’ll lead to a lot of lost solar leads and deals.

What you can do is encourage and organize group activities.

Things like team dinners or nights out are a great way to let them decompress while bonding in a non-work environment.

Individual competitions encourage a healthy competitive atmosphere while team competitions naturally push them to support each other.

You can host trips, take them to self-improvement conferences, or send them on a cruise. 

Really, any activity that helps them feel rewarded and part of the team will help them bond, work together better, and ultimately make them more receptive to listening to you.

4- Giving Out Instructions

Miscommunication is probably one of the most common mistakes I see among managers.

Either the manager isn’t clear enough about what they want, the employee is too intimidated to ask for clarity, or both.

Left alone, this is a problem that can have eventually lead to cascading effects and impact everything from your communication with solar lead providers to letting perfectly good prospects fall by the wayside.

That’s why it’s crucial to be very clear about what you want.

In my experience, the most common reason someone didn’t take care of a task properly (even by A-Players) was because they didn’t clearly understand the instructions I gave them.

When you ask for someone to do something, be very specific as to what needs to be done, which steps to follow, and by what time you need it finished.

It’s crucial to add a deadline and step by step instructions because that makes sure things get done efficiently and on time.

Also, make sure there are no disagreements with the employee you’re delegating to.

If you’ve got a certain solar lead generation strategy in mind but someone on your marketing team thinks it should be done differently, you need to clarify why you want it done the way you want.

If an employee disagrees with what you’re asking them to do it either won’t get done or it’ll get done in a different way than what you asked.

For this reason, you always want to ask them if they have any questions, no matter how simple you think the instructions are.

Look out for any hesitations.

And be sure to handle any points of disconnection between the two of you.

Also be sure to check in for progress.

This doesn’t mean you should micromanage them.

But you want to check in regularly to see that what you asked for is being done and moving in the right direction.

This can be the difference between a follow-up campaign that converts 20% more exclusive solar leads into sits, and one that just tanks.

5- Checking for Completion

Don’t just take “done” as done. Ask for proof!

The only way you can know something is done is by looking at the final product. Whenever something gets done, take a second to look at it and approve it. Or get proof that the task was finished. 

Otherwise you can’t know if something really got done or that it got done in the right way. If you sign off on a social media management strategy for your solar company without checking it and it turns out to be different from what you wanted, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Zain Jan