You’d be surprised how easy it is for your solar business to become disorganized as it grows.

If your focus in the beginning is just on increasing solar leads and sales, then it’s easy to let things like recruiting, management, and documentation fall by the wayside.

Your systems and operations will become more and more hectic the longer you leave this problem alone.

Eventually it’ll get to be too much and you’ll reach a breaking point.

Here’s how I keep Better Earth organized and running at peak efficiency.

It’ll take some time to get these strategies set up, but once you do you’ll be able to relax and watch your team operate like a well oiled machine.

1- Lead With Efficiency

When your goal is to better organize your business, simplification is the name of the game.

At least in the beginning.

Start by choosing a single core strategy and separating your channels.

Don’t have people on the same team doing different things. All this does is create confusion and cross wires.

If you have someone collecting exclusive solar leads from canvassing doors, they shouldn’t also be focusing on recruitment.

Next, make sure everyone follows the same sales process.

If one rep does well and one does bad and they’re both using different processes, you’ll have no way to analyze their performance.

Make a checklist for your sales reps to follow and keep them on track.

Make sure your 1-on-1s are in place.

Starting out, you should personally be doing a 1-on-1 with each rep on a weekly basis. As you scale you’ll eventually be able to pass this task onto your managers. Keep the meeting to 15-30 minutes and don’t overcomplicate things.

Make sure everyone has clear goals and expectations.

Different expectations means you may not be satisfied with a rep, but their manager thinks the rep is doing well because you never clarified.

Give your managers a list of benchmarks to judge their reps’ performance. If the rep starts lacking, they’ll be able to pull them back in line without you needing to get involved.

Everyone on your team should know the business’ roadmap.

What do they have to do to rank up? What can they expect if they maintain extraordinary performance? If they can reliably bring in quality leads without your solar lead provider, what will they get? 

Be crystal clear here. There’s no room for vagueness. Everyone should know what the potential rewards are for bringing in results. This’ll keep them motivated and focused on improving their own performance without you needing to crack the whip.

Speaking of results, how are you holding your team accountable? Are you sticking to your guns, or are you letting people off the hook? If you have weekly training at 8am and someone shows up at 8:05 am, don’t let them in. Not even if they’re a top producer.

Otherwise you’re signaling that you don’t care about the standards you set. Then your culture starts to slip and people start going in different directions without knowing what they’re doing.

Remember, the Patriots have cut some of their best players just for being late to practice. You’re building a culture of excellence. Don’t back down, or your team won’t take your standards seriously.

Have the right meetings in play. At minimum you should be holding 2-3 team meetings a week, first thing in the morning. But keep them short. 15-20 minutes tops.

Otherwise people start getting bored, burned out, and don’t work as hard after.

All you need to do is go over goals, targets, and what people accomplished in the days beforehand.

Use this time to hold people accountable, shout out people’s wins, restate the company’s mission, and announce a new game. Anything other than that is fluff and eating up everyone’s time.

Last, your structure needs to be rock solid. Door-to-door sales can’t have a manager who doesn’t knock doors. Your reps only respect managers who are actively fighting the same battles they are.

Your lead gen team should have a morning check-in and night check-in to keep everyone sharp. Not only does this keep them accountable, but including incentives in these meetings serve as a constant form of motivation.

2- Get Organized Like a CEO

As the business owner, your business is ultimately a reflection of you and your habits. So if you want next-level organization, you need to be ruthless with your time and how you measure your value.

This means setting strict limits on how people take up your time.

Don’t have someone else arrange meetings for you. Own your schedule.

Make time for “buffer zones” between meetings. This allows you to analyze the meeting content and gives you room to handle unexpected events.

Don’t put yourself in the position of coming out of a solar sales meeting and immediately having to jump on your social media marketing. You won’t have time to process the info from the previous meeting and take whatever action is needed.

Set aside two hours each week to reflect on the issues you’re currently facing and the progress you’ve made.

Your goal for this time is to break down complex goals into smaller, bite-size tasks. Make sure you’re not multitasking. You should be giving people your full attention, even if for a short time.

Take a course, training workshop, or mastermind at least once a year to give yourself the materials you need to grow as a CEO.

Read relevant news to keep your finger on the pulse of the industry. An informed leader is a strong leader.

If you’re not already documenting everything, start now.

And I mean EVERYTHING. Better to have too much data than not enough.

This eliminates any he-said she-said.

Plus it gives your team a reference point for everything, making it easier to analyze and improve performance.

If someone suddenly starts bringing in more exclusive solar leads than anyone else, you’ll be able to go back and figure out what they started doing that made that change.

Have a strict routine every week. Both personal and professional.

This makes your team value and respect your time more while adapting to the structure you’ve set in place.

Make sure you only hire people for roles you yourself have done before.

This is something a lot of CEOs ignore because they want to get out of operations ASAP. And usually it comes back to make trouble for them later on.

Perform the role at least a little bit.

Model its processes after someone who executes it successfully, then build an SOP out of it. This makes replacing people much easier and eliminates emergencies if people get sick, quit, or take a vacation.

If you’re the top performer in your business, find 1 or 2 people to shadow you.

Once they prove their potential, start phasing yourself out. An example of this is taking on 100% of performance to 80% to 60% to 40% and so on.

You should be asking yourself, “How can I get someone to be as good as me or better?”

Balance your time spent strategizing versus implementing.

Roughly 20% of your time should be spent on strategy. The remaining 80% should be spent on implementing.

The reason for this is it teaches you to put a plan together faster and more efficiently without getting bogged down in the details.

Hire people who are smarter than you.

Look for complementary skillsets.

You want people who excel in areas you don’t. This allows you to focus your time on what you do best. If you’re not the best at project management, find someone who is.

If your solar lead gen skills could be better, hire someone with a track record of crushing lead gen.
Zain Jan