A world-class sales team doesn’t start and end with their sales skills.

If you want to increase your monthly sales and solar leads, you need to focus on growing not just the business but your sales reps as well.

This means seeking out those with leadership potential, and then creating an environment to let that potential flourish.

Why? Because even just one or two qualified team leaders will take an enormous amount of delegating and oversight off your shoulders.

Not to mention it’ll increase your reps’ performance – and ultimately your sales.

Unfortunately, way too many solar companies neglect this until it’s too late.

They’re so focused on sales and exclusive solar leads that by the time they get to improving their reps, they already have a high turnover rate.

So what I’m going to do is share with you the process I used in Better Earth to help turn my best sales reps into team leaders.

If I hadn’t done this I would’ve never gotten a wink of sleep while I was scaling the company to 9 figures.

1- Incentivize Recruitment and Peer Performance

I love this strategy. It’s like killing a whole flock of birds with one stone.

Rewarding your reps for recruitment doesn’t just take the brunt of recruiting off your shoulders.

It also teaches your reps to keep an eye out for certain skills and traits, which they’ll need to do to manage a team.

On top of that, you can also reward them for the performance of the people they recruit. How many sales they bring in, the solar leads they generate, and so on.

Do this and your reps will instantly start paying more attention to how their recruits are performing.

It drives your reps to actively mentor and help their recruits up their numbers, as if they’re running their own team.

The beauty of this technique is the more your reps support their recruits, the more team leadership skills they develop.

Assuming you’re compensating them properly for recruit performance, over time this’ll drive your reps with potential to ease into a leadership role.

And at that point you can think about moving them to a managerial position.

Finally, you can also reward your reps for the performance of their co-workers.

This is similar to rewarding recruit performance, except it encourages cross-team support and communication more than leadership skills.

Still, it creates a great environment to help people tap into their leadership potential while increasing rep performance and your utilization of solar lead providers.

But don’t make the mistake of punishing your reps for recruit or peer performance.

That’s a quick way to kill sales and make sure nobody wants to work for you.

2- Allow Them to Fail

Contrary to what a lot of solar business owners seem to think, hand holding your reps and swooping in to save the day does more harm than good.

Instead, what you want to be doing is creating low-risk leadership opportunities for them.

Leading daily drills, scheduling or leading a meeting, letting a new rep shadow them, and so on.

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Failure is a part of the game. It’s unavoidable. So if you have your eye on specific people as leadership material, you don’t want to coddle them.

Obviously don’t just sit back and do nothing when they need help.

If they’re managing the social media marketing for your solar business and engagement numbers are in the basement, it’s okay to step in.

But when appropriate let them try and figure things out on their own.

Reason being is that problem solving skills are crucial for leaders.

You don’t want your managers coming to you with a problem every day they could have fixed themselves, do you?

3- Create an Ownership Mentality

This is the Holy Grail of employee mindsets. It’s powerful… but it takes work to make it happen

Never forget: you can prep someone for leadership day in and day out… but if you don’t make them feel like a trusted and valued part of the company, they’ll never actually use those skills.

Our clients are always asking me what’s the #1 way to motivate their reps to close more deals and bring in more exclusive solar leads. And every time my answer is: impact.

People WANT to make an impact. Start trusting them with more important decisions.

Give them authority. Make them feel like what they do matters and they’ll start stepping up their game without being asked.

This isn’t even that hard to do.

Validate them by truly listening to their ideas (and implementing them if you think they’re good). Give them a little personal time to work on a side project they think will boost sales. 

If they feel like what they do has a direct impact on the company, then they’ll start to see the company’s performance as a reflection of themselves.

They’ll become emotionally invested in its success, driving them to go above and beyond more often.

That emotional investment will indirectly affect the rest of your sales team.

And before you know it, you’re bringing in more solar leads than you ever have before.

4- Offer Training That Goes Beyond the Job

There’s a reason a company like Starbucks gives its employees a chance to earn a college degree.

Getting a degree in Biology or Engineering won’t help someone make a better cup of coffee… but it does empower them with a bigger pool of knowledge they’ll want to apply in real life.

And when they see that you’re willing to invest in them as an individual and not just an employee, they’ll want to repay the favor.

Besides, a competent leader never earned their position by only learning the stuff they needed to do for the job.

If you want leaders with better toolkits, give them access to the entire tool shed. Not just the tools they need.

Making efficient use of solar lead providers and closing deals boils down to a lot more than just sales skills.

What does that mean for us? If your reps are in sales, don’t just offer them sales training.

Give them access to anything. Offer them resources not just on sales but on IT, marketing, development, etc. 

Offer them everything, then see what they gravitate towards.

If it’s a skill that can help your business, great. Leverage that and give them opportunities to exercise their newfound skill.

If not, they’ll still feel a sense of gratitude towards you for helping them improve themselves. And it’ll show in how they approach sits, exclusive solar leads, cross-team performance, and every other aspect of their job.

5- Remember That Performance Doesn’t Equal Leadership

This is a super common mistake made by business owners every day all over the world.

There are plenty of outstanding salespeople who make terrible leaders, and plenty of so-so salespeople who make great leaders.

That’s because sales is about persuading people to take action on your offer.

Leadership is persuading people to perform at their true potential. Both may share qualities, but it’s not enough to base leadership on sales performance.

Don’t dismiss this step.

Failing to understand it can have major ramifications for your company if you keep giving leadership positions to non-leaders.

You should never promote someone just because they close the most deals every month or convert the most solar leads.

For one, this demotivates true potential leaders and discourages leader-like behavior in your team.

It also creates an every-man-for-himself atmosphere, pushing reps to focus on their own sales performance – even if you incentivize team performance.

Ultimately, it can lead to a significant drop in cross-team communication, support, and efficiency.

Remember, you’re already incentivizing sales performance with comp plans and competitions and bonuses and rewards (and if you’re not, you should be).

So use promotions as a way to incentivize leader-like behavior instead.

6- Lead By Example

Walk the walk. Be the kind of leader you want your managers to be.

You’re the person they’ll look to for cues on how to behave and handle problems.

If you blame a rep for poor performance like wasting solar leads, so will they.

Don’t skip over this one. It sounds like a no-brainer but it’s very important.

You should always, ALWAYS be the first to take blame. Adopt an “everything is my fault” mentality.

If you’re quick to blame others, no one’ll want to take on more responsibility under you. Because why would they? It’ll just mean they get chewed out more.

This requires frequent self-monitoring. Get yourself into the habit of asking, “Could I have handled that situation better? Is there anything I could’ve done to prevent that?”

Remember, this is YOUR business. You’re the one at the helm.

If a rep underperforms, chances are it’s because of something you did or didn’t do.

Show your team you’re willing to bear the brunt of a loss, and they’ll be happy to fight to give you as many wins as possible.

That’s how you encourage leaders to take on more responsibility, making it easier to increase sales and exclusive solar leads.
Zain Jan