Thursday February 15, 2024 by Zain Jan

Zain meets weekly and answers questions from the coaches related to what clients are running into. This particular question from a coach elicited a most interesting and insightful answer from Zain of value to all of our clients.

Coach’s Question:

So kind of like a double question. Let’s say, there is no Better Earth. You got nothing. It’s just you. You’re going to get into the solar industry. You maybe already know about it, and you’re to start today. What is going to be your game plan with the data you have going into a saturated market, quote unquote? And then a brand new or not so saturated market—let’s say like the Midwest or somewhere?

Zain’s Answer:

Yeah, for sure. It’s a good question.

First thing, I would if I were to really to go back and I had all of the information. It’d probably be impossible for them [clients] to have the same amount of information. So we’d probably do different things. But what I would do if I were them, is I wouldn’t necessarily go and hire people. I wouldn’t go and necessarily build a huge team to start.

I would make sure that I myself become a top producer first because there’s no way I can build a business that relies on sales without actually doing it, in my opinion, but maybe you could. But I think it’s going to be much harder, especially for a lot of the type of clients that we deal with. So I would first turn themselves into top producers by going and learning that market and building out a sales process.

I would have them build a sales process, I’d have them build a perfect pitch and script. I would have them build a perfect follow up process. I would have them learn the area really well. I would have them build their entire structure of their business with just themselves operating within it.

They should be able to sustain and make enough income there to number one, live, but number two, actually be able to invest back into the business for the future. Once they’ve made a little bit of money and they have enough funds to be able to invest back into the business, then I would start duplicating my process.

The good thing is when you teach someone how to do a process that you’ve done so many times, it’s a lot easier to teach them how to do it. The reason is it is so real to you because you do it and you have acted upon it.

So when you’re telling someone to go and do something, you’re not telling them out of hope. You are telling them out of practice, like you’ve done this before.  You are very certain.

So I would say that’s the second thing I would do. So first thing, I would become a seven figure producer myself before I even worry about anyone else personally. I then would bring on some other people and I would recreate and duplicate my efforts.

Once I would have recreated and duplicated my efforts a few times over, then I would bring in a bigger source and group of people. I’d probably build a sales org with five or ten people doing 100 deals a month. I would make a lot of money doing that. I’d have a very profitable business.

Then I would most likely build a model that relied on a lower margin and higher quantity than I would on a higher margin and lower quantity model. I would get very aggressive on my baselines that I give to my sales reps, and I would recruit a lot of industry people. So for anyone experienced in the industry, I’d give them really aggressive pricing. I wouldn’t want to make more than 20 or 30 cents off of them. I would scale the hell out of that to 500 deals a month or something like that.

Because I’d have the ability to recruit and I’d have the proven processes, I’d have the credibility of my own success. And throughout that whole process, I would document it all to make it very clear that I know what I’m doing, and everything’s recorded, everything is documented.

And I would also showcase that on social media because social media talks and you can pretty quickly make a name for yourself in the solar industry just by producing.

And I think if someone just followed those steps, they’d become very successful. And then maybe after that point, I would try to go and conquer different parts of the business. But until I did that, I would focus on that. I think that’s the lowest hanging fruit possible. Whether you’re in a saturated or quote unquote, unsaturated market, I would do the same exact things.

Coach’s Question:

Would you get hot leads or self-generate your own leads? Would you just go self gen door to door?

Zain’s Answer:

Personally, just me. I would self gen because I think it’s your least risk and it’s your most reward. It’s your highest margin thing, and it’ll allow you to make the most money off the bat.

Then later on, I can grow different parts of my business. But to start, I would just start there until I’ve built a team of people and until I’ve started to recruit people.

Then maybe I might go into a silo and build an internal sales department that does marketing and maybe hot leads, et cetera. But I would follow the same process I did for the door to door self gen side. I would go into it myself and I would do all of those things and build it up, as opposed to just hire someone to do it.

Coach’s Response:

Beautiful.