Solar Automation
Marketing and Sales Automation for Your Solar CRM System
Every Solar Business needs a funnel for outbound lead management and incoming requests, an AI trained to handle replies, and an API integration with the estimating software of your choice. Here is the breakdown of what a full system is composed of.
- Marketing and Sales Funnel
- AI Agent to Reply to Funnel Replies
- Custom API Integration with Your CRM
- Funnel Dashboard
Marketing and Sales Funnel
First part of business is generating leads, closing business, and retaining customers. In general, a funnel starts AFTER the lead is generated. We use a few funnels to handle new leads. The point of a lead generation funnel is to–not only knock out the “speed to lead” (shitty cliche)– but also to have the RIGHT cadency and the RIGHT messaging and more than anything:
Keeping it organized.
Ever had a contractor confirm with you from one number, then get a confirmation text from another number, and then when you try to call back it redirects you to a third number, and so you google the business and find a FOURTH number? Yeah. fucking annoying.
A funnel should solve that and keep everything extremely organized.
New Lead Funnel
As soon as a new lead comes in, be it from a lead vendor, a facebook ad campaign, a giveaway you’re running, Angie’s list, Thumbtack, a PPC campaign, an LSA campaign, a referral–NO MATTER WHERE they come from, there has to be a universal greeting.
Build the front doorof your business.
Someone walks in and gets the greatest greeting in the world, then they are steered to the next step: usually setting up an appointment.
Follow-Up Funnel
But what if a new lead comes in and doesn’t set up an appointment? I mean look, I do this constantly. My amazon cart is full of bullshit I might never buy, but I started the process and many people follow my same pattern.
We know we need the arborist to come and trim the tree branches, so we called a few companies, but we haven’t yet set up the appointment. That’s what this follow-up funnel is for. To rope ’em in.
Booking Funnel
Sometimes people just wanna book via text and email rather than call, and so this is what the booking funnel is all about: utilize AI and automation to put in a request for an appointment. This is the first step to converting a lead.
Now all we need to do is keep it organized and call to confirm the appointment before we set the inspection. Don’t wanna run calls that aren’t worth it, so a bit of whittling is needed here.
Confirmation Funnel
Great, now they’re confirmed. What now? Well now is where we try to get in as many touch points as possible before the your guys show up. There is SO much we can do here. We can share some testimonials, we can introduce the tech that will be coming to their home, share some photos, use a bio, send a bit of information about the company.
The more touch points we can get the more money people will spend once you arrive at their home. Why? Cause people want to trust you first and THEN they will buy what they’ve been putting off for years.
Estimate Funnel
You drafted an estimate and now we wait, right? NO! Now we let the estimate funnel do its work. But here’s the catch:
All that automation and AI? We tame it down here. These are your BEST leads (anyone who replies to an estimate follow-up) and so we want to treat these leads with the utmost care.
So we turn the AI off here. More on that later. Actually, nah, it’s too complex to write about how the AI is set up. Just book a demo if you want more info on that.
Anyway, let’s move on so this isn’t a super long post.
Insurance Funnel
You’re not in the solar game, you’re in the insurance game. You’re an adjuster. Gotta get those claims through, and so we spend some good time putting together an insurance follow-up funnel that will help the lead get the job through and make sure they keep on top of their insurance company so they can get that new roof with solar panels you’re trying to get them.
Review Funnel
Job done? Great. Now everyone goes to the review funnel. We can set it up so that everyone gets a link (and the link they get will depend on where they came from) or only happy people get the link. Yes I know, Google hates this. So what?
Anyway, you got yelp review links, google review links, BBB review links, and as Open AI becomes more of a player, we may see their new search engine become a popular spot for reviews. We will see.
Loyalty Funnel
The job ain’t done yet. Now we have our referral program or our membership club. If you do other services and offer a Total Comfort club or whatever you call it, this is where we try to get people enrolled. We want that MRR coming in. And even if you don’t have a membership program, perhaps you have a referral or an affiliate program. Here is where we do that.
Permission Funnel
I know what you’re thinking, we GOTTA be done by now, right? NOPE! We will keep in touch with every single customer and lead twice a month. How do we do that? Easy! We ask their permission if it’s okay to add them to our annual nurture funnel.
We give them some juicy reasons to stay on board, and then on we truck…
Nurture Funnel
The last thing we want is after ALL this work to send out tone-deaf email blasts and text blasts every once in a while. No no no, that is not the way. we want to make sure that EVERY bit of communication is connected to the last time we spoke to the lead/ customer. This way we are top-of-mind and don’t seem like we don’t care about them.
It’s easy for a customer to feel like you don’t give a shit about them if you’re sending some email or text blast that totally ignores where the relationship currently stands.
Imagine you get a new roof with panels only to get a text a few weeks later asking if they ever thought about solar? That’s a blatant example but it gets more nuanced then that.
What if they got a new roof with panels and the next time they hear from you is an article about your company. Wtf? Or maybe it’s “how to know if solar is right for your home.” Again, wtf?
No, we gotta be more clever than that.
AI Chatbot to Handle Funnel Replies
All these messages go out, but what happens when people reply? Easy: Ai.
In the distant past, like two months ago, people had to have CSRs monitoring all this stuff. But y’ain’t gotta do that no more. Now we can train an AI agent with whatever personality we want to gather field all the replies and act as your 24/7 assistant replying to leads and questions whenever they come in.
If someone wants to book an appt? The AI agent can do it via text. It’s insane.
Training Your AI Agent
Honestly I don’t even want to get into this here cause it’s always changing. Just know it’s not easy, but we have a method. Most people mess up this part; we make sure that we don’t. If we don’t get it right on round one, then we pause and fix before going to round two.
You need specialists on board at all times to manage your AI. This is not something you should do in-house.
Book a demo if you wanan chat more about this, there’s just simply too much shit to go over. And don’t watch too many YouTube videos on this. You won’t get the info you need.
Custom API Integration
Generally there are a couple pieces of software talking to each other, and there are third-party applications like Zapier or Make or Pabbly that can assist with API connections or webhooks, but generally the endpoints they provide are limited and you’re going to need a custom solution.
This is YOUR system. Your system should be tailor-fit to YOUR business and so however the best way to set it up is, that’s the way it should be. The great part about technology nowadays is that we can do basically anything.
If you can visualize it, you can have it.
Zapier Usually Doesn't Cut It
Sometimes there are contacts with multiple opportunities, or one closed estimate with one open estimate on the same job. They got the roof but still thinking about the panels. You sold them on the panels but they’re not sure if they should redo the roof. They want a solar-powered pool warmer but they’re not sure.
You can quickly see how complex these deals get and that without the right data available to formulate how the automations will work, you’re gonna have it 98% right.
And here’s the thing about automation.
98% right is worse than nothing at all. 2% firing wrong shit is a nightmare, especially if your database is large. That’s why if you’re gonna do it, do it solid.
Funnel Dashboard
How many leads came from Angie? How many appointments were set from Angie? How many sales came from doorknocking? How many estimates did organic social bring in this month? These are metrics you want to know. Also… Which salesperson brought in the most revenue? What about cash collected, which team member pulled in the most actual dollars?
Seeing your lead sources, what stages of the pipeline each lead from each lead source is in, and knowing the owner of those deals are crucial metrics to know. We designed our dashboard so that it’s simple.
No Tag manager needed. No insane seven million points of data. One screen to see all the most important shit.
- CPL – Cost Per Lead
- CPIS – Cost Per Inspection Set
- CPD – Cost Per Demo
- CPE – Cost Per Estimate
- CPS – Cost Per Sale
- CPA – Cost Per Customer Acquisition
Anyway, that’s what you need. Funnel, AI, API, and Dashboard. Bada bing, bada boom.
