Solar power has been gaining a lot of market traction and popularity in recent years. Businesses, as well as consumers, are now investing in solar power not only because it is environmentally responsible but also because the economics has started to make solid sense.

Our team at WorkPack has worked with many solar power EPC companies in recent years to help them streamline their projects. Many of these solar installers specialize in rooftop solar projects. The rooftop solar installers are more consumer or SME focused businesses and we have been helping them not only with project execution but also with their sales management.

When working with these rooftop solar EPC teams, we learned their business is significantly different from traditional EPC. That is true solar project execution as well as for sales.

Rooftop solar projects are usually of a few kW capacity. Since the projects are small in size, solar installers need to execute a large number of them. To finish with a good number of project orders, you would want to maintain a large pipeline of potential customers.

Create customers by educating them

Rooftop solar power generation is not really a very well known subject, especially for consumers. Apart from environmental benefits, the strong economic upside is still not well known at the consumer level.

So education – especially on the economic benefits of solar – is a key to creating new customers out of homeowners. The good news is that in the digital age, you can use many channels to get the word out.

If you can create catchy content, social media can be greatly leveraged for broadcasting to a huge audience. Email marketing is a time-tested channel that is still strong, provided that you have the right tools.

Rooftop solar businesses can also do well by having a local focus. Use geographically targeted ads to get local leads.

Essentially, you can make use of digital marketing tools to educate mass consumers and potentially turn them into customers.

Numerous leads to be chased

Successfully running your marketing campaigns will put a large number of people in your pipeline. These new leads are at the very least, curious to learn about having solar panels on their roofs. Now that you have a long list of leads, you would want to –

1. Educate them about solar power and convince the economic benefits
2. Survey their rooftop
3. Prepare a quotation
4. Establish superiority of your services and products
5. Explain the math for return on their investment
6. Secure a project order

That is a long list of things to be done for very many people.

If you are doing it by yourself as the business owner, then you have your hands full and you will need some tool to keep track of all the work that needs to be done.

Or if you have hired a sales team to go in the field and do all these things, you still want to keep track of how they are performing with this long list of tasks. Again, technology can help you.

You can use Excel sheets, shared google spreadsheets or a customized solar CRM software to track how your sales pipeline is moving. A digital tool will take care of keeping the records, so you can just focus attention on the actual sales work.

Lot of work before the purchase order

Another characteristic of the rooftop solar project is that a lot of work can actually be invested in a potential sales case before getting the project order. For example, surveying the rooftop or site for project work, getting electricity bills for ROI analysis etc.

If you are doing this much of work for a number of leads, then it definitely makes sense to track that data against particular leads and then track how those leads are converted. Having this information will help you in the future to further optimize the sales process.

Again, for tracking this presales work you can still use either a spreadsheet or a CRM.

But we have found that most traditional CRM systems have limited options to track multiple attributes against leads in your pipeline. For example, a CRM may not allow you to enter the rooftop area or electricity bill against a lead.

Spreadsheets have no such limits and they are much easier to manage. So you may choose to track presales data using a shared spreadsheet.

Communicate effectively with execution team

All the documents and data that you gather during the sales process – e.g. electricity bill, site photos, videos etc. – has to be handed over to execution team after the project order is placed.

It is a lot easier if you have this data handy in your CRM or spreadsheets.

But spreadsheets are lousy for keeping track of files. The best you can do is hyperlink a file path. But those links are not reliable. They are meaningless once you move or rename the files.

CRM is better in this respect. Some CRM software may provide a way of managing documents and files. But they are not really designed for purpose of managing documents and have certain shortcomings when it comes to document management.

How about WorkPack for managing sales

WorkPack is basically a document management platform, with tons of additional features and functionality. Following features of WorkPack have helped sales and BD teams of solar installers to keep track of their sales processes –

• Email integration
• Marketing email campaigns
• Multiple email lists/contact lists
• Create and manage leads
• Define and manage sales process
• Create and manage custom shared spreadsheets – linked with sales process
• Store documents and files against leads
• Mobile app to upload documents and pictures from site

As you can see, WorkPack offers the basic features of a CRM in addition to strong integration with shared spreadsheets and document management.

So with WorkPack, you can –

• Manage leads and sales process (just like you would do in a CRM)
• Track additional data against leads – electricity bills, roof area etc. (instead of a separate spreadsheet)
• Upload and manage files, photos etc. against leads (instead of a document management system)

Having one central platform instead of 3 disconnected tools will definitely make your life easier.

But don’t take our word for it. Give it a try yourself. Register for a free account on WorkPack to see how it has helped other solar companies like yourself.