Why systems have to come before scaling solar leads

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January 8, 2025

11:18

Why systems have to come before scaling solar leads

This is a systems and operations update.

Most discovery calls we take are with installers earlier in their journey — subcontracting, one-man bands, electricians moving into solar — and the pattern is always the same.

They want more leads.
They want scale.
But there’s nothing holding it together on the back end.

No sales pipeline.
No visibility.
No way to prioritise effort once leads start coming in.

In this video I explain why we’re extremely hesitant to launch ads without systems in place, how this shows up for installers and for us internally, and what we’re currently building to handle the next phase of growth properly.

It’s not flashy.
But it’s the difference between momentum and chaos.

For context, this video was originally recorded on 6 January 2025, views & strategies may have changed since.

Featuring

Jude Cornish

Chief Commercial Officer

Video transcript

Happy Saturday. We are back. Today I’m going to do a little video on systems and operations, and give a bit of an update on what we’re working on at the moment.

Quite often when we go on discovery calls with installers, they’ll be at an earlier stage of their company journey. Maybe they were primarily doing subcontract work, or they were a one-man band, an electrician coming into solar, and they’re looking to build up the scale and the volume.

To do that, they need more leads. They need to generate demand, and they need to provide a more streamlined service offering rather than doing any and every electrical job they can. That’s fantastic.

However, the first question we ask them is: do you have any sort of CRM or organizational company system in place? And more often than not, the answer is no. They might be using some sort of app that does job management, but especially from a sales pipeline perspective, quite often there is literally nothing in place.

We are very, very apprehensive about that, and the vast majority of times we will outright say no to launching any campaigns if nothing is in place on the back end. Because we know we’re pretty good at what we do — and very quickly we’re going to turn the ads on, and then we’re going to have to turn the ads off again because the installer gets overwhelmed with the amount of leads coming through.

They won’t know who they need to follow up with, where people are in the process, DNO applications, all of that kind of stuff.

And just by the nature of social media leads, you’re going to get some people that come through who don’t progress very far at all. On the flip side, you’re going to get people that come through who progress all the way and end up with an installed system. You need a system on your end that allows you to differentiate and focus your efforts effectively.

This is also the case for us. Joe and I do very well bouncing ideas off each other, and at any one point we generally have a good idea of what the other person’s priorities are, what they’re working on, what’s blocking them, and all that kind of stuff. We work together, train together — we’ve got a good understanding.

However, we’re now hiring two Framer developers — which, by the way, you can still apply for. It’ll be for the next batch, so it’ll be for our third developer, but you can still apply. The link will be somewhere on my profile.

And very soon after that, we’re going to be hiring a full-time video editor because of the sheer volume of advertising creatives we’re looking to churn out and test.

If those individuals came into the business right now, they would be utterly lost.

There are some systems in place. We’ve got, for example, some databases on the back end built in Coda that act like our HQ. We’ve also got our billing system with all the client invoices, and it feeds the client portals. So it is organized — especially from the perspective of what our clients need. That was what we put first.

But in terms of our own organization and internal systems, it’s certainly lacking.

So what I’ve gone ahead and started to build out is a full Airtable database that is going to be our company HQ — with every single piece of information in it.

What I’m particularly excited about is that because Airtable is a database, we can link all the records together. So when a lead comes in, it will be attributed to a funnel, to an ad itself, to a source.

From there, our video editors will be able to see exactly which deals — or leads — have been generated by specific ads. And likewise, eventually our web designer who will be running conversion rate optimization tests on our Perspective funnels will be able to see: these are the leads, this is the conversion rate, this is how it’s comparing all the way through.

And I guarantee there will be trends that we’re not seeing currently because we have the data, but we don’t have an easy visual way to see that data.

Airtable will allow us to do that. Previously it was starting to feel like “do as I say, not as I do.” Now we’re putting the systems in place to handle this ourselves.

Especially with the content we’re putting out, demand for our services has gone through the roof. Fortunately, we’ve got a good sales CRM in place outside of this, but we still need all of the back-end fulfilment and operations systems to be really ticking.

Operations is more Joe’s side, so he’s going to have his work cut out making sure everything is ticking and churning so we can get people onboarded as quickly as possible, and get to the point of delivering results for them as quickly as we can — in a stable and sustainable way.

We could very easily just run straight to launching as many clients as possible, but if they only get good results for a week because everything falls apart in the background, then it doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s not a good use of anyone’s time or money.

So that’s why we’re putting everything in place, and I’m excited to share more updates as that comes through.

But the general point of this video is: as an installer — especially if you’re looking to do your own demand generation using sources like social media — you need those systems in place.

If you want any guidance on that, we do offer stuff like CRM and things like that. But I’m always happy to answer a question, and I can probably geek out about what I’m building with this Airtable setup as well — as long as you can put up with that.

Hope you have a lovely weekend, and I will see you in the next one.

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