The 8 Words That Built Our Solar Sales Philosophy

Selling is only fun if you believe in what you’re selling, and ideally if you own and use it yourself. Solar is no different. The best solar salespeople are often those who have it on their own homes, and can point to the benefits, show off the performance in-app, and show off the pictures. But it’s not enough to walk the walk and have the passion for the product. You need to have an elevator pitch, and ideally even a single sentence that summarizes why solar makes sense for nearly everyone (in case the elevator ride is just one floor).

We built the Ipsun Solar sales philosophy on just that - we tell everyone the same eight words as to why solar is a no brainer. Whether we’re on a sales call or just talking about solar socially with friends and family:

The same 8 words, every single time.

Those 8 words are a wellspring, for questions, and the imagination of your audience.

And it’s guaranteed that it’ll spark their imagination and curiosity.

That’s how we went from solar tinkerers to a $10M company in about 2,000 days with sweat equity and limited investment.

Are you ready?

When someone asks us why they should go solar, we tell them that it’s: “an untaxed, stock market return, with no volatility.”

That’s it.

Let's extend on it:

It’s untaxed because it’s just savings on your utility bill (can’t tax that!).

It’s a stock market return when you look at the year-over-year savings relative to the S&P (assume a 10% ROI in the market), especially when you load in local, state, and federal incentives.

And there’s no volatility, because as long as the sun rises every day, you’re getting the same return day-in-day-out, year-in-year-out.

Now we’re solar installers, so we know this intuitively.

But have you ever said it quite like that?

Every single homeowner you tell that to will be interested, even if they have absolutely zero interest in the environment, and even if they think that climate change isn’t real.

The reason is obvious, we’re all loathe to pay taxes, and to ride the rollercoaster that is the stock market. What if you could take a bit of your investments and put them into something that gives you a more stable, and higher return, while also adding 4.1% to your home value and giving you energy independence.

I defy you to find me anyone, of any political stripe, who doesn’t find that compelling.

Here’s the best part about those 8 words. They always, and I mean always, get a good response.

Nobody hears that and scoffs and walks away. They want to know how and why. They want to see the numbers. They want to see a cashflow. And once you dig into the details, they want to see their solar irradiance, and what their tilt and azimuth is, and on and on.

You are guaranteed to have a good conversation after those 8 words, and the longer and more substantive the conversation, the more likely that person is going to go solar.

Now when we started Ipsun Solar back in 2016, we could never have guessed that a global pandemic and once-in-a-generation inflation was on the doorstep. But ironically, there is no better time to pull out those 8 words than today, if you’re talking with prospective customers.

Why?

Well because there is no greater hedge to inflation than solar. Utility rates are climbing faster than groceries (did you know that groceries are expensive now?), and the combination of material cost increases, wage inflation, and interest rate increases, mean that every day you defer going solar, is a day that you dig yourself into a deeper hole with your utility and the larger economic forces.

Every day that you hasten going solar, you lock in 30 years of electricity prices with your own clean energy, and avoid inflated utility costs, interest rates (for those financing their systems), and the ever inflating cost of going solar itself.

So we’ve been same 8 words since day one of Ipsun Solar, they just happen to be more resounding than ever.

At Sunvoy, we’re even building in dollar savings and moving away from kilowatt-hour savings by the end of the year, so consumers can see a metric that makes cents (ha!) to everyone.

Don’t believe me?

Try it for yourself.

And if you have a good elevator pitch, especially if it’s one sentence, tell us what it is!

We love giving others the opportunity to share our passion for going solar, and we’d love to hear how you do it.