“In the end, after I sowed seeds of doubt, did the comparison, and let the customer marinate on it ... we close it right then and there. ” - Mike Morris

So this is another one, eliminating competition: how to make your offer the only logical choice for the customer. I've run into this a lot going out and selling solar where they’re like, “oh, I want to get a quote from somebody else.” And you're there with intentions of closing the deal. The last thing you want to do is add a whole bunch of unknown variables to the equation. So now you can't close now because they've got to go meet with so -and -so and get a quote.

Seeds of Doubt

The first thing I do is, it helps if you're familiar with your marketplace. Let me give you an example right here. So, I was talking to Garrett and Garrett was talking about another solar guy up here where we live who also does solar. And I started going in there and I was intentionally starting to sow seeds of doubt.

Seeds of doubt. So, I started telling stories about the solar company. Like, this particular individual, I know for a fact because he worked with a guy over here named Bill. When Bill had a problem with the system, he wouldn't call him back, he wouldn't talk to him, he dropped him like a newborn giraffe. Did not care. Like “hey, my batteries don't work.” “I don’t care.” He dropped him, right? I'm not trying to criticize or anything, I'm just telling stories about something that happened.

Compare

So I come in here and I started still telling stories and planting seeds of doubt. Then, it helps if you can start showing some sort of evidence. Some of the solar companies that have a very poor performance so you can do a Google search on it, pull up their reviews and show them. You're like, "Hey, they got a 3 .1 star review. See, their customers really don't have a very good experience.” Now, I'm not saying, "Oh, that company sucks. That company's trash. That company's whatever.” I'm not saying that they're trash. I just showed it as evidence. I said, "Those customers really haven't had a very good experience. They don't have a very good review."

And then I come up when I pull up this review. I'm like “so 4 .8 stars. collectively, our customers have a very good experience and we've been doing this for eight years.” In fact, I'll even sow seeds of doubts like “They've only been around for one year. In one year, they really don't know what they’re doing. Until you get passed three years you're really not even qualified to do much. We've been doing this for eight years.”

Marinade

So I sow seeds of doubt, compare, and then I do this marinade where I just let the customer think about it and start drawing their own conclusions. In fact, I'll even help them along like, “Does this make sense, you see what I mean?” And what I want them to do is to start doing a tally in their head like, “Okay, it makes sense, yeah. You're right, let's move forward.”

I've done that a lot of times. We had one where I was with Tyson and we were closing this deal and the customer's like “Hey my my friend also is getting solar right now." So we called his friend and he said, "I'm buying solar right now." The one guy was getting 18 panels and with us he was getting 16 panels. And he's like, "Hey, why are you charging me so much?" I'm like, "Well, it's kind of hard to be able to answer that question until we understand what your friend is actually getting." So then his friend came over to the house and we got the other solar company on the phone. We called them up and we asked for information on it. We found out what panels they were using, what inverters they were using, we found it all out.

I said “Okay cool. So our panels right here, every single panel of ours produces 10% more than that one.” We pulled up the spec sheets and the data. So he looks at the spec sheet and the data and he's like “Holy cow those panels are way more efficient” I’m like, “I know. Substantially more efficient.” So then it created some doubt in his mind. I said, "Okay, now look at the degradation." And he looked at the degradation and he's like, "Wow." Then we got our pencils out. We started running the math and you could see the that although it looked like the other guy got more, he bought a much lower quality and it's probably like $50 ,000 or $100 ,000 spread over 30 years. He was like, "Huh." And so then I asked, "Do you see the value proposition?" He said, "Yeah. I want mine." And the other guy's like, "I like yours better, but I'm from Africa and once we commit, we just kind of stick with our people. So I'm gonna stay with him." I wasn't trying to move him away from him at his new opportunity.

In the end, after I sowed seeds of doubt, did the comparison, and let the customer marinate on it, the customer's like, "I want that one. I want the good one." And, snap, we close it right then and there.

But literally, it was the weirdest thing I've ever had happen. The other customer came to the house. Now I got two customers in the house, we got the solar rep on the phone where he had a chance to do his pitch, and he came out and disclosed exactly what it was since they weren't disclosing what they were providing. After they disclosed everything, then seeds of doubt, compare, marinade, close. That's all that happened.

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Case Studies

Tyson Stone

"I just knew if I didn't try something else, my life wouldn't change. I'm young, was working at Rocky Mountain ATV/MC at $17/hr. I've averaged $320/hr working with Mike."

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