With a sales territory plan, you can improve the efficiency of your field sales team and ensure no one is working overlapping areas or duplicating sales efforts.

In this post, we’ll look at the sales territory mapping process— what it is, what it entails, and how sales managers can improve it.

What Is A Sales Territory Map?

A sales territory map is a visual layout of your sales territories. You can manually create maps or use territory mapping software to define territories and assign them to the reps that are the best fit for each one.

What Is Sales Territory Mapping?

Sales territory mapping is the creation and assignment of sales territories based on factors like geography, revenue potential, and the individual expertise of sales reps.

Territory planning also incorporates the size of accounts to ensure a fair balance. For example, two large accounts might be equal in revenue to four smaller accounts, so managers might want to rebalance territories to ensure reps have equal opportunities to hit their sales quota.

The Old Approach to Sales Territory Mapping

Territory mapping with Google Maps and a highlighter leaves room for error and confusion. You have no way to determine how many prospects you’re assigning to each rep, how many customers you have in each territory, or whether prospect demographics in each territory align with your ideal customer profile.

Not to mention once you send a rep out with their printed sales territory map, you’ll rarely get it back — and therefore have no idea where you’ve worked or haven’t worked.

Consider this situation:

1. A rep made a sale outside of the territory you assigned them, claiming they weren’t sure where it ended.
2. The rep who was assigned to that territory lost the opportunity to make that sale.

Who do you give the sale to — the rep who closed the deal, or the rep who covers the territory where the sale occurred?

The same issues can occur with other legacy solutions like Streets and Trips and MapPoint. Today, sales organizations can use software to design sales territories, prevent territory disputes among sales teams, and gather the insights sales managers need to adjust territory boundaries or reassign reps.

The Benefits Of Modern Sales Territory Management

Modern sales territory mapping tools help managers:

Assign territories strategically

You wouldn’t assign a junior sales rep to your highest-value territory. With the multiple data points available in territory mapping platforms, you can segment sales territories and assign reps to territories that align with their experience level. This approach to sales planning and territory management ensures your best reps are working the most valuable territories.

Balance workloads

To maintain harmony among your sales team, you should be mapping sales territories in a way that balances the workload. That means looking at more than just the geographic area of each territory — a small territory could contain just as many leads as a territory that spans two ZIP Codes.

Increase rep selling time

The way you map sales territories can help reps maximize their selling time. For example, you might find that shifting the territory boundaries gives each rep a simple sales route, with little distance between stops. Route optimization is one of the best features of territory mapping apps.

Boost rep productivity

In the days of analog territory mapping, field sales reps wasted countless hours jotting notes on paper and marking up maps to keep track of their progress. Digital territory maps integrate with CRM data, giving reps instant access to important data when they’re in the field. And they can update notes from their mobile phones, which eliminates the need for manual entry and increases sales productivity.

4 Ways To Create A Sales Territory

To save time, be more efficient, eliminate confusion, and increase performance, create territories for your sales team using the following strategies:

1. Target Market Demographics

One of the most effective strategies for territory management is to gather market demographics before sending your team out to knock on doors. This will minimize unproductive time for your reps in the field.

Using a tool like SPOTIO’s Lead Machine will help you to identify key territories, target qualified customers that match your ideal customer profile (ICP), and ensure that your team is targeting prospects that have real buying potential.

You’ll also have the ability to track the progress of each of these leads in your sales pipeline through the app. This prevents leads that you’ve spent money on from slipping through the cracks and increases the return on your investment. (This is one of the main features SPOTIO offers that causes many outside sales reps to switch from the competition).

The more information you have about your current customers, the better. You can understand where you’re having the most success and identify higher-quality potential customers with a greater chance of buying.

Download this resource to learn more:

2. Include Current Customers In Each Territory

Your current customers are extremely valuable to your business, and not just because they purchased your product or service.

Your customers can provide you with some of the highest converting and cheapest leads: referrals. You just have to ask.

Start by generating a list of all of your current customers. If you use a sales tracking app like SPOTIO, it’s simple to upload this list into your account, or you can simply sort the pins in your account by the status you created to signify a closed-won deal.

If you’re not using a sales tracking app, you’ll have to map these addresses by hand individually. It will be a much longer process, but well worth it.

Once you’re able to see all of your customers on a map, draw out territories for your reps to work based on these locations.

There are two strategies for this approach:

1. Evenly distribute the number of customers in each sale’s reps territories.
2. The other option, if your customers are more spread out, is to assign a couple of smaller territories to each rep, but still distribute them as evenly as possible.

The goal is to use your current customers as references when pitching a new prospect. You can also have your team visit satisfied customers to ask for referrals.

3. Distribute By Number Of Prospects

Making sure that sales reps have enough prospects to visit is essential to their performance and production.

Without sales territory mapping software, you can spend hours on this process. Sales territory mapping software significantly simplifies this process, saving you many hours and ensuring greater accuracy.

Create and assign territories based on the number of contacts you want each rep to work.

As you start drawing out a sales territory plan in SPOTIO, the app will tell you the estimated number of prospects in that territory.

Using territory mapping software will allow you to create equitable territories for your entire team in less than 10 minutes.

4. Distribute By City/ZIP Code

Creating territories by city or ZIP Code is a little bit trickier because of the size of the area. Even so, distributing territories by city or ZIP Code is one of the easiest methods because there’s no room for misinterpretation.

You can tell a rep, “This is your ZIP Code, and if you get a lead or sale outside of your territory, it’s going to the rep that territory belongs to.” Creating territories this way eliminates a lot of the conflict and guesswork for reps.

These territories won’t be quick to work through and shouldn’t be changed frequently like smaller territories.

How To Evaluate And Optimize Sales Territories

You’ll need to periodically review your sales territories, because circumstances change. Your prospects might move to a new area, a competitor may begin working in your territories, or your staffing levels may increase or decrease.

Review Your Rep Count

If you’ve gained or lost reps or customers since you first defined sales territories, you’ll need to reevaluate. You may need to adjust or merge territories quarterly or yearly.

Consider Your Team’s Skills

You may have new hires with expertise in a certain aspect of sales that makes them a good fit for a territory, or you may find you need two people to cover one territory if you’ve lost the superstar who once covered it.

Analyze Existing Territory Performance

An underperforming territory might not be a result of sales performance. B2B and B2C prospects might have shrinking budgets or new priorities, or a competitor might be luring your prospects away. An underperforming territory always merits closer inspection.

Reassess Market Potential

Has the spending potential within your territories changed? That’s an important question to consider as you review your territory design. Review your sales data for the past year to detect any trends that may help you forecast market potential.

3 Common Mistakes To Avoid In The Territory Mapping Phase

1. Using Limited Data – And The Wrong Territory Management Tool

If you don’t know your client and/or account data, you can’t gauge how well the sales rep is doing, let alone make improvements.

Refrain from making continuous changes to sales territories, as it will negatively impact client engagement. However, you will want the ability to modify territories occasionally.

Find the best sales CRM tool to aid you in this process.

2. Failing To Include Your Sales Team

In order to be effective in territory mapping, you need to involve your sales teams and reps and take their experience and talents into account. If reps feel they have a say in territory planning, they are more likely to feel satisfied in their roles.

3. Relying On Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets won’t help your reps see their territory boundaries. If you want to win in sales performance and motivate your reps/teams, you must incorporate the right tools and applications that improve territory visibility.

8 Reasons To Use Sales Territory Mapping Software

According to an MIT study, 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. It’s no surprise that visual territory management tools are especially helpful for sales teams.

Sales territory mapping software provides a simple way for sales teams to visualize geographical areas and ensure:

• Territories are a manageable size for reps
• There is no overlap between reps
• Sales leaders and managers are thoughtfully and strategically assigning the top performers to the right territories

Here are eight reasons to use sales territory mapping software:

1. Prevent Deals From Falling Through The Cracks

If one rep has too many leads to manage, some of them will fall through the cracks. Sales territory planning software helps you balance territories and ensure reps have the capacity to manage all leads in their territory.

2. Uncover New Leads In Existing Territories

The temptation to expand to new territories is only natural. But it’s likely that your team hasn’t covered all potential leads within their existing sales territories.

With sales territory management tools like SPOTIO, you can use insights about your territories to reveal new leads in your existing territories.

3. Save Hours With Segmentation

Without territory mapping software, sales managers often have to spend hours creating sales maps.

Solutions like SPOTIO make it easier to categorize areas or regions by:

• High or low sales potential
• High sales volume
• High-quality leads

These features make it easy to map territories quickly while providing a simple-to-use interface for the reps in each territory.

4. Improve Close Rates With Data-Driven Area Assignments

Sales territory mapping solutions help sales leaders place their reps strategically.

With integrated key insights like sales performance, geographical history, total revenue earned, and leads converted, sales leaders can use SPOTIO to place people where they can make the most impact.

Whether this is about placing high performers where they’re needed most, or placing average performers in an environment that allows them to reach their potential, consider your team’s strengths and opportunities as you’re creating a sales territory plan.

5. Optimize sales routes and improve productivity

Without an effective and comprehensive system, territory mapping and sales route planning tend to be two separate activities.

Using smart features like those offered by SPOTIO, you can quickly see which territories landed the most accounts and where the highest-value clients are.

Sales route planning is adjustable on the fly. When new leads arise, the app helps users adjust their route and plan efficiently.

6. Measure Sales Data Across Territories

The best sales territory mapping software solution makes it easy to measure and compare sales data across multiple territories.

For example, using SPOTIO’s smart reporting features, you can quickly see which territories landed the most accounts, where the highest-value clients are, and which territories are underperforming.

This gives you strong visual data to understand where to invest as well as how sales reps are performing by region.

7. Boost Team Morale

When sales territories are unevenly distributed, sales goals may be unattainable for some reps, and morale may suffer. Whether a territory is too small and lacks potential, or the territory is too big for a rep to manage, a workload imbalance can cause frustration and resentment among your team.

With the data you gather from smart sales territory mapping software, you can closely monitor the level of work required to support each territory and allocate your sales team accordingly.

8. Help Your Team Succeed

Most sales territory mapping tools are part of a field sales enablement platform (like SPOTIO). That means you get a suite of tools that reps can use to:

• Add notes about prospects and leads using their mobile device
• Drop real-time location pins as they move through their territories
• Automate reminders to follow up with leads
• Sync data to your CRM remotely
• Share notes and reports
• Access a complete history of all interactions with leads and prospects
• Review essential steps in your sales process

All of these features help reps work more effectively — and reduce the need for time-consuming manual data entry.

Supercharge Sales Productivity And Increase Revenue With Sales Territory Mapping

Organize and divide territories: Define and reorganize territories in just a few minutes with SPOTIO’s intuitive interface.

Visualize lead and customer data: SPOTIO lets reps color-code map pins based on any data point, such as previously contacted leads, new prospects, and existing customers.

Monitor territory performance: Click on a territory to see performance data for sales teams and sales reps, and run reports that show performance metrics for all territories.

Find out how SPOTIO helps field sales teams stay organized, increase productivity, and close more deals. Request a demo today!

Door to door sales gives reps the opportunity to explain the ROI of a solar energy system, discuss financing options, and even show homeowners a rendering of what their home will look like after solar panel installation.

In this post, we’ll outline a 10-step process solar companies can use to boost door to door solar sales, and how to simplify the sales process with the right tools and technology.

10 Steps to Increase Door To Door Solar Sales

Want to learn how to sell solar door to door? We should warn you, it will take time and effort. But once you learn and implement the 10-step process below, you’ll start to see results. So let’s dive in with step number one!

Identify Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Success in sales starts with an in-depth knowledge of the people you’re trying to sell to. The same is true for solar companies. So before you do anything else, build an ideal customer profile (ICP.)

An ICP defines the perfect customer for a company’s products and/or services. In your case, it will be a description of the person (or company, if you sell solar panels to other businesses) who is most likely to invest in your company’s solar systems.

The ICP should include customer location data, financial details, and information regarding specific “pain points” you can help solve. And you may have more than one ICP. Here are two examples of homeowners that might be interested in installing solar panels:

The Environmentalist

• Donates to environmental charities
• Drives an electric vehicle
• Has a master’s degree
• Follows environmental groups on social media
• Lives in a neighborhood where the average home value is $500,000
• Pain point: Wants to reduce reliance on fossil fuels

The Investor

• Owns secondary property, like land or a rental home
• Works in finance or senior leadership
• Follows investment and wealth management topics on LinkedIn
• Lives in a neighborhood where the average home value is $800,000
• Pain point: Wants to reduce electric bills without sacrificing personal comfort
• Pain point: Wants to increase the value of their home

Use ICP data to prospect efficiently

It doesn’t matter how good you are at door to door sales; you won’t be able to close every deal. There are a variety of reasons for this.

Some people, for example, don’t get enough sun on their property to make solar a worthwhile investment. The last thing you want to do is waste your valuable time talking to a prospect who has no intention of making a purchase.

To avoid this, use your ICP data to only connect with potential customers.

Tools like SPOTIO make it much easier to prospect efficiently, thanks to features like Lead Machine, which allows users to filter prospects using 200+ data points.

Map and assign sales territories

At this point, you know what your ideal customer looks like and you’ve identified a few of them in the field. Now it’s time to map and assign territories so your canvassers and/or reps don’t waste time visiting the same prospects.

Once again, the right tools can help with this. Take SPOTIO’s Territory Management tool, which lets you assign territories based on geographical boundaries or by drawing on a digital map. Sales leaders can then assign territories to the most qualified reps on their team and monitor the results.

Also of note, Territory Management provides data-backed insights into territory history and performance so you always know what’s going on and why.

Perfect your pitch

What do sales reps do once they’ve been assigned a territory? They hit the road and go talk to people, of course! When they do, they need to be ready to pitch.

Here are five door to door sales pitch examples your reps can use:

1. The Opener Pitch: This pitch aims to build connections with prospects as quickly as possible and create a positive first impression.
2. The Elevator Pitch: This sales pitch is short and sweet, giving prospects a wealth of information in quick bursts.
3. The Storyteller Pitch: This pitch uses the power of story to build trust with prospects and deliver information in an entertaining way.
4. The Pain-Based Pitch: This sales pitch helps reps uncover prospect pains so they can pinpoint how their company can help.
5. The Close Pitch: Reps use this sales pitch when they’ve built rapport with prospects and are ready to ask them to make a purchase.

For more information on these five pitch examples and how solar companies can use them to fuel a door to door solar sales strategy, read our blog post on the topic.

Don’t Educate — Showcase The Value

Here’s the thing: Your prospects don’t need to know the technical details of solar.

How each panel works might be interesting information to you. But prospects only care about smaller energy bills, higher home values, and (maybe) environmental factors associated with the solar system you can install on their properties.

So, don’t delve too deep into education. Tell prospects what they want to know. For environmentally conscious homeowners, that might mean preparing data about how solar energy can reduce their carbon footprint. For investment-minded homeowners, be ready to present evidence of how solar will save them money and raise the value of their home.

Enable canvassers to send leads to reps

If your solar sales department is like many others, it asks different employees to handle different tasks. Canvassers, for example, are responsible for pinpointing leads, making initial contact, and scheduling future appointments.

Closers, on the other hand, attend the appointments their canvassers make, explain the benefits of solar, and convince prospects to make a purchase.

To be successful, this system requires the seamless transfer of information. Manually tracking these steps in the sales process can be cumbersome, but it’s easy to do with the right technology.

SPOTIO, for example, makes these kinds of transfers smooth by automatically transferring canvasser notes to a company CRM, documenting all communication channels that canvassers use, and automatically capturing lead data.

Integrate your CRM data

Your sales team acquires a lot of data. Make sure your reps have access to it so they can consistently close more deals in less time.

You can do this by integrating your preferred CRM with SPOTIO. Once you do, your reps will be able to access all of your company’s important sales data from any device, including their phones, which is handy when out in the field.

More importantly, you can organize data on a digital map, filter it based on the needs of individual reps, and manipulate it in a variety of other ways.

Track sales activity and performance

You can’t help your sales reps improve if you don’t know how they spend their time in the field. That’s why it’s so important to track sales activity and performance.

With SPOTIO, you can see each of your field rep’s routes in real time and track sales rep activities so that you know exactly who they contact and when, and the communication channel they use.

This information will tell you whether you need to retrain your reps or motivate them to work more efficiently.

Prepare for objections

Prospects always have a reason not to buy. Because of this, the best door to door solar sales reps have learned to handle objections the right way.

Here’s what we suggest:

Prepare Specific Rebuttals

Cost is probably the single biggest objection, and any solar sales rep should be prepared to address those concerns. Reps could, for example, explain how in the long term, homeowners end up saving money after installing a solar energy system, which means they’ll recoup their installation costs.

Visual aids can be quite effective in door to door sales. So if a solar company creates an illustrated one-sheet explaining the benefits of solar, a sales rep can leave that with a prospect to review.

Use The LAER Model

The LAER Model stands for Listen, Acknowledge, Explore, Respond. Basically, it means that sales reps should listen to prospect objections, acknowledge that they hear and understand them, explore the reasons why these objections have come up, and then reply in a sincere way that may help prospects see past their objections and make purchases.

For more information on common sales objections and how to handle them, read through our blog post on the topic.

Use Social Proof

In the solar market, social proof can be a great way to help hesitant prospects overcome objections. Again, this is where a handout could be useful, if it includes testimonials from customers. And when you do make a sale in a neighborhood, ask your customer if you can place a sign in their yard for your solar business. Even seeing your business name regularly could make a homeowner more receptive to a sale.

Always follow up

Selling solar door to door is a numbers game. The more people you talk to, the more sales you’ll make. This applies to follow-ups, too.

Just because a prospect says “No” doesn’t mean they’ll never buy from your company. A “No” today could easily turn into a “Yes” next month or next year. But you’ll never realize that potential if your reps quit after the first “No” they hear.

The hardest part about following-up is keeping track of who you contacted, when you contacted them, and when you need to contact them again.

With a tool like SPOTIO, a solar salesperson doesn’t have to worry about tracking these tasks. Instead, they’ll use the platform’s Autoplays feature to automate follow-ups at the cadence of their choosing. This ensures leads don’t fall through the cracks.

Start Selling More Solar Panels

The key to solar sales is having the right strategies, processes, and technology in place.

SPOTIO enables solar sales reps to be more productive and hit higher sales numbers thanks to a host of helpful features:

Lead generation: Find leads that fit your ICP using SPOTIO’s unique Lead Generation tool, which quickly pulls up a list of prospects for your reps to contact. Reps can then filter prospects by homeownership status, age, credit capacity, and a host of other factors to make sure they’re a good fit for your brand.

Appointment setting: Whether you employ a team of canvassers or ask reps to source their own leads, they can do it more efficiently with SPOTIO’s Appointment Setting tool. Users can instantly set appointments from the field, pass them off to other team members, automate time-consuming tasks, and more.

Activity management: Where have your reps been? How many times have they contacted Prospect X? Come to think of it, where are they right now? SPOTIO’s Activity Management feature will tell you exactly how your reps spend their on-the-clock hours. (Note: This feature can be turned off if desired.)

Territory management: You can cut, manage, and assign territories inside SPOTIO, too. Use our intuitive suite of tools to divide geographical areas by ZIP Code or by drawing on a digital map. Then assign the territories you create to specific sales reps. You can run territory-level reports in SPOTIO to evaluate performance.

Route planning: Door to door sales is effective, but not always efficient. SPOTIO helps reps maintain peak productivity by automatically planning the most efficient routes between prospects. That way reps focus more on how to sell solar panels instead of how to get from point A to point B.

CRM integrations: Every solar sales team needs a CRM solution. One of the best things about SPOTIO is that it integrates with just about all of them. Whether you’re a loyal Salesforce user, a HubSpot enthusiast, or you use another platform, you can connect your CRM of choice to SPOTIO and reap the benefits.

Tracking and reporting: SPOTIO does a lot for solar sales reps. But what about the folks that manage them? SPOTIO was built for you, too. Enjoy detailed tracking and reporting features that will help you keep your finger on the pulse of your department at all times. Even better, SPOTIO reports are easy to create and read!

Does SPOTIO sound like the right tool for your door to door solar sales team? Then what are you waiting for? Request a free demo of our platform to see it in action.

It’s a great way to make sales—unless your door knocking game is subpar. Fortunately, there are plenty of door knocking apps you can use to improve your efforts in this area.

Once you add this kind of tool to your tech stack, you’ll plan more efficient routes between prospects, eliminate double visits (i.e. knocking on the same door more than once,) and minimize tedious admin tasks that reduce the amount of time you have to close deals.

In this article, we’ll explain what door knocking apps are, the unique advantages they represent, the specific features you should look for in the best door knocking apps, and more.

What Is A Door Knocking App?

A door knocking app is a piece of software that simplifies the door knocking process, helping users stay organized and knock on more doors than they otherwise could on their own.

Every door knocking app is different. But the best ones include territory and document management, location tracking, multichannel communication, detailed reporting, and automation features. They also integrate seamlessly with the other tools you already use.

The result? A much better door knocking experience for you and/or your team that leads to more sales, more revenue, and more success. Let’s talk more about these benefits…

What Are The Advantages Of A Door Knocking App?

Now that we know what door knocking apps are, let’s talk about why they’re so beneficial to outside sales reps. Here are four advantages you’ll enjoy once you invest in this kind of tool:

It Simplifies Route Planning

You could plan door knocking routes with a pen, a piece of paper, and that faded paper map you found in your attic last summer. But you won’t win you any points for productivity.

Door knocking apps feature digital maps, which make it much easier to design logical routes between prospects. The best door knocking apps take things a step further, allowing you to simply input addresses, then wait as the tool generates the most efficient route between them.

Tools like SPOTIO will automatically track your mileage, too, then export the data for a clean, accurate, and simple reimbursement process—no admin work required.

It Gives You Instant Access To Lead And Prospect Details

As mentioned above, the best door knocking apps do more than plan routes. Some of them will also help you learn about your prospects, then use that information in sales scenarios.

Quickly discover basic contact information for each lead on your list, as well as details regarding business type, revenue, and number of locations (for B2B sellers;) and age, home ownership status, and credit capacity (for B2C sellers,) directly on your mobile device.

It Helps Reps Stay Organized

Which doors have you already knocked on? And what was the result? A quality door knocking software will keep track of that information for you so that you can reach peak productivity.

For example, you’ll know exactly which doors in your territory to knock next, so you don’t waste time on double visits. More importantly, you’ll know which prospects showed interest in your products/services, and which have already booked appointments with your company.

Note: the SPOTIO mobile app will let you set appointments from your phone, which means you can use our tool to plan efficient door knocking routes, learn about your leads before you engage them in conversation, and book sales meetings that sync with your preferred CRM.

It Reduces Time-Consuming Admin Tasks

The average sales rep spends just 28% of their time selling. Why? Because non-selling activities like administration work require the bulk of their on-the-clock hours.

This is another reason to invest in a quality door knocking app. Once you have one, you can tap into automation to win back your day in a serious way. We’re not joking. SPOTIO has been proven to boost rep productivity by 46%. Say hello to insane levels of efficiency!

What To Look For In A Door Knocking App

You don’t want to buy any ol’ door knocking app. You want to buy the best door knocking app on the market, right? That’s why you should look for these eight essential features:

Territory Management

Invest in a door knocking app that includes territory management features.

SPOTIO makes it easy for sales managers to cut territories based on geographic boundaries or by drawing on a map. They can then quickly assign said territories to qualified sales.

Also of note, SPOTIO can be used to assess territory performance, thanks to in-depth reports. This will help you make key adjustments, or double down on winning tactics, to close deals.

Automated Sales Sequences

Door knocks are important, but they’re only one step in the field sales process. SPOTIO will help you complete them all in less time, thanks to powerful automation tools.

Use our platform to automatically capture prospect information and sync it with your CRM of choice. Then build entire automated sales sequences that include visit and call reminders, email and text message sends, and more. That way your leads don’t fall through the cracks.

The best part is, sales sequences can be designed and viewed on any device, which means field sales reps will always have access to them. In addition, sales sequences can be saved, reused, and even shared with colleagues to ensure maximum success for your whole team.

Digital Business Cards

What do you do if a prospect answers the door after you knock on it? Hopefully you have a strong sales pitch prepared that will pique their interest and lead to a future sale.

Just as important, you need to give your prospect a way to contact you down the road. An old school business card might work. But a modern digital business card is a much better option.

With SPOTIO, you can easily design digital business cards that live on your prospects’ phones. You know, the devices they already spend hours looking at every day.

Even better, SPOTIO’s digital business cards can be updated in a flash and will alert you when they’ve been viewed. That way you can contact prospects at the most ideal times.

Integrations

Door knocking apps are fantastic, but they aren’t the only tool in your field sales team’s arsenal. That’s why integrations are so important to team productivity levels.

Connect SPOTIO to the other solutions you use on a daily basis, such as your email provider and your preferred CRM. SPOTIO seamlessly connects with Gmail, Salesforce, HubSpot, and SOLO. It also integrates with Zapier, so almost every other integration is available to you, too.

Document Management

In all likelihood, your field reps use a variety of sales enablement materials to help close deals. We’re talking about product images, case studies, white papers, and the like.

Top-end door knocking apps like SPOTIO give reps easy access to all of these things, which will make it much easier for them to build trust with new leads and drive revenue.

SPOTIO can even be used to store and distribute contracts with e-sign capabilities. So, when you knock on a door and meet a perfect, buy-ready prospect, you can make the sale ASAP.

Location Tracking

Where are your reps? Like, right now.

SPOTIO includes a location tracking feature, so you always know where your reps are in the field. That way you can make sure they actually knock on the doors they say they knock on.

You can also use this feature to assess travel routes and ensure reps make the most of their time, and evaluate the number of visits your reps make on a daily basis.

Note: this feature can be turned off if your reps feel it violates their privacy.

Multi-Channel Communication

Yes, your reps spend a significant portion of their time in the field. But if in-person visits are the only way they communicate with potential customers, they won’t close many deals.

The best door knocking apps include multi-channel communication features, which will allow your reps to call, email, and text prospects directly from their mobile devices. With SPOTIO, you can then automatically log these activities in your CRM and analyze the results of each.

How is Rep A so successful? Why is Rep B struggling to meet quota? SPOTIO’s activity and communication metrics will help you answer these questions. Speaking of which…

Detailed Reporting

You’re knocking on doors, but are your efforts moving you closer to success?

Look for a door knocking app that includes a detailed reporting dashboard. That way you can evaluate your approach, eliminate subpar tactics, and double down on winning strategies.

One of the best things about SPOTIO is that it will allow you to create custom reports—about your team’s door knocking activities or anything else. Simply choose the metrics and KPIs you care about. Then generate reports that only include these bits of information.

See Why SPOTIO Is The Best Door Knocking App

SPOTIO has the features you need to elevate performance for your field sales team.

Sign up for a free demonstration of SPOTIO right now to see our industry-leading tool in action. A knowledgeable representative will get in touch with you as soon as possible.

When they do, they’ll be able to show you all of the door knocking features we mentioned in this article, including our route planning, territory management, location tracking, multichannel communication, automation, and reporting features, as well as our integration capabilities.

According to recent research, the industry is expected to hit $84.4 billion by 2027—a 48% jump from where the industry was last year, in 2022. Not bad!

What’s driving this incredible growth, you ask? The advent of wireless technology, the Internet of Things (IoT), and a greater awareness of security threats.

It’s a great time to learn how to sell security systems. So that’s what we’ll cover in this article. Keep reading for our best tips regarding home security sales. Let’s dive in!

10 Tips for Selling Home Security Systems

Ready to learn how to sell home security systems door to door? You’ve come to the right place. In this section, we share 11 tips to help you make more home security sales.

Home Security Sales Tip 1: Start With Your Target Audience

Who are you trying to sell to?

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. If you want to succeed, you need to develop a strong understanding of your target audience. It’s a fundamental part of the sales process.

Fortunately, gaining this kind of knowledge isn’t that difficult. Simply talk to your current customers to learn what makes them tick. We suggest researching your competitors and reading popular forums in your niche, too. This will help you identify specific pain points.

When you know your customers like the back of your hand, create an ideal customer profile.

Your ICP should include demographic information about your target audience, such as their gender, age, and income level, and psychographic details, like their hopes and fears.

Home Security Sales Tip 2: Thoroughly Understand The Value Proposition

Why should a potential customer buy from your company?

You need to have an intimate understanding of your products and the value they provide to your target audience. Obvious value propositions include: “safety” and “peace of mind.”

But you should dig deeper than this. Your value proposition should be something like, “We offer customers the peace of mind they crave at a lower price point than the competition.” Or, “We keep our customers safe while providing the best customer support in the industry.”

When you boil down the value propositions that are meaningful to your customers, they generally are focused on one or two of the following themes:

• Price/Value: “The cheapest, most cost-efficient, or the best ROI or value…”
• Capabilities/Benefits: “The best features, the most comprehensive, flexible…”
• Convenience: “The easiest to use, the most intuitive, the quickest to start…”
• Customer Service: “The best reviews, best customer experience, support, warranty…”
• Quality: “The best reputation, most reliable/secure, modern, luxurious…”

These are winning value propositions because they address customer concerns and include unique information that can only apply to your specific business. Try to craft something similar.

Home Security Sales Tip 3: Use Holistic Storytelling

There are a ton of home security systems on the market. How do you separate your company’s offerings from the pack and grab your target audience’s attention?

Holistic storytelling is one of the best ways to build relationships with potential customers.

Why? Because stories help sales reps like yourself build personal connections with their prospects. Once these personal connections are built, your prospects will trust you more. And, as every professional seller knows, trust is the bedrock of the sales industry.

So, how do you implement a holistic storytelling approach? Here’s a five-step process that door-to-door salespeople can use to incorporate stories into their sales pitches:

1. Start by telling your prospect why you knocked on their door. Be courteous, introduce your company, and, if possible, add a personal touch to the discussion.
2. Ask your prospect a question to help engage them in conversation. The question can lead into your story, but the point is to get your prospect to participate.
3. Dive into your story honestly and genuinely. Focus on educating the customer. To do this, you must understand what the customer needs to know about home security.
4. As you tell your story, weave in questions at strategic points. This will help you hold your prospects’ attention and learn more about their specific needs.
5. Finally, end your story with a call to action. If you don’t give your prospects a “next step,” they’ll simply close their door and forget about you. Don’t let this happen!

Ultimately, the story you tell at the door should be one you want to tell. If you don’t believe in, or have the desire to tell the story, it will show in how you speak and your body language.

Home Security Sales Tip 4: Set Minimum Daily Sales Activities

At this point, you know who your target audience is and why this specific group of people should purchase your company’s security products. You’ve also committed to holistic storytelling to help engage prospects in meaningful sales conversations. Now what?

Now it’s time to set minimum daily sales activities. What are you going to do every single day to help you connect with more prospects, close more deals, and drive more revenue?

You might decide to make X number of in-person visits per day. Or send X number of emails and/or text messages. Whatever you decide to do, actually do it. That way, you can earn higher commission checks, achieve your sales goals, and propel your company forward.

Remember: you can’t control who buys from you and who doesn’t. But you can control how many people/companies you contact and how often you contact them.

Home Security Sales Tip 5: Re-Canvass Neighborhoods

When was the last time you re-canvassed a neighborhood?

If you’re like most sales reps, the answer is never. Your breeze through a neighborhood once, then move on to the next one, never thinking about the area you just left. This is a mistake.

Recanvassing will allow you to connect with potential customers who weren’t home the first time you passed through. It will also give you a chance to promote recent sales. You can say something like, “Your neighbor across the street just bought a security system from me and can now check each camera from his phone. Are you interested in something similar?”

Mentioning an existing customer—especially one that your current prospect knows—will help you build trust. As mentioned earlier, trust is essential in sales. Use it!

Home Security Sales Tip 6: Be Professional

What does “be professional” mean?

For some, it means wearing a suit and tie to work. For others, it means treating their bosses, colleagues, and prospects with respect. For you, it might mean something completely different.

To be honest, though, what professional means to you doesn’t really matter. You need to make sure that your prospective customers think you’re professional. Why? Because you’re selling them the promise of safety and security. If you aren’t a pro, you won’t make sales.

Here are a few ways you can boost your professionalism:

Get an ID Badge: An ID badge will identify who you are and the company you represent. You can get them from websites like Quick ID Card and Nametag Ninja.

Invest in Marketing Materials: High-level marketing materials, like print brochures and well-produced promo videos, can make you look more professional, too, especially if you show them to prospects on a tablet or some other portable device.

Create a Digital Business Card: The majority of print business cards end up in the trash. Digital business cards, however, can be sent directly to a prospect’s phone, which will automatically raise your professionalism in their eyes. Use a tool like SPOTIO to easily create and distribute digital business cards.

Home Security Sales Tip 7: Use the “Norm of Reciprocity”

Psychology tells us that if someone does something nice for us, we feel obligated to return the favor. This phenomenon is known as reciprocity, and you can use it when selling security.

Used correctly, the norm of reciprocity is a powerful technique when learning how to sell security systems door to door. Here’s how to incorporate it into your sales pitch:

Knock on the door.

Apologize for interrupting the person’s day.

Offer to do a FREE security inspection of their home.

The person at the door will think, “Wow a FREE inspection! What a nice offer!”

Complete the FREE security inspection, then attempt to engage the prospect in a conversation about the security threats you’ve uncovered in their home.

Now that you’re talking to a uber-engaged prospect take the opportunity to deliver your sales pitch, which has a high likelihood of success thanks to reciprocity!

Home Security Sales Tip 8: Have a Mindset of Education

You make your living selling security systems. So you (hopefully) have a deep understanding of the products and/or services you sell. Your potential customers? Not so much.

That’s why you should approach every sales conversation with a mindset of education. How can you turn your door-to-door pitches into learning experiences for your prospects?

Your answer to this question will help you make your sales engagements about your customers, not about the commission checks you hope to earn from them.

When this happens, you’ll make more sales because the people you talk to will want to buy from you. Why wouldn’t they? You have their best interests at heart.

When using this home security sales tip, do your best to mix in NON-scary and NON-threatening statistics. For example, 76% of Americans use some kind of security measure to protect their homes. Maybe your prospect wants to join the party!

Home Security Sales Tip 9: Create A Smooth Transition From Canvasser to Closer

If your sales department uses canvassers and closers, you need to make sure that the transition between these two different roles is as smooth as possible for your prospects.

The easiest way to ensure a seamless transition is to use a reliable software application like SPOTIO. Doing so will help canvassers capture pertinent information from prospects, then book appointments. Said information can then be transferred to closers so that they have all of the details they need when they speak to potential buyers at the predetermined time.

Home Security Sales Tip 10: Plan For Objections

You know that home security systems will be important in 2023. But your target audience might not wholeheartedly agree with you. As such, they’re going to come up with reasons not to buy. You need to be prepared for these objections so that you can respond to them effectively.

The easiest way to prepare yourself for rejections is to catalog the most common ones your sales team receives. Then prepare answers before each. That way, when an objection comes up in the field, you’ll know exactly how to reply in a way that pushes the deal forward.

Sell More Home Security Systems with SPOTIO

Home security sales represent a fantastic opportunity for modern-day sales reps—if they understand how to approach the market and appeal to potential customers.

Fortunately, the ten tips above will have you selling security systems in no time.

The only other thing you need is an industry-leading software application to help you source leads, canvas, and implement your sales sequences in a successful way.

SPOTIO is the tool you want. Why? Because it was specifically designed for field sellers. As such, it’s equipped with all of the features you need to close deals, including:

• Lead Machine: Find leads in your area. Then use 200+ filters to weed out unqualified prospects and spend your valuable time on people who actually want what you sell.
• Canvassing: Are you a canvasser? Use SPOTIO to quickly capture sales notes and set appointments. Then sync the data with your CRM, so closers have all the details.
• AutoPlays: Most sales require multiple touchpoints. SPOTIO’s AutoPlays feature will allow you to automate visit and call reminders, as well as email and text message sends. That way nothing falls through the cracks, and more leads become customers.
• Digital Business Cards: As we talked about earlier in this article, SPOTIO will allow you to create digital business cards, which can be sent directly to a prospect’s device. This ensures the business card doesn’t get lost, and allows sales reps to access important information, such as when the business card is opened.
• Territory Management: Are you a sales manager? Then you can use SPOTIO to cut territories by geographical boundaries, such as county or zip code, or by drawing on a digital map. You can then assign each territory to the most qualified rep on your team and track performance. Doing so will help you adjust your sales strategy.

SPOTIO is a powerful platform for door-to-door sellers. But you don’t have to take our word for it. Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO today to see the tool in action!

It’s not always easy, but it’s far from impossible. We’re about to teach you exactly how to get solar leads for your business in 2023 using 12 proven strategies.

Once you master the techniques below, you’ll be on your way to success in the solar market. Intrigued? Then let’s dive in and discover the secrets to boosting your solar sales potential.

12 Ways to Generate High-Quality Solar Leads

Solar lead generation isn’t some mystical art. If you implement a few of these free and paid techniques, you will connect with more prospects and close more deals. Let’s get to it…

Define your target audience

You can’t generate solar leads if you don’t know who your target audience is.

When you understand these people, you can tailor your sales approach to their unique needs and dispositions. You’ll also know which channels you can use to reach them.

So take a moment to define your target audience. Are they residential or commercial customers? What goals do they have? What challenges do they face? And how can your products and/or services help them overcome said challenges in the near future?

For example, your ideal customer might be homeowners between the ages of 30 and 50, who currently spend too much money on their electricity bills. By installing solar on their homes, your company can give them more financial flexibility.

Craft messaging for both residential and commercial solar leads

What if your solar business serves residential and commercial customers?

It’s important to differentiate between these two groups of people. Each will have different pain points and motivations. The incentives and tax breaks will vary as well.

By crafting unique messaging for different customer segments, you’ll appeal to more people, thus increasing your chances of securing the best solar leads available.

Canvass (and recanvass)

One of the most effective ways to generate solar leads is to canvass neighborhoods in your area. Talk to as many people as you can to see if they’re ready to make the switch.

Remember: you shouldn’t talk to just anybody. Focus on homeowners who meet the criteria in your ICP and have solar potential, i.e., live in a location that gets enough sun.

ICP stands for ideal customer profile. To create one, use the data you collected about your target audience to create a fictional person/company that will benefit from your offerings.

One more thing: recanvass neighborhoods on a regular basis. This will help you connect with people who weren’t available to meet in the past and follow up with folks who previously expressed interest but haven’t yet signed a contract with your company.

Keep the value front and center

When it comes to solar lead generation, keep this in mind: your prospects don’t care about how solar technology works. They care about saving money, going green, etc.

So don’t drown prospects in an ocean of technical information. Focus on the value they’ll receive once they purchase a solar system from you. Then focus on the value your specific company brings to the table, such as faster install times and better customer service.

Run paid ads to interested prospects

We recommend paid advertising campaigns for solar lead generation, too, which will enable you to reach red-hot prospects on platforms like Facebook and Google.

The trick is to target people who are already interested in solar energy.

In-market ads will help you find prospects who are currently searching for what you sell. Retargeting ads will help you connect with folks who have already visited your website.

Whatever you decide to do, make sure you understand your target audience (see above) and use keywords that will resonate with them. That way, you only attract good-fit leads.

Get listed on local service directories

What do potential customers do when they decide to invest in green energy?

Simple: they whip out their phones and search for solar companies in their areas. Then they scour sites like Yelp and Angie’s List to find reliable providers who fit their budgets.

Your company needs to have a presence on these kinds of directories. That way, you can reach customers who are actively using them to find solar brands.

Other important directories include Solar Reviews, EnergySage, Clean Energy Experts, and Consumer Affairs. Make sure your company appears on them.

Launch SMS marketing campaigns

Did you know that 98% of text messages are opened? That means SMS marketing can be a super effective way to generate solar leads. You just have to use this channel the right way.

The question is, how? Start by building up your subscriber list, i.e., a list of people who have agreed to receive text messages from your company. The easiest way to do this is to offer subscribers something of value in exchange for their phone numbers.

Once you have a few numbers in your database, follow up with potential customers. Thank them for joining your list, and ask them if they’d like to schedule a quick meeting with you.

If you don’t hear back from them, try again a few days later. You may want to incentivize them, too. Bet you’d get a lot more meetings if you offered a limited-time discount on a solar system!

Purchase solar lead lists

Just about every solar sales professional has purchased a leads list in the past, which goes to show you it’s an effective strategy—assuming you use it wisely, of course.

Purchasing leads lists will help you generate solar leads fast. This is especially helpful when building an inbound marketing strategy, as this kind of tactic can take a while to bear fruit.

There is a downside, however. Buyable leads lists don’t always feature the best solar leads. The information you receive could be non-exclusive, which means your competitors can access it, too. And the information might be outdated, which can harm your productivity.

Still, when learning how to generate solar leads, you should give it a shot. Just purchase a high-quality list. The extra money you send will be more than worth it.

Get visual on social media

Potential customers want to see your work. So make sure you publish a variety of images on your company’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter profiles. Consider using Pinterest and TikTok, too, as long as you (or a member of your team) can post content consistently.

What kind of content should you publish? Here’s a quick list to get you started:

• Work-in-progress photos
• Before and after photos
• Company event photos
• Happy customer photos
• Solar industry-related photos
• Company award photos
• Work-related videos

We should mention hashtags, too, which are kind of like keywords on social media. By including them in your posts, you’ll reach more of your target audience for free.

Go to local trade shows and events

Since most solar companies only operate in specific geographical areas, local trade shows and other events can be a fantastic way to score quality solar leads.

Research a few events in your city. Then plan to rent a booth, distribute promotional materials, connect with potential customers, and demonstrate certain products. If possible, run a contest or raffle to engage event attendees and help them remember your company.

And, of course, take lots of pictures during the event and post them on social media.

Incentivize customer referrals

Customer referrals are incredibly important to the success of your solar company. So it makes sense to ask current customers to send them to you.

To make sure they actually follow through and do this, why not incentivize them? Offer them a discount on their solar system if they refer X number of leads to you. Or, if the customer already purchased their system, offer them X% back per referred lead.

Set up a solar CRM

Finally, invest in customer relationship management (CRM) software.

The right CRM system will help you track leads, follow up with potential customers, and close more sales. This begs the question, which CRM is “right” for your solar company?

First, choose a CRM that is tailored to the solar industry. This will help you get the most out of the tool. Then do your best to balance the necessary features with your current budget.

Or, if that sounds like too much work, just use SPOTIO. Our CRM platform was specifically designed for outside sales teams. Dozens of solar companies use it to reach quota and drive revenue. Schedule a free demo of SPOTIO today to see our solution in action.

Start filling your pipeline with qualified solar leads

Your solar business needs high-quality leads. Fortunately, the 12 lead generation techniques in this article will help you get them. All you have to do is implement the tips, tricks, and strategies above to connect with more prospects and close more deals.

Looking for additional advice to supercharge your solar company? Download your free copy of the Complete Field Guide for Solar Sales Leaders right now!

Sales canvassing is the process used to initiate contact with a prospect or lead that you don’t have an appointment set or meeting scheduled with. In other words, you’re going in cold. Sales canvassing can be done in person, over the phone or via email. It involves identifying and qualifying prospects that would benefit from your product or service.

Sales Canvassing Tips

Sales canvassing is a critical step in building a sales pipeline, but many field sales struggle with how to get started. Below, we’ll cover 13 tips you can use to canvass more efficiently and generate a consistent pipeline for your reps. :

1. Set activity-based goals.

Canvassers should be trying to make a certain number of contacts each day in order to keep the pipeline flowing. These are the controllable factors. When there are activity-based goals at the forefront, it keeps canvassers focused and productive.

2. Identify quality prospects

This starts by knowing who your ideal customer is. Identify prospects that would benefit from your product or service before you start canvassing to give yourself a better chance of turning prospects into leads.

A simple way to accomplish this can be done using SPOTIO’s sales intelligence tool, Lead Machine. You can pull and filter a wide variety of data (200+ attributes) such as, neighborhood information, phone number, household salaries, credit capacity, and property types to find the most qualified prospects to start working in the field.

If you’re selling solar, as an example, you want to be able to identify homes that are owned (not rented) and don’t already have solar. Lead Machine puts this information at your canvassers fingertips.

3. Map sales territories

Once you have the prospecting criteria in place, it’s time to map and assign territories so that reps or canvassers have enough prospects to work, and that they are not treading on each other’s toes.

SPOTIO’s Territory Mapping tool enables you to:

• Map out your entire territory on an actual map and break territories down by zip-code or create zones based on economic potential
• Track all sales activities
• Add leads
• Record feedback received at the door
• Use real-time data to determine where to knock next
• All data sent back to your manager, so no time is wasted reporting back

4. Polish your canvassing script.

Scripts are created to make your job easier and give you a proven system, based on principles that work. It is very important to remain conversational with the person at the door to build trust so that when you ask for the appointment, it’s like the person is taking advice from a trusted friend.

Give yourself freedom to edit the pitch to make it your own, while following the basic script your manager has taught you. You are not a robot and potential leads don’t expect you to be because they see a human on their doorstep. So, personalize your engagement with people at the door.

Make small tweaks that fit your personality to demonstrate to the person at the door that you identify with them and understand how your product or service will solve their main issue.

5. Be prepared.

Decide and commit to maintaining a positive attitude. The more positivity you radiate, the more positive people will be around you. And, with such happiness in the air, it’s really hard to say “no” or respond negatively.

Being prepared doesn’t have to be complicated:

• Be nice;
• Be genuinely interested in the potential lead at the door;
• Respect all potential leads’ time;
• Nurture your “not interested” or “not at this time” leads; and
• Follow through on everything that you promise at the door.

6. Use data to make decisions.

Real-time data to track your sales activities, based specifically on your canvassing efforts, will lead to understanding the true impact of your canvassing performance.

To get more leads while canvassing, you need consistency and proficiency based on actual data, not some made-up numbers or playing a guessing game of where to knock. Consider tracking the following daily metrics and analyzing them to gain more knowledge on where to knock, what types of neighborhoods yield the most leads, etc.:

• Total number of leads generated;
• What territories yielded the most leads;
• Number of leads that scheduled appointments; and
• Which leads to add to your follow-up program.

7. Use qualifying questions.

As soon as you make contact with someone at the door, start the qualification process of transitioning them over to an actual lead, even if the person at the door is just a little interested. Here some examples of qualifying questions to consider and record the answers in SPOTIO:

• Does the person at the door need your product or service?
• How are they solving this problem now?
• What are their top priorities in a solution?
• What results would you like to see?
• Are they happy with their current solution?
• What’s their budget?
• Does the person at the door understand and see the value it will provide by agreeing to the price point?
• Is the person at the door able to commit to a certain amount of time for the appointment?
• What would prevent us from becoming partners?

By qualifying people at the door and then transitioning them to a lead when canvassing, you ensure your product or service solves a major issue for the person. The person will either respond by scheduling an appointment or saying they’re not interested.

To gain more leads, be sure to put everyone who was “not interested” in a follow-up program and nurture them so that you and your product or service stays top of mind. Also, when they are interested, they will know to contact you.

8. Transfer leads to reps

The handoff is important. Canvassers have worked hard to qualify the prospect and deem it a lead, so it’s important the transfer from canvassers to salespeople is smooth and that all details about the account are conveyed to the rep.

SPOTIO knows the “art of the transfer” and helps your sales canvassing team master this with features and functionality to help streamline and organize this step.

• All notes taken are automatically transferred to your CRM, automating the tedious task of logging activities
• Any communication channel (call, text, email, visit) a canvasser used is documented in SPOTIO
• Lead data and activity history of every lead is captured

9. Integrate with a CRM.

CRMs are notoriously despised by your field sales teams due to the extra work it requires to keep contact records up-to-date and populated with accurate information. But what if there’s an intuitive mobile application that allows salespeople to easily log activities on the fly and have that data automatically populate your CRM?

SPOTIO’s Mobile CRM connects seamlessly with your system of record to capture activities and notes from the field back into your CRM. Now, all prospect and account records are up-to-date, giving reps full context when re-engaging with leads.

10. Leave sales collateral at the door.

As soon as you knock on the door, place a door hanger or flier around the door where it is stable and most likely to be seen. This serves two purposes:

1. If the homeowner answers the door, it will serve as a reminder of your visit; or
2. If no one answers, it will serve as a notification that plants a seed in the homeowner’s mind that you were at their door and why.

By pre-engaging potential leads with collateral about you and your company, you automatically get the homeowner thinking about you and what you are offering (and reduce the chance of rejection). When you follow-up, it will be easier to convert them to an actual lead because they have already been introduced to you and your product or service.

11. Always follow-up.

When a person at the door responds with “I’m not interested,” it doesn’t mean they will never be interested. The potential lead is not telling you “no,” he or she is telling you “not yet.” So, dedicate yourself and follow-up with them until they become a qualified lead, which in the long run, yields getting more leads while canvassing.

With SPOTIO Autoplays, you can set up a series of outreach sequences for different channels (calls, texts, emails, visits) to automate the follow-up process. Simply template out scripts for emails and texts, set the intervals you want the messages to go out, and your follow-up sequences will fire automatically without any manual work from canvassers or sales reps.

Keep prospects engaged and your product or service at the top of their mind.

Creating Autoplay sequences removes the guesswork of “What do I do next?” – or – “Who do I need to follow-up with today?”, ensuring no opportunity falls through the cracks due to lack of follow-up.

12. Knock on the right door.

Just because a door faces the street doesn’t mean this is the door that the homeowner uses on a regular basis. To increase your door open rate, knock on the door that looks like the most accessible and most used.

Check for these signs to determine if there may be another door to knock:

• No mailbox or mail slot in the door;
• A build-up of newspapers/flyers around the door; or
• A pathway or driveway that leads to another door.

Bonus Tip: Think safety first! Always stay visible from the street. Never go around to the back of a house alone, even if you believe the back door is the most used door.

13. Don’t get discouraged.

Getting prospects on the hook is hard work. It requires persistence, creativity, and pure grit. This isn’t easy and giving up is all too tempting.

Some advice on how to eliminate frustration and shorten what can be a lengthy back and forth, or worse, non-responsive prospect is to make sure you keep your pitch short, relevant and valuable.

Interact with prospects like real people, not like a sales goal; showing them that you want to help creates trust. By establishing a relationship based on empathy will prove dividends to your success.

Don’t give up! It’s like they say, nothing good ever came easy.

Level Up Your Sales Canvassing Today

Every neighborhood is full of potential buyers for you and your team to go after, which makes sales canvassing they key to growth. It takes time and effort, but when a plan is in place and your team has the tools they need to help automate, organize and simplify the selling process, your bottom line will thank you.

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales engagement and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

Keep reading to learn what customer mapping and customer journey mapping are, how they differ from each other, how customer mapping will benefit your field sales team, and why SPOTIO is the only customer mapping tool you need.

What is Customer Mapping?

Customer mapping is the process of creating a visual representation of a company’s territories, leads, and current customers on a map.

Decades ago, door-to-door or outside salespeople would draw territories on paper maps and mark the locations of potential leads. These days, most field sales reps use sales mapping software create and manage territories.

Either way, customer mapping is essential to the success of your sales team, which we’ll talk more about soon. First, we need to clarify the differences between the terms “customer mapping” and “customer journey mapping.”

Customer Mapping vs. Customer Journey Mapping

As mentioned above, customer mapping is the process of marking territories, as well as potential and current customers on a visual map.

Customer journey mapping, on the other hand, is the process of mapping every interaction a potential customer has with a company before they make a purchase. The best customer journey maps describe sentiment and pain points, too, which helps sales reps understand leads.

A B2B customer journey, for example, might look like this:

Source: Delighted

As you can see, customer mapping and customer journey mapping are different. The first deals with a lead or customer’s physical location. The second deals with a hypothetical journey that leads must go on to become customers.

How Customer Mapping Can Benefit Field Sales Teams?

For years, field sellers had to use tools that were designed for inside sales teams. Now, field reps have access to customer mapping software, which is made for their specific needs.

Here are five ways that customer mapping software will benefit your team:

Stop leads falling through the cracks

It’s easy to forget about certain leads when you have dozens of them in your pipeline. Customer mapping ensures this doesn’t happen.

Image: SPOTIO’s visual representation of CRM data — prospects, leads and customers — on a digital map

It’s pretty simple: You add leads to the map, field reps look at the map to plan their sales routes for the day, then see all of the leads in their pipeline, which will make them think, “Oh, yeah, I need to contact these people.”

Modern customer mapping software goes a step further. Not only will your field reps be able to see their leads on a handy digital map, they’ll also get notifications when it’s time to re-engage with specific leads. Win!

Identify hidden sales opportunities

How do your field reps know which leads to focus on? If your team uses customer mapping software, they simply look at their customer map.

Tools like SPOTIO allow reps to color-code their customer maps based on any data point they want: pipeline stage, result of last visit, etc. This means that reps can look at their sales maps and easily determine which leads are most valuable. They can then focus on these leads and increase conversion rates.

We’ll talk more about SPOTIO in the next section, so stay tuned!

Increase referrals from existing customers

Did you know that referral leads have a 16% higher lifetime value than other types of leads? Or that referrals have a 37% higher retention rate?

Good news: Customer mapping can help you secure more of these valuable leads. Here are two easy ways to make it happen:

1. Have your field reps identify current customers on their customer map. Then ask them to pinpoint nearby prospects. Now, when your reps visit these prospects, they can say something like, “John Doe from next door really loves our services. We think you might, too.” The simple fact that this prospect’s neighbor is a customer will increase the likelihood of them converting.
2. Ask your field reps to approach current customers and request referrals in the area. You can even authorize your reps to give incentives if you want. Either way, you’re bound to get new referral leads.

Plan smarter sales routes

Unlike inside sellers, field sales reps travel from prospect to prospect for in-person meetings. This allows them to connect with prospects on a deeper level, build trust with them in less time, and, ultimately, close bigger deals.

There’s one problem: It can take a lot of time to travel to prospects, which tends to hurt productivity metrics for field sales reps.

Customer mapping will help your reps plan smarter routes between prospects so that they can spend more time selling and less time behind the wheel. All they have to do is look at their customer maps, decide which prospects and/or customers they’ll visit that day, and design the most efficient route between them.

Even better, tools like SPOTIO will automatically plan the most direct routes between visits, giving field reps even more time to sell, sell, sell.

Increase revenue

All of these benefits equal more revenue for your company.

If you can prevent leads from falling through the cracks and generate more referrals, your reps will have more people to talk to. And if you can decrease your reps’ windshield time, they’ll have more time to talk to people.

Improve Your Customer Mapping With SPOTIO

So now you know that customer mapping is important for field sales teams.

The question is, how do you actually do it? You could give your reps a paper map and a Sharpie, and say, “Good luck!” Or you could use SPOTIO. We’re biased, but we guarantee the latter option is preferable.

Once you get access to the SPOTIO platform, you’ll be able to:

Easily Create and Manage Territories

How do you cut territories? If you’re like many other field sales managers, you use CRM software. It works, but let’s be honest, it’s not the ideal tool for the job.

SPOTIO lets you cut and maintain territories at a granular level. You could parse territories by specific neighborhoods, for example, rather than by ZIP Code, city, or county (something traditional CRM solutions can’t do).

This level of functionality helps sales managers prevent sales rep overlap and identify gaps in territory coverage.

Visualize CRM Data on Your Maps

Your CRM software is full of important data. SPOTIO makes this data accessible and actionable for field reps by allowing them to visualize it on a digital map and see where their leads, opportunities, and customers are. They can then use this information to plan efficient sales routes with the click of a button.

Distinguish Between Leads, Opportunities, and Customers

Speaking of leads, opportunities, and customers, SPOTIO makes it easy for field reps to see the difference between them.

Each person and/or company in your CRM database becomes a pin in SPOTIO and placed on a digital map. You can then color-code pins to represent different pieces of information. For example, you can make all of your leads yellow, your opportunities red, and your customers blue.

You can also color-code and organize pins based on other data points, such as the result of the last visit or the amount of time since your last visit. It’s your map — organize it the way you want!

Customize Map Views

Field reps can also customize their SPOTIO map views to their preferences. Here are the settings available inside of our platform:

• Satellite Mapping: Access a satellite view of your map to visualize the scale and size of your territory in the real world.
• Territory details: View specific territories on your map, as well as the assignments and activities associated with each, so that you can easily manage them.
• Leads:  As mentioned earlier, with SPOTIO you can see all of your leads, opportunities, and customers so that you know whom to contact and when.
• Hailtrace: Integrate SPOTIO with your Hail Trace account to view storm maps in your area so reps can be prepared.
• GPS Trails: Monitor your reps in real-time. Where are they and what are they doing? SPOTIO will tell you. (You can also turn off this feature).

Get real-time insights

Finally, SPOTIO will give you the data you need, when you need it.

Use our customer mapping features to spot trends. Then zoom in for a closer look and view real-time metrics for each of your reps. Metrics include leads created, leads won, win rate, estimated revenue, and leads by stages.

Move to different territories on the SPOTIO map, and your metrics will automatically update for the chosen area!

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SPOTIO is the sales engagement platform specifically for field sales teams. With our solution, you’ll gain access to all of the customer mapping capabilities described in this post, as well as task automation, multichannel communication, territory management, and lead generation features.

Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO today to see it in action and decide if it’s the right tool for your field sales team. We’re confident it will be!

Unfortunately, building one such program is harder than ever. According to a recent study, 61% of B2B marketers say that lead generation is their top challenge.

What’s the solution? First, sales and marketing teams need to work together to generate and vet quality leads. Second, well… We have a few ideas for you.

Keep reading and we’ll show you how to nail lead generation for B2B sales. That way you can cut through the noise, capture your buyers’ attention, and beat the competition.

Target The Right People

Your B2B sales lead generation program will fail if you target everyone. Instead, develop an ideal customer profile (ICP), and only sell to companies that match it.

What’s an ICP? It’s pretty simple: an ICP is a fictional company that could theoretically benefit from the products and/or services that your company sells. To create an ICP:

• Analyze: Which of your customers get the most out of your offerings?
• Pinpoint: What attributes do your top customers have in common with each other?
• Study: How do your customers use your products? What pain points do they solve?
• Create: Now, combine all of the data you’ve uncovered into an ICP template that includes industry, location, company size, budget, and other important details.

Your ICP will keep your prospecting efforts on track and make sure you don’t waste time on leads that will never buy the products and/or services that you sell.

Search B2B Lead Databases

Did you know that you can just buy B2B sales leads?

Companies like UpLead will give you access to entire lists of prospects, which you can import directly into your customer relationship management (CRM) tool of choice.

By searching through these kinds of B2B lead databases, you may be able to find quality prospects to reach out to. Just remember, you’ll need to qualify them to make sure they’re good fits for your business. Then you’ll need to nurture them to make sales.

Establish a Lead Qualification Framework

Productive lead generation for B2B sales is all about qualification.

In other words, you need to qualify prospects before you pursue them. Doing so will help you weed out bad-fits so that you can focus your time on companies that might actually buy.

Supercharge the qualification process by establishing a lead qualification framework. Don’t worry, you don’t have to build it from scratch. Here a few well-known ones you can use:

• BANT: This framework was developed by IBM in the 1960s. To use it, establish four criteria for every lead—their budget, ability to buy, need for the product, and timeline.
• CHAMP: This framework was created as an alternative to BANT. To use it, pinpoint your prospect’s challenges, ability to buy, whether they have the money necessary to purchase, and how much of a priority making said purchase is to the organization.
• GPCTBA/C&I: This framework is another alternative to BANT. To use it, learn each prospect’s goals, plans, challenges, timeline, budget, authority, consequences, and implications to see if they’re a good fit for your company’s offerings.

Of course, you can always create your own lead qualification framework. For more information on this topic, check out this article from Oktopost.

Embrace a Multichannel Sales Process

Some prospects like to talk to sales reps on the phone. Others would rather communicate via email, or text, or LinkedIn. You should try to accommodate each prospect’s preferences.

The best way to do that is to build a multichannel sales process with a tool like SPOTIO.

With SPOTIO, reps can track every phone call and in-person visit they make. They can also schedule emails and texts to send at the most appropriate times, boosting productivity. It’s an easy to use platform that will help you manage a robust multichannel sales process.

Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO today to see if it’s the right tool for your sales team.

Attend Trade Shows

It may seem like an old school approach, but trade shows can be a gold mine for B2B sales lead generation. The key is choosing the right trade shows to attend.

Pick events that cater to your industry and target audience. If you sell software, for example, don’t waste time and money going to the “Food Marketing Conference” or anything like that.

Once you’ve chosen a trade show to attend, give it your all. Sign up for a booth, use video to attract attention, give product demos if possible, and, above all, establish ways to collect contact information from the many potential customers you’ll meet.

Help People Remember You

As a sales rep, you meet a ton of people. Do they remember you? They should!

One of the best ways to make yourself more memorable is to create and distribute digital business cards, AKA business cards that can be sent and stored digitally.

These sales tools can be created with SPOTIO. Simply log into the app, tap the section titled, “Business Cards,” and then enter your information into the template. Voila!

Once you’ve created a digital business card for yourself, you can distribute it to prospects via email, text, or QR code. Even better, you can track when prospects open your digital business cards, which means you’ll always know exactly when to follow up with potential customers.

Remember People’s Preferences

As mentioned above, your prospects have preferences.

Some want to be called on the phone, others want to be contacted via email. Some like to take sales calls at the beginning of the day, others would rather wait until the afternoon.

Give your B2B sales lead generation efforts a boost and remember what each of your prospects likes so that you can accommodate them during the sales process.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to actually remember these little details. You just have to add the information to your CRM of choice so that it will remember for you. (Note: SPOTIO is great for this, as it allows field sellers to easily capture these kinds of details, then automatically transfers them to their CRM thanks to seamless integrations with many top tools.)

Fine-Tune Your Territory Mapping

Are you part of a field sales team? Then you’re familiar with territory mapping.

Well, guess what! Proper territory mapping will lead to better lead generation for B2B sales. “How so?” You ask. Think about it: when you properly map your territories, you’ll be able to tell which are underperforming and why. You can then work to fix prominent issues.

You’ll also be able to ensure an equal distribution of workload and make sure that the reps you have working each territory have the necessary skill sets to succeed.

Each of these things will help your team generate better leads and close more deals.

Map Existing Customers

Plenty of field reps map their prospects. Doing so allows them to see where the potential buyers are and plan the most efficient routes between them.

Here’s a wild idea: map your existing customers, too.

Once you locate the existing customers in your territory, you can leverage those connections to meet new prospects and make more sales. Maybe you ask an existing customer for a referral. Maybe you just ask to use their name in future sales conversations.

Either way, your relationship with existing customers can be used to meet better, more qualified leads and, ultimately, close more deals for your company.

Align Your Sales and Marketing Teams

Think back to the beginning of this blog post…

Do you remember what we said? We said that one of the keys to successful B2B sales lead generation was getting marketing and sales teams to work together.

It’s true. If marketing and sales are on different pages, your lead gen game will suffer. When these departments are aligned, you can expect to see 32% greater year-on-year growth.

To ensure alignment, make sure both marketing and sales agree on what a qualified lead is and when leads get passed from one department to the other. Then work together to create content and full-fledged campaigns to generate new qualified prospects.

Create Engaging Content

Speaking of content, you should create it to aid your B2B sales lead generation efforts.

Just remember, people at different stages of the funnel will need different kinds of content. For this reason, marketing and sales professionals need to make a wide range of material.

Here are a few content types you can use to generate quality leads for your company:

Blog posts

Your target audience uses the internet to find information. Answer their most pressing questions in a blog post and you’ll establish trust. Once this happens, it will be much easier for you to acquire contact information and turn website traffic into bonafide leads. (Keep in mind, to succeed with blogging, you need to optimize your content for search engines.)

Guest posts

Blogging on your company’s website is a great idea. But if you really want to kick this strategy into high gear, invest in guest posting, too. Guest posting can go one of two ways: you can either write blogs for other websites, or you can ask other writers to write blogs for your site. Both strategies will get your brand name and content in front of new eyeballs.

Case studies

Case studies are valuable pieces of content—especially at the bottom of the funnel when sales reps need to convince prospects to get off the fence and sign on the dotted line. Interview your company’s happiest customers and ask them why they love your products and/or services so much. Then publish their story on your website.

Videos

There’s no doubt about it, video is one of the best types of content. Why? Because audiences love it, which is one reason why YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. Don’t worry, you don’t need to create a Marvel-type film for your company. We suggest repurposing old content into video format and posting them online. That’s it.

Webinars

We’d bet money you’ve attended a webinar or two in your day. But if not, just think of them as mini online conferences that typically help audience members learn a specific skill via slide shows, expert interviews, and more. Host one of these bad boys with a tool like ClickMeeting and build trust, influence, and sales opportunities with your ideal customers.

White papers

Finally, we have white papers, in-depth reports that are often given to potential customers in exchange for contact information. As such, they are great B2B sales lead generation tools. Like many of the other content types we’ve talked about, white papers can also help companies establish authority in their niches and earn their target customers’ trust.

Gate Your Content

So, you’ve made all this content. Now what? Obviously, you need to promote the blogs, videos, and case studies you’ve created. Social media and email marketing are great tools for this. But we suggest gating a few of your top-performing pieces, too.

If you’re not familiar with the term, gating content is the practice of putting white papers, webinars, and other materials behind a lead capture form.

This strategy will allow you to collect emails, phone numbers, and other forms of contact information, while boosting your company’s reputation—assuming you have great content. Plus, it’s a widely used and accepted tactic, so your target audience won’t mind.

Automate Your Sales Processes

Let’s face it, lead generation for B2B sales is hard. There are tons of tactics to try and details to remember. It’s easy for things to fall through the cracks.

Because of this, we suggest using automation to streamline your sales processes and ensure you follow up with leads in a timely manner that encourages them to make purchases.

SPOTIO’s Autoplays feature was designed for this exact purpose. Design custom sales sequences that include phone calls, emails, text messages, and in-person visits. Then receive notifications when it’s time to perform specific tasks, or allow SPOTIO to do them for you.

It’s an incredible time-saver for field sales teams that will also help you connect with more leads, and turn more leads into paying customers.

Set Up A Referral Program

Referrals are some of the best leads around. Want to generate more of them for your company? No problem, just set up and implement a referral program.

There are a bunch of ways to do this. You could, for example, simply incentivize your current customers to share your products and/or services with their family, friends, and colleagues. Trust us, your customers will love a percentage discount or a cash rebate offer. You can partner with other, non-competing businesses to generate referrals, too.

Whatever you decide to do, make sure your referral program is beneficial for all involved. That way people enjoy participating and your B2B sales lead generation efforts soar.

Analyze Your Data

After reading this blog post, you might decide to create an ideal customer profile for your company, invest in content marketing, and build a referral program. You may think about attending a trade show or two as well, and plan to get serious about territory mapping.

Great stuff! Just don’t get so busy that you forget to take stock of your efforts. Are you actually generating more leads? And are those leads high quality or throw-aways?

The only way you’ll know for sure is to analyze your B2B sales lead generation strategy to see if it’s working or not. If it is, double down on your approach. If it isn’t, change tactics.

Improve Your SEO

SEO, short for search engine optimization, is a BIG topic—way too big for this article. But that doesn’t mean it can’t help with lead generation for B2B sales.

By optimizing your website and content with specific keywords, you can increase the likelihood that it appears in Google search results, thus exposing your brand to new leads. When this happens, prospects will come to you instead of the other way around. Win!

Just know that SEO takes time and, usually, a high-quality tool or two. Some of the most popular ones include Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz.

Run Retargeting Ads

Ready to supercharge your B2B sales lead generation strategy? Try retargeting ads.

According to Instapage, retargeting keeps, “Your brand in front of your potential customers after they have left your website, persuading them to reconsider your offer when they need it.”

Basically, an internet user visits your company’s website, but doesn’t buy anything. Then you run retargeting ads to recapture their attention. The next time they surf the web, they see your ad—maybe on Facebook or a different website—and decide to finally make a purchase.

While this strategy can get expensive, it can be extremely effective because it targets leads who have already shown interest in the things you sell.

Ask For Reviews

Finally, try asking current customers for reviews to increase lead generation for B2B sales.

Why are reviews important? Because 92% of B2B buyers are more likely to buy after reading them. If your company doesn’t have reviews, you’ll have a hard time making sales.

It makes sense. Seriously, when’s the last time you bought something on Amazon without perusing the review section? We’re going to guess never. We all want to make sure the products and services we buy are worth the money. Reviews are great for that.

Many times, all you’ll need to do is ask your top customers for reviews. They love your products/services. They’ll probably be more than happy to share their thoughts with the world. But if not, give them an incentive: 20% off their next purchase, a $25 Visa gift card, etc.

How Will You Get More B2B Sales Leads?

Your company needs leads, which means it needs to invest in B2B sales lead generation strategies. The only question is which of the above tactics will you choose?

We suggest trying a few different approaches to see which works best. The top tactics may surprise you. But as long as they connect you with quality prospects, it doesn’t matter.

To assist your effort, consider SPOTIO. Our solution was specifically designed for field sales teams. As such, it has all the tools field sellers need to generate more leads, build strong relationships, and close a record number of sales—all inside the same platform.

Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO today to see if it’s the right tool for your sales team.

In this article, we’ll explain why solar sales are on the rise, the challenges of selling solar panels in 2022, and 14 best practices to help you close more deals right now.

We have a lot to get to, so let’s dive in and get started!

Why are solar sales on the rise

There’s no doubt about it: solar energy is more popular today than at any other point in human history. The question is, why? There are a few reasons:

• Customers: The average solar customer is unique. Sure, they want to save money on their electricity bill. But many of them want to produce clean energy, too, and support the planet. Solar gives them this opportunity.
• Affordability: New technology makes solar energy more affordable to everyday folks like you and me. In fact, the cost of large-scale solar projects has plunged by 85% in the last decade, thanks to advances in the space.
• Legislation: Finally, governmental commitments have helped the solar industry grow. As of this writing, 38 states in the U.S. offer solar incentives. The goal? To stimulate interest in this kind of energy.

It’s not hard to see why solar energy has become so popular in recent years. But that doesn’t mean that solar companies are walking down easy street. There are numerous challenges that said companies must overcome to find success.

The challenge for solar companies

As mentioned, solar sales are on the rise, which means there’s an incredible opportunity for solar companies (like yours!) to boost sales.

But, as in every industry, incredible opportunities often lead to stiff competition. Put simply, everyone wants a piece of the solar pie and is willing to fight tooth and nail to get it. This is a challenge that your company must overcome.

Here’s another challenge: the average sales cycle in the solar industry is 8.9 months. That’s a long time—much longer than it takes to sell a car or enterprise-level software, even though these things often cost much more.

Because of this, successful solar sales reps need to have an intimate understanding of the solar sales funnel. That way they can guide prospects through it faster.

Let’s talk more about that…

Key stages in the solar sales funnel

Solar sales is a numbers game.

Generally speaking, the more prospects your reps talk to, the more deals they’ll close. But you can streamline the entire sales process by optimizing your solar sales funnel. To do that, you first need to understand the five key stages, outlined below.

Prospecting

The prospecting stage is when solar sales reps identify potential customers to contact. The key to success at this point is qualification.

Here’s the hard truth: not everyone wants to buy solar panels from you. Some people will want solar, but won’t be able to afford it. Others will be interested, but own properties that don’t receive enough sunlight to operate panels.

To sell solar, you need to find prospects who want to invest in the technology, and have the ability to do so, both financially and geographically speaking.

Connecting

Once your reps have built up lists of potential leads, they need to reach out to them. This is known as the connecting stage of the solar sales funnel.

It’s important to remember that the goal at this stage of the sales process is not to make sales. It’s to set appointments. Once an appointment is set, reps will be able to expound on the benefits of solar and attempt to close a deal.

It’s worth pointing out that prospects forget about appointments all of the time. We suggest investing in some kind of appointment reminder app for your solar selling team. Doing so can reduce no-shows by 10% – 15%!

Considering

The considering stage of the solar sales funnel includes your reps’ pitches to prospects, follow-up procedures, and everything else that goes into making sales.

Every one of your reps’ pitches should answer three questions:

1. Why does solar make sense for this particular prospect?
2. Why should our company be the one to sell them solar panels?
3. Why should this specific prospect invest in solar right now, not tomorrow?

If your reps can answer these three questions in an adequate manner, they’ll be well on their way to closing deals. After that, they’ll just need to send eye-catching proposals, follow-up on a regular basis, and make it easy for prospects to say, “yes”.

Decision

Your reps have met with the prospect and answered all of their questions. Said prospect has now entered the decision stage of the solar sales funnel.

Unfortunately, this is often where deals stall or fall through. Sometimes it’s because the prospect can’t secure financing. Other times it’s because a trusted advisor (their real estate agent, for example) tells them not to install solar panels.

To ensure prospects sign on the dotted line, you need to stay focused, hammer home the benefits of your solar systems, and simplify the process when possible.

Post-win

Selling solar panels is the goal, but it’s not the end. Just because a prospect agrees to make a purchase doesn’t mean you can drop them like a hot potato.

The fifth and final stage of the solar sales process is known as post-win. This is when sales reps check in with new customers to make sure the installation process is smooth and painless. Failing to do this could result in expensive change orders.

Following-up with new customers will also give you the chance to ask for referrals. This is important because solar leads can cost hundreds of dollars to secure. Referrals, on the other hand, are completely free. Win!

Solar sales best practices

Let’s recap:

So far, we’ve talked about why solar sales are on the rise and the challenges you’ll face when selling solar in 2022 and beyond. We also covered the key stages in the solar sales funnel so that you can, hopefully, guide prospects through them faster.

Now, let’s talk about a few solar sales best practices you can use to supercharge your department’s workflows. If you implement a few of these, selling solar panels will get a whole lot easier—we guarantee it!

Start with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Who are you selling solar to? If you don’t know the answer to this question, you’ll struggle to find customers, close deals, and achieve success.

So, before you do anything else, pinpoint your ideal customer. Then create an ideal customer profile, often referred to as an ICP, to distribute to your reps.

Your ICP should include information about the person (or company, if you sell solar panels to commercial clients) you want to sell to, including their geographical location, their financial situation, and the specific problems you’ll help them solve.

Use ICP data to find qualified prospects

Once you’ve created an ICP, you can use it in your prospecting efforts.

This is the key to finding qualified prospects who actually want to invest in the solar panels you sell. Just make sure you look for four key pieces of information:

1. Home Ownership: Only talk to folks who own their homes.
2. Home Value: Spend extra time with people who own big, expensive houses, as these homes will use more electricity than smaller ones.
3. Credit Score: Focus on prospects who have the financial ability to buy solar panels from you. Their credit score will be a good indicator.
4. Location: Center your efforts on the people who live in locations that can accommodate solar panels. Strike all others from your leads list.

SPOTIO makes it easy to find qualified leads thanks to its impressive sales intelligence technology, which will enable you to filter through 200+ data points and pinpoint potential buyers that meet all of your ICP criteria.

Get crystal clear on what you’re selling

Always remember: your reps aren’t meeting with prospects to educate them on how solar panels work. They’re meeting with prospects to explain how your company’s solar panels will solve the energy-related problems they experience.

In other words, reps need to focus on the money prospects can save, the additional value solar panels lend to houses, the environmental impacts of solar energy, etc.

These are the things your company sells. Make sure this is crystal clear before you send reps to meet with potential customers. Trust us, selling solar will become much easier once you and your team internalize this fact.

Prepare your solar sales pitch

Success in solar sales requires a rock-solid pitch.

As mentioned above, the best solar sales pitches answer three questions. 1) Why should the prospect invest in solar? 2) Why should the prospect buy from your company? 3) And why should the prospect buy right now, not later?

Here are a few more tips to make sure your reps nail their pitches:

• Use Data and Visuals: Data and visuals make the benefits of solar come alive. Use them and watch your sales skyrocket.
• Tell Customer Stories: Customer stories build trust. Prospects will think, “Well, if it helped that guy, why won’t it help me, too?”
• Create a Sense of Urgency: Make prospects want to buy now by telling them about the changing nature of incentives, the continual rise in energy prices, and other true facts that may help them make a buying decision.

Set minimum daily sales activities

At the end of the day, you can’t force people to buy solar panels from you.

You can, however, make sure that your reps send emails, make phone calls, and otherwise follow-up with potential buyers in a consistent and timely manner.

Set minimum daily sales activities for each of the reps in your department. This will keep them accountable. It will also increase the number of sales they make.

Canvass in neighborhoods with solar

Here’s a super ninja solar selling tip for you: canvas in areas that already have solar.

“What?” you’re thinking. “Why would I do that? If one house in the neighborhood already has solar panels, the neighbors will undoubtedly know about the technology. If they really wanted panels, they’d simply reach out to us themselves.”

Not true. Most people don’t realize the benefits of solar. Some might not know who to contact to ask about getting panels on their home. Others are flat out busy.

All of these things keep prospects from reaching out to solar companies on their own. But none of them mean that said prospects aren’t interested. By asking reps to canvas in neighborhoods that already have solar, you give your team the best chance to connect with interested prospects and set more appointments.

Create a seamless transition from canvasser to closer

Does your sales department employ canvassers and closers? Then you need to make sure the transition from one to the other is completely seamless.

This is easy to do with a tool like SPOTIO, which will allow canvassers to capture important details about prospects and book appointments with them. Once this is done, canvassers can easily send said notes to closers and add the appointments to their personal calendars. It’s a super convenient way to do sales!

Automate the sales process

Your reps meet with and engage a ton of prospects. To save time and make sure none of these potential customers fall through the cracks, invest in automation.

Imagine how much more your reps will get done when emails and text messages can be scheduled to send at opportune moments—without reps having to click the “send” button. And how many more prospects they’ll talk to when they’re reminded to make follow-up calls based on proven sales sequences.

SPOTIO’s Autoplays feature will give you this ability.

Create customizable sales workflows that include the most important sales activities, like making calls, sending emails and texts, and scheduling in-person visits. Then allow reps to access these sequences on any device.

This will keep them accountable, help them remember which tasks to perform and when, and ensure that more of your prospects turn into paying customers.

Understand and plan for objections

You know that most people can benefit from solar. That won’t stop your prospects from showering you with a waterfall of objections…

• Solar is just too expensive.
• Solar panels are really hard to maintain.
• Solar will make it more difficult to sell my home.

The list goes on and on. Fortunately, these objections don’t have to slow your department down—as long as your reps understand the most common ones and the best ways to overcome them.

Follow up with leads

Did you know that 80% of sales require five or more follow-ups? If your reps don’t check in with prospects on a regular basis, they won’t close many deals.

Fortunately, following-up is easy with SPOTIO’s Autoplays (mentioned above) and similar tools. All you have to do is tell the app when you want to follow up. It will then send an email/text for you at the appropriate time, or shoot you a reminder to call/visit the prospect in question.

When your reps do follow-up, make sure they offer something of value. They can, for example, offer to answer questions or share an eBook your company just published on the benefits of solar. Ask them to limit “Just checking in” emails.

Re-canvass neighborhoods

Your team just canvassed a neighborhood. What should they do now? They should re-canvass said neighborhood after a suitable amount of time has passed.

Our research indicated that returning to neighborhoods until a 60% saturation level is reached can boost booked appointments by 25%.

This is because re-canvassing enables solar sales teams to connect with prospects they missed the first time around. It also allows prospects to become familiar with sales reps. Familiarity almost always leads to more sales.

While making second, third, and fourth passes through a neighborhood, make sure your reps name drop the people they’ve already booked appointments with and/or the folks who’ve already bought a solar system from them.

Doing so will help build trust with prospects and increase the likelihood of a sale. When it comes to selling solar panels, trust is key.

Monitor rep activity and performance

Do you know what your reps do in the field? You hope they’re talking with customers and closing deals. But how can you know this for sure? You have to closely monitor rep activity and performance, which you can do with SPOTIO.

The SPOTIO mobile app will allow you to track your reps in the field. That way you can see exactly where they go and when they go there.

This level of information will help you properly diagnose poor performance. Are your reps under performing because of a lack of effort or training? When you know the answer, you can act accordingly and improve your department.

(Note: This feature can be disabled in SPOTIO if reps feel it violates their privacy.)

You can use SPOTIO to track other rep activities, too, such as the number of emails and text messages they send, calls they make, and prospects they visit.

Ask for referrals

Every business wants more referrals. Why? Because they help sales teams close more deals without having to invest a ton of money into marketing.

Referrals are extra important in the solar industry, where it can cost $150 – $200 to generate an appointment-ready lead. Buy-ready leads can cost even more, often between $500 and $1,000 each. Referred leads, on the other hand, are free.

Even better, referred leads are often the highest quality leads your reps will encounter because the potential customer will already know and trust your brand.

Invest in the right technology

Last, but certainly not least, to sell solar at a consistent clip, you should invest in the right technology. We’re talking about CRM solutions, sales engagement platforms, proposal design apps, and other tools that make selling solar a lot easier.

• CRM Solutions: Customer relationship management software, CRM software for short, will help your sales team keep track of customers. It’s an essential tool for all sales teams, regardless of industry.
• Sales Engagement Platforms: A sales engagement platform does exactly what you think it would: help sales reps engage prospects. SPOTIO is the sales engagement platform that was specifically designed for field sales teams, which makes it perfect for solar sales purposes.
• Proposal Design Apps: A proposal design app will help you create custom, eye-catching proposals in a matter of minutes. This kind of tool will make your reps more productive and your company seem more professional.

Increase solar sales with SPOTIO

If you’re in the business of selling solar panels, you’re probably wondering, “How can I boost sales for my department?”

The answer is to implement the solar sales best practices we outline in this article. Once you do, you’ll be able to take advantage of the massive opportunity that the solar industry represents and shoot past your competitors.

One of the top best practices is to invest in technology solutions. CRMs, sales engagement platforms, etc. will make your reps more productive, help them appear more professional, and allow them to close more deals.

Speaking of technology, why not give SPOTIO a try today?

Thousands of solar sales reps use our app every day to connect with prospects and move them through the five stages of the solar sales funnel.

Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO to see if it’s the right tool for your team.

HBR found that optimizing sales territory design can increase revenue by 2 to 7% without making a single change to the company’s overall resources or strategy. When done properly, there’s a good amount of leg-work that goes into sales territory design. But it’s a crucial part of setting your team up for success.

Sales territory design is often viewed as a tedious process by managers who lack a thorough understanding of the direct impact it can have on their team. Quite simply, this is one of the first steps you should take to ensure your team is working in territories with enough prospects who match your ideal customer profile.

With the amount of analytics available today, salespeople should rarely walk blindly into new territories. Lead generators, like Lead Machine, are a great way to identify key territories and potential customers based on the market demographics of your ideal customer.

6 Signs of Poor Sales Territory Design

Establishing a well thought out sales territory design will take a lot of effort in the beginning. But it’s imperative to invest the time, energy and resources. Not doing so will waste your sales peoples’ time and cost you money. Don’t risk losing out on closeable prospects because you didn’t take the time to plan.

• Well designed sales territories can increase sales productivity by as much as 10%-20% (Source)
• If sales territories are not adjusted periodically, sales organizations can encounter situations where growth is constrained in up to 20% – 30% of territories (Source)
• Research by the academics Andris A. Zoltners, PK Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer showed that sales territory redesign can increase sales by as much as 7% —without altering strategy or budget.

# 1 | Salespeople targeting the wrong prospects

Understanding that your sales fortune is in the follow up shouldn’t be news to you. But have you ever looked into the accounts each sales rep is actively following up with compared to the ones they’re not?

There’s a lot more to the story than just making sure salespeople are re-engaging potential customers. Many organizations have reps who aren’t following up with quality leads, and others who are spending a good portion of their time chasing low-potential opportunities.

It goes without saying that this requires better data, and coaching.

On the other hand, many fail to consider the very real possibility that this is a sales territory design issue. The salespeople who don’t have the number of high quality prospects needed to stay busy on a daily basis are almost forced to over pursue the potential customers with a low probability of converting.

That’s clearly not an ideal situation. And what’s even worse is this can cause good accounts to be ignored. When sales territory design isn’t a priority, some salespeople are blessed with an abundance of quality leads to work while others are stuck chasing the chicken.

The sales rep with too many accounts to work often becomes too busy to put forth the required effort needed on every deal. These individuals also tend to make their quota solely by working the “easy” accounts due to the large number of leads in their funnel. They lose their drive and hunger.

The easiest and best solution for resolving this issue is to reexamine how you design sales territories. If you end up in the situation above, you could be forced to redistribute accounts from one sales rep to another, leading to a lot of complaining. This type of negativity casts a black cloud over the company culture you’ve worked so hard to build.

#2 | Sales reps are duplicating efforts

If your reps aren’t crystal clear on which accounts they’re responsible for and in what areas, they’ll end up working the same leads. This problem is two-fold:

1. Your reps will get frustrated. Nobody wants to take the time to travel to a potential customer’s place, only to learn that a colleague was just there a few days ago and already planted seeds to make a sale.
2. Your prospects will become annoyed. Leads don’t want sales reps to duplicate their efforts anymore than reps do. They have work to do and unnecessary conversations with outside sales teams are a distraction.

Frustrated sales reps and annoyed leads is exactly what you don’t want. Fortunately, proper sales territory management will solve this problem.

#3 | Territories not getting enough coverage

Another sign of poor sales territory planning is a lack of coverage. Are your reps able to adequately cover their entire territories? If not, you have a problem. To solve it, you have to determine the reason why your reps are struggling in this area.

Is the territory too big? Are your reps not putting in enough effort? Do they simply need to be trained to cover more ground in less time?

The second and third possibilities are sales productivity issues, but the first is a sign that you need to optimize sales territories for your team. We’ll show you how to do it in a later section of this article.

#4 | Sales reps are spending too much time in the car

If you don’t segment territories correctly, there’s a good chance your reps’ windshield time will go up. And every sales manager knows that time behind a windshield is time not spent meeting potential customers and closing deals.

When creating territories, you’ll want to make sure that each one isn’t too large, as this will increase the time reps spend driving from one prospect to another. You’ll also want to ensure the routes between prospects are optimized.

Think about it this way: there are a couple of different ways to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco. You can drive the I-5 Freeway, which will take you about six hours, assuming you don’t hit traffic. Or you can drive the 101 highway, which will take you much, much longer. The same is true for your sales team.

You want your reps to take the most direct route from prospect to prospect so that they don’t waste time in the car. This is an essential part of proper sales organization and territory planning.

#5 | Hiring and retention problems in select territories

Turnover is a very real problem in today’s sales culture.

Estimates of annual turnover among U.S. salespeople run as high as 27%—twice the rate in the overall labor force.

A way to solve this issue—one that you may not have considered before— has to do with how you design sales territories.

A high turnover rate is a potential symptom of poor sales territory design. Salespeople often leave their organizations because they aren’t making money. Assigning new hires to territories that don’t show promise is setting them up for failure.

While most won’t want to admit this, the correlation between field sales and factors related to the salesperson’s effort and ability are likely less understood. Reps who don’t have the level of opportunity and success early on will easily get discouraged. You’ll quickly notice any positive momentum they had start to slip away, and with it goes their time of employment.

This is especially true if they see other people in the company experiencing a high level of success. Watching tenured salespeople who can milk a territory yet still find a way to be 100% over quota will only lead to frustration.

The easiest way to combat this issue head on is to assign accounts to reps who have low opportunity. Sales managers should implement a required activity level on opportunities and reassign the ones that aren’t met. This is assuming the sales rep not getting the same number of quality leads is actually putting in the effort needed to achieve their targets.

By giving more accounts to salespeople who have low opportunity, you give them a greater chance of generating sales and becoming successful. This could solve the retention problem you may be having.

#6 | Poor incentive and compensation structure

Every team will have top performers and underachievers. But where are the rest of your team members falling on the achievement scale? You want your top performers to make the most money, of course. But consider the message your compensation structure might send to others on your team.

If the highest earning sales people aren’t also some of the hardest working, it could be a result of unfair sales territory design. Your compensation structure may need to be restructured to match your sales process. Opportunities that are unevenly distributed skew the common metrics used to determine incentive-based pay.

When the numbers are impacted so heavily, it’s likely due to the territory more so than it is the sales rep. The reason being is that metrics tend to favor those with a greater number of large accounts in their pipeline. An alternative comp plan is based on a market share metric where those with fewer opportunities and accounts are more heavily favored.

If you want to accurately represent performance and ability within your organization, consider rethinking your sales territory design strategy to give reps more equitable opportunities with the right customer. Doing so will significantly increase the likelihood that metrics will paint a clearer picture based on sales skills, leading to properly incentivized pay.

The goal should be to build a culture that enforces pay for performance. Establishing a fair compensation plan is one of the most effective ways to motivate salespeople.

10 Step Process for Designing High-Performing Sales Territories

Due to our data-rich environment, you have access to more information than you need to address the problems you face. The best and easiest way for the majority of companies to start the sales territory design process is by focusing on geography, industry, and size.

For companies whose sales are highly relationship-based, randomly placed or sized, or target a very limited number of prospects, “named” accounts are a common alternative approach.

Key considerations in territory design:

• Is the workload equally divided between each member of the team?
• Does the territory design provide equal compensation opportunities?
• Is there a good mix of existing and new accounts per territory?
• Does the territory design allow easy travel time management?

Step 1 | Set clear sales goals

Accountability produces results. Think about what you want to accomplish and create S.M.A.R.T goals.

Most profitable (least risky): Evaluate which of your territories are most successful and double down on what’s already working.

Most growth: If you’re more focused on the long-term instead of the short-term, focus on territories that haven’t been worked yet. It’s likely to take longer to become profitable, but will generate greater growth over time.

Learning / new markets: To establish yourself in a new market segment or determine if it’s viable, send a canvasser into this territory to accomplish a specific task. This will help determine exactly what’s needed to succeed in that market.

Step 2 | Analyze capacity and performance

Once you’ve set clear sales goals, you need to look at historical performance data to determine your team’s sales capacity, i.e. the number of sales reps you need to accomplish your objectives.

To do this, ask yourself, “how many reps do I have on my team right now?” Then assess how many of them will realistically hit quota. Combine these figures with your organization’s average ramp time to understand how many sales reps you need to consistently hit your goals, month in and month out.

Step 3 | Identify your ICP

Next, identify your sales organization’s ideal customer profile, better known as an ICP. These are the people who have the highest likelihood of buying from your company and remaining loyal. They’re very important to your team’s success.

You need to know who these people are, what they like and dislike, the challenges they deal with on a regular basis, and where they’re located.

The question is, how do you find them? Start by analyzing your current customers. Which ones have been with you the longest and represent the most revenue for your company? Find out what these folks have in common with each other. Then use them as a template for your sales team’s ideal customer profile.

Note: SPOTIO’s Lead Machine will give you the data you need to identify new leads. With this tool, you’ll be able to search territories for qualified prospects, while filtering out bad fits using over 200 data attributes.

Step 4 | Use geographic and business data to design territories

At this point, you know what your sales team’s goals are, how many reps you need to accomplish said goals, and who your ideal customer is. Now it’s time to start designing territories that will help you accomplish your objectives.

There are different ways to create territories. For example, you can cut them based on geographical boundaries, segment boundaries, revenue boundaries, etc.

The method you use to determine territory boundaries will depend on your company and its customers, the products you sell, and the reps you employ. However you cut your territories, make sure the boundaries are equal and distinct.

Step 5 | Visualize new and existing leads

Now that your territories are cut, use a tool like SPOTIO to visualize the leads in each of them. When we say “visualize” we mean it literally.

SPOTIO allows users to visualize any data point, including ICPs, as pins on a digital map, which will help bring CRM data to life and ensure you don’t miss anything. Every data point pin can be color-coded as well to increase comprehension.

For instance, new leads can be assigned the color blue, missed opportunities can be yellow, current customers can be green, and ready-to-buy prospects can be red. Then, when you look at your digital map of customers, you’ll be able to quickly see where each one is located and how valuable they are to your company.

Step 6 | Segment territories by lead quality and quantity

You’ve visualized your leads in SPOTIO and color-coded them for easy reference. This will make it super simple to segment each of your territories by the quality and quantity of your leads, which is the next step in this process.

Take a minute to understand where your leads are and which of them represent the best opportunities for your sales team. That way you and your reps can increase sales productivity and focus your valuable time on the best leads.

Step 7 | Rank your talent

It’s important to know how each sales rep stacks up against the rest of your team. To accomplish this, create a scorecard and evaluate your sales reps to identify who your top, middle, and low level performers are.

1. How much is their quota?
2. Do they consistently achieve this number?
3. How many current customers and prospects are in their funnel?
4. How many viable prospects are located within their territory?

SPOTIO’s Leaderboard (above) is a great way to compare sales reps against each other. Doing so will give you actionable data you can use to coach your reps more effectively.

Once ranked, match the most fruitful territories to the higher ranked reps. However, things change throughout the year. Sales reps can exceed or fall short of expectations. So if adjustments need to be made, go ahead and do so.

Step 8 | Measure territory performance

Tracking performance against the KPI’s for each territory (think activities performed, the result of each activity, etc.) is extremely valuable because it gives managers key insights and data into sales reps performance.

With these metrics you can design more balanced territories and allocate them in a way that gives everyone the best chance to succeed.

The importance of this data isn’t limited to understanding the needs of individual sales reps. Sales metrics are invaluable in understanding the success of every sales team within the company, and the entire sales department as a whole. They’ll also help you to spot trends and determine inefficiencies.

To accomplish this, I’d highly recommend implementing a sales enablement tool like SPOTIO to help you measure and see:

1. Team performance in relation to your sales funnel
2. Data from custom statuses and fields based on KPIs
3. Graphs representing team performance, best time and day to knock, maps, etc.
4. The number of attempts it takes to establish contacts, get leads and make sales

Step 9 | Analyze activity metrics

As mentioned above, it’s important to analyze your team’s activity metrics such as who they’ve contacted, how they contacted them, and the result of the interaction.

This is important because it will help you and your team improve sales productivity. You can easily look at the metrics and determine what’s working and what isn’t. You can then spend more time on the former and less on the latter.

The only way to fully optimize sales territories is to learn how your sales reps spend their time in each territory and adjust your sales process for peak efficiency.

Step 10 | Include Salespeople

Involving your sales reps is an important step in this process. Your team may surprise you with ideas you wouldn’t have come up with on your own.

It may take a little longer to create territories and implement your new plan. But your sales reps will feel valued if you involve them in the development process, which will help eliminate most of the typical frustrations associated with change.

The Benefits of Effective Sales Territory Design

Designing sales territories takes some effort, but is vital in establishing a solid foundation for your sales engine. The benefits you will notice are:

1. More time selling and less time driving from prospect to prospect
2. Better sales force morale due to the more even distribution of workload and sales potential
3. Improved customer coverage, resulting in more sales
4. A better knowledge of which prospects you should focus on
5. Higher revenue potential

If your sales territory design is on-point, the workload of sales reps declines and they become more efficient and thus, more successful. And a successful employee is a happy employee, which means your department’s turnover rate will improve, too.

Design High-Performing Territories With SPOTIO

Sales territory design is essential to the success of your sales team. Without it, your reps will overlap, grow frustrated, and maybe even quit.

The good news is all of these efficiencies are perfectly avoidable. All you have to do is implement a sales territory management plan. To do so, follow the 10-step process we outlined above and (this is important!) stick to it.

The easiest way to design high-performing territories is with SPOTIO. Our industry-leading software is easy to use and powerful, enabling our users to quickly cut territories based on geography, customer type, or anything else.

Once a territory is cut, SPOTIO helps you manage it by allowing you to visualize leads, segment them as you wish, and track the sales activities that happen inside them. In other words, it’s the complete sales territory design tool you need.

Request a free demo of SPOTIO today to see if it’s the right solution for your team.

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales engagement and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.