Whether you’re looking to boost solar panel installation, help companies with financing, or emphasize the importance of system maintenance, a lead generation strategy can increase solar company revenue.
Marketing your solar business through outbound sales development and inbound digital marketing is essential for building your sales pipeline, piquing the interest of potential buyers, guiding them to the end of the sales cycle.
If you want to get more commercial solar sales, you must do the following:
- Identify the Types of Prospects You Want in Your Solar Lead Funnel
- Choose a Business Growth Strategy That Aligns With Your Target Audience
- Get in Front of Solar Decision-Makers With Sales Appointment Setting Services
- Bring Leads to Your Solar Business Through Digital Marketing
- Use Content Marketing Materials to Promote Your Solar Products and Services
- Align Solar Sales Development and Marketing Efforts for Maximized Business Growth
Identify the Types of Prospects You Want in Your Solar Lead Funnel
Every company has its own perception of a “high-quality sales opportunity.” So, although a prospect may be interested in your company’s solar services, they may not fit your company’s criteria, which is what makes defining your ideal prospect such an important part of building a sustainable solar lead funnel.
Before sales reps reach out to prospects or marketing specialists craft sales and marketing content, we suggest that you determine your company qualifiers to ensure you’re getting the best business opportunities for your pipeline. For example, many of our solar clients have a sales lead qualifier of at least 10,000 square feet because it ensures they’re getting a quality business opportunity rather than occasional project work. Additionally, it ensures that the opportunity being presented to the client results in a positive ROI.
While defining sales lead qualifiers are crucial, so is creating different buyer personas within your target market. Dividing potential customers in your target market into buyer personas can help you better segment prospects and leads, allowing yourself to better market your solar panel and energy maintenance services.
For example, the buyer personas between business owners and facility managers for solar services differ in their pain points; therefore, they must be approached differently. Creating and dividing prospects into their different buyer personas encourages your SDR and marketing teams to provide them with information that aligns most with their wants, needs, and interests.
Choose a Business Growth Strategy That Aligns With Your Target Audience
Once you have a firm understanding of your target market and their buyer personas, it’s time to select a solar lead generation strategy that aligns with how they go about making purchases. While some buyer personas make interaction better with appointment setting, others may see more leads generated through inbound lead generation. Selecting a strategy that aligns best with your target audience ensures that you get the most gain from your business growth efforts.
Get in Front of Solar Decision-Makers With Sales Appointment Setting Services
Many industries benefit from B2B appointment setting services, and the solar industry is no different. The goal of B2B appointment setting is to get your business in front of potential customers so you can pitch your solar services and secure more revenue.
If you want to set solar appointments that are likely to result in closed business, it’s important that you build an appointment setting that’s sustainable and scalable so it can grow as your business continues to expand.
Here’s a breakdown of how your solar sales process should look:
- Prospecting: This stage of the sales process consists of finding prospects that meet your ideal customer qualifications. While this could include buying solar leads, it could also consist of using sales prospecting tools and technologies to find the best prospects to fill your outbound sales pipeline.
- Lead qualification: When sales reps start contacting prospects you’ve filled in your pipeline, it’s important that they qualify the prospects to ensure they chase potential buyers that are interested in your solar services and are to result in a positive ROI.
- Lead nurture: Not every solar lead is ready to convert into a sales opportunity after the first point of contact, which is why lead nurturing is an essential part of the sales process. Lead nurturing empowers sales reps to engage with decision-makers when timing makes the most sense for them, reducing the amount of time they spend in the sales cycle.
- Sales appointment set: After days, weeks, or months after nurturing qualified prospects, it’s time for sales reps to secure the sales appointment between a decision-maker and a member of your internal sales team. Here, the account and sales executives provide them with a customized sales presentation that encourages them to close a deal with your business.
- Sales meeting attended: Account or sales executives attend the sales meeting with a qualified prospect and pitch them your solar products and services. They take this time to learn about what wants, needs, and pain points of the sales opportunity and expand on how your solar business can help them achieve or resolve these components.
- Deal closed: Once the sales meeting is under wraps, it’s time to get the solar lead to sign on the dotted line. This can happen immediately following the meeting; however, it also may require some follow-up from the account or sales executive. Therefore, you must send them a proposal and see what further hesitations they may have.
Bring Leads to Your Solar Business Through Digital Marketing
While outbound prospect list building tools are great for getting started with your lead generation efforts, what happens to the interested buyers that aren’t in the system? Well, this is where a solar marketing strategy comes in. Creating and implementing a digital marketing plan for your solar business is vital for generating inbound leads that are interested in your solar energy products and services.
Using solar industry-specific buzzwords in content is crucial for efficient website development and search engine optimization (SEO), which increases the likelihood of your website showing up on the search results page and brining user to your site.
If you want to optimize your solar digital marketing strategy through your website, blog posts, and landing pages, consider implementing the following solar keywords into your content:
For more insight into the latest solar digital marketing best practices, read our blog here.
Use Content Marketing Materials to Promote Your Solar Products and Services
Marketing collateral is a great addition to your solar marketing and sales efforts, and they can be used in a wide range of scenarios. For example, bringing materials like brochures, case studies, sell sheets, pitch decks, and infographics to your appointments leaves the prospect with information on hand and offers a good impression of your company.
Additionally, solar marketing collateral can be used in your appointment setting and inbound lead generation efforts. Sometimes, leads don’t want to spend five minutes on the phone discussing your company—they want to learn about you on their own time. Instead of pestering a prospect by calling them repeatedly, you can send a sales enablement asset that boils down your sales pitch more effectively than a phone conversation.
When it comes to using content marketing materials for your solar marketing strategy, they can be used for social media posts or embedded into your website for increased SEO value. These sales enablement assets can help build brand awareness and establish your company identity, which can help build trust between your solar business and potential buyers.
Align Solar Sales Development and Marketing Efforts for Maximized Business Growth
If you want to meet your solar buyers where they are, it’s essential that you align your sales development and marketing efforts. While sales and marketing are often seen as two different departments, streamlining their goals and business growth efforts empowers your company to generate more leads and know how to effectively pitch them, encouraging them to close business with your company. Both sales and marketing teams are responsible for lead generation; however, it’s important that you have a streamlined process in place to ensure no high-quality solar lead falls through the cracks.
Key Takeaways
Solar lead generation doesn’t come easy, but it’s worth the ROI. With a solar appointment setting and inbound digital marketing strategy in place, you have the opportunity to build your sales pipeline and effectively move qualified prospects through the solar lead funnel.
At Abstrakt Marketing Group, we partner with solar companies like yours throughout the nation. Whether you’re a solar company that works with carports or prioritizes building solar farms, we help solar companies generates leads for all aspects of the industry.
We know how valuable solar solutions are to businesses—and we want to promote them to your target market as well. When you’re ready to maximize your solar lead generation efforts, contact the sales and marketing experts at Abstrakt!
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