In our latest episode of the Solar Coaster Podcast, we had the pleasure of hosting the phenomenal Dean Mannix, a sales performance coach with an impressive track record of advising executives from top-tier companies including Goldman Sachs, Oracle, Coca Cola, and Toyota. Dean shared his invaluable expertise on elevating sales effectiveness, the battery market, achieving personal and business goals, and the significance of sales coaching in the solar industry.
ABOUT THE PODCAST:
Welcome to the Solar Coaster! A podcast for navigating through the ups and downs of the Australian Solar and Energy Industry. Hosted by the Supply Partners Technical team and joined by industry professionals each episode to help you turn chaos into stability. We'll be talking about solar, batteries, EVs, Electrification and much more, so sit back and enjoy the ride.
LINKS:
In our latest episode of the Solar Coaster Podcast, we had the pleasure of hosting the phenomenal Dean Mannix, a sales performance coach with an impressive track record of advising executives from top-tier companies including Goldman Sachs, Oracle, Coca Cola, and Toyota. Dean shared his invaluable expertise on elevating sales effectiveness, the battery market, achieving personal and business goals, and the significance of sales coaching in the solar industry.
ABOUT THE PODCAST:
Welcome to the Solar Coaster! A podcast for navigating through the ups and downs of the Australian Solar and Energy Industry. Hosted by the Supply Partners Technical team and joined by industry professionals each episode to help you turn chaos into stability. We'll be talking about solar, batteries, EVs, Electrification and much more, so sit back and enjoy the ride.
LINKS:
Welcome to the Solar Coaster, a podcast about the ups and downs of the australian solar industry brought to you by the technical team at supply partners with host Wade Allen and technical guru Andrew Thomson. Okay, we're rolling. Thank you for tuning in to the Solar Coaster podcast brought to you by supply partners, Australia's technical distributor for solar and energy storage equipment. We are not just box movers, but we bring you technical and sales support to help you stay ahead of the curve and in the cart of this absolutely exhilarating roller coaster ride we call the australian renewable energy industry. I am your host, Wade Allen, and with me, as always, our senior technical guru, Andrew Thomson, at. Thank you, buddy. Welcome. And speaking of sales support, we have a very special guest for you today. No stranger to the camera and microphone that's in front of him, a true rags to rich story. I love this. He's a number one bestselling author. He's a global sales performance coach who advises, coaches and trains executives from some of the world's largest companies. And like Westpac. Right, a couple other big. Ah. Oh, you want to go with the Goldman Sachs, Oracle, Namura. Wow. Coca Cola, Toyota. Amazing companies in the world. A friend of the business, a friend of ours and yours. The list goes on and on. Dean Mannix, thank you for being here, Dean. We really appreciate it. Fantastic. Fantastic. It wasn't quite rags. I mean, I did have board shorts. Oh, yeah. So where did you grow up? Was it the Goldie Gold coast? Yeah, absolutely. Sunny Gold coast. That's awesome. So what's going on, bud? What's new? What's new? Oh, wow. World's going crazy. Clients under a lot of pressure at the moment. Getting more and more clients, talking about leads drying up, things getting a bit tougher. Obviously, that pressure is coming through into the system. And so it's hustle time. It's hustle time. So it's, hey, if it's twice as hard to sell, hustle twice as much. And that's where things are at at the moment. So lots of exciting projects. Onwards with my doctorate. So starting the research section of that soon, which is exciting and staying fit. And I'm going to be a grandfather. Wow. Congratulations. So my beautiful daughter's having a beautiful boy in September in New York. In New York, yeah. So you're going to make the trip? Yeah, obviously. Yeah, absolutely. That's exciting. I've got a couple of teenagers, too, and I'm already thinking of being a, like, I'm excited. Don't be in a rush. I'm not in a rush, but I'm totally excited for it. I think. Pretty amazing. That's awesome, man. Well, I would actually have to say, and Andrew will probably agree with me, that what you just said about leads drying up and it being a bit more difficult these days. We've actually heard a lot of that. Hey, Andrew, definitely we're hoping that maybe they'll pick up in the next three months, but in the meantime, people just need to get creative with how they're. Pulling their leads in. So hopefully you can tell us a. Bit more about that today. Yeah, for sure. Now, obviously Dean's here for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons we wanted to bring in is because you have developed a brand new sales training programme called Energy Solutions sales. And this is going to be huge for solar salespeople out there because it's going to aid in that transition that we've been harping on for the last year now. And that's or two years moving from a solar business to an energy business as you add batteries into your pitch and everything like that. So it's not only going to aid them in making that transition, but a lot of people are afraid to, I'd imagine. And so what you've done is you've created a programme that's going to not only help them make that transition, but help them close more sales and increase their overall transactions and margin and everything like that. Yeah. Look, I mean, as a market becomes more competitive and fundamentally the market becomes smaller, you've got to think about a number of things. One is differentiation becomes critical, conversion becomes incredibly important and deal size becomes incredibly important along with margin. So if you're not thinking across all four of those, then fundamentally you're the one that's going to get caught under the bus, there's plenty of opportunity out there and there's plenty of great salespeople and great companies that I'm working with that are succeeding and doing really, really well. But you just have to be hustling, you have to be more deliberate about the conversion side of things. You've got to be more deliberate about making sure you get yourself out of that bucket of what I call the solar bandits. Because what we're going to see in a compressing market is worse solar bandit behaviour, more cutting margins down to zero, cheap and cheerful, making promises that can't be kept, and customers who are probably more susceptible to that sort of sale. And so I think you've got to go the other way, aggressively. Okay, cool. Well, before we dive into it too deep, and I'm really excited too. I always love just getting a bit of your origin story. It does help people sort of humanise you because there's no smoke and mirrors to your success. You're breathing the same air and everything like that. Anything's possible if you set your mind to it. So if we could just ask a couple of questions like where you came from and how it all started. When did you jump into sales? So I guess I jumped into sales at the age of eight. Oh, wow. Lemonade stand. No, way. More sophisticated than that. Okay. My father was a printer and there were all these offcuts of the printing stuff. And so I used to make up notepads out of the offcuts and sell them at school. So that was the amazing started. Then my next job I thought about this was quite funny. Then my next one was a paper run. Okay. And I figured out that if I sold papers at the pub, people were often drunk and would put them down. I could pick them back up and sell them again. I love the entrepreneur. Yeah. I filled out the integrity part in my sales programme a little bit later in life. So at twelve, I was maybe a little bit too keen on cash. Okay, that's fair enough, yes. And then actually through uni, I had work inside a swimming pool company. So I used to basically man the swimming pool demo areas and secure the leads for the sales guys. Okay. And that was a fascinating thing to be exposed to at that age. I was about 16, I think, then, and a friend's father owned the pool company and gave me the job. So sales came up early. And then obviously I got into law, developed a heap of property, blew what was a fantastic company to pieces through a big fight with a financial partner. Ended up in $437,000 of debt from being a hero with no assets. And a mate said, mate, you can get your way out of that by selling photocopiers. And that's how I got into sales. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. 437. Yeah, I remember writing that number down. And remember that's back in the 1990s. That's not in these days terms. Far out. So I'm no stranger to having a couple of things blow up on me. Thanks, Covid. I tell you what, though, you learn a lot from those. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the moment, it's hideous. Oh, yeah. Full on depression. No, it was aggression for me, not depression. I don't do depression. I just get angry with myself and get on with it. But, yeah, look, you do learn a lot. And I think the biggest thing that I learned out of that was empathy and being forced into sales. Being on the bones of my butt. I've got a lot of empathy for people who find themselves in a situation where sales is confusing because I didn't choose to be in sales and where they're under a lot of pressure, where they're learning something brand new and it can be very frustrating. And I guess also the impact that it has on your ego. Absolutely. If you're not used to all that rejection in the first three to six months, it can take a pretty big impact on your overall identity. I think that's actually a healthy thing when you start breaking apart your ego, because then you actually get to see the different sides of it. You get to put actual words towards it and recognise it and that way. Exactly. You can recognise it at different times. Yeah. I think, though, with the self help stuff like that, I love the saying that only the rich brag about having been poor. Okay. And so only the people that have come out the other side brag about having gone through the tough stuff. And most salespeople don't make it through the tough stuff. They live pretty miserable lives for 30 to 40 years of their career, selling pretty much the same amount that they sold when they first started and just getting by and changing from job to job to job because they never get that thing called sales handled. So, yeah, it's an interesting one. Well, wherever you go, there you are. Right. So when was it that you made the decision to become a sales coach and trainer? Yes. So when I was selling photocopiers, I got back on top of things. Things were going well. As part of my charitable giving, I used to write a newsletter that went out to about 900 people in the days, pre online. So you had to actually print the thing out and fold it all up. And that was going out to about 900 people a month. And we decided that because I had a couple of friends involved, we decided that basically we'd run these free motivational sessions and get speakers to come in and speak at them. And so we get about 80 to 100 people at those sessions. And once in a while the presenter wouldn't turn up. Oh, really? And so me and my mate became the motivational speaker. And then finally someone said, hey, will you come and do that for our company? And I was like, well, if you pay me, I will. And they said, sure. And I was like, okay, here we go. That's how it started. Wow. What year was that about? That was 97. Okay. Yeah. Sales through, well, the 70s as an eight year old eighty s, ninety s now all the way to here. So sales always get such a bad rap. People just think of the dirty salesperson and tell you the truth, I still get a lot of cold calls that piss me off and people knocking on your door and what have you. But to lump everybody into that same category, like all the salespeople and bdms in the world, it's completely ignorant because sales is the pointy tip of every business. There is no business without sales. Correct. So I guess what I wanted to talk about not only that stigma, but can you just explain to us, because you really are a big proponent of ethical sales. What does that mean? Look, ethical for me is aligned with the prospect's goals and interests. So there's nothing ethical about achieving a good margin. There's nothing unethical about making or doing your best to create a situation where the person is likely to make a decision. Yes. Right. And as long as buying what you're selling is in their interests and aligned with their goals, then I think you should have no fear of really influencing effectively. It's when you get into a situation where you know that what you're doing is operating against their interests. Like, for instance, selling somebody a dodgy solar panel that has a ten year warranty on it that you know will last for three years and that the manufacturer will probably bail out of, I would suggest, is not really ethical. Correct. Versus upselling them to something with a 25 year warranty that you believe in and have confidence in, that they can rely on at a higher price, I believe is absolutely ethical. Yeah. Now you've come into supply partners before and you've actually coached all of us, all the employees and stuff like that. I don't take any responsibility for what they do that in their field, by the way. A lot of people are quite angry, but there's definitely things because that was even a couple of years ago now, and Andrew was mentioned this before. He uses a lot of your techniques, even when he's purchasing today. But one thing that stuck out for me during one of, I can't remember when it was because I've been in sales for so long as well. Like, I've been in sales for 20 years. And every so often you do need a good kick in the ass, a bit of a Prod. Absolutely. You can get complacent and comfortable in what you're doing. And even if it's something you know, and it's just like, oh, yeah, I need to be doing that. Or if it's a new nugget one thing that I've always, always, and I didn't know why, but I love the mornings. I love getting up in the morning. I'm a morning person. I'm at my best for sure. And you said about winning the morning. Yes. And I just want you to explain what winning the morning means to everybody. Well, the reality is that as a human being, you have to understand, even I have a limited amount of energy to output each and every day. And fundamentally, our energy is at its peak in the morning. Even if you're telling yourself, I'm not a morning person, it is. And if you fail to activate that sales side of yourself in the morning, you're not going to activate it in the afternoon. It just doesn't happen. The bottom line is that you've got to set yourself up so that by ten or eleven most days, you've actually achieved the most important things that you can achieve and got them out of your system and got them done. Because if
you haven't done it by then, the probability of really revving yourself up at 03:00 p.m. In the afternoon is insanely low. Insanely low. You know what just triggered in me when you were saying that? Because I can attribute it to when I was going through uni, is procrastination. Yeah. So if you haven't done what you know you should have done by eleven, that little voice in the back of your head and the demon on your shoulder, that's the procrastinator, is already telling you you're a piece of crap. Well, it's not ideal, is it? The bottom line is, if you win the morning, as in, let's just say you're a sparky. Now, the average sparky is going to say, but Deano, you know, I'm installing in the morning and I'm flat out and all these things are going on. It's like, that's cool. Listen, just take half an hour out when you're driving down to bunnings to pick up whatever you forgot or whatever it might be to make those three follow up calls, or to send those three texts, or to pump out that email, or to video somebody installing on the roof when the sun's really good and just posting it on social. The bottom line is, if you can just do something each and every morning that you know is causing progress in the sales side of your business, you're going to feel much better about your business. You're going to be creating momentum in a way. You go, but most people set themselves up for massive failure. In the morning, massive failure. They haven't planned their day out the night before, and so they're in a state of urgency before they've even started on the way to the first job. They're listening to the radio now. Nothing on the radio is making you a better human being or a more motivated human being. Right. And so instead of listening to something that might nourish them or feed them or just leaving the damn thing off, most people don't get back in touch with their goals in the morning. Most people with their families in the morning, their families a hassle instead of a joy, because they don't wake up and say, what am I? Grateful? Why is it fantastic to have two insane kids running around? Why is it awesome to be able to feed them? As opposed to, why do I have to feed them? Why are we always in a rush? Why can't they get ready? So there's so many things you can do as a human being just to set yourself up for a fantastic day. And if you don't, then fundamentally, you probably set yourself up for a poor day. Yeah. Tell me about the strategies. Well, they're simple, right? They're not amazing things like, just make sure that you're playing AC DC in the morning, not Celine Dion all by myself. If you've got to listen. But you're crying when I got here. Wade, if you're listening to a podcast, right, don't listen to the Save the Whales podcast in the morning, listen to that in the afternoon, listen to the how am I going to build my business podcast in the morning? There's simple things, but it's amazing how many of us get ourselves into really bad habits. Another one, in this day and age, obviously, is looking at everybody else's lives and realising yours is crap. Because if you jump onto Instagram right now in my feed, all my friends are in Europe and I'm not. Everybody's in the French Riviera drinking cafe and doing whatever they want every single day. And, oh, what am I doing here again? Yeah. Turn off notifications of social media. That has been one of the greatest things I ever did for myself. Yeah, well, the world's setting us up to feel bad about ourselves because we feel bad about ourselves. We spend more time on social media, more time watching the news, more time jumping into media. So if you're not taking control of this stuff, you're in big trouble. And gratitude is a big part of that, right? Yeah. Having the strategy, like, part of your strategy of winning the morning is waking up and actually being present in the thing that you are doing and being grateful for what you do have. And so it's huge. Everything comes down to your strategy and what you're going to do. Like every person listening probably has a business, more than likely in the renewable energy business, and they should have a strategy for their business. And one thing I did want to ask you is we just took over another financial year recently. What do you do in your business every year for yourself? Like, do you set goals and strategies for this next financial year? Look, the first thing you have to do, because most of the people we're talking to here are small business owners, right? Yeah. The first thing you've got to do as a small business owner is set your own personal goals first. Right. You got to set goals across six areas. One, you got to go, okay, how am I currently feeling and how do I want to feel? Because if you're consistently feeling depressed or anxious or frustrated or stressed, you got to set a goal to change that mentally. Exercise? Yeah, mentally. Where am I at? What do I want to get smarter at? How do I want to strengthen myself up mentally? Because most people mentally are the victims of urgency and the victims of not having a control over their mind most days, physically. Look, the bottom line is this job, I guess if you're an installer, great. The job's probably taking care of you physically because you're up there, you're doing exercise, you're doing other stuff. But if you're in sales, there's a good chance the job is actually going against you because there's a lot of fun to be had in this industry, and you're sitting on your butt all day on the phone. Right. So you got to set goals around that use of your time. How can I use my time more effectively, in a smarter way and more efficient way? Relationships. How can I improve my relationships? And what relationships matter to me? That could be at home, that could be at work, that could be with major companies that you're working with. And then fifth one, money. Like, where's my money? Where am I at financially? So if you set those first, then it's easy to figure out what you need to do in your business to help you achieve those goals. Yeah, right. But if you just set business goals, like, we're going to grow margins. No, most people don't say we're going to grow margins. We're going to grow sales by 20%. Well, you might just be creating a bigger beast for the year, and all the rest of it goes on. Yeah. What does that mean, exactly. Yeah. So sorry if this is a bit of a personal question, but can you tell us maybe one of the goals that you've recently set for yourself? Yeah, so my primary goal this year, it depends on what part of my life. So in terms of the business and revenue, my focus is on a product called Better sales coach. And I've set a goal to do around about half a million dollars of revenue in that product specifically because where I want to take that is in five years, I want that to be a $10 million product. So that's a really big focus business wise. Physically, I've got the usual goals, physically, in terms of weight, in terms of running, et cetera. But I've got a number of events in the calendar that will make sure that happens relationship wise, obviously get really close to the new grandchild. I'm very, very close to my daughter, so I have very specific goals around making sure how many times we speak and what we do and what we catch up. And Theresa, she pretty much takes care of herself because she's amazing at putting up with me. So the goal there is to have her keep putting up with me. But then also, intelligent, wise, doctorate. My doctorate, in terms of getting through the bulk of my research in the next year, is really important so that I can finish that doctorate by the end of next year. Those are the primary goals. I don't have a lot of thing goals at the moment because I'm pretty happy with most of the things in my life. Yeah, right. Well, we sell what you rolled up in. So back to what we were talking about. Most people that do own small businesses or small to medium businesses, they do make goals within their business and it's usually centred around exactly what you said. We want to increase sales by 20%. Well, what does that mean? Yeah, because you can either increase your revenue, decrease your costs or increase your productivity. Absolutely. And this business is so tight already. Everybody out there, this australian solar industry is so tight, everybody's probably as efficient as they're going to be. Well, there's probably room for improvement. Their costs are tight, their margins are tight. So the only thing they can do is increase the revenue, which comes down to increasing the average transaction size, right? It does. And the scary thing is, though, for many out there, when they think about increasing the revenue, as the deals get bigger, they get more scared and they take their margin from the deal to make it look smaller. So actually, even though they're increasing their overall revenue, their profitability is lower. And because they don't know how to sell a bigger deal, they're actually damaging their conversion and confusing people. And so it's really interesting. I'm not going to go through the numbers, but in any business with about a 20% margin overall, a 10% improvement in conversion will generally generate about a 40% improvement in profitability. Wow. That's it. So if you go through the numbers, it's crazy. Yeah. Okay. Right. And so a lot of business owners would probably be a lot smarter setting a goal to improve conversion by 10% on the same amount of deals than they would increasing revenue by 20% because they're going to be richer, they're going to have a lot more fun, they're going to put in less systems for more money, and they don't have to be as afraid of a shrinking market because they can convert more out of less. Well, we're going to cover two of. Those today for sure. We're going to increase our average size by adding a battery to it and we're going to increase our conversion with the sales training. Absolutely. And the bottom line is, even if you don't increase your average size of deal by including the battery, you're probably going to improve conversion just because you've offered a bigger solution and the customer can back down to a smaller one. Yeah. Before we actually talk about that, I do want to talk about the first training programme that you actually created for supply partners, the one surrounding quality and value over price. Yeah. And I think that was actually about the third one. Like, Lliam and I pumped out other stuff, but that was the first formal one where we said, okay, great, we're going to create a formal training programme. We're going to train the team in this and they're going to roll that out. And I've got to give kudos to you and the team and everybody involved. The way that you've rolled that out to so many solar professionals has been amazing. Yeah, well, it's great. It is great. I've done it multiple times. I could almost do it off by heart now. But not only is it received, but there's so much gold in there that people take it on and it has helped them significantly, even when they're up against what you call the solar bandits. We call them fleas. Yeah. And it's funny, I guess, you create a programme, it's been fantastic to hand it over to you guys to roll it out. And obviously it sits on my website as well, in case somebody who isn't a customer wants to buy it. But I actually had someone call me on the weekend last week and go, oh, my gosh. My team have all gotten really excited and even the most down, horrible person in our team is now listening to you in his car. And I don't sell that product, it just sits there. Right. Because you guys have done such a great job of really getting across the whole market. But it was sort of got me really excited about just how good this content is and how much of a difference it can make. Well, mate, it's still so relevant. It's so relevant. So I wanted to actually just touch on it quickly before we talk about the energy solution sales programme. So there were six main areas of selling quality and value over cost. So let's go through those. The first one, I believe, was quality of design. Yeah. So maybe put it in context, right? So whenever you're selling quality versus cheap, there's three questions you have to help the customer answer. First, what's different? Because if they can't figure out what's different between your solution and the cheap solution, the only difference is price and they'll buy the cheap solution, right? The second is why should they care about that difference? And then third is, how do they justify paying more for that difference, right? So that's just important to put these differences in context, right? Then you've got to ask yourself, okay, how do I create a higher level of difference in that prospective customer's mind? And so the first one was. First one was quality, was design. Yeah. It's amazing to me how flippant so many solar professionals are about their design services because we've got a carport getting put out in front of the place so we can get some cars off the street. And I had a mate who's an architect design it for me and put it together and he was a mate and a friend and it still cost quite a bit of money to design something that's really a very, very basic structure. And I think that the number of solar professionals that just give their design away as if it's worthless and meaningless and nothing sets themselves up for failure and sets the customer up to believe that's not a difference they should care about. But if you've got a good story about your design and why design is so important and what the downside of poor design is, then bang, you can create a difference just in terms of talking about the way you design the solar system and including the prospect in the process. Yeah, it's not so much these days that solar is. I remember back in the early 2010s when people were like, oh, I don't want solar. It looks terrible on my roof. Yeah. Now it's almost like, I can't believe you don't have solar. It's. Duh. It's just one thing that we do, but, man, we have all seen a really shoddy inside from the street. So upset about poor design. I literally want to throw rocks at the house. And there's this. So for those of you that know the Gold coast, you drive through Burley and you're driving towards the airport, and there was this really nice house built in, in a pretty average location, because obviously it's on the highway, but really nice house. They're doing this beautiful job, and it's got this beautiful glass, and it's a beautiful roof line and looking fantastic. And some muppet just had to put that last panel on top of two strings of panels. I don't know why they just had to put it there. So you've got this string of, like, eight panels. Eight panels. And then this one panel on top that's, like, at the apex of the roof and covering the apex of the roof. And every time I go past it, I literally want to go in there and find out who did it so I can hunt them down. Yeah. Oh, man. Go ahead. Sorry. I think ultimately, poor design is one of the biggest problems for our industry, because if you go into the socials, if you go into any of the comment sections about Solar, end users are typically jumping on there saying, solar is a scam. I'm not saving any money. I got $20 feed in off my last bill. This is a huge problem. And it all comes down to the people they bought off didn't design the system correctly. No doubt. They probably went to one of these solar bandits and just go, okay, I'll take a 6.6 kilowatt system that wasn't tailored to them, and now they're not saving money. They've wasted their money. Yeah. And the thing is, if you can't explain to somebody and sell the value of design and what the downside of poor design is, then you're setting them up to be taken advantage of by the solar bandit. Yeah. And the next one was equipment. I mean, obvious. That's so obvious. The quality of the equipment is so important. I mean, we talk about this all the time about how many solar panels have been orphaned in Australia because the customer's gone. Now, what can you say about making that customer care about the difference between the equipment? The more detail you provide the customer on the equipment, the less they're probably going to care because the more confused they get. And so you've got to be really punchy and specific about why this piece of equipment is better than that piece of equipment. I'll give you an example in terms of just in this energy space, I jumped in the car to be driven to the airport. I was in Melbourne yesterday doing a presentation, and this is a guy who's been driving around forever and he's had a new car. And he goes, oh, the genesis is just so unreal. And he know, basically, the way that the batteries work in the genesis is different to the way that they work in other cars, because in another car they're attached to the chassis. And if there's a crash, you have to throw the whole thing out. But in the genesis, you can actually have a crash and they can replace the batteries. Now, that's probably the only thing he knows about the EV part of that overall technology. But that one thing differentiated it significantly enough from other options in the market for him to say, well, this is for me, because I might have a crash and I don't want to throw away the whole car. And so simple little stories like that linked into the energy space around battery are what's going to differentiate equipment. You taking them through all the specs, all the detail, and getting your little engineering hard on on is going to damage their ability to understand the value of that difference. I suppose asking the right questions and then shutting the hell up and actually listening to what they care about is probably a big thing. Yes, it is. But you should be driving the agenda of the conversation with questions that naturally lead to a place where they understand the difference and the importance of the difference. You shouldn't be asking haphazard questions and seeing where it goes because you're the professional, right? So you go in to see a surgeon, they don't say, hey, just tell me about your general health. They're like, they know what questions to ask to figure out what problem you've got, to show you what solution you need. And they have a methodology for getting you there. And I think that as solar professionals, we need to. And that's one of the reasons why I love working with you guys, is because you take the time and the effort and the energy to educate me enough and to bang things back and forth so we can create those questions for people. And that's an exciting thing about what's inside the programme, is that methodology and those plans already in there. Yeah, right. The next one was quality of installation, especially surrounding safety installation. You have to have a story about installation, because installation is where things go pear shape. Installation is people on my property. Installation is people on my roof. Installation is people in my privacy and my space. And so even just saying, pete the installer is a fantastic. You know, one of the things about, you know, the reason he works with us is because we give him a whole day for installation, because he was sick of working for companies that were pushing him for. Yeah, right. So even just humanising the installer is a great way of differentiating your installation from somebody else versus most, I think, just run with the. We're CEC accredited or it's not CEC anymore, is it? Most of these brands, most of these fleas, Muppets, they won't even tell you what products they'll be installing on the day. They won't tell you the name of the mate. Just trust me. But if you're smart, you listen. Pete the installer, this is the way we're going to install, by the way. This is how long it'll take. And whatever you do, if you don't go with us, just make sure you get some detail in the installation, because there's a lot of horror stories out there and you just want to make sure you get that right, because once it's on the roof, it's really hard to get it off. Yeah. And aesthetics as well. Aesthetics. Think about it. People pay three to ten times as much for something because of the way it looks. Yeah. And what we install sits on top of their roof, sits inside their garage and batteries. Is fascinating because it's amazing to me how many people talk about the way their battery looks more than what it does. And if you look at the companies that are fantastic at selling aesthetics, they have specific strategies and tools to do that. And I really believe that it's a fantastic place to differentiate. And the way to really differentiate there is. You don't want this to look ugly on your roof, do you? No. Let me show you some pictures of what this could look like if we just slapped it up there without actually doing some design. Before you and I spoke. Let's make this part of the overall solution. Yeah. The last two were surrounding confidence. Let's just talk about the warranty confidence. Yeah. So how do you sell value and quality of your warranty? So the best way to sell the value of warranty is the fear of getting yourself into a situation where the warranty doesn't come good or isn't honoured. And so, once again, some stories around basically warranty nightmares. I think the whole. Just how many panels are out there that have been orphaned and talking to that and saying, look, let me explain why we've chosen this panel with this warranty and not this one. The downside of this one is this, this and this. And look, Mary, if you bought yourself a fridge and it had a ten year warranty, but in three years you called the number and they weren't there, and there was no onshore company for the consumer affairs to chase, how would you feel about the warranty that you paid for? Yeah, well, that's exactly what's happened in our industry, unfortunately. And because it's so easy to get panels in, I want to make sure that whatever panel I put on your roof is not only warrantied by me, but is warrantied by the manufacturer. So that in three to five to seven years time, if for some reason there is a failure, you're not left high and dry like so many other. Australians have been and all those, that's why I wanted to reiterate them literally as you're mentioning the quality and value of all those. We did that for solar only three years ago. And now that batteries are coming in, now that we're all moving into an energy business rather than just a solar business, it's so relevant. Every single one of those is still extremely pertinent in the conversation, especially in. A space where, and I don't know if I'm not allowed to mention this, but when you're competing with really big brands that customers know about and are reading about in social media, and are attached to people that they identify with, you have to be really good at differentiating the brand that you're selling around things that matter to that human being. Because that's why companies spend so much money on brand. Because often the brand itself is good enough to differentiate and get people to pay more money. So if you're not selling that it brand and you want to operate at a different price point, but with just as good a quality, then you've got to have stories and you've got to differentiate. I think you raise a good point there. With some of the big brands, we're starting to see some franchises pop up with familiar faces, franchises that have been operating, doing in different industries over the years. And now the people that are opening up these franchises are fairly new to solar. So just because they have a recognisable brand does not mean they're going to deliver the service that you actually need. Yeah, and that's a nice distinction, because the 6th difference is fundamentally confidence in the company that's doing it. And it's interesting. You can either complain all you want about the people that come in and out of the industry, or you can set yourself up to tell a much better story about you and why they should feel comfortable about you as a member of their community doing work for them. Now, I can accept that there might be some larger providers out there that this doesn't apply to, but if you're a small business, you've got to play the small business card. You've got to play that you're part of the community. You've got to play that you grew up here or that you've moved your family in here. You've got to play the fact that your kids go to the local school. You've got to play the fact that you've installed solar for a number of people in your own street. You've got to work that angle so that people go, you know what? I don't know what it is, but I just feel so much more comfortable about Wade doing this for us. And I think we should pay the extra money. There's a lot of people out there will do that. Same here. It was just an example because I didn't want to use Mary again. Mary. She's used a bit. Sorry, Mary. One of the things that scares me the most is surrounding safety when we're talking about batteries now, because Andrea could probably attest to this and almost probably everyone in the business. I literally get at least one email a day from a new battery manufacturer trying to bring their products into Australia and it literally looks like a copy and pasted one of the day before with a different name. And we talked about this. How many pv companies have orphaned their panels on australian roofs? There's 68 battery manufacturers on the CEC list right now today. I checked, and that's just for on grid ones. So I wonder how many we're going to see in the next few years and then three to four years after that, how many are going to disappear? And we're talking about batteries now, like, yeah, solar panels can be dangerous, but at least they're on their roofs. Has anybody seen a battery go up in flames? It's scary as hell. It's good YouTube material. Oh, yeah, it really is. And I guess with solar panels that if the manufacturer leaves or there's a problem with the solar panel, you can typically interchange it. Maybe with a bit of effort, you can just swap out a third party brand. A battery could be half the cost of your initial solar installation. And if that fails, you can't just pick out a piece of the battery and replace it. The whole thing needs to be replaced. That's a great point. And if you're five years into a ten year payback cycle, that's very painful. Whereas most people, they might get the three to four year payback on the solar panels and go, well, I didn't get the ten year payback that I was promised, but at least I've evened out. So it's a very different story. But I think on the safety one, it's interesting. Now, I'm definitely not an expert on battery safety, but if I was playing that angle, I'd be going, Mary, Mary, the person I sell to, those of you who don't know, I have imaginary characters that I sell to. I spend a lot of time with them and they've become real to me. Mary's loaded, by the way. She's bought a lot of stuff of me. I'd say, mary, look, you probably don't realise this. There's actually currently 68 different battery manufacturers pumping batteries into the australian marketplace. And that might seem exciting as a consumer because you might think, wow, I've got so much choice and I should be able to get one at a good price. But that's actually scary news for us because it means that there's a lot of battery coming into the marketplace that's not really going to meet your needs and might not get your payback. So let me just tell you the ones that we absolutely cancel from the get go. And then I'd have some sort of technical reason why we can wipe 40 of those off the list. Now, you're not a fan of getting too technical because you can just lose the customer. Yeah, it's got to be high level and easy to understand. So I'd have to have some sort of basic example and it would be something like, look, Mary, let me explain. There's a reason they don't put certain batteries in cars because of this risk, and I believe it should be the same in terms of putting a battery in your house. Would you agree? Okay, great. So look, I just want to wipe off 40 of those lists. Why are the three that we want to talk to you about? Or why is the two that I'm talking to you about? Or why is the one that I'm talking to you about the one that I recommend? It's safer for this reason, this reason and this reason, or you don't need to worry about safety because it doesn't do this, or it doesn't do this, or it doesn't do this. Okay. Should you bring it up in the discussion if it hasn't been raised? Because you then run the risk of scaring them off a battery entirely? That's a really valid question. I think it would depend on how competitive your market is, what your competitors are doing, how aggressive the customer was about coming to you saying, I want a battery. So there'd be a lot of factors involved in there, but I would want a little bit of a safety story in terms of, or maybe just a confidence story around. Look, we feel much more confident about this brand because of their history with XYZ, or because they have an onshore office, or because they have this battery that we won't even consider ourselves, won't even talk to them, are in this camp because of XYZ. So you can say we push BYd, one of the largest manufacturers in the world. They've got evs everywhere. They've been in the australian market over ten years. And look, they use this chemistry, the safest chemistry. And hey, if we put it in your garage, we'll put some bollards in front. No worries. Yeah, and Mary, we can get into technical detail if you want to, but just understand that we've got a technical team that really focuses on the safety elements of this and the chemistry and the battery that can become a very detailed conversation. But it does matter. And just know that we've had some very smart people take care of that. So the new energy solution sales training isn't just that old one with a new face on it. We're not talking about those six things anymore. So it is about reframing your whole approach. And I kind of touched on it earlier that people might be afraid to even bring batteries into the conversation, but it's actually going to help you close more deals and make more money and more margin, hopefully. So how long has this new energy solution sales training been in the works for you? Yeah, it's interesting. I've been pretty aggressively suggesting that a battery should be part of any solution offered ever since I got into solar, which is now six or seven years ago. Right. Because the simple fact is that a great strategy for selling a mid solution is to create a much bigger solution that the customer then compares to. So throwing a battery on top of it and saying, hey, this one's $27,000, this one's$12,000, and this one's $8,000, is just really good sales strategy. I got more passionate about batteries as a result of an engagement with Phil Crotty over at what was then LG Chem and is now LG Energy Solutions, where Phil came in and said, listen, can you help us put together a story around selling batteries? And he exposed me to some really good research that had been done globally around the battery buyers, what their preferences were, what they were thinking, how they were buying, how they assessed value. And that was around about three and a half years ago, I believe it was pre Covid. So it was about three and a half years ago and put together the solution with them. And then Lliam and I have been talking about this for quite a long time. And once again, Lliam's always coming up with the next idea and the next evolution of the business. And I love the fact that the way his brain works is he was thinking about, and how do we enable all of our customers? The spark is out there listening to this to be more effective in terms of selling these energy solutions. And so when was that? That was about six months ago, eight months ago. We got together and started planning it out and banging around details and strategies and ideas. And so here we are at launch date. Yeah, no, it's awesome. Yeah, I'll get to what I think about it in a bit. But when I said that some people are afraid to bring it into the conversation, do you think because it's so prevalent now, everyone knows what solar is and everybody knows what batteries are now. Like, evs are really, really making it in our face. Everyone knows that cars are moving that way, houses have solar, but we're putting batteries in houses now. Energy prices are going up. Do you think that the solar and battery salespeople out there, if they're not bringing batteries into the conversation, are they hurting their business on the whole? I would say in most cases, absolutely. Arguably in all cases, because one of the things you really want to do is differentiate yourself from the bandit or the flea. The probability of the bandit or the flea having been accredited to sell batteries and to install batteries is low, which means that even if you just introduce into the conversation, Mary, just so that, you know, we're actually accredited to install batteries, and only accredited providers can actually do that. So I do want to talk to you about that, just to make sure you understand what the options are and whether you want to include one in your solution today or not. I just want to make sure you're educated about what you might want to do in the future so you don't create a system today that can't manage that. So even that conversation automatically differentiates you from the bandit. And if the bandit doesn't talk batteries. Mary's sitting there going, I wonder why they didn't talk batteries. Oh, they're probably not accredited. That's a good thing for sales. It's a really good thing for sales because even if it's your pv solution against their pv solution, if you've damaged them on that front, I call that dropping landmines. I always want to put a few landmines around so that the flea or the bandit steps on it and it blows them up. Yeah, absolutely. I think introducing it into the conversation is a great way to differentiate. It's a great way to create a bit of discomfort for the bandit and it's a great way to educate customers on what an overall energy solution is, which is part of what we should be doing. Absolutely, yeah. You get back to ethical. Right? Like, oh, I'm worried this will impact my sales, so I'm not going to tell them about something that is fundamental. I don't know that that's totally ethical. I think the reality of it is why do most people purchase solar? Majority of them will purchase solar to save money. Now. It's actually fear. Fear of rising energy costs is the number one reason people buy solar. And that was very interesting in terms of, we talked about reasons for buying batteries and I was very surprised. The number one reason for buying a battery was actually fear of rising energy costs. Despite the fact that it didn't have the energy. The return on investment profile of solar, that was still the number one driver. Yeah. Now, with the recent electricity price rises in a lot of parts of Australia, it's increased around 30%. There are maybe a couple of parts of Australia that are exempt from that. But look, for the majority, there has been an increase. Now feed ins have dropped down. A lot of people are getting paid five cents per kilowatt hour, some less. So the reality is, gone are the days where you can just put a large system on your roof and the customer will save money in order to, I guess, provide a system that will save the customer money and provide that energy security. It's really only going to be done with a battery. Yeah. And look, I mean, I think there's. And there's an overlay there, right? There's an overlay. As yet it doesn't save as much money as the solar does. It's like, no, it doesn't, but it still saves money. And the bottom line is that, to me, one of the things that I really love about the battery is I always felt like with the solar dynamic in the power companies, that you're sort of getting screwed, right? It's like, hey, guys, we'll buy this off you to eight to. We'll
sell it back to you at 06:00 p.m. For $35 to $0.40. It's like, how'd that work? Whereas the battery owner can sit there and say, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, I'm resilient. That's one of the big pain points for the general market. A lot of the market does not understand why they only get paid five cents per kilowatt hour for their solar feeding back to the grid. The end users think they're doing everybody a favour. They put this on their roof to help the world, but it's not like that. The reality is, in a lot of cases, the prices of electricity are going into the negatives during the day, so your excess solar isn't worth anything. In fact, it's actually costing the retailer money. So I think there needs to be more education around that. Yeah, and you've got to be careful, once again, of overcomplicating. But simply saying to somebody, look, the bottom line is that there's a power dynamic here where no matter how you feel about it, they're only going to pay you. They're going to charge you 35 to 40 if that upsets you. The best way to take control here is to have a battery so that you're using your own energy at night. Exactly. What are the other reasons? We talked about fear and we talked about sticking it to the man because it's unfair. Is there other reasons? Well, I want to create some sort of mystery for the programme. Not going to drop at all. But I will say one other that I don't think enough solar professionals think about, and that's just the retrofit costs. The bottom line is, if you've got the person there doing your kitchen and they can do the bathroom at the same time, you get them to do the bathroom, because otherwise it's going to cost you twice as much to get somebody to come back and do it right, and you're going to have to put up with the mess for another period of time, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that something that's really easy for a customer to understand is, look, if you get it all done at the same time, it makes sense, doesn't it? Right. And even if we plan out where you'd like the battery to go, so that if you don't buy it today, we set the solar system up so that we minimise disruption when we put the battery. And that makes sense, doesn't it? Because if we set the solar system up and we don't think about the battery, it could cost a lot more and have be a much more hassle to put in a later date. So why don't we talk about the overall solution and we'll come back to just buying the pv solar if you want to, but at least set yourself up so you don't have heartache in the future. So that retrofit cost, I think, is a big one and I think sets you up as a professional that cares about their home, that cares about things that others don't. That is talking about something that the other band that the bandit didn't talk about. So it's a smart play. Yeah, well, we want to keep some mystery around the programme as well. There's three other reasons. There's plenty of different areas that are just fantastic. Like I went through it all and it's just full of gold. I loved the stuff about listening to the customer, I loved the stuff about the closing language that you can use. Objection. Handling is always so important and the way that you put it across is fantastic. But overall, it's the whole framework of the sale that has changed. And that's the biggest thing I got out of this because I think the worst case scenario, if you follow what you're training, you're still probably going to walk away with the pv sale. Yeah, exactly. And I think importantly, you're not going to make the mistakes that could screw up your overall sale by introducing the battery the wrong way. And I think you started off with the commentary around. A lot of people are worried about including a battery in the overall sale because it makes the deal too big or whatever else it might be. The reality is that the problems are being caused because they're introducing it as a last minute thought or the customer is forcing them to introduce it once they've tried to sell them a different way. And so you want to take control of the situation. And I think that the lovely thing about the training programme is it's an overall system that understands, even if you just want to sell pv, this is how to introduce into the conversation and still have success on both levels. Yeah, I really look forward to using this programme and doing exactly what we did with the last one, getting out there in front of my customers and giving them this gold, this information, because it really is going to keep them relevant and ahead of the curve. Exactly what we talked about in the intro. Yeah, I think even if you're resolute that you're not going to be selling battery. This is a programme people should do with your team because it's going to improve their pv sales. Right. The reality is all the strategies in there are going to enable you to be smarter about selling pv. But you want to know what's going on out there in the market. You want to know how to avoid making some really common mistakes. So everyone's going to get massive value out of this programme. But I think if we can just help the majority of people out there that aren't the bandits, introduce this, introduce it in a way that makes the customer feel like they've got control and create the extra demand, increase margins on just your pv solution, or at least maintain margins on your pv solution, not have the battery sale ruin your sale and or ruin the margin in your sale and ideally work towards the goal of going. I'm doing larger deals at better margin, or at least at the same margin because they're larger deals. I'm therefore more profitable. I am relying on putting in less systems because of the larger margins and the larger deals and I'm improving my conversion along the way, which means my business is becoming more profitable. I mean, every business owner should have that goal, but especially in the solar space where it's so competitive. And I just keep coming back to the point that I know that you didn't sign up to your business to become a professional at sales, but if your sales are crap, your business is crap. And if your business is crap, your life's crap, you can't get away from that, right? And you can sit around and complain and moan and groan and whinge and bitch, or you can get on board and get in control of this thing called sales, which I just love that you guys are helping people at that level. Yeah, thanks, man. Now, you mentioned you're doing a doctorate. I wanted to ask you, what is it? What is it? So my focus is on sales coaching in the small to medium enterprise. So what's actually happening between sales manager and salesperson around sales coaching? And how are sales managers actually coaching out there in the marketplace that we work in? I'm absolutely fascinated about that in terms of the small to medium enterprise space, because that's where I want to have a big impact going forward, is just helping small business owners with sales teams and it's like herding cats. Just have some genuinely proven strategies in that space that they can deploy to be more effective at getting salespeople to be more effective. And if people out there listening want to bring you into their business personally to help them. What's the best way to get in touch with you? Yeah. So bettersalescoach.com is easy to find me. So the t shirts you'll see in all my social dean Mannix.com is still up and running. Just reach out. Dean at Dean Mannix.com is an easy one. There's some great free stuff in terms of sales growth strategy, some sales process stuff. But just I want to remind people that the solar specific stuff that I'm doing is running through you guys and you guys are deploying it out there at no cost for people who are giving you customs. So the first port of call should be calling up supply partners for sure. Oh, yeah. I have to say, dean, there's a few people that operate in the space that you do. However, none have as much cut through as you do. There are things that you've taught us years ago that I use to this day when I'm making purchases, you're kind of like a little angel on my shoulder saying like, don't do it. I'm glad it's an angel. So, yeah, I definitely recommend people cheque it out because you are the real deal. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. Yeah. Well, it has been a pleasure, buddy. And I really, really want to thank you for coming in here today and for your time and for joining us. Happy birthday to you, by the, you. Know, you're a legend in the sales world, and I love what you do for us and for the industry. And I want to thank you and for anybody listening exactly what Dean said. If you would like one of our supply partners, bdMs, to come into your business and present this new energy solution sales training programme, please give them a call. Or you can reach out to us at sales@supplypartners.com dot au and request for the team to arrange that. I think that's it, man. Thank you very much. Again, rock and roll. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks for listening. Thanks.