Sighten’s Proposal Assistant service is here to support you when creating a compelling custom solar proposal template.

As a solar installer or contractor, you’ve likely put thought and effort into building your company’s brand, logo, website, and social media. These are all essential tools for driving new customers to your business.

As we advance into 2019,  the residential solar industry finds itself in a very different place compared to the start of 2018. A year ago massive uncertainty surrounding President Trump’s solar tariff decision cast a shadow over the industry; this year there is optimism about a return to growth.

Of course, solar remains a rapidly evolving industry and likely overall market growth in 2019 belies significant changes happening at the ground level in all aspects of how residential solar is delivered to consumers. The coming year will see continued evolution and maturation in the residential solar market including important trends in financing, product offerings, market structure, and technology.

Here are five predictions for what lies ahead for the residential solar industry in 2019. And if you’re a residential company looking to capitalize on these trends and grow your business this year, Sighten’s solar software platform can help you stay ahead of the curve - schedule a demo of our design and proposal tool here.

Everyone wants great reviews, testimonials, and referrals. But there’s a big difference between wanting these things and actually building them into your company’s process to ensure you get them.

Referrals and positive reviews are tied to hugely positive outcomes for your business. Both significantly reduce customer acquisition cost (CAC), which results in faster and more profitable growth. This means anything you can do to increase the percentage of your customers that provide reviews and referrals will have a big impact on your business.

Once in a while, customers will proactively provide great reviews and referrals. More often, they’re busy and won’t ever think to do it unless you ask. So, the first lesson is just that - always ask! But how should you ask? When? How can you build processes around asking?

In this post, we’ll answer these questions and discuss strategies to reliably generate great customer reviews and ample referrals at your company. With these simple techniques, you’ll win more customers and drive profitable growth.

In the previous post in our solar sales series, we discussed how to use the techniques of storytelling and social proof to improve your solar pitch.

By leveraging the way your customers relate to other people - and by using your solar proposal to layer in case studies and different examples of social proof - you can help prospects make buying decisions with confidence.

In this post, we’ll keep the tips coming but with a focus on how to cultivate strong customer relationships. Specifically, we’ll discuss four ways to create stronger connections with your solar leads, especially how you can build likability and trust.

In part one of our series on boosting your solar sales using the science of decision-making, we looked at two key concepts: single option aversion and the decoy effect.

Together, these two principles can help you close more deals by presenting options designed to facilitate confident buying decisions.

This time around, we’re going to discuss storytelling and social proof--two more science-backed concepts that can have a meaningful impact on your close rate. We’ll dig into what makes these techniques so effective and how you can leverage storytelling and social proof as part of a repeatable sales pitch.

This month on the Sighten blog, we’re kicking off a blog series exploring several key principles in the science of decision-making. Using some simple yet powerful concepts, you’ll be able to make sure your solar sales process maps to how the human brain actually processes information and makes buying decisions.

Adopting these data-driven strategies will help you develop effective, repeatable ways to close more deals. We’ll also show you how MyProposal, Sighten’s solar proposal tool, makes it easy to incorporate these insights into your sales process.

This post will focus on two separate but related concepts: single option aversion and the decoy effect (also known as the asymmetric dominance effect). While the scientific jargon can make these seem like complicated concepts, they’re actually fairly intuitive.

In previous posts, we’ve discussed the competitive advantage of residential solar companies offering multiple types of financing – particularly in the context of our fast-changing, ever-evolving industry.

As the market for solar continues to expand to include greater economic and demographic diversity, it becomes more and more important to have a range of financing options to match the specific circumstances and preferences of each prospect.

The Sighten platform, including our new MyProposal toolset, is designed to make everything that’s complicated about your job simple – including financing. We’re excited to announce that we’re bringing that same simplicity to a type of financing with a reputation for being uniquely complicated: PACE - Property Assessed Clean Energy.

How does Sighten simplify PACE? Read on, or if you’re already a Sighten customer, reach out your account manager or info@sighten.io to learn more about our integrated PACE financing options.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released a study evaluating the accuracy of Sighten’s automated shading tool, showing that Sighten remote shading estimates are nearly identical to measurements taken on site. The Department of Energy-affiliated lab found that Sighten's shading tool generated the most accurate shading estimates of all software applications evaluated by NREL to date.

Over a decade into the U.S. residential solar boom and the “solarcoaster” continues to surprise with new twists and turns. Like any good rollercoaster, there have been a lot of ups and downs – but if you keep your eyes open and your wits about you, these changes can be exciting instead of stomach-churning.

Just like our installer partners, Sighten has worked hard to make sure our software platform stays relevant in the fast-changing solar landscape. And we’re confident that our new proposal tool, MyProposal, will make your ride on the solarcoaster a lot more enjoyable by helping your business capitalize on the most important trends in residential solar.

You can learn more about MyProposal in our upcoming webinar on Wednesday, May 23 – sign up here. But first, let’s talk about how the MyProposal feature set can help you stay ahead of the market and grow your solar business!

In terms of where the sun is shining in residential solar financing, solar leases have recently been overshadowed by solar loans. Industry publications have touted the rise of solar loans in recent years, and our experience with Sighten customers has borne this out. A poll taken at our recent solar financing webinar found that around 30% of installers currently offer leases, and approximately 40% have never offered a lease.

As a solar installer, you know that it’s not hard to convince potential customers of the benefits of going solar – the challenge comes when you have to explain how much it costs. No matter how much the cost of solar has fallen in recent years, the prospect of a five-figure upfront expenditure for an investment that will take years to pay back is simply a non-starter for most homeowners.

That’s where financing comes in. The ability to offer your customers loans, leases, and other financing options transforms solar from a big hit to their household budget into a smart investment that will have them in the black from day one.

Telling a story

Human beings respond to stories and narratives that make complex concepts easier to understand. Research has even shown that humans remember facts at a much higher rate when those facts are part of a story as opposed to just listed out. How can you make your solar sales pitch more of a narrative and drive engagement with your prospects? Start with analogies!

Every successful sale starts with getting your prospect to care about the problem you are solving. This can be tricky in solar, given that most homeowners don’t stay up at night fretting about their electricity bill.

What are some best practices to create urgency with a solar prospect and drive real engagement with your pitch?

Sighten exists to support the people selling, financing, and installing solar every day. That’s why we love hearing about our customers growing faster or operating more efficiently because of Sighten software. Recently, we dug a little deeper and asked our partners about their favorite aspects of running their solar businesses on Sighten. The result? Sighten customers love the platform’s financing tools, ease of use, and speed with accuracy.

You’re ready to grow your solar business this year, but what changes have you made to kick things into a higher gear? What are you doing to generate more leads? Close more sales? Hire and train more sales reps?

Here at Sighten, you could say we’re a little obsessed with helping solar companies grow. To that end, we’ve put together our solar sales cheat sheet -- 5 tips that could be game changers for your sales numbers this year. Take a look and let us know what you think!

Today, the Elemental Excelerator announced it's 2017 cohort - a group of cleantech companies working to create the new energy economy. As an Elemental Excelerator portfolio company, Sighten will expand its solar software platform to support energy efficiency and energy storage projects. Read more about the the Elemental Excelerator mission and Sighten's selection here.

SOLAR+ Project

Sighten's Elemental Excelerator project entails developing a SOLAR+ software tool that supports the design, sale, and financing of combined solar + efficiency and/or storage projects. The pilot will focus on Hawaii but will be open to all companies interested in growing their SOLAR+ sales through better technology.