Join The Solar Power Movement

Archive for August, 2010

Today I worked the SolarTEK Nashville booth at the Living Green Expo in Franklin at the Franklin Factory. It was a lot of work but I had a blast. I never spoke to so many people about solar before.

We had a pretty good setup. I manned the booth all day and had a captive audience a couple of times. We only wound up with 10 calls to make but gave out at least 40 business cards and numerous other pieces of literature about solar.

Our next expo is at the HOME Show in Nashville latter in September.

I tell you that being put on the spot by total strangers about a subject you are not really an expert in will get your creative juices flowing.

Well today, after three days of designing a four page letter, 36 hours printing 400 copies of the four page letter, front & back at a cost of over $250.00, another two days folding the letter, $65.00 for the 400 addressed envelopes, and them another day stuffing the envelopes and then another 6 hours stamping the sealed package with the metering postage stamp I have finally finished my first bulk mailing.

This was sent out to businesses and individuals that are members of the local Chamber of Commerce.

I have another 425 to go. But I’m going to wait for the first batch to make it to their destinations and by Thursday of next week I will start calling each recipient and see if they got the mailer and strike up a conversation about solar energy.

I sat down this morning and devised how many panels, or solar water heating systems I would need to sell in order to generate $3,000.00 per week of activity. With my commission rate being cut in half I need to sell twice as much as before. So to meet my financial goal it will require for me to close the deal on an approximately two 3.0Kw sized system plus three 80 gallon SHW installations per week.

I think I am talking myself out of this as an occupation. The real way to make money in this business is to move where people want solar power and fight the competition or open a solar energy store and have offer workshops and seminars to educate the masses on the advantages of solar.

Last week I joined with the local Chamber of Commerce in hopes of finding a market to promote solar power to. For the past week I’ve been working on a mailer to send out to Chamber list of members.

As of today I am waiting on the envelopes to be printed. My first mailing will be 400.

I spent over 10 hours yesterday harvesting emails from the Members area of the the Chamber website. They said they could not give this to me with the mailing list because of an FTC rule. But if the email addresses were in published in the directory that I could solicit to them.

Here is the thing. I’ve been going door to door and business to business but I am finding that people are just not home or are too busy or are just not interested. The very few that find solar interesting are not calling or do not at the time seem to want to pursue a conversation about it. So I am just stepping up the pace a little and using other means to get the word out.

Today, August 26 2010 I am finishing the first leg of the snail mailing. I will then build a squeeze page with an opt-in box on it. From there I will send out a brief message about soalr to all the emails from the Chamber. If they are interested then they can go to the squeeze page and sign up for a series of solar power messages. We’ll see how this works.

This last August 20th 2010 I attended a 6 hour accredited seminar for engineers and architects. I was the only one the room without a 4 year college degree and was popping off questions and absorbing all I could. The seminar was of course solar power oriented. It was 4 hours of solar PV and 2 hours of solar thermal. I really learned or at least encountered quite a bit of meaningful information. I hope to utilize it in the days ahead as I continue to broadcast the benefits of “Going Solar”

That is the way I feel about now. I’ve been going around to prospective neighborhoods testing out the market. I walk up to the door with sales literature in hand and hope someone is at  home. IF they answer I introduce myself and claim that I am a solar energy consultant, although my business card says I am an “Energy Analyst”.

Sometimes they are interested, other times they say they had thought about looking into solar and still others just laugh and say stupid stuff. Just last week I had three older persons say that they were too old to think about any long term solutions and were just waiting on the grave. How depressing.

My strategy needs to rotate to a more qualified approach. I am going to use the directory from the local Chamber of Commerce and send out a letter of introduction for the company I represent. Another approach is to start with a classified ad in the local papers maybe two days per week for a month.  It will look something like:

Has the electric bill gone through the roof? Maybe it’s time to “GO SOLAR”  contact davenport@solarteknashille.com for a free energy analysis.

Or something like that. More to come.

After wasting a whole day working on my truck – the one I use to solicit solar – I headed out to Smyrna TN to keep an appointment for an energy audit. On the way my truck over heated and I had to pull off the road for a while.

A policewoman came over to check me out and told me where the nearest K-Mart was so I could get some more anti-freeze. After about 20 minutes of letting the engine cool I realized it was not going to start. I had run it so hot that the valves were beginning to rattle.

So I called my prospective client and let him know I was in trouble and would be late. He didn’t like it because his window of freedom was only for about one hour. A little while later a good guy named Webster wearing a white cowboy hat pulled on his white horse and offered to help. He took me over to the K-Mart store where I purchased 2 gallons of PEAK anti-freeze. We went back to my truck.

Poured both gallons into the system and started it up. All is well, no cloud out the tail pipe and no rough running problems. I’m on the road again.

I made it to the appointment 45 minutes late. The home owner briefly told me about his current energy consumptions and left for his appointment. I took the necessary pictures and attempted to climb up on the roof but decided with my record of accidents I would pass. So I counted the rows of shingles from the ridge line to the gutter and measured the house length, took out for the hip areas and did a square footage calculation.

Later that day I sent the home owner a quote of $56,000.00 dollars. I hope to hear from him by noon tomorrow. If not, then I will give him a call.

To end the day I went door-to-door in a couple of neighborhoods looking for homes that would be a good match for solar. One woman just laughed at me, took my flier and shut the door.  A man asked if putting solar on his roof would void his lifetime warranty. Another said they hired a crew to remove a solar water heater from their roof. Had to hire a crane to get it down. What a stupid shame.

Tomorrow I will rise early and get knocking on businesses.

Getting started is the hardest part. You would be surprised how many people do not fully understand how sunlight turns into electricity. Or just what really is solar energy.

So I took some of SolarTEk’s literature and proceeded to go to various sub-divisions and well to-do neighborhoods and knock on doors. The response was mostly positive.  One out of 10 will talk to you about it and mostly they took the handouts and thank me.

repetition is the key to getting any kind of point across. So I’ll just have to devise a method of contact that will stick in their minds once they encounter it. But let me tell you about on person that did call me back after I left a flier and business card.

It was a commercial call and I interrupted the elderly man’s lunch. I acknowledged his busy schedule, thanked him and left. The next day I got a call from Rose Tires & Service. It was the owner and he wanted me to come by and give him an idea of “just how must this solar cost”. Next morning I went over at 9:30 AM and net with Chip Smith, the owner. Now Chip is a young man and has a successful family run auto service center. It was bought by Chip and his wife Jan in 1991. But the company, ROSE TIRES goes back several years.

I submitted a quote and was told to call back the following Monday.

I’m a little behind on my updates already. I’ve been going to the main office in Nashville to get acquainted with the owner/president of SolarTEK, Scott. All the while looking at ways to get the word out in my community about how affordable solar is now a days.

Sitting down with Michael C., I’ve learned the basics of using the solar calculator and the size of the various panels and hot water systems they promote. As well the name brands over the off brand types out there.  As of this post SolatTEK uses three different PV panels and two large SHW systems. I can’t reveal the actual company brands due to competition, but two of them are long standing manufacturers of solar panels and the third is new but gaining recognition for performance and price.

The company is geared toward getting  the homeowner or business owner into a system that will ultimately generate enough electricity to the power grid so they can have enough free electricity to run the building and make a little money at the same time. But what I like is that while needing to turn a profit to stay in business, they are equally ready to help a utility customer understand how little changes in power usage can go a long way to lowering the cash outlay for energy.

More to come.