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Archive for September, 2010

It’s been a little over 3 months now since I started trying to find people in Wilson county that are interested in solar. The company I represent is in hard financial times and looks like it may go down. I’ve gotten a few leads locally but most end up being in Nashville, Franklin, Gallatin and so forth. Anywhere but Wilson county. So I’m wondering about finding someone to partner with and become independent consultants. On a home owner level. Persons interested in going solar would use a consultant to “guide” the home owner through the process. I’ve looked into opening a USA Solar Store here. It would be necessary to have a store front so people could see solar panels and solar water heater system and other solar products not only to turn sunlight into energy but to take steps to lower their current energy bills.  A solar store has a $75,000.00 start up price tag. Includes inventory and training and marketing. This is the target I want to hit. The problem is I don’t have any equity or cash to get the loan for the store fees.

I’m looking at finding some night work as a janitor or dishwasher to pay the bills while I continue to promote solar.

Well, I’ve long since wanted to attend the Louise Mandrel Home Show that takes place in Nashville TN each year. The company I am representing had a booth and I got to do a little hawking on Saturday.

What are my thoughts, what did I learn? Our booth was crowded. We did have a pretty cool set up with a solar panel and SHW system. The SHW installer guy built a stand wtih a solar panel on top soaking in the ambient light. That was being inverted to AC which was powering a couple of heat bulbs below in a box. The bulbs were heating up the water in a solar water heater panel which was being used to make coffee and tea.

We had a very small corner over in the far back of the show room. Right across from us was a couple of older ladies with a foot cushion booth. They would keep drawing attention away from us before I could even make eye contact with people walking in our direction.  So there were five of us at times standing in an area smaller than 4′ x 8′  Maybe one out of five persons approached us with a view to wanting to know about solar. Most of the time the wanted a price quote based on the square footage of their home. Well you can’t do that, or at least we don’t have a formula for that yet. Seems like it would not be that difficult.

(note to self: work on spreadsheet to come up with formula for determining PC price per square foot quote)

Other folks were just grabbing anything that was free, pen, or fliers or business cards. Some were only shooting the breeze about some aspect about solar that was unique to their own circumstances.  After a while I started talking to people just strolling by and asking them is they knew about solar or if they had any questions.  This worked to some degree. It allowed me to speak about what I learned so far which really helps to get it firmly etched in my own mind.

However, these are just “maybe leads”.  They are not targeted leads. I mean we had a sign up that said we were giving away a free 1Kw PV system. Well of course people are going to fill in an entry form even if they don’t know what a 1Kw PV system is.  Several of the folks I spoke to lived in another state. Not going to travel to Maine or South Carolina , or Alabama to do a quote.

While at the show I did a tour of the kinds of vendors and saw a nice cross-section of companies with plenty of good quality products. Some were more of the flea market caliber, but whatever, right.

I am formulating a mind set about this getting customers, no matter what the product. Working a booth at a show or fair or on the street corner is still cold calling and this does not have a sustainable level of viability. In short it barely works if at all. To be successful you must have people coming to you already informed about your product and ready to purchase.

I would rather be the only worm in a small pond of fish than with a colony of worms in a large lake. You know what I am saying here. To lure people to you sales page, your ad in the local paper, your voice on the radio, you need to start right in your own neighborhood. Locally. Which I’ve been doing by going house to house in good areas. But whose home during the day? Retired people who say “oh I’m too old to think about that”. Or kids with no parents around, which when I find this I get back in the truck as fast as possible and move on.

To get targeted leads you must help them qualify themselves by providing a way for them to think that they can not get by another month without looking into this solar power thing. It needs to be on the local radio station, the local newspaper and any other avenue available on a local level.

For example. Today I have to drive 72 miles one way to a guy that call our office because the company he works for is installing 4 million $$$ worth of solar panels on the company property. Good for that company. They see the light. But the guy that called and about solar live in a home that values about $83,000.00 on 25 acres way out in the county. He was told over the phone about how much a certain sized system will cost and still wanted to have us come down and talk about solar. In my eyes this is a qualified lead. AI just may be able to do business today.

We’ll see. I’ll let you know how it goes.

You don’t want to be in the face of potential clients, however, if you don’t remind them that you are still alive and they will forget about you.

Case in point. On September 1 I made a follow up on someone that had filled out a form out booth during an EXPO. A couple day later I called and asked about comeing by to do a site evaluation as they had requested.  Oh yes they said. could yo come today. It was about 10:00AM, so i said, would noon be alright. They said sure, come on.

I went and looked over the available roof area, the shading, orientation. They did not want panels on the front of the house which incidently faced due south. So I figured a really small PV system on the north roof on top of two dormers with East facing slope. I don’t like it but hey!

I give her some very helpful advice about insulation, putting a timer on the gas water heater(yes you can) and adding a thermal blanket. SO I got the email address and went home.

At home I put together a quote for about six panels. But them I sprang out of box and thought that we could use the dormers as a foundation to build a framework across and this would allow a much larger system facing the South.

I worked all this up with PDF and put into an email and sent it out to the home owner.   Than I waited.Two days, three days. I got busy with working on a mailing list and finally about six days later I called the home owner.

Oh! they had forgotten all about it. So with me on the phone she checked her email and sure enough, there it was dated 9/1/10. Then she remembered me.  Oh well that was a couple of days ago. Guess I’d better call and see if they are still interested.

The moral of this story: make contact, develop a relationship, keep contact.

In another post I mentioned that I had paid to be a member of the local Chamber so as to get a mailing list of other members. Well so far I’ve sent out 394 letters and about 250 email follow ups. Out of that bunch I have received one ticked off response about how he is fed up with all the junk email and snail mail and one response from a person that sits on the board of directors for the local electric company. MTEMC.  I pasted in his email response to me:

Have you heard the “Solar Powered Song” by Ray Stevens? We at HSS are Clean Coal supporters, Solar wont even run our A/C. I have done much research on alternative fuels, they just aren’t cost effective. We have a loaded 400 amp panel in our home now. A solar system wont benefit us. The only energy conserving measure I am taking is a dual fuel Central for the lower Floor. Thanks, Cecil

I called this person and figured he would enlighten me about his view on “Clean Coal” and how big his home was if it has a fully loaded 400 amp panel running it. But alas he was overloaded with phone calls at the time and could not talk. He said: “I’ll have to catch up with you later”.  I found the Ray Stevens song and it is anti-solar. Very negative and biased in how using solar is portrayed. It is pro coal and nuclear power. Guess Ray is getting more than royalties.

The guy above said he did a thesis on alternative energy when he was in college. Bio, wind,geothermal and so forth. That could have been 10 years ago. Solar technology has made strides since then and is a viable alternative to paying out the nose for electricity.

Oh, by the way, there is no such thing as “Clean Coal”. Never has been and never will be. If you don’t believe me ask the people in East TN that were flooded out due to the dam breaking on the coal ash storage reservoir. Or ask the people in West Virginia about all the deaths from cancer and all the ones still living with cancer from the coal ash being carried over the mountains and right into their homes. The class action law suit and the clean up cost are in the 300 billion range. Solar will never cause harm or demand restitution.

Well, today I started making contact from the leads I got from the Living Green Expo last Saturday. I only came away with three as I don’t want to be spending so much money on fuel running all over the place.

This morning I went into Nashville and did a site evaluation. The home owner has a perfect roof area. It faces almost due south. It’s not too steep and only minimal shading in the early spring. But she did want panels on that side of the home. So I looked at what is available from an East-West orientation. Not too good here. She has some dormers and a couple of areas that stick out from the main roof. Maybe I can get a small 1.38Kw system by spreading out the panels onto different areas. All will be getting the Eastern sunshine for the most part.

If she would reconsider using the front of the home then we would be looking at about 4 Kw system. Better for them and for me.

On the way to the call I had to floor it as I merged onto the interstate. One of my door magnets flew off and drifted to the shoulder of the road. When I went back after the call I could not find it. Man! those things are $40.00 each.  @#%*%@#.

More to come.