Brandon Bridgewater Sunergy Renewables; Chief Sales Officer
Thanks, Tim. So, at Sunergy, our sales approach is quite a bit different than most companies. Its simple, but it works really well. We have managers,
closers and setters. When youre a setter, your whole focus is to just knock doors and set appointments. Thats all you do. When youre a closer, you go to those appointments, all day every day. By keeping these two things separate,
it allows our reps to focus on what they do best, which, in turn, gets both them and us a higher return. So, by sticking with this model, we can ensure we consistently stay around a 50% minimum close ratio. We shoot for higher but thats our
standard that we hold them to. Thats typically 2-3 times higher than most companies in the industry today.
This model is very different than most companies. Typically, youll see companies recruit as many sales reps as possible. Theyll provide little to
no training, a couple hours on then they send them out on the doors. So that same sales rep will knock doors, book their own appointments, and then that rep will go back and try and close those same appointments themselves. I understand why they do
itits just easy to scale, theres not a whole lot of management involved. But that might with the model, the quality of the average sales rep drops drastically. Usually that ends in the sales reps sticking around for a couple
months, maybe a year, but they end up falling off and losing sales reps pretty quickly.
So, by specializing, were able to generate higher close
ratios, more deals per rep, which, in turn, equates to higher average earnings per rep, compared to the industry. Even though we pay slightly less commission per deal, overall, the sales reps earn quite a bit more with us as opposed to competitors.
Also, this is what helps us keep sales reps. Our retention rate is really good compared to industry. This is one of the key things that we believe helps
drive that retention rate. The other stuff on here is more tied to the CRM and software. But we have a very robust softwaretracks KPIs, anything else we can need and then we use all that information to make specific decisions with our sales
guys, where they go and what they do.
Here, the main focus on what we provide to customers is the value proposition. That value proposition is we build
solar projects with the goal of saving the customer money day one, as long as their payments are around the same or less than what theyre already paying for power. Its a great value for them. So, we help them escape from the unreliable
electric grids, and the increasing power costs and they can go solar and save money at the same time. They can also store their extra power on the grid for later use, and in some circumstances, they can actually sell that power back to the power
companies and make money off of it. So, its a huge incentive for them as far as the value proposition.
Were also vertically integrated. That
is a lot more important than most customers and sales reps believe, but Ill leave that to Kalen to discuss a little bit more in depth later on. On the left, youll see a little corporate timeline, it just walks you through where we
started and how weve grown over the past five years. Then on the right you can see our geographical presence. We started in Florida, like Tim said, and opened up Texas and Arkansas a little bit over a year ago. Recently, very recently, we
opened up Missouri and our plans to open up Illinois and Ohio next year are progressing well.