The Solar Sales Leap: Stop Knocking on Doors, Cold Calling, and Buying Leads and Start Using the Internet to Grow Your Solar Energy Business for the Long Term

-- will help anyone who works in marketing, sales, or management at a residential or commercial solar contractor to sell more solar with the powerful new tools of online outreach. These days, even while solar panels are getting cheaper and cheaper, the cost of acquiring a new solar customer remains high - around $3,000 on average for a residential installation, according to GTM Research. This raises the price of installations and cuts into the profit of solar installers. If solar sales and marketing was effective it would be cheaper and easier to get a new solar customer. But traditional tactics, most of which have been used for decades, from door-knocking to cold calling to direct mail, don't work well anymore. In some cases, by destroying consumer trust, outdated outreach can backfire for solar sales. Why? Blame it on the Internet. Suffering from an overload of information through phones and computers, not to mention cable TV and satellite radio, the average American consumer today gets thousands of marketing messages a day. That's why more and more people are blocking ads on their computers and on their phones. Busy consumers have even less patience for solar telemarketers or door knockers than they do for ads. That's why today, people are not just blocking the ads. Potential solar buyers are also hanging up on the cold callers, slamming the door on the canvassers, and tossing out the direct mail unread. And that means lost sales for solar installers. Pushy marketing tactics create distrust for the solar industry. And that distrust is fanned by monopoly electric utilities who use stories of solar scams spread around the news media and online to throw mud on the rooftop solar industry. As scare stories spread they'll create distrust and make homeowners and commercial property owners think twice about working directly with solar installers. is a practical guide to help solar installers survive and thrive in today's market by using the power of the Internet to build trust with homeowners and commercial property owners. The book is also a manifesto calling for the industry to remove the biggest roadblock to solar's growth by bringing the industry's marketing out of the 1970s into the 21st century. While there have been books published previously on solar sales and marketing, is the first book to introduce Internet marketing to solar companies. It's a detailed guide to help solar installers make the transition online with concrete advice to create content they can use to establish themselves as trusted advisors rather than sales bullies. The book covers such topics as: