Looking for a secret weapon for your solar business? With the solar market tightening, more installers are looking for tools or tips that can help them accomplish more with less.
We’ve always been advocates for a software stack for solar companies that are looking to increase efficiency — whether that’s because of growth or a tighter operating budget. But knowing exactly what should go into that solar software stack can be tricky. What’s a nice-to-have versus a need-to-have? What can be combined so you can save on costs versus what’s worth investing in because it’ll earn you more in referrals or save your team enough time to do more.
That’s why we’re going to go over the six different technologies that make up our recommended solar software stack in 2024. Have you been thinking about either adding or cutting one of the following technologies?
- Lead gen tool
- Proposal tool
- CRM or project management tool
- Customer experience platform
- Field app
- An internal communications tool
We’re here to argue that these are the 6 essential tech capabilities that your business needs to keep pace with competitors. And — here’s the trick — they all need to integrate with one another.
What we hear from some installers is that a software stack like this costs a LOT of money. But if software is costing you money versus saving you money, you have to chuck it. That’s why we’re sharing our tips below so you can choose the right ones.
Which solar lead gen tool is best?
Looking for better solar leads? It may sound counter-inuitive, but if you’re trying to generate leads in-house, you need to start with a marketing focused CRM like Hubspot.
Here’s why: To generate leads, you need to expand your top-of-funnel. With a CRM like Hubspot, you can post to all your social channels in one click, and even schedule your posts in advance. This will help drive more traffic to your website.
Then, when your prospects have made it to your website, your solar lead gen tool comes in to help you seal the deal. Your lead gen tool should make it incredibly easy for prospects to find out the answer to their burning question: How much will this actually cost me? To do that, embed a solar calculator on your site. Demand IQ has one of the best AI widgets that’s not only a solar calculator but also qualifies your leads.
If none of this resonates — either you don’t have the resources to generate leads in-house, or you haven’t seen results from trying to grow this top-of-funnel organically — we recommend you consider EnergySage. It’s a marketplace where you pay per lead. Conversion rates are low, but it can get you the brand awareness that you might need.
Which solar proposal tool is best?
If you’re looking for a new solar proposal tool, here’s what you need to look for in 2024:
- Does it use Lidar or photogrammetry to generate accurate roof and shading data to plan the layout? You do not want change orders. Trust me.
- Does it factor in the correct rate structure that your customer’s utility charges?
- Does it integrate with the financing options you’re offering? You want to make it easy for your customers to know how much they’re actually paying and in real time.
- And most importantly, does it provide a user-friendly, attractive interface so that even the biggest solar newbie can understand it.
None of the solar proposal tools on the market are perfect. However, two rise above the rest. Aurora is by far the most popular proposal tool and is well regarded for its accuracy, integrations, and ease-of-use. Meanwhile, OpenSolar is pretty competitive with its feature set — especially considering it’s free.
Which CRM is best for solar?
“I love my CRM.” No one has ever told us that here at Bodhi. However, especially if you’re a solar company that does more than a handful of projects a month, a CRM is a non-negotiable. A CRM will help you keep track of customer data, track project statuses, and keep contract details straight.
If you’re looking for a new CRM for your solar company, make sure to only invest in a CRM or project management tool that:
- Fits the scale of your business — If you’re doing 10 projects a month, consider Monday.com. If you’re doing 100 per month, consider Scoop.
- Is appropriately priced — Salesforce is powerful, but you’re also going to shell out at least $100k to get it set up properly.
- Gives you the reporting you need — don’t pick Monday if you want complex graphs. Salesforce or Hubspot are better.
- And most importantly, it must be easy for everyone on your team to use — Because if they don’t use it, that’s just a big waste of time and money. Netsuite for example. There’s a reason accountants love it.
If you’re looking for an even more in-depth review of the top CRMs for solar, check out our review of Salesforce, Hubspot, monday.com, and SolarSuccess.
Which solar customer experience platform is best?
Is your team too busy answering customer questions to focus on the project? Or is it the other way around, where your customers end up inadvertently being neglected? Then you need a customer experience platform.
Here’s what you need to look for:
- Does it give you a white-labeled customer portal that consolidates documents and proactively answers customer questions?
- Does it bring all your customers’ communications from not just the app, but also across text and email, into a single inbox for your team?
- Does it integrate with your CRM and project management to be able to automatically send your customers personalized and timely updates?
- Does it survey your customers to identify which customers are happy and which are not?
There is one customer experience platform that comes to mind, Bodhi! And there’s a free version!
Which solar field app is best?
Still using your iPhone and Google Drive as a “replacement” for a dedicated field app? What seems cheap and fast now can eventually cost you a fortune in time wasted.
That’s why we recommend investing in a field app. There are a few to consider:
Device Magic
- Pros: Great mobile interface, works offline, and easy to set up integrations.
- Cons: Becomes expensive as you add more users.
CompanyCam
- Pros: Easy to upload and annotate pictures. Automatically sorts photos by day and job site.
- Cons: Some users note degraded image quality upon upload.
There’s also a newcomer to this space: Scanifly. In addition to their design tool, your field crew can easily collect the data that your designers really need. Their motto: Manage field ops ON THE FLY.
If you want a deeper dive on Device Magic vs CompanyCam, as well as in-depth reviews on SiteCapture vs SolarGrade, you can find our full breakdown on these softwares here.
Do I need Slack for my solar business?
Have you ever thought: I don’t need a dedicated internal communications tool. Gmail and texting are free.
While these tools may be free, think of how easy it is to lose information in an inbox. Texting is even worse, with customer information living (and dying) on a single person’s phone.
If you’re still skeptical, here’s how to get more ROI out of something like Slack:
- Integrate it with your other softwares for improved visibility. For example, slack can ping you when a customer filled out a lead form or left you a review.
- Use their advanced search. Search for messages from specific people, or between specific dates or file types.
And here’s a Pro tip: While slack is great to discuss something, memorialize your decision in your CRM.
How to tie it all together
If you’re still skeptical of whether your solar business truly needs all of these softwares, especially in 2024’s tight solar market, let us walk you through an example of how a software stack can work together and pay for itself.
First, your prospect clicks on an Instagram ad, posted by Hubspot. That leads them to your website where they use DemandIQ to estimate their system savings, providing you with their address and contact info.
This customer data is recorded in your Hubspot as a lead, and Hubspot automatically pings a sales person on Slack to follow up to follow up with the prospect.
Once they’ve engaged with the prospect and are working on the proposal within Aurora, these proposal details are automatically recorded in Hubspot. Then, at contract signing, a project is automatically created in Scoop, and Bodhi begins sending automated updates.
At PTO, the salesperson is pinged on slack to follow up to ask for a referral.
And that’s just scratching the surface. When your softwares are specifically designed for solar, and they all integrate with one another, there are countless ways your business can embrace automation and tooling to help save more time, which can in turn be used to push projects to PTO faster or work on closing new leads.
Your prospects also expect this kind of seamless digital experience. While many of these automations are happening behind the scenes, in the age of Amazon and Uber, solar customers have higher expectations than ever before. They notice when a salesperson is slow to respond or their proposal is ugly.
If you’re looking for a partner who can help you exceed these high customer expectations, or help give some feedback on your existing software stack and how we might be able to simplify it, schedule a time with us. And if you’re ready to test out how a customer experience platform can make a difference in your business, get started for free now.
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