On this page: What's broken
  1. What's broken
  2. What we install
  3. Why listen to us
  4. Free answers
  5. Straight answers
  6. Book the diagnosis
Solar — signed is not installed

Solar's dirty secret: deals sold hard
cancel quietly.

A signed contract is not revenue. Between the signature and the panels sit weeks of surveys, permits, and silence — and that's where the deal you celebrated goes to die. We're two people who turned a $227 first commission into a ~$1.3M-a-year recurring book in an industry that punishes over-promising the same way solar does. The machinery that fixed it there installs here.

Get your free diagnosis See what we fix
Our receipts
FreedInsure — $227 first commission → ~$1.3M a year two people ~40 states health & life
What's actually broken

The six leaks we see in almost every solar company

You don't have a demand problem. You have a gap between what gets signed and what gets installed — and a funnel that leaks on both sides of it. Every one of these is fixable.

Leak 01

Cancellations between contract and install

Signed Friday, dead three weeks later — somewhere between the site survey and the permit, the customer went quiet and then went away. You paid for the lead, the appointment, and the celebration. The revenue never showed up.

Leak 02

Savings pitches that boomerang

An over-promised savings picture closes fast and cancels faster. The first real bill contradicts the pitch, the customer feels played, and the review they write recruits for your competitors. The deals you oversell today are the doors that won't open next year.

Leak 03

Reps paid on signatures

Comp on signatures and you will get signatures — including the ones that never install. The rep gets paid and moves on; the company eats the cancel. Your comp plan is training your closers to sell deals that die.

Leak 04

The not-yet pile nobody works

A homeowner who says no today has a bill that goes up every year. Rates rise, a neighbor installs, the math flips — and nobody from your company ever calls back. A no today isn't a no in eighteen months. It's only a no forever if you never follow up.

Leak 05

The referral engine nobody built

The happiest install on the street will sell the next three roofs — if someone asks. Almost nobody asks. No referral moment in the process, no neighborhood touch after the crew leaves. Your best salesperson is a customer you never put to work.

Leak 06

Lead spend judged on appointments

Cost per appointment is a vanity number. An appointment that signs and then cancels costs more than no appointment at all. The only number that judges lead spend honestly is cost per installed system — and most solar companies have never run it.

What we install

The same machine that ran our floor

Not solar theory from someone who never carried a quota — the actual systems two people used to run a multi-state sales operation, adapted to your market, your financing partners, and your team.

  • The honest-picture pitchA savings presentation built on the customer's actual usage — realistic offset, real payback window, what the bill does in winter. Math the customer can verify is the anti-cancellation vaccine.
  • Install-rate comp designA meaningful share of every commission rides on the install, not the signature — and cancellation rate sits next to close rate on every rep's scorecard, in daylight.
  • The contract-to-install cadenceA same-day welcome that restates the picture they bought, a scheduled touch at every milestone — even when the update is "no update, here's what's next" — and a named human they can reach.
  • The referral machine and the honest scoreboardReferral asks wired into the happiest moments — permission-to-operate day, the first full-month bill — and a scoreboard that tracks installed systems per rep and per lead source.
LeadDialed in minutes — and the not-yets enter a cadence that never forgets
PitchSavings math the customer can check — the picture the first bill confirms
SignTreated as halftime — the follow-through cadence starts the same day
InstallWhere comp pays out and the scoreboard counts
StreetReferral asks at the happiest moments — every install sells the block
Simulation — how the machine treats a lead
20:04:11Lead arrives — quote request submitted
+0:00:08Auto-text sent — consent on file
+0:01:42Dialed — lead connected
+0:02:59Next touch scheduled on the cadence

Why listen to us on solar, honestly

We don't come from solar, and we won't pretend we do. We come from insurance — an industry that also lives and dies on what happens after the yes. When a policy gets sold on an over-promised picture, the customer cancels in the first months and the commission claws back. Different product, same disease: a gap between what got signed and what actually sticks, created at the pitch and paid for by the company.

Tino's first commission was $227. He and Mike — just the two of them — built FreedInsure into a health and life operation licensed across roughly forty states, fed by a lead engine they built themselves. They still run it — roughly $1.3M a year with three-quarters of the book renewing. They got there on the honest-picture pitch and retention machinery, because a two-person shop can't survive a chargeback wave. That guardrail transfers to solar directly — a cancellation and a chargeback are the same bill with different letterhead. The long version is on the About page.

Free answers first

Read what we'd tell you anyway

The playbook isn't a secret. These are the deep dives we give away — because trust is the product.

Solar

Solar sales: why deals die between the appointment and the install

The trust deficit, the honest savings picture, and the silence after the signature — the full breakdown.

Read the breakdown → Getting found

Solar SEO: the homeowner searches before the appointment holds

Skeptical homeowners check your name, your reviews, and your town first — and ask an assistant whether solar is worth it at all. What has to exist so those answers name you.

See the build → Sales systems

Picture painting: the close that stays closed

Vivid pictures close deals. True ones keep them closed. The method, and the guardrail that makes it safe.

Read the method → Sales systems

Retention: the revenue you already earned

Keeping the customer after the yes — the cheapest revenue in your business and the easiest to lose.

Read the case →
Straight answers

Questions solar operators ask us

Because the paperwork is the same for the deals that install and the deals that cancel — the pitch isn't. A customer sold an honest picture rides out six weeks of permitting fine, because nothing that happens contradicts what they were told. A customer sold an inflated savings number spends those same six weeks finding out, and the silence gives them time to do it. Tighten the cadence, yes — but the deals that die easiest were already dead at the kitchen table. The fix starts there.
You'll lose some reps — specifically the ones whose numbers only work when over-promising is free. That's the point. A rep whose deals cancel was never your best closer; they were selling deals you paid for twice — once in commission, once in cancellation. Reps whose deals actually install make more under install-based comp, not less. Phase the split in over a quarter or two instead of flipping it overnight, and watch who complains loudest. That list is diagnostic.
Both, differently. A door team is a premeditated pitch delivered at volume — the honest-picture presentation and install-rate comp matter most there, because the doorstep is where over-promising lives. Digital leads are a speed and follow-up game — minutes-to-dial and the not-yet cadence matter most. Either way the scoreboard is the same: cost per installed system, per channel. Run that number for both and it tells you where the money should go. If you'd rather own the pipeline, we build done-for-you campaigns in accounts you keep.
We were two people. Every system on this page was built by a two-person shop first — that's the point of systems. And small regional is where this matters most: your reputation lives in a handful of zip codes, so a cancellation wave and the reviews that follow hit you harder than they hit a national brand — and a referral engine compounds faster, because your installs sit on the same streets. Small is the best time to install systems. You're not untraining fifty reps later.

Put your close rate and your install rate side by side

The gap between those two numbers is what over-promised pitches, silent weeks, and signature-based comp are costing you. The free diagnosis prices that gap with your own numbers — and shows you what closes it. Straight verdict, no pitch deck.

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The diagnosis is free. The cancellations aren't.
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