What a solar sale really costs you
Bought-in leads, a call centre booking appointments, reps pitching in the home. Each step leaks a little, and the lead supplier's invoice only shows the first one.
What solar businesses track
- Leads by supplier and what each cost, exclusive or shared.
- Appointments booked, confirmed the day before, and sat or blown out.
- What sold: panels, a battery, both, and the order value.
- Sales agreed days after the visit, once finance or a second look comes through: pick-ups, counted on the day they sold.
- Call centre hours, how fast new leads are rung, and leads booked long after they arrived (SU data).
What Vanzio joins to it
- The diary, if appointments live outside the CRM: appointment, rep, outcome, who booked it, when it was booked and confirmed. Each diary row is matched to its lead by lead number, or else by phone, email, or postcode and surname, which are used for the match and never kept.
- First-call times from the dialler, for speed to first call and calling hours.
- Hours from the rota, for hours per pitch, the call centre board and the pay sheet.
- What each lead cost, from the export or as a cost per lead for each supplier.
Names, phone numbers, emails and street addresses never go into the reporting workbook. Postcodes are cut short and figures are shown by postcode area (G, ML, EH).
The cost-per-sale question, in your words
A lead from one supplier costs £25 and from another £35. Which one is cheaper per signed job, once the no-shows and the pitches that don't sell are counted?
Cost per sale is lead spend ÷ the sales those leads made. With the diary and the rota it also gives conversion by rep, the blowout rate and hours per pitch. How it's worked out.
The demo's Solar division is this business: two paid lead suppliers plus social, referrals and self-generated leads, seven reps and a Trade rep, and a call centre of eight it shares with Windows. Its Lead sources page answers the question above for each supplier.
How the figures get in. On Core you import your CRM's export yourself. On Connected, linking the diary, dialler and CRM is part of the build. No live CRM link is built today. Which CRMs.
Try it on four numbers, or see the whole thing.
The 4-number check works out what a sale costs from each lead supplier from your spend, leads, pitches and sales, on your screen only. The demo is Demo Solar Ltd, a made-up installer with solar and windows divisions, and shows every figure the dashboard has.
Every figure is defined on How every number is worked out.