In the past, solar providers were able to generate leads primarily with telemarketing and door-knocking.

These methods are proving to be too time-consuming in most scenarios now, however, leaving them lacking the positive impact they had in the past.

The top solar installers in the industry are now arming themselves with tech and other resources that help generate commercial solar leads in a fraction of the time it used to take.

Here, we’ll show you two common ways they’re doing so:

Part One: With Property Intelligence

Part Two: Through Lead Generation Companies

1. Finding Solar Leads with Property Intelligence

Property intelligence has been gaining popularity amongst solar and roofing professionals because it offers a way to find leads essentially on-demand, while allowing you to proactively filter out leads that don’t align with your typical project scope.

Often times, the easier it is to get your hands on a leads list, the more it’ll suffer in terms of lead quality.

Lists available for you to buy may not be specifically filtered for you, and are usually made available at a quantity-based price.

The Reonomy platform allows you to scan any U.S. market freely based on very specific qualifiers, on a subscription basis.

You are in full control, yet can generate leads very quickly, and repeatedly.

Reonomy Commercial Solar Leads

The leads you find on Reonomy can be considered very exclusive, by nature of the fact that you are tracking them down yourself in a very customized manner.

Imagine searching Google for “solar installer jobs near me,” then getting a list of relevant projects with detailed information on properties and owners.

That’s essentially what Reonomy can help you do.

The key to building a great lead list with Reonomy is using the search criteria that best cater to your specific business needs.

Below, see the common search filters that top solar installers use to win new business with property intelligence.

Spot Opportunities in a Specific Geography

Reonomy provides a range of geographic filters to ensure that you are working leads in your local market.

You can filter properties by state, city, county, zip code, street name, and exact address.

You can also search your local area using Reonomy’s interactive map, including Draw and Radius features to spotlight certain areas.

This is especially popular for off-grid solar energy installers that know areas where it is hard to connect to the grid.

A quick radius draw or street input will produce all the commercial entities within this area.

Leads by Property Type

The next common filter used by solar installers is the Asset Type filter.

With it, you can identify leads based on a certain type of property.

Reonomy includes every asset other than single-family homes. Build a list of multi family leads, industrial leads, office, retail, or anything in between.

You might even seek out things like parking lots, storage facilities, golf courses, or malls for larger projects.

For example: Say you primarily install solar PV for warehouses. You can narrow your list of leads down based on that and a number of other industrial real estate property types.

Find Opportunities Based on Size

Naturally, you’ll want to find projects of a certain scale.

It’s very common for solar professionals to identify opportunities in Reonomy by the size of a parcel’s building and lot.

That includes an ability to filter within a range—say, properties that have a building area square footage between 50k-100k.

Dive Into a Property’s Ownership and Access Contact Info

Once you’ve identified properties that look like winnable proposals, you can quickly uncover who the owners are, along with their contact information.

You might want to reach out on the spot, or simply take the property away as a lead to reach out to later (note: you can gather owner information in bulk across many properties).

When matches are found, you’ll be able to see the phone number, email address, and/or mailing address for each owner associated with the property itself.

“…just because the guy’s the president of the company doesn’t mean he owns the building. I just wanted to bypass all of the gatekeepers and go straight to the owner of the property.“

Stephen Burkhalter, Founder, Solcertain

Understand Owners in Great Depth

If you already know the name of a property owner, or you identify them using Reonomy, you can then identify other properties they are associated with.

Many top solar installers love this tool, as it allows them to focus their lead acquisition efforts on the largest commercial property owners and set up sizable projects.

This is also great intel to use to inform your solar sales pitch.

2. Solar Lead Generation Companies

An alternative approach to gathering commercial solar leads is to work with a lead generation company, who can source potential projects for you.

Some companies may offer larger, more general lead lists, whereas others will offer what are considered “exclusive” leads.

It’s really a discussion of quantity versus quality, which, of course, will vary from one lead gen resource to the next.

Some of the top solar lead generation companies include:

LeadGenius

LeadGenius provides general solar leads for its customers, as they serve more than just solar professionals.

One of the ways its research team finds leads is by using Google Earth to identify commercial structures in any given city with at least 600 feet of Southern exposure.

Another team then mines the contact details for each of those buildings, including owner and property manager information for each building location.

LeadGenius explains that they can provide leads with many supporting data points that cater nicely to the needs of solar professionals, such as:

Demographics

Firmographics

Buying signals

Contact information

“Firmographics” refer to a company’s annual revenue, capital events, market share, employee count and growth rate.

Buying signals hint at the prospect’s receptiveness to a specific product or service, such as a recent change in property ownership—an important buying signal for solar installers.

Solar Lead Factory

Solar Lead Factory uses state-of-the-art marketing and technology to target potential solar customers and build high-quality leads lists for solar installers to purchase.

Solar Lead Factory offers both exclusive and non-exclusive options depending on the types of projects an installer might be looking for.

Companies that Offer “Exclusive” Solar Leads

A potential downfall of working with a lead generation company is that you may be getting some (or many) of the same contacts that another similar business is getting.

This dilutes the value of leads a bit. Your competitors may have already connected with the people in that list.

This is where the idea of “exclusive” leads becomes so important—and where Reonomy can be of great help.

The lead generation companies listed below are those that advertise their ability to offer exclusive leads to solar companies.

Connexion Solutions

Connexion Solutions offers a two-pronged approach to generating commercial solar leads.

The strategy begins with providing very hands-on assistance to solar installers.

They provide a comprehensive marketing strategy that includes assistance with all advertising, marketing, social media and SEO.

They have a no-risk, pay-per-lead program in which solar installers ONLY pay for live leads that are sent directly to their telephone or email.

Each lead is exclusive to that client.

Exclusivity allows for you to build a more personal, impactful connection with a lead, increasing the likelihood that they convert and become a client of yours.

Connexion Solutions also has a “100% Lead Guarantee.”

That means that if they send you a live lead that’s a complete dud, you’ll be refunded the cost of that lead.

CraftJack

CraftJack is a solar lead generation company that has curated nearly one million leads for professionals in solar.

All leads are phone-verified and screened in advance for quality.

A dedicated account manager is assigned to each professional to ascertain whether a lead is a good fit for that specific company.

CraftJack leads are not 100% exclusive, which they fully acknowledge.

Their leads are sold up to four commercial installation companies, but are distributed on a limited basis.

This provides a smaller pool of competition compared to solar leads that might be sold to the wider marketplace.

Determining Which Solar Lead Generation Strategy is Best For You

When trying to generate new commercial solar leads, it can be difficult to navigate the various strategies, and understand what the most cost effective resources will be.

How do you really know which approach is best for you?

A good starting point is to step back and evaluate your team’s resources.

Do you have the capacity to bring your lead gen/business growth efforts in-house?

How consistent will your team be if this is the route you take?

If you want to be effective in generating solar leads in-house, it might be worth hiring someone specifically for that role—someone who knows the ins and outs of how to utilize social media, paid media, earned media and other tools effectively.

Having someone solely focused on business growth will allow you to assure the consistency of filling your pipeline with potential new projects.

For companies who don’t have the in-house capacity, working with a solar lead generation company may be worthwhile.

These companies take the guesswork out of marketing and provide consistency when trying to generate and convert new commercial solar leads.

This allows your team to focus on what matters most: interacting with property owners and installing commercial solar for them!