The CRM for solar installers with a 90-day sales cycle
Proposal, site survey, financing and permitting as stages, with a cadence that keeps the homeowner warm for months.
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- Unlimited seats
- Your own database
- AI waits for your approval
Solar is the only trade on this site where the deal can die twice after the customer has said yes: once at financing, and once in the months between signature and permission to operate. A pipeline that stops at Sold tells you nothing about either. This page is about building one that runs the whole way to the meter being switched on, and about the follow-up that keeps a homeowner from cancelling while they wait.
A quarter at a residential installer
Three things every sales manager recognises, and what gets configured for each.
Bought leads go cold inside a week
A lead from an aggregator has been sold to more than one company and is worth the most in the first hour. Two days later it is a stranger who is annoyed with everybody. Configure the inbound webhook so the lead is a record the moment it arrives, with an owner, an escalation task, and a day one, three and seven cadence.
Proposals are sent and then silence
The design goes out, the homeowner opens it twice, and the rep has moved on to the next appointment. Configure Proposal sent as a stage with a follow-up cadence over several weeks, so the second and third conversations happen on a schedule rather than when the pipeline gets thin.
Signed jobs stall in permitting and nobody calls
Between contract and switch-on sit the site survey, the structural review, the permit and the utility interconnection, and each is a wait the customer experiences as being ignored. Configure the post-sale stages with an update touch on each move, so a customer waiting eleven weeks hears from you three times.
The cancellation window is the number nobody puts in the CRM
Most trades measure a pipeline to the sale. In home solar the sale is roughly the halfway point. A signed contract cancelled during permitting costs more than a lead that never converted. You have already paid for the design, the survey and the commission.
That makes post-sale stages part of the sales pipeline rather than an operations concern. Site survey, structural or engineering review, financing approval, permit submitted, permit approved, installed, inspection, interconnection, permission to operate. Each is a stage with a date and an owner, and the moves are what trigger the customer update. Nobody cancels because a permit office is slow. They cancel because for six weeks nobody told them anything.
Financing deserves its own stage for the same reason. An approval that comes back short, or a homeowner whose credit changes between signature and install, kills the deal at a point when everyone has stopped watching it. A stage with an expiry date on the approval makes that visible while there is still time to restructure the offer.
What we configure for you
A working setup for a residential solar installer, inside the first 14 days.
- 1
Pipeline stages
One long pipeline rather than two short ones: Lead, Contacted, Appointment set, Proposal sent, Financing approved, Signed, Site survey, Permit submitted, Permit approved, Installed, Interconnection, Permission to operate, with a cancelled stage carrying a reason.
- 2
Channels
Your mailbox connected over IMAP. Aggregator and web leads post to the inbound webhook, with the source and lead cost recorded. Calendly appointments land as meetings, and the LinkedIn queue covers roofer and builder referrals.
- 3
Cadences
A day one, three and seven speed cadence on new leads. A proposal follow-up over several weeks, and a milestone update sequence on the post-sale stages. A referral cadence that fires once a system is switched on and the customer is happy.
- 4
Agent policy
The Inbox agent set to review, so it drafts a status update or an appointment reply and a person approves it. Guardrails cap touches per contact at three days apart and hold sends to business hours, which matters when your leads are consumers.
- 5
Knowledge-base voice
Your equipment, warranty terms, finance partners, service area, typical timeline by area and licence line, loaded as knowledge. No draft states a saving, a payback period or an incentive you did not approve.
Your stack, and what sits beside it
The design tools produce the proposal. We run the pipeline it moves through.
| What you run | What it keeps | What SalesCrew adds |
|---|---|---|
| Aurora Solar | Remote shading analysis, system design, production modelling, the proposal itself | The pipeline the proposal moves through, and the follow-up after it is sent |
| OpenSolar | Design, proposal and integrated financing options | Milestone stages after signature and the update cadence that stops cancellations |
| SolarNexus | Project and workflow management for installers | The sales pipeline in front of it, plus cold and referral outbound |
| Your financing partners | Credit decisions, dealer terms, loan documents | Nothing. We record that a stage was reached, never the credit decision behind it |
| Lead aggregators | The leads you buy and their delivery | The lead lands with its source and its cost, so cost per installed system by source is a query |
| Your electrician and roofing partners | The work and the referrals | Partner contacts with a cadence, so referral sources are worked rather than remembered |
These connections run through webhooks, CSV import and the API. A proposal event posted from the design tool moves the deal and starts the follow-up.
Purchased leads are where this industry gets into trouble
SalesCrew beside your solar design platform
A configurable CRM (SalesCrew)
- Stages that run all the way to permission to operate, so a stalled job is visible before it cancels
- Long cadences that keep a homeowner warm through months of waiting, pausing on any reply
- Lead source and lead cost on every record, so cost per installed system by source is a query
- Unlimited seats, and one Postgres database per company you can dump whenever you want
The solar platform (Aurora, OpenSolar, SolarNexus)
- Design, production estimates and a proposal a homeowner can act on, which is the core of the sale
- Financing options presented inside the proposal itself
- Workflow built around the permitting and installation reality of this trade
- Vendors who understand utility interconnection and incentive programmes
Speed to lead on a bought solar lead
No trade on this site depends on the first sixty seconds more than this one. A bought lead is often sold to several installers at once. The company that makes contact first often sets the appointment. The rest are calling someone who has already booked with a competitor.
SalesCrew creates the lead the moment the webhook fires, with the source and cost. It assigns an owner and raises an escalation task if nobody has touched it. It drafts the first email for a person to approve. The day one, three and seven cadence starts on its own.
The lead cost sits on the record from the first second. So the manager sees which aggregator produces installed systems rather than appointments alone. An automatic text goes out within a minute of the lead arriving, from the speed-to-lead pack.
There is a second call pattern worth designing for, and it is the quiet one. Customers in permitting call to ask where their system is, and every one of those calls is a warning sign that your update cadence is not running.
Where this gets used
Three jobs an installer does every week, described as mechanism.
Working a bought lead on day one
The aggregator posts to the inbound webhook and the lead exists immediately with its source and cost. An owner is assigned, an escalation task fires if it goes untouched, and the day one, three and seven cadence runs until the homeowner replies.
Keeping a signed customer calm through permitting
Each post-sale stage move triggers the next update in the milestone cadence. The Inbox agent drafts it from the stage and your knowledge base, a person approves it, and the customer hears from you at week two, five and eight rather than not at all.
Asking for the referral at switch-on
Reaching permission to operate puts the customer into a referral cadence, which is the one week of the whole process when a homeowner is genuinely delighted. Replies land in the shared inbox and every touch is logged against the record.
What sales managers ask first
- We buy leads. Does that get us in trouble here?
- It can, and not because of the software. A homeowner who filled in a form on a comparison site has consented to something. Whether that covers your company calling and texting them depends on the notice they saw and the records the vendor holds. Get the consent evidence in writing before you buy. SalesCrew records the source on every lead, enforces suppression and opt-out, scrubs DNC at audience freeze and runs a consent gate on call start. The consent is yours to prove. This is not legal advice.
- What happens in the first minute after we buy a lead?
- The lead is created the instant the aggregator's webhook fires, with its source and cost. The owner and the escalation task exist immediately. The first email is drafted for a person to approve, and the day one, three and seven cadence starts.
- Our cycle is 90 days or more. Will anyone still be following up in month three?
- That is what cadences are for. A proposal follow-up over several weeks and a milestone update sequence through permitting both run on a schedule and both stop the moment the customer replies. Suppression is checked when an audience is frozen and again at send, so nobody who opted out is contacted by a sequence that started before they did.
- How does it work with Aurora or OpenSolar?
- Through webhooks, CSV import and the API. The design tool produces the proposal and posts the event. SalesCrew holds the stage and runs the follow-up, while design and production modelling stay in the design tool.
- How do we handle dealer fees and pricing in the pipeline?
- As deal values and fields you configure. System price, payback and savings come from your design tool. No draft states a number unless you put it in your knowledge base, because claims about a homeowner's future bill are what get installers into trouble.
- What does it cost, and what happens if we leave?
- Core is $299 a month with unlimited seats, Outbound is $699 and Agency is $1,200. An installer buying leads at volume usually wants Outbound for the sender pool and the campaign agent. The trial is 14 days and a card is required to start it. If you leave, you take a full Postgres dump plus CSVs, because your company's instance is a separate project. It goes read-only with export available, and a person deprovisions it after 90 days.
Which tier fits a solar installer
Outbound if you buy leads at volume. Local adds the speed-to-lead pack.
Outbound at $699 a month adds the sender pool, the Instantly send provider and the campaign agent to everything in Core, which is what an installer running paid and cold volume needs. Core at $299 covers the pipeline, the shared inbox, cadences and the data bank with unlimited seats. Local is the phone, SMS and speed-to-lead tier: numbers, text-back and the AI receptionist on top of Core.
Related
Start with the proposals that went quiet in month two
Import last quarter's unsold designs and your stalled permits, and watch both cadences line up in review.
Want to see it first? Book a demo