If you have a business in the solar industry, it’s imperative to use solar CRM software. These tools will help you manage how you interact with customers while also tracking relevant data. On top of that, you can boost productivity by automating certain tasks.
Finding the right solar CRM is going to help your business grow, expand, and you’ll find it easier to connect with new customers. Here are some of the things you want to know about solar CRM systems and what options are the best on the market right now.
What is a Solar CRM?
A solar CRM is a software tool that you can use to manage your solar business. Its focus is to help you create a list with all the leads and customers, manage your site surveys, create proposals, manage documents and photos while also keeping track of every project and contact. That even includes the various offers you sent to potential customers.
Using a solar CRM is vital for any business within this niche. Not only do you get to manage every client’s requests accordingly, but you can also assess the project and ensure everything is going properly.
CRM tools created for solar customers can help streamline and improve the sales process, while delivering a much better experience. Your focus is on establishing a very powerful, long-lasting customer experience.
Why do you need Solar CRM software?
Solar CRM tools are essential because you have a better and more streamlined way of operating your business. The interface and all features are fully customized to fit your requirements and needs.
In addition, you can market your solar brand, but also walk your customers through every process, from financing to installing the solar system. It’s also possible to use solar CRM as a way to manage customer interactions, set alerts, and transform leads into paid customers.
The right solar CRM software will make it much easier to ensure your business is running smoothly and without interruptions. It also helps make the entire business process quicker, while also giving a good idea of your project’s completion rate, costs, and other factors.
Features of Solar CRM Software
Solar CRM tools are made from the ground up to fulfill the needs of the photovoltaic industry. While features might depend from one solar CRM tool to the next, there are a few core things that you will always have within all these tools.
- Lead Management: Efficiently track and manage leads generated from various sources such as website inquiries, events, or referrals.
- Project Management: Specific to solar companies, this feature helps manage the entire project lifecycle, from initial planning and design to installation and maintenance.
- Solar System Design Integration: Integration with solar system design tools to streamline the process of creating and managing solar projects directly within the CRM.
- Shade Analysis: Unique to the solar industry, some CRMs integrate shade analysis tools to optimize the positioning of solar panels and assess potential shading issues.
- Government Incentive Tracking: Keep track of available government incentives, tax credits, and rebates for solar installations to ensure accurate pricing and provide relevant information to customers.
- Proposal Generation: Generate professional and customized solar project proposals, including detailed information on system specifications, costs, and potential energy savings.
- Workflow Automation: Automate repetitive tasks and workflows, such as sending follow-up emails or scheduling appointments, to enhance efficiency.
- Customer Communication History: Maintain a comprehensive record of all communications with customers, ensuring that interactions are well-documented for better customer service.
- Performance Monitoring: Track the performance of installed solar systems, monitoring energy production, and identifying potential issues for proactive maintenance.
- Mobile Accessibility: Access CRM data and functionalities on the go, allowing sales and field teams to stay connected and update information in real-time, especially beneficial for site visits.
- Integration with Financial Systems: Seamlessly integrate with financial systems to streamline invoicing, billing, and payment processes associated with solar projects.
- Customer Portal: Provide customers with a portal to view their solar project status, energy production data, and documentation, fostering transparency and engagement.
Solar CRM selection guide
There are a large variety of solar CRM tools, so how can you pick the right one for you and your business? Here are some criteria you want to take into consideration.
- Check the interface and user experience. Ideally, you want to have a great dashboard that gives you access to all features within a few clicks.
- Automation features are preferred, so you can start automating many internal, repetitive processes. It can also help you save resources, since you don’t have someone handling manual tasks like managing documents or using templates for documents.
- Marketing features are important since you want to see whether the solar CRM will help you promote your solar business to clients. The ability to send emails, establishing marketing campaigns, these are great things to look for when picking a good solar CRM tool.
- Pricing is just as crucial; you want to ensure that the solar CRM software you go for will fit your budget. You also want to see the pricing structure, and if they have a subscription model or anything similar to that.
- Do they offer any customer service? Are there any CS limitations? These are important things to consider when you use a solar CRM system.
- Check and see if the solar CRM integrates with other software tools. Having integrations like cloud support, financial tools, all of those can enhance the experience and provide a better result overall.
9 Best Solar CRM in 2024
Set Shape
Set Shape has a comprehensive solar CRM system that can help streamline installations, automate your marketing and sales. It also does a very good job at managing your clients, while also tracking referrals. Set Shape does an exceptional job at helping you access great solutions like e-signatures, proposal tools, customer portals, and shared calendars.
Within Set Shape, you can also find cloud-based emailing, texting, and calling. It also features bulk messaging, video marketing, templates, along with a powerful set of analytics and metrics you can track. They even have an AI system to help automate many tasks.
- You can start creating solar system landing pages to help connect with your audience and generate new leads, all while making it easy to book consultations.
- Access comprehensive solar system monitoring and tracking information for your clients.
- Automatically schedule meetings with solar clients and offer them the means to choose what they want to discuss.
- The CRM allows users to upload documents for solar registration and incentives. You get to see every milestone, while also keeping a copy of the solar contract.
- Track all your solar referrals, complete with email, phone, name, purpose and other relevant information.
Pros
- A very efficient and modern interface
- Comprehensive project management tools
- Integrated marketing suite for solar companies
- E-signature system
- Customer Portal
Cons
- Quite expensive if you have many users
Spotio
Spotio does an excellent job at helping you connect with clients, generate leads, and keep track of all your projects. It can become overwhelming to manage all solar projects and ongoing tasks, but Spotio helps you do that. In addition, it can empower you to access the necessary number of leads quickly.
You can also target homes that fit the customer profile. They even have filters based on credit capacity, age, phone number, rentals or homeowners, and so on. That alone makes the sales process easier.
Their canvassing software can make it very easy to track activity data, and you can also check the results of your sales reps. You can better organize your teams while also boosting customer engagement. And yes, you can easily track every project and see its state.
- Identify your solar sales territory and receive comprehensive mapping information right within the dashboard
- Create solar customer profiles and filter them based on a variety of criteria according to your needs
- Track the performance and current schedule of all your solar sales reps
- You can check and see the current state of each potential solar sale, if customers answered and if they declined, asked for more assistance or support.
- Set appointments with solar customers and manage them appropriately.
Pros
- Find the best customers within your region
- Great support for B2B and B2C clients
- It’s a powerful field sales engagement tool
- Impressive filters to help track the right clients
Cons
- They only offer custom pricing
- It can become expensive based on what areas you target
Solar Plus
Solar Plus does an excellent job at helping you with not only the CRM part, but also with the design of a solar system. It also covers the installation process. That makes it a very sturdy, dependable, and comprehensive tool for your solar needs.
In addition, they offer financing and energy modeling tools. You can learn more about local compliance, job safety analysis, and design checks.
Another feature offered by Solar Plus is their Smart Energy Simulator. They use a simulation engine that helps you figure out how much solar power you generate. You can learn the total amount of power you can save and resell to the grid as well. It’s a very powerful and detailed sales tool that can help solar companies provide a comprehensive, reliable service to their customers.
- A very good tool for solar system design
- It has a set of tools to manage the installation process
- Send fully customizable proposals
- Smart energy simulator to identify costs
- Detailed energy and financing models
Pros
- Find the best customers within your region
- Great support for B2B and B2C clients
- It’s a powerful field sales engagement tool
- Impressive filters to help track the right clients
Cons
- They only offer custom pricing
- It can become expensive based on what areas you target
Arka 360
Arka 360 is offering, as they say, a complete “solar business OS”. You have access to all the necessary tools a solar business needs in order to grow and thrive. On top of that, it allows you to create battery and PV designs. Yet, at the same time, you can also send proposals, manage leads, and also obtain permit packages.
It’s a very detailed software that can be really good not only for designers, but also for lead management. You get everything under a single roof while still making the entire experience very seamless for your customers. Arka 360 also has a powerful financial analysis and report generation engine.
- A very powerful design studio that helps you design and customize the solar system based on the customer’s requirements and needs
- Study all the current solar leads within your system, identify their current conversion state and see their information
- Assess the current costs and sustainability, but also the profitability of every solar project you are working on. That allows you to narrow down any projects where extra charges might be necessary.
- Access ready-made packages and engineer stamps for solar permits.
- Gain access to the best solar installers and place orders from within the CRM.
Pros
- Very good for lead generation
- A streamlined way to monitor every project
- Send proposals with ease
- Impressive solar system design software
- Finance and reporting tool
- Improved permit management
Cons
- Its design can be overcrowded at times
Pylon
Pylon’s main purpose is to help you design better solar systems and also seamlessly connect with your clients. It’s made with efficiency in mind, and it allows you to create very accurate proposals in just under 2 minutes.
They integrate 3D shading tools, energy analysis, and comprehensive imagery solutions. You can also analyze load profiles and convert solar quotes in a breeze.
- Import solar-specific leads from your current lead generation software you’re using
- Establish a secure, two-line way for you to connect with solar leads and manage replies.
- A detailed, kanban-style deal pipeline created specifically for tracking and managing your solar sales.
- Detailed reminders for solar sales professionals to ensure they always reply to a message and maintain connection with leads.
- Track solar system KPIs to ensure that your sales team is doing their best work.
- Comprehensive STC form automation which helps with solar clients, while also eliminating errors.
Pros
- A simple, efficient solar CRM tool
- You can import leads from Facebook, Google Ads, and Zapier
- A 2-way email and SMS system
- Close more sales quicker
- Performance analysis
Cons
- The interface could use some work
- Expensive if you have a larger team
OpenSolar
OpenSolar is a free CRM solution, along with solar design software. With its help, you can manage your contacts, projects, and leads in a single space. You have payment processing, e-signatures, and digital contracting.
You also have a way of managing tasks and projects along with team members. The CRM integrates scheduling and digital calendar capabilities. Moreover, you can automate business operations, set custom prices, create workflows, and access a white-label solution.
- Design solar systems from within your computer, with great accuracy. You receive insights on product placement, efficiency and you can optimize everything on the spot.
- Send dynamic proposals to solar clients, while also maintaining a high level of transparency.
- An integrating financing system that’s a part of the proposal process. This way, customers don’t even have to leave the proposal, they can see available payment options.
- Comprehensive imagery system specifically optimized for solar systems
Pros
- It’s a very detailed and dependable solar CRM tool
- No seat limit, no subscription fees
- E-signature and digital contract support
- Contact and client management
- Automation features
Cons
- It’s not as complex as many paid tools
SaaS Solar
SaaS Solar does an excellent job at offering you a highly detailed, dependable, and very efficient solar system. In addition, it has a very detailed customer portal to check project info and even track energy savings. There’s also a partner portal, along with a detailed reporting feature.
The CRM also has a simple way for you to monitor the installation process and any servicing activity as well. It’s free for up to 3 users; if you have a larger team, it’s $37 or $46 per user each month, depending on the package you choose.
- Create a complete list with your solar leads and sales. You can also manage and send proposals, while also accessing streamlined data.
- Automate emails for solar clients, while using AI to maintain your voice and retain branding efforts.
- Check the credit score of your potential solar clients, to ensure they are able to afford and access your specific services/products.
- An online interface that allows your solar field sales team to login, add customer info and manage their leads or update your team with relevant information.
- Create new solar contracts and projects from within the CRM. You can also send quotes to solar leads as well, along with accessing lead nurturing features.
Pros
- It allows you to create quotes and capture leads
- Perform a credit score check
- Manage your leads and clients
- Create projects and contracts
- Very easy to set up
Cons
- A rather overwhelming interface
- It is costly for larger teams
Sunvoy
Sunvoy is a software that combines fleet management with customer portals in a very powerful CRM. You can use it to promote your brand and drive more business. Plus, it manages to unify your hardware and software into a very complex, yet powerful tool.
Aside from the customer portal, it also has consumption, production, and battery monitoring. You get CRM integrations, referral programs, system maps, O&M tickets, and many others.
- It shows customers the energy consumption habits, which makes it easy to educate them on what good energy habits they can use
- Circuit level monitoring system that allows you to track solar customer needs and upsell them those services they need
- Detailed solar battery monitoring, which allows customers to see the energy flow of their solar system live
- Track every solar project and manage it from within the interface, you can also see if any maintenance is necessary depending on the situation.
- Manage the entire solar fleet by accessing multiple inverter accounts within a single dashboard.
- Detailed lead/client management
- Track battery and consumption levels
- Streamlining your hardware and software solutions
- Improve your company’s marketing
Cons
- It’s priced per system
- The marketing system can be improved
Solar Monkey
Solar Monkey has an excellent CRM system that helps you manage clients and track their needs. It can be very good for lead generation but also for improving and managing your sales funnel. On top of that, it can be very resilient when it comes to activity planning.
It has great integrations to help you optimize how you are using other software with it. In addition, you also get access to very good, reliable reports and analytics.
- Create a solar sales funnel and track the progress of every potential lead, if they were sent an offer, if it was accepted, if they try to negotiate prices, etc.
- Plan the activity of your solar teams. Customers can choose their preferred installation date and also change it when necessary.
- Receive a complete report with the solar system costs, installation process, but also costs and so on.
- Start a solar-focused marketing system and choose to use email marketing or any other marketing features.
- A solar field management system to help track your team’s efforts, see what leads were captured, while also managing solar projects and adjusting every project.
Pros
- Very powerful integration system
- Create and optimize your sales funnel
- Impressive lead generation system
- Plan activities and obtain detailed reports
Cons
- Pricing is not transparent; it’s on demand
Conclusion
There are a vast number of solar CRM tools you can use, each with its own feature list and benefits. We recommend using our guide to pick the best solar CRM that fits your needs. Keep in mind that a good solar CRM can help your business grow and evolve, so it’s crucial to find the ideal one that fits your requirements!
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do solar companies need a CRM system?
A CRM system for solar companies is essential for streamlining operations and enhancing customer relationships. It helps manage leads effectively, automates workflows, tracks project progress, and facilitates communication. With a solar CRM, companies can optimize their sales processes, ensure efficient project management, and provide better customer service, ultimately leading to increased profitability.
What features should I look for in a Solar CRM system?
When selecting a Solar CRM, prioritize features such as lead management, solar system design integration, shade analysis tools, government incentive tracking, and project management. Look for a CRM that offers proposal generation, workflow automation, performance monitoring, and integrates seamlessly with financial systems. Mobile accessibility and a customer portal are also beneficial for on-the-go management and improved customer engagement.
How can a Solar CRM save time and money for my company?
A Solar CRM system can save time by automating repetitive tasks, optimizing project workflows, and facilitating efficient communication. It streamlines lead management, reducing manual efforts in tracking and converting leads. Additionally, the integration of financial systems ensures accurate invoicing and billing processes, contributing to financial efficiency. Overall, a well-implemented Solar CRM enhances operational efficiency, allowing your company to focus on core business aspects and increasing overall cost-effectiveness.