Choosing a CRM for a solar company

Most solar companies have bought a CRM. Rather fewer are using one. The gap between those two states is where the money is, and it is almost never closed by switching to a different product.

Which CRM features actually matter?

1. 01

   Automatic capture from every channel

   Web form, phone, Business Profile message, Facebook, and any lead vendor, landing in the CRM without anybody typing. If a lead source requires manual entry, that source will be under-recorded within a month and invisible within three.

2. 02

   Automation that fires on its own

   The instant text, the follow-up sequence, the review request, the appointment reminders. A CRM where a human has to press send is not automating anything. See the solar sales follow-up sequence.

3. 03

   A genuinely usable phone app

   Your reps are in vans and your crews are on roofs. If updating a record on a phone takes more than twenty seconds, records stop being updated, and every report you run afterwards is fiction.

4. 04

   Complete communication history

   Calls, texts, emails and notes on one timeline against the contact. Without this, whoever picks the lead up next starts from nothing and the customer notices immediately.

5. 05

   Pipeline stages you can define

   Solar has stages a generic CRM has never heard of: site survey, design, permit, interconnection, install, commissioning. See solar sales pipeline stages.

6. 06

   Reporting on the numbers that matter

   Speed to lead, contact rate, set rate, sat rate, close rate, and cost per sat appointment by source. If you cannot get those out, you cannot manage the channel spend.

7. 07

   Integration with the rest of the stack

   Whatever you use for design and accounting has to connect, or somebody retypes a proposal into an invoice every week.

Solar-specific or generic?

Industry-specific CRMs arrive with solar pipeline stages and sometimes financing integrations already built. Generic platforms are usually more mature, cheaper and more flexible, and need configuring.

The honest answer is that this matters less than people expect. Pipeline stages take an afternoon to configure. The thing that decides whether a CRM works is whether the daily workflow genuinely happens inside it, and that is about usability and automation rather than about industry labels.

What should you ask before you sign?

1. 01How do leads get in from each of my channels? Get it demonstrated per channel, not described in general.
2. 02Show me an automation firing, end to end, with the timings. Not a workflow builder screenshot.
3. 03What does the phone app actually do? Full record access or read-only, which is far more common than vendors volunteer.
4. 04How do I get my data out? Format, completeness, whether communication history comes too, and how long it takes.
5. 05What is the real cost at my headcount including onboarding, add-on modules and the tier you will need in a year.
6. 06Who configures it? Included, paid, or your problem. This is where quoted prices most often move.

Before you migrate

Changing CRM is two to six weeks of disruption in a business that cannot pause its phone. Make sure the problem you have is actually the software.

• If leads are not being captured, that is usually integration, not the product.
• If follow-up is not happening, that is usually automation not configured, not the product.
• If reports are wrong, that is usually nobody updating records, which a new CRM will not change.
• If the team refuses to use it, that is usability or training, and it is the one reason that genuinely does justify switching.

Three of those four are fixable in a fortnight without changing anything. If you do decide to move, how to consolidate your solar tech stack covers doing it without losing leads mid-migration, and do solar companies need a CRM covers whether you need one at all yet.