Quoting residential solar at the kitchen table: a guide for NZ installers

The slowest part of selling residential solar is often the gap between the first visit and the quote. The customer is keen at the kitchen table. A week later, after the design has gone back and forth at the office, they’ve had two other quotes and cooled off.

Closing that gap means doing the design, the numbers and the proposal in one sitting. Here’s what that takes.

Start from the address, not a site visit

For most homes, current aerial imagery is enough to design the system. New Zealand’s national aerial photography is good enough to trace roof faces accurately.

Trace each roof face separately. The pitch and the direction each face points drive everything that follows.

Lay out panels face by face

Once a face is traced, fill it with panels, keeping the setback from every edge and avoiding vents, skylights and flues. Try portrait and landscape: one usually fits more.

Expect to adjust by hand. Trimming a row near the ridge or moving a panel off a flue is normal. What matters is that the output and the price follow the change straight away.

Work out output per face

Output depends on each face’s pitch, direction and location, so work it out per face and add the faces together, rather than applying one figure to the whole roof. Long-term solar data for the location gives a sound monthly and yearly estimate.

Be clear with the customer about what’s in the estimate and what isn’t. If you haven’t modelled shading, say so.

Make the business case in the customer’s terms

Customers decide on a handful of numbers: the price including GST, the saving in the first year, the payback in years and the savings over 25 years. Use their own power rates where you can, or a current retailer plan, and state the assumptions, such as how much of the solar they’ll use at home and how fast power prices rise.

No one should be promised guaranteed savings. Show the assumptions, and the number stands on its own.

Send the proposal in your brand

The proposal is what the customer shows their partner that night. It should carry your logo, colours and contact details, show the roof with the panels on it, list the equipment with warranties, and set out the savings and the assumptions behind them.

Keep your costs and margins out of it. The customer needs the total price, not your spreadsheet.

Don’t re-key it into your job system

If you run jobs in Fergus, the quote should arrive there as a published quote, with the customer, site and job created, rather than being typed in again. Re-keying is where prices drift and line items go missing.

Where Solar Designer fits

We built Solar Designer for New Zealand residential solar installers. You trace the roof on aerial imagery, the panels lay themselves out on each traced face, and it works out the output per face and the customer’s business case. It produces a PDF proposal in your brand and, in one click, creates the customer, site, job and a published quote in Fergus, with your Fergus price book loaded when we set you up.

Each installer gets its own deployment on its own web address. Book a demo and we’ll take a job from address to Fergus quote with you.