Volt
Volt™ by Freedom Forever is a lead management and canvassing app built for solar sales teams. Features include door knocking tools, lead management, territory assignments, competitions, leaderboards, and more.
“This app is a masterpiece!”
“I really love how intuitive it is and how easy it is to use it.”
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Volt set out to solve a real problem: dealers were paying up to $30k a month for third-party canvassing and lead management software that wasn't integrated with Freedom Forever's platform. An in-house solution meant free, fully customized tooling built directly with dealer input — and a genuine recruiting and sales differentiator for the industry.
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One of the most unique aspects of the residential solar industry is the nature of sale — a deal isn’t truly closed until the system is installed and working. This makes the relationship between the sellers (or dealers) and installers important — neither party makes money if the job is not completed or properly installed.
As the largest residential installer in the U.S., Freedom Forever has exclusive partnerships with the Super Dealers of the industry — together they act as the sales arm for Freedom Forever.
This mutually beneficial relationship incentivizes Freedom Forever to support the Super Dealers with development resources, including bonus software products — like the Volt App.
Volt’s Evolution
The Process
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The “Sales App'“ as we called it back then was kicked off in September 2022.
In just 4 months we were launching the MVP of Volt Freedom Forever’s first sales app.
MVP
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The MVP was launched early January 2023
Current Version
The Process
The concept for a sales app was not new at Freedom Forever. The Chief Revenue Officer understood the potential and knew it could be a key industry differentiator. Once the company had a product team up and running and the priority winds shifted toward the sales side of the business, the sales app concept found it’s moment.
Working with our VP of Product and collaborating with another Senior Product Designer, we came up with a few key screen mock-ups in order to pitch our concept and get final buy-in from the necessary stakeholders.
Fun Fact: Solar dealers primarily follow a setter-closer sales model, where more junior level sales reps canvass neighborhoods, with the goal of setting appointments and assigning them to closers – the experienced sales reps most likely to close the deal.
Next with feedback from stakeholders, we honed in on the core features for the MVP, with an eye toward future iterations.
The MVP:
Door knocking/canvassing:
A map view that allowed for pin dropping to quickly create and disposition or tag leads based on the conversation (or lack there of) at each door they knocked.
Lead Management:
A list view of the leads created
A view for each lead with the ability to set appointments and leave notes and add attachments
Scheduling:
Ability to easily set appointments assigned to a specific sales rep
A calendar view for reps and managers to keep track of reps’ appointments and schedules.
The MVP
The concept had been percolating for years. Once the product team was in place and priorities shifted toward the sales side, it found its moment. Working with our VP of Product, we pitched the concept with a handful of key screen mockups and got stakeholder buy-in.
We launched the MVP in January 2023 — four months after kickoff. I took the lead design role, defined the early design system, and worked closely with a small team through daily standups and sprints. Downloads doubled within the first four months. Leads created grew from 59k in January to 583k by May. Events per user tripled over the same period.
The Evolution
Since launch, Volt has grown steadily with full rebrands, new features driven by regular dealer input, focus groups with sales reps, and quantitative metrics. Features added include leaderboards, lead filtering, sales competitions, calendar blockers, Google Calendar integration, and sales rep recruiting and onboarding.
The Rebrand
The Branding & Marketing are primarily responsible for the logo designs and color directions. I worked with the team for both iterations to finalize the color schemes to ensure text readability for both the light and dark themes with a bright yellow lime primary color.
Volt Logo & Color Styles
Enhancements
Since Volt’s launch the app has consistently been improved with new features and regular enhancements across the board. In order to determine where we focus our design and development time we meet regularly with leaders from each major sales dealer, in addition to leaders we collect qualitative data from sales representatives who use Volt daily, and analyze quantitative metrics.
Additional features launched:
Leaderboard
Lead Filtering
Sales Competitions
Calendar Blockers
Google Calendar Integration
Sale Rep Recruiting and Onboarding
Sales Competitions
Google Calendar Integration
Sales User Onboarding
