Getting Leads from Lead Generation Companies

SolarNexus can integrate directly with companies that offer qualified leads for solar projects. Once setup, leads your company buys will feed directly into SolarNexus, enabling you and your team to respond faster using accurate information, accelerating the sales process.

We currently have working integrations with these providers of qualified sales leads:

• SolarReviews
• Clean Energy Authority.com
• Clean Energy Experts
• energysage
• wavesolar
• FiveStrata
• Home Improvement Leads
• leadgenesis
• 123 solarpower
• modernize
• rgr Marketing
• SUNLYNK
• PowerScout
• Blue Fire Leads
• CM Custom Media

If you currently use or want to use one of these providers, or if you have another provider of leads you work with, please let us know.

Implementation

The first step to implementing an integration with one of our lead generation partners is to contact them and open an account.

Next, let them know you want your leads to be automatically pushed into your SolarNexus account. You will need to provide the lead gen company with three items from your SolarNexus account: an API key, the Lead Source name that you create in your SolarNexus account to track their leads, and optionally, the ID of the SolarNexus user who should be in the initial Sales Owner (if any).  Although the SolarNexus API also requires a job process ID to create a job, you do not need to include the the SolarNexus application will automatically default new job creations to the correct process for new sales leads, which is your "Standard Project Process."

Create an Email to your lead gen company representative and include the following suggested text, substituting your specific values where indicated:

Please post my leads directly into my SolarNexus account. Here is the posting information you need:

• API key (sending separately)
• For SolarNexus, the data payload is defined with the SolarNexus API documentation (to post new job, use the jobs endpoint)
• For the lead_source_id element, use:  Lead Source ID
• For sales_owner element, use:  "sales_owner": {"id":SolarNexus_user_ID}
  (OR to leave the new lead unassigned, just say "do not include the sales_owner element.")

NOTE - You MUST replace the italicized words above with your specific values. Here's how you get the information from SolarNexus:

1. Your API Key

In order to allow the lead generation company to create new leads in your SolarNexus account, you will need to provide them with a SolarNexus API Key. This key is associated with a specific User in your account -- think of it as a code which is a combination of the login AND your password.

You can provide an API key for any User in your account, but we strongly encourage you to use an API key for someone in management who is likely to be around for some time so that you don't have to worry about updating your lead gen connections.  Here are two possible approaches:

For the highest security of your account data, you can provide an API key for a user that does not have Sales Management rights and is not an Administrator, which means the key could never be used to access all the project data in your account. The slight limitation with this approach is that newly created leads can only be assigned to this regular user, or be left "unassigned." This is not much of a limitation, however, since you can use the milestone functionality to assign the "sales owner" role after creation, or you can simply have a user with Sales Management or Admin rights get notified of the new unassigned lead so that they can review it and assign it to a Sales Owner for further follow-up.

Alternatively, you can provide an API key for a user that has Sales Management rights or is an Administrator.  The advantage of this approach is that newly created leads can be automatically assigned to a specific Sales Owner (you have to choose one), who will get notified of the new lead immediately.  If you are comfortable with the slight risk of providing an API key to a third party that potentially could be used to access all your data, this is the best approach.

To get your API key, log in as the User you'll be using, per the above description. Rollover the username at top right, and click the "Profile" link in the menu that appears:

If you already have an API key, you will see it on the screen in the API and Integration section. If no key is displayed, use the Generate button to create one.

Once you have an API key, select (highlight) the entire key and copy it, so you can provide this to your lead generation provider.

CAUTION!!!: DO NOT CLICK GENERATE IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A KEY IN USE. If you regenerate your API key after a lead provider has started sending you leads, you will have broken their connection by changing the key. If that occurs, contact your lead provider and have them update the API key used to connect to your account.

NOTE: For security purposes, we recommend NOT sending your API key in Email together with other API information that would make it easy for a bad actor to take API actions in your account. Its best to assume that Email is public. A good option is to paste the API key into a doc that you can send with some security, for example using a Google doc that you can share with a specified email address only. If you do send your API key via Email to the lead gen provider, send it separately with no additional information in the Email so that a potential bad actor would at least need to do some work.

2. Lead Source

We recommend creating a Lead Source that is the name of the lead provider you are using.  To create a lead source, navigate to Administration > Lead and Project Data > Lead Sources. On your Lead Source screen, create new Lead Source, with lead category = "Lead Gen Providers" (or equivalent), and Lead Source name = name of the company you are buying leads from.

SolarNexus automatically creates a unique ID for all lead sources. Provide this lead source ID to your lead gen company.

NOTE: Earlier versions of the SolarNexus API accepted the Lead Source name in the post using XML format. When You should then provide the exact name you created to the lead provider. They will input that name into the new lead when pushed into SolarNexus.

3. Sales Owner User ID (Optional)

If desired, and you are using an API key for a user with Sales Management or Administrator rights, you can provide the ID of a specific User in your account which should become the Sales Owner of all new leads that the lead provider pushes into your SolarNexus account. This user will see a message on their Dashboard of the new lead, and if set in their Profile, will also get an e-mail notifying them of the new lead.

Note that if the lead provider has the ability to assign leads to different users based on some defined criteria, you may give them the user ID for all the SolarNexus users which will be assigned to incoming leads. 

To get the ID of a SolarNexus user, login to SolarNexus as an Administrator to your account, and go to Users in the Administration menu. On the row for the User you want to use, you'll see a column labelled "SolarNexus ID".  The number in that column is the User ID to provide the lead generation provider as the "Sales Owner ID".

Once you have collected the necessary data, contact your Lead Provider with the information and they should be able to quickly get you setup.