The Rev-Share Play

Monetize your customer list without selling another panel.

Your past customers need panel cleaning, EV chargers, roof work, monitoring upgrades, and pest exclusion. You don't have to do any of it — you introduce a vetted partner and take a cut. Works on customers who can never buy equipment from you again, including every lease and PPA on your books.

Read this before you start, because most people get the direction backwards.

A rev-share runs two ways, and the smaller half is the one everyone builds first:

You refer out. Your customer needs a roof, insulation, a water heater. You point them at a partner and take a fee on the job. Real money, one-time.
They refer in. A roofer replacing a roof, an architect drawing a house, a tax preparer explaining incentives — each is standing next to someone at the exact moment solar comes up. When they point that person at you, you don't earn a fee. You earn an install.

One partner's job pays you a commission once. One partner's referral pays you a customer. Run the arithmetic on your own numbers and the inbound side is usually several times the outbound side — which means the partner worth the most effort is rarely the one whose jobs you can most easily refer.

The ranking heuristic that falls out of it: value the inbound leg by how close that trade sits to the moment somebody decides on solar. A re-roof or a custom build *is* that moment. A sound system isn't. Rank by that, not by job size.

Four stages: pick the services, rank both directions, vet the partners, run the introduction.

Stage 0 — Check whether you already built this

Many installers already publish a partners or "local business referrals" page — vetted trades, listed for customers, quietly earning nothing. If that's you, the expensive half is done and what's missing is the split.

Skip Stage 2's sourcing if so, and go straight to terms with the companies already on your page. You vouched for them publicly; that is the hard part of a partnership, and you did it for free.

Stage 1 — Pick the services worth your list

prompt 1

You are a channel-partnerships strategist working with a residential solar
installer who wants to monetise their existing customer base through referral
partnerships instead of new equipment sales.

### MY SITUATION

[paste your cohort summary from Play 01, plus:]
- Service area (metro/region):
- Roughly how many past customers:
- Typical roof type and climate:
- Anything I already offer in-house:

### YOUR TASK

Recommend which aftermarket services to build partnerships around, ranked by
expected revenue against MY customer base specifically.

For each service, give me:
  - why it fits this base (climate, roof type, system age, ownership mix)
  - which of my cohorts it applies to, including aftermarket_only / TPO
  - realistic job value in my region
  - how often a customer needs it (one-off, annual, multi-year)
  - a realistic annual revenue estimate at a stated referral rate, with the
    take-rate assumption stated plainly so I can argue with it

Consider at minimum: panel cleaning, EV charger installation, monitoring
upgrades and re-registration, roof repair and re-roof coordination, electrical
panel upgrades, critter and bird exclusion, gutter work, and battery service for
systems I did not install.

### RULES

- Rank by revenue against MY base, not by what is generically popular.
- Flag any service where the referral would put my core relationship at risk.
- If a service is better brought in-house than referred, say so and explain the
  threshold at which that flips.
- State every assumption as an assumption. Do not present an estimate as a fact.

### OUTPUT

A ranked table: service | fits which cohorts | job value | frequency |
suggested referral rate | est. annual revenue | key risk.

Then a short recommendation on which two to start with and why.

Stage 1b — Rank both directions, not just the one you control

prompt 2

Take the services from Stage 1 (or the partners already on my referrals page)
and value each one in BOTH directions. Most rev-share planning only models the
outbound leg, which is the smaller half.

### FOR EACH PARTNER OR TRADE, GIVE ME

  OUTBOUND   what I earn referring my customers to them
             my installs x share who'd buy that service x their job value
             x my referral fee
             Show the middle step -- the total work I send them -- not just the
             fee. A fee that appears straight from a percentage looks arbitrary;
             the volume it is a cut OF is what makes it real.

  INBOUND    what I earn when they send someone to me
             realistic referrals per year x MY average install value

  FIT        how close that trade sits to the moment a homeowner decides on
             solar. A re-roof, a custom build or an architect at design stage IS
             that moment. A water heater or a sound system is not. This drives
             inbound far more than the partner's own revenue does.

### RULES

- Rank by the two legs COMBINED, and say plainly which partners are worth real
  effort versus which are a courtesy listing.
- Flag any partner whose inbound is structurally zero and say why. A solar
  cleaning company's customers already own solar -- what it sends back is service
  and battery work, not installs. Getting this wrong inflates the whole model.
- State every rate as an assumption I can change. Do not present an estimate as
  a fact, and do not cite a source you cannot name.
- Do NOT assume my partners currently send me nothing. You cannot know that, and
  if I already split with one of them the whole analysis reads as careless.

### OUTPUT

partner | trade | outbound $ | work I send them | inbound installs/yr | inbound $
| combined | worth the effort?

Stage 2 — Find and vet partners

The vetting is the whole play. Your asset is fifteen years of trust, and one bad referral spends it.

prompt 3

You are helping a residential solar installer vet local service partners for a
referral partnership. My reputation is the asset being lent, so screening matters
more than speed.

### THE SERVICE

[service from Stage 1]
### MY AREA
[city / metro]

### YOUR TASK

1. Build me a vetting scorecard for this trade — the specific things that
   separate a partner who will protect my reputation from one who will burn it.
   Include licence and insurance requirements that apply to this trade, and what
   the coverage minimum should be given they will be working on roofs with live
   electrical equipment present.

2. Give me the exact questions to ask on a first call, including the ones that
   surface problems people do not volunteer: how they handle a damaged-property
   claim, who actually shows up to the job, subcontracting, response time on a
   callback, and what happens when a customer is unhappy.

3. Give me the disqualifiers — things that should end the conversation.

4. Tell me what to verify independently rather than take their word for, and
   where to check it.

### RULES

- Be specific to this trade and to work performed around an existing solar
  array. Generic vendor-vetting advice is useless to me.
- Include the failure modes specific to working near live PV: array damage,
  voiding my workmanship warranty, walking panels, disconnecting monitoring.

### OUTPUT

A scorecard I can fill in per candidate, a call script, and a disqualifier list.

Stage 3 — Outreach, terms, and the customer introduction

prompt 4

You are writing the materials for a residential solar installer setting up a
referral partnership.

### CONTEXT
Service: [service]
Partner: [name / trade]
My customer base: [rough size and mix]
Agreed structure: [e.g. 10% of job value, or $X per completed job]

### WRITE ME

1. PARTNER OUTREACH — a short message to the prospective partner. Lead with
   what they get: warm introductions to homeowners who already trust me, in a
   defined service area, with no ad spend. I am not asking them for a favour.

2. TERM SHEET — the commercial terms to agree in writing before any referral:
   referral rate and what it is calculated on, when it is earned (booked vs
   completed vs paid), payment timing, attribution and tracking, service
   standards, what happens on a damage claim, exclusivity if any, and how either
   side exits.

   Typical market rates for context: around 10% of job value for a closed job,
   2-5% for an email introduction only, 15-20% where the referrer manages the
   client relationship. Specialty trades often pay a flat $50-200 per job.

3. CUSTOMER INTRODUCTION EMAIL — from me to my customer. This is the one that
   matters. It must read as a recommendation from someone protecting them, not
   an ad. State plainly that I receive a referral fee. Give the customer a
   reason this partner was chosen. No pressure, no urgency, no discount theatre.

4. TRACKING SHEET — the columns I need to track referrals, status, and payments.

### RULES

- The term sheet is a commercial summary, not a contract. Say clearly that it
  needs a lawyer before signing.
- Disclose the referral fee in the customer email. Every time. It costs almost
  nothing in conversion and it is the difference between a trusted advisor and
  someone selling their list.
- No fake scarcity, no invented endorsements, no claims about the partner I have
  not verified.
- Email bodies as single-line text with \n where line breaks go, so they paste
  into a spreadsheet cleanly.

### OUTPUT

The outreach message, the term sheet, the customer email, and the tracking sheet
columns as CSV.

What to do with it

Start with one service and one partner. Run twenty introductions, see what converts and whether the partner performs, and only then add a second.

The disclosure line in the customer email is not optional. It costs you very little and it is the entire difference between a trusted advisor and someone selling their customer list.

Want this run for you instead of by you? That is the job.
adrian@atlasautomates.com · atlas automates