Solar Telecaller Handover: Pass Leads to Field Reps Cleanly

Picture a caller in Nashik who books a site visit for Thursday at 11 am. She types the details into the sales WhatsApp group and moves on to her next call. The field rep sees the message at 9 pm, between two other chats. On Thursday he reaches a third-floor flat in a rented building. The customer is a tenant, the owner lives in Pune, and all anyone knows about the roof is that "it is open".

Nobody broke a rule, and the lead still died in the gap between them.

This guide is about that gap. A solar telecaller is the inside-sales caller who turns a fresh enquiry into a confirmed site visit, and the job only works when a field rep takes the lead over cleanly. You get the job and daily rhythm, a handover card, an ownership rule, a clock for the rep, a call-to-visit script in English and Hinglish, and the shared numbers. It runs on a sheet or any CRM.

The Baton Rule is our own method, not an industry standard. Where a number is only our suggested default, we say so.

What a solar telecaller does, and where the job stops

A solar telecaller contacts new enquiries, finds out whether a site visit makes sense, books it, and passes a complete card to a field rep. The job stops when the rep accepts the lead, not when the visit is booked, because a booked visit is a promise the company has not yet confirmed it can keep.

That one change ends most arguments between callers and reps. The rep cannot call a lead weak after accepting the card.

Ringing lists of people who never enquired is cold calling, a different job, covered in cold calling for a solar business. This guide is about leads that already enquired.

The subsidy line is easy to get wrong on a call. MNRE's PM Surya Ghar guidelines give no central subsidy to commercial and industrial customers, and non-DCR modules in any form make an installation ineligible (MNRE guidelines, PDF uploaded July 2025). A caller who tells a shop owner "you will get ₹78,000" has promised what the scheme does not offer.

A telecaller's day, built around the board

A telecaller's day works when it opens with the leads that already have a clock running and ends with a card audit. Calls in between go from the newest enquiry to the oldest.

Researchers writing in Harvard Business Review in 2011 found that most companies do not answer online enquiries nearly fast enough (HBR, 2011). The first-call speed rule is in our lead routing rules. The "board" below is your lead list filtered by stage: a tab on a sheet, or a filter in a CRM.

This rhythm is our suggestion for a 10 am to 6 pm shift, not a benchmark. For retry spacing, use your follow-up cadence. Our habit is to ring between 10 am and 7 pm unless the customer asked otherwise, which is a courtesy, not a TRAI limit. TRAI lets customers register their own time bands (TRAI preference registration), so log and honour such a request the same day.

The Baton Rule: Card, Clock, Bounce

The Baton Rule is the handover contract we suggest between a caller and a field rep. One named person holds each lead at any moment. The baton changes hands only when the receiver says so in writing. A baton that cannot be carried goes back to the sender with a reason. It has three parts.

1. 1

   The Card: no complete card, no pass

   The caller fills eight gate fields before the lead goes to a rep. If one is empty, the lead stays with the caller.

2. 2

   The Clock: the rep accepts or returns it in two working hours

   Until the rep replies "Accepted" with a visit time, the lead is the caller's. Each hop has a time limit and a named person who acts when it passes.

3. 3

   The Bounce: a returned lead carries a reason code

   If the rep cannot take it, the lead goes back with one code from a short list. The code is the feedback that fixes the next call.

"In writing" can be a typed WhatsApp reply or a stage change in your CRM, such as "Visit booked" to "Rep accepted". A thumbs-up does not count. A real acceptance names the time: "Accepted, Thursday 11, I will call him by 5."

Our Two-Desk Test guide has a short handoff card for teams that split a calling tool from a solar CRM. That card lists what a caller writes. The Baton Rule adds a gate, a clock and a return path.

Who owns the lead at each stage

The caller owns a lead from the first enquiry until the rep says "Accepted". The rep owns it from then until it is won, lost or bounced. Name your stages so they show the owner, and anyone filtering the board can see who holds a lead without asking.

Three rules keep the table honest.

• Nobody calls a lead they do not own, except to cover for someone who is away, and the note says so.
• No second pitch. After acceptance the caller stops calling, and the rep does not re-ask the card questions. If he must, the card failed.
• The customer has one contact at a time. The confirmation message names the caller and the rep, so the switch is no surprise.

A signed order starts a second handover, from rep to installation, in our sales-to-installation handover SOP. If one person enquires through two sources, see duplicate leads in a solar CRM.

The handover card: what the caller fills before the pass

The handover card is a short record the caller completes before a lead goes to a rep. It has eight gate fields, which must be filled, and three prep fields, which should be. A good card lets the rep read it cold and drive to the right address with the right expectations.

It does not replace qualification. To score a lead, use the BANT scorecard for solar leads. The card is the packet that comes out of that conversation.

Copy the first four columns into a sheet, or into the notes on each lead, and the card is ready to use.

The 30-second read test

Before accepting, the rep reads the card once, without calling the caller. If he cannot answer all four questions, he returns it as "card incomplete" within the clock.

1. Where am I going, and at what time?
2. Who will I meet, and are they the decision-maker?
3. Is this a property where I can talk subsidy at all?
4. What has the customer already been told?

A card returned for gaps counts against the caller's card number, not the rep.

What stays off the card

Do not collect Aadhaar, PAN or bank details on this call. They are needed later for scheme and DISCOM paperwork, and the customer should know why you ask. The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, notified 14 November 2025 with an 18-month phased timeline, require a clear notice of the specific purpose for which personal data is collected (PIB, MeitY, 14 November 2025). Asking only for what the visit needs is the easier habit to defend. This is not legal advice.

The clock and the bounce: when the rep is slow, and when the lead comes back

The rep must accept or return a card within two working hours, call the customer the same day and log the visit outcome that evening. If the rep does not act, a sales head sees the lead and moves it within one working day. These times are our suggested defaults, so test them on your own travel and lead volume. A booking after 6 pm starts the two hours at 10 am next day.

The clock

Without the third row the rule is only a wish, because an escalation needs a name and a time. The caller nudges once and stops. If the rep is on leave, the sales head names a cover rep in advance. The first-touch clock for a new enquiry is in our routing rules; this one starts when a visit is booked.

The bounce

A bounce is when the rep sends a lead back to the caller. It is not a failure, and it must not be quiet: the rep returns it inside the clock with one code.

Store the code as a label on the lead, or one column on your sheet. Once a week, spend ten minutes on the bounce list inside the weekly pipeline review. If "Not the owner" keeps appearing, the ownership question is not being asked. If "Slot clash" keeps appearing, the slot sheet is stale.

Call-to-visit script in English and Hinglish

A call that books a visit has seven beats: open and ask permission, collect the card answers in a fixed order, bridge to a visit, offer two slots, confirm and name the rep. The lines are templates, so put your own company, area and rep names in the brackets. The Hinglish is written for a female caller; a male caller swaps endings such as "puchungi" for "puchunga" and "rahi hoon" for "raha hoon". The opening names the enquiry on purpose, for the TRAI reason in the next section.

Two questions come up on nearly every call. Give every caller the same answers.

After the call, send the customer a confirmation and the rep the card.

Calling rules in brief (checked 31 October 2026)

For a caller working leads who enquired, the practical TRAI point is to act fast and keep a record of the enquiry. This is our reading of the primary texts, not legal advice, and our guide to missed-call marketing for solar covers TRAI in depth.

Our cold-calling guide has its own compliance section. Where it differs from the TRAI texts above, follow TRAI.

The shared numbers: what the caller and the rep are both measured on

Measure the caller and the rep on one shared number, visits held per 100 leads worked, plus a few numbers each owns. Do not rank a caller on calls made or visits booked alone. Booked visits are easy to pad, and the field rep pays for the padding.

The worked example is illustrative. Assume one caller, three field reps and 220 leads worked in a month.

Read the month in this order. Cards complete at 86% means the caller still passes six cards with gaps. Acting inside the clock at 79% means nine cards waited too long. Three "not the owner" bounces mean the ownership question is not working. Each leak has a different owner, and none shows if you only count calls.

To turn these into targets, work back from the visits you need, as in setting monthly sales targets. For the weekly view, see solar sales team KPIs. Pay is a separate decision, in the solar sales rep salary guide.

Where the handover still breaks

First ask whether you need the split at all. Use it when the person who qualifies leads cannot answer them in time because they are on the road. If one person both calls and visits, skip the handover but keep the card as a note to yourself.

Four mistakes show up again and again.

• No slot sheet. The caller books without seeing the rep's day. Fix: each rep posts free slots every morning.
• The rep re-asks everything. Fix: the 30-second read test above, and a card returned as "card incomplete" instead of a second round of questions. The Monday check that notes really exist is in managing a field team you cannot see.
• The caller hoards hot leads for their own numbers. Fix: measure the shared number.
• Bounce codes go soft. Everything becomes "not interested". Fix: a short list and a weekly review.

Train both sides: teach new reps the card in their first 30 days, and let callers rehearse objections such as "papa se baat karni padegi" with solar sales roleplay scenarios.

How QuickEstimate fits

Quickest Solar CRM does not hand the lead over for you, and we do not claim it assigns leads automatically. It gives you the board and the reminders the Baton Rule needs, and your people keep the rule.

• Lead capture: add and edit leads in one list that the caller and the reps both open, and keep the source as a label and the enquiry date in the activity log.
• Customisable stages and labels: name the lead stages so the stage shows who holds the baton, such as "Visit booked", "Rep accepted" and "Back to caller", and use labels for bounce codes. Filter by stage to see cards waiting for acceptance.
• Follow-up reminders and the activity log: set a reminder on the lead for the clock, log each call, and log one activity on several leads at once, such as a batch of no-answers.
• Dashboard and team report: a team view. Check which of the numbers above it shows for your stages, and keep the rest on a sheet.

You can add the caller and the reps as team members with permissions, and each person works on the same lead record. The Free plan is one user with 10 proposals a month and no card, so it suits trying the stage names and labels alone. A caller plus reps needs Pro, at ₹6,999 per user per year with a 3-user minimum (₹20,997 for three users), billed yearly with a GST invoice. You can also run the Baton Rule on a sheet first. If you are weighing a calling tool against a solar CRM, our comparison of a calling app and a solar CRM covers that choice.

What to do this week

Do these four things before you buy a tool or write a new script.

1. Audit 20 booked visits. Mark each as held, cancelled or returned, and for each failure note the missing card field. It takes under an hour and shows which gate field matters most.
2. Print the card and the clock. Use the eleven fields and the clock table above, and put them where the caller and the reps sit.
3. Rename your stages. Make each stage name show who holds the lead, and add the bounce codes as labels or a sheet column.
4. Run one week, then review. The following Monday, the sales head, caller and reps spend ten minutes on the shared numbers and the bounce list.

Then adjust the clock to your own travel times. Reps spread across towns may need a longer one.

Frequently asked questions

What does a solar telecaller do?

A solar telecaller contacts new solar enquiries, asks fixed questions about the bill, the property, the roof and the decision-maker, and books a site visit. The job ends when a field rep accepts a complete handover card. The caller does not quote a price, size a system or promise a subsidy amount.

What should a telecaller ask before booking a solar site visit?

Ask for the customer and decision-maker, two phone numbers, the full address with PIN code, whether the property is owned or rented, the last electricity bill, the roof in the customer's own words, and a visit slot the customer confirms. Also record what you told the customer. These are the eight gate fields.

How fast should a field rep act on a telecaller's lead?

We suggest accepting or returning a card within two working hours, calling the customer the same day, and logging the visit outcome that evening. These are our suggested defaults, not an industry benchmark. If the rep has not replied by four working hours, the sales head sees the lead and can reassign it.

Who owns the lead after the telecaller books the visit?

The caller owns it until the field rep replies "Accepted" with a time. Then the rep owns it until it is won, lost or sent back with a bounce code. Name your stages so the owner is visible, for example "Visit booked" for the caller and "Rep accepted" for the rep.

Should a telecaller quote a price or subsidy amount on the phone?

No. Price depends on system size, roof and make, and subsidy on home type, capacity and scheme rules. MNRE's guidelines give no central subsidy to commercial and industrial customers and require domestically made modules. Say the engineer will confirm both at the visit, and record anything you did say.

Can a telecaller call someone who enquired a week ago?

TRAI's Third Amendment, notified 18 September 2026, lets a commercial communication rest on an enquiry for seven days from its date, if the enquiry was in writing or digital form and kept in a verifiable form. After that you need another basis. Read the regulation and take advice. This is not legal advice.

Which numbers should a telecaller and a field rep both be measured on?

Use one shared number, visits held per 100 leads worked. Add cards complete at the pass for the caller, acted inside the clock for the rep, and bounce rate by reason. Avoid ranking the caller only on visits booked, because booked visits can be padded.