Ep 152 - This Isn’t Extra, It’s Premium!

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back. It's Friday, it's my day, joe. It's another episode of Electric Preneur Secrets, the Electricians podcast, episode number 152. And I come to you as Clay Neumeyer, but more officially, the Pleasant Peasant from north of the border, holding doors open for everyone who's going in the building and thanking them for walking through. And with me is my esteemed co-host, joseph the Salesbot, lou Canney. We're fired up. It's Friday, I'm so fired up. I did my top button today, joe.

I was going to say that's a ballsy move. It's 92 degrees here in New York, so I'm not buttoning anything right now. You're lucky I'm not going all the way down.

I want to know if you're with us, live in our Electric Preneur Facebook group, do let us know. Are you a top buttoner? What kind of service shirt are you wearing? Is it a polo? Is it the full button up like the dress? Work shirt, like we've got? Do you do the top button up on either of those? Oh, mine just naturally undid there so I'm back, I can breathe again. But hey, I was happy to support my community of top buttoners there for just a little while, joe.

You know what it was. It was that your neck is just so thick and muscular. You probably just breathe a little too hard and popped out right. That's got to be what it was.

I've been doing the workouts and one of my favorite is the neck thrust.

I feel like we should be in an 80s movie, just like.

Yeah, I'm actually surprised that the button didn't just pop right off the shirt, just undid. So this is a good morning, good start.

It would be even funnier if it popped off, hit the camera and dipped out right.

Yeah, hey, man, are you the T100 version of the sales bot? Is that who we've got today on the call?

Oh man, you're calling me on it. So the T100 was actually. I'm a huge Arnold Schwarzenegger fan, so I love the Terminator series.

Skynet.

Yeah, so one of those things where the T100 was the most updated version of it and it's all good. My version is I was called the sales bot when I was younger because I was very robotic, being very autistic, and I was still good at sales, like even as I was growing, as I was getting better with it. But now I like being the sales bot because I can look at where I was and, yeah, I'm still still spectrum 8aF, but I can make it me. This is who I am and I'm so glad to share my quirks and oddities with the world and maybe they'll feel better after working with me, you know.

I love that as a sales bot. I have a professional question for you. Actually, have you considered that the recent AI, the takeoff with AI, is kind of alarming and maybe very consistent with Skynet?

Honestly, yeah, the thing is, is that, like with AI, there's so much that can go with it, like I wouldn't mind a whole Skynet situation. I mean if you think about it like we as humans we're not doing a great job running things. Maybe give computers a shot at it right, oh boy, oh, can of worms.

Here we opened up. I do want to introduce something, though. On that topic is I don't think we talked about it, but last Friday I did attend this business function, the Interplay Summit and there was some people smarter than me in the room. I hope you all find the liberty of such rooms as well in your life, in your growth, in your business and the Harvard professors and a gal from the Metaverse the Facebook Metaverse and she was the head of innovation of something or other. I can't remember her name, but they were having this discussion about AI and where it fits. And since you said that, I did take this one solid takeaway, this note about AI and one of the limitations is, as they saw, in the future of education and what we'll see is like AI tutoring you won't need to hire a human anymore. You'll build an AI tutor to suit your needs and that AI tutor will be able to teach you things At some point. Joe, it's very possible that an AI tutor, teacher or coach teaches our program and the sales mastery that we do.

Did you imagine that I consider myself a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton At the same time? To have an actual AI running this? I got it like that. That's kind of crazy. Here's the downfall, though.

Everyone's wondering like, okay, is AI replacing us then? And it really can't. And there's one area that they spoke to that I thought was a huge takeaway, and it was this comfort zone. Ai is programmed on inputs which come from your comforts mostly, and so, even having that tutor, they'll teach you what you want to know, but they're also receiving the inputs of your comforts. What I mean by that is something we call the developmental edge is a place that AI will have intuitive trouble to figure out what you need. That's outside of your comfort zone. So, in our space and transformation and supporting people, there's a very strong likelihood that we'll continue to work with AI and build programs in a cohesive network of a combination of both, but will it ever replace us entirely? I don't think so, joe. No.

I mean, that same argument came back to where people were talking about like, believe it or not, I actually worked for a company called CNS where we did robotic engineering and robotic construction, and this is back, you know, in the day where they were like, oh, these are all gonna replace us. I'm like, no, they won't, we need to fix them. That's the part, like you know, you get the tomato sauce on it. Now we can't see like these things are tools. They're no different than anything else. They require human input and if even they can get beyond human input, it requires a creative edge which just cannot be unorganically designed. It requires that human spark to initiate the task it needs to do. So, if okay, maybe if you're a laborer where you're picking things off a shelf, yeah, I can see that being replaced. But the person who maintains them and designs them and continually works on them and enhances them programs them. That job is gonna go up in demand, not down.

I'm a 30,000 foot view guy with you know the creative aspect of it, so I'm not worried and I'm not gonna complain. But I'm gonna shift us back to our topic of the day because I took us down a rabbit hole, man.

Sorry about that. I love you, I'm feeling fantastic.

I'm wound up, and I just went completely to the left when we meant to go right. So let me just say this to start us off Sure, it's not extra. Everything we've talked about this week is not extra. We're not adding work. Yes, there are some extra steps, but it's not to do with defeating slow season. Really, it's about everything that we do. It's not extra. It's premium. Premium is about doing extra things. If you're a premium service provider, though, it's not extra. Did I just completely contradict myself, or did that make sense?

No, it did, and this was my take on it. It was when you establish yourself, you're saying I choose to be a premium residential electrical service specialist, like that is who I am. That's what I'm gonna do. You cannot be the apples to apples guy anymore. It doesn't work. Outlet in, outlet out, here's my time material that won't fly anymore. So you doing more to succeed at a higher level is the standard now. That's not you signing up for bonus. You signed up for this when you first got started. So we're not asking you to do things that are above and beyond. We're asking you to do the things that should be expected for the company that always was striving to go above and beyond from the first place.

And the word comes to mind as congruent. So it's not even switching focus, it's actually maintaining focus and building momentum based on that focus and really building balance all year long for yourself, for your family, for your staff. And what about theirs, their balance, their families? Because another thing we touched on yesterday this reactive versus proactive, something we really didn't even get to dig into is like how your environment responds to the environment. Not necessarily your intended output, but the actual output that's happening. So your actions dictate their actions, and we all kind of have it ingrained in our heads that what I mean to say is what I expect out of them. That's kind of the fallacy with communication, isn't it? What I mean to say, what I have right here, is what they should receive and so they should act upon.

But hey, not going to work that way.

Communications at 2A Street right. The receipt of the message is as important as the delivery, and if you're not confirming that they even received that and then reaffirming with your action, how the fuck can we ever expect people to do what we want them to do?

And I have a great example of that, if you don't mind me saying so, perfect.

Please drive away.

Okay. So one of those situations is where we go up to the door and we expect that the customer called us because they want to do something today. And then they come the door and they say hey, just so you know, I'm getting three estimates on this. The first thing is that they have a thought and their thought is I just want you to know that I don't want you selling anything to them, I'm not going to make a purchase. But that's not what they said, but that's what they want you to think. So it doesn't make sense, Like just how you're just as confused, wouldn't it make sense that your clients are also confused when you're forcing them to kind of be a mind reader for you? And can I give a bonus action and actually solving that objection?

throw it out there. Yeah, please do all right, awesome.

For any time someone says, hey, I'm just getting estimates on this or hey, just so you know I'm getting multiple estimates on this, the best thing you can possibly do is to call in the question the why, like well, hey, clay, I really appreciate you telling me that. Thank you for the transparency, but if you don't mind me calling a quick time out here, we just got here. What were you hoping to communicate by telling me that? And? And now we're in a sake of transparency, right now we really understand what's happening and now we can move forward productively.

Yeah, yeah, communications hard man, and I know we're taking a bit of a spin on this again. I mean we don't plan these right. We literally got rid of all the fancy shit other than our, our Nickname badges beneath us and this fancy lightning bolt behind us. We're still just live, doing intros, having conversations, and I want to share something with you that was reinforced by something I was reading earlier in a book actually, and it's on this communication. It's exactly what you just said and what we continue to say about taking things to the ridiculous, but Authentically. Mmm, there's a huge thing that happens and this happens to electricians and professionals alike, electricians always saying I wasn't trained in business clay, so take it easy on me, and I go fuck, oh, I wasn't either. For the longest time. It took some striving towards that to get that, and that's where we're at right now with you. Man. Right, you put your hand up, you jumped on a call because you want to better yourself and learn something, and that's incredible. But here's what happens in the pursuit of business and becoming a professional is we start writing emails that take 30 minutes to type because all the paragraphs are perfect, the grammar is right, then we take 15 minutes to review it eight times, then we maybe send it to appear for review. The further up this business tree and this anyone you ever see trying to add letters to their name Myself included for a long time the worst this problem gets and what this rabbit hole I'm referring to is actually this gap between professionalism and authenticity. Where we see this with electricians is often in that sales process when they're talking through the things they're finding, using electrical terms and I think this is even capitalized, bolded, italicized, double underlined and highlighted in our lessons guide. Do not assume the client knows what a part is. Do not assume they know what the fuck you're talking about.

I have to jump on this one. Please do so. I literally the reason why we told we tell this, you know, particular situation is I've had calls when customers have said that they don't know things that seem to be utterly basic. One of the ones was I literally went to a home and the customer opened the door and I remember asking to go see the panel. We didn't call on the main electrical assistant back then. We called it a panel and she was like what? Then I'm like you know, we're your main electrical panel. Where would that be? She looked like what are you talking about? Like where do you go? Where are the breakers? The what? Where do you turn things off? Oh, the fuse box. Yeah, it's downstairs. So the fact is is if you don't speak in languages your client understands, or you don't make it easier for them to understand, they won't follow what you're saying and a confused mind won't buy and you're confusing them from the jump. So I just I had to throw that in there because that's too relevant.

It's huge and of course we're on this little Communication path. But this is all relative to what we spoke about all weekend. It's relative to our topic, which is that it's not extra, it's premium. And if you'll take your communication to a premium level which means your confidence, your, your inward discussions are projecting that premium Meaning you treat yourself right, faith knows that it's already received and acts accordingly. It means that when you offer a club membership, you truly mean that they're you're giving some of the VIP service and when your staff see that they can also enact that, in fact they will. As one of our clients said, when he saw his whole team turn around and start looking forward and start growing, he said to me clay, I don't even know, it's not like it's something I said and like, no, it's what you're doing. Communication is only seven percent the words we use. It's 93 percent our body language, our tonality, our pause. Joe. Mmm you know, oh my god.

Yeah, I personally believe that one of the things I struggled with was with communication, but knowing how to insert productive pauses that can heighten the word you're saying before and after it can have such a big impact in a statement. And I don't think people are willing to slow down their conversations Because we're nervous and we're trying to get as many words out as we can, so the customer doesn't think we're trying to sell them. We want to make our whole case before they can respond. I when really, if we just talk to people as if we wanted them to talk to us, slowly, concisely, with intention, the right things get done. So you're right, like and you know what.

Your clients confidence in you as you project that and as you offer your maintenance package and your Memberships to ultimately defeat slow season by being proactive and making sure there is no slow season for your business either. And all that is a set of actions that we've described all week, that we gave away in our value piece on Wednesday the SS playbook. You can still grab that, by the way. Just put SS playbook anywhere you are. We'll send it over to you. We'll have a quick combo, drop it right in your lap and it'll help you with this. But when you communicate that or the client perceives that confidence, the client stays longer. The client will be able to sign up for your additional maintenance. The client will subscribe to your lifetime craftsmanship warranty and allow you to come back and inspect at certain times of the year. Right, they'll sign up for your club memberships. And when you believe it and they believe it, your staff will believe it, and a staff that believes in you as a staff that is also sticking around. And you start to see how this premium service map could not run without this stuff, joe, and you found that out the hard way yourself Would be wrong of us to talk a bit about your own experience and what memberships have done for your business.

We now have to go active? I'd be happy to. So you're talking primarily about what happened and what the results were after we started doing club memberships correct.

Please, yeah, jump on into that.

So, before club memberships, remember everything that we worked with was we had a lot of HVAC trainers, a lot of plumbing trainers, and my main inspiration was wait a second, how come electricians? How come our season is so slow, from September, october, november, december, january? Why is it slow in these months and all the other trades aren't now? Obviously, there were other equipment that they were working on, but the one thing that I saw was that they all had service agreements on that equipment. We didn't have equipment, so what to do? So we designed that they were actual club memberships you could offer on the services that we provide To, where we're enhancing the quality that they get and letting these clients actually receive VIP treatment Like actual VIP treatment, like after-hour service, front-of-the-line passes, wave-dive, like everything. It was awesome. If you took this, you felt like you're taking a first-class ride. But what we were noticing was that first, in the first year alone, we sold a hundred of the memberships and then, beyond that, if 50 of them were able to make it to the calendar, we had 50 calls that year were we able to say, hey, I paid you in advance, I like you, I want to subscribe to what you're doing and I'm giving you active permission to go through my home with a fine-tooth comb and find Problems and prevent them before they become big. If you had a slow month and you had 50 of those people, how many of them would convert? It was a very, very strong amount of people were like yeah, that makes sense, especially if you did this the right way, and when I say the right way, I mean Definitely being far more proactive than the average person. We were selling plans in January and scheduling them for December. We were selling them in February and scheduling them for November Because we knew that if we don't put eggs in that basket at that time, we could be in risk of having nothing going on. So, rather than getting to new construction or get into commercial, we set ourselves up to have more customers who wanted to work with us and just in that year there were 30,000 memberships and membership wins.

So that's just the fees for the membership 30,000. But it also enabled you to again leverage those inspections and ultimately realize 120k plus months in Months where you weren't getting the call volume that you were accustomed to.

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. I mean there was actually someone three even higher than that. Like I had, I think, a January month where it was like 133,000 and it's crazy to think about. But, like, if you're not Consistent, you have to understand Is it your process or is the people you're surrounded by? Now I learned, after doing this process for so long and Modifying it to work for whatever we needed to be, that it likely wasn't the process. So then it's what are the other options? Okay, I'm tired of being in front of customers that don't want to buy for X reason. Solution surround yourself with clients that will, and if you can't find them, make them. Make them first-class clients and then give them value. I will go through your home, I will inspect everything and if I find a problem, I'll correct it before it becomes a big problem. This benefits you, this benefits me, and I will guarantee you'll have a white glove experience the whole time. I'll literally wear latex gloves, if you want. I will be in your home, smiling, boot covers, gloves, full, uniform, lettered, wrapped. Then that is a premium experience that you won't get from someone else, and once they experienced it, that's when they started telling other people about it, and when they started telling other people about it, slowest season really did disappear.

Nice man, I love that. It's all leveraged, all making the most of your leads, guys. And you can too and just like our scheduling series, which this time is so fantastically into, you could go back to episodes, I believe, 93, 94, 95, 96. This four episode series where we talked about maintaining a consistent two-week schedule. And as that pile, that line starts to grow, guess what? You can leverage this further by offering your services to Just Club members and again, really qualifying and kind of niching down to continue to find and build a client base of only your most preferred people that you want to serve, who believe in you and your services and your team. And I don't know about you guys listening, but to me, if I'm an electrician looking for work in this industry with good balance, good earning, potential, space for my family and kids and even the families of the company, plus a clientele that believes in us and a leader that understands balance, sign me the fuck up, joe, because that's my plan B if this service loop electrical thing doesn't work out.

Well, one thing I can tell you is that that's never going to have to be an option you have to worry about. But don't worry, I feel like you'd be an amazing and residential specialist.

I got to say, man, I just love how these topics can just fucking spider web out and everything ties together. You guys, we are teaching premium service to electricians and you can have this too If you're already on your way. They're still levers. They're still leveraged to grab. There's still ways to improve. So do not. You know, don't fear it, Don't get into that scarcity, Don't let that overcome you. Stay proactive, stay focused and stay with us, because we're going to keep helping you. The whole fucking way I said fuck more times than usual, but it's Friday and fuck it.

I love it and you know what, not PG-13. Sorry, what are we going to do?

There we go Electricians in their mouths sometimes. I did have a guy tell me once that that was not a leadership quality, but I tend to disagree. I think properly placed profanity, alliteration, and it's fine as properly placed profanity, properly placed profanity a bit of a tongue twister, joe. But let's jump into the All-Star Actions and close this out for the week. What do you say?

Okay, I'm down. So actually you've been taking all stars. I'm going to say I've been taking all stars. I think I'm going to try the basic on this one.

Okay, hit the basic.

Okay. So the thing about the basic is we want to establish what the floor would look like to do this right. If the All-Star is doing the full club membership, what does a basic look like? Realistically, you just need to have yourself do one of two things. Can you find equipment that requires annual service? I personally love generators. That is my shtick. I love generators. I'll always love generators. But do you know them well enough to service them? Because if you know generators, you'll learn that the service of them continually opens doors, both figuratively and literally. You get to go into customers' homes. You get to set yourself up and learn about them. You get to be familiar with their needs and wants. So your basic basic action is can you find a piece of equipment that you personally are willing and comfortable to start servicing? If you can establish a service niche for a particular piece of equipment, you can schedule all those services in block months. Just in and of itself, you can actually defeat whatever slows these in and is applying to your industry.

Love that. That's big. As you talk about generators, I get totally distracted out in La La Land thinking about how big August was on the inside for our team, for our team of electric printers who are with us, with just 35 reported wins, joe, we reached $691,000. Just to give that context, just a little context here, it wasn't until July that we really broke through the million mark. In August, almost eclipsed it in a single month, and generators were a massive piece of this. And yet I still hear people saying generators aren't profitable. We don't do generators, we don't suggest generators. I'm not going out for 10 to 13 points and I just have to say if you're only making 10 to 13 points on the generator, why did you price it that way? I don't understand. It doesn't even make sense to me. So all-star action, though. Let me get focused and let me keep this simple. Actually, it's something we've talked about all week. Not only should you offer these memberships and be proactively pursuing the premium service status and displaying that for your team and communicating at the highest level, but I truly believe that that all begins in the beginning. It begins with answering the phone and it begins with that design and presentation of options. If you're not presenting as a premium service provider at the point where someone reaches your office, please audit that process. Please audit your office and get that what we call the brighter day call process. Get that implemented. It's something we give away for free just to help you guys do that. Now, a lot of times people say, well, that's kind of cheesy. No one would say that. That's more reason to say it. Stop being like everyone else, guys. That's the all-star here. You need differentiation. Be different. Be different. From the moment they begin to experience you have a 3D impact on your clients by reinforcing that you're a premium service from every single person they come into contact with in your business and by following up again just as congruently as they would have expected once they've truly begun to believe that you are everything you painted the picture about being. That was massive, it was too big.

I just drew a picture like the fucking moon out here. I love that I'm sitting here just beaming I'm absolutely teasing right now because it's like wow, awesome, if you can deliver a premium level service and you can be different from beginning to the end, you no longer an apples to apples canary, it's apples to Corvettes. There is no literal comparison that will work at this point, because if you're different in every opportunity, Then it's just running the play Joe.

You'll never have a slow month again, or at least the moment you recognize that some of the things are out of your control are taking effect. You just go back to the things that are in your control, fill your fucking schedule and have 140k month or whatever. I love it. Okay, guys, this has been another episode of Electric Printer Secrets and we're finishing another week where we got focused a short week, but we got focused on the slow season, being proactive and again building up electricians to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. We're taking the weekend off. See you, guys, next week.

Cheers to your success.