Ep 156 - Advanced Generator Options To Sell More

Hello, hello and welcome back, happy Thursday. This is another episode of Electric Prenu Secrets, the Electricians podcast with your boys. Clay the pleasant peasant new mire it's a tongue twister still, I almost can't say it and Joseph, the sales bot Lucani just a couple of master electricians with business addictions here to help you in your endeavor to master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. Today's no exception. We've got a great show Advanced Generator Options to help you guys sell more, to help you master those sales, to help you get more profit, more fruit from this tree. Now would it be wrong of us to want to do that for them, joe?

No, sir. In fact, if I can just throw in something, even though I have almost no sleep in my system at this point, the moment you said we're talking about generator options, it was like an EpiPen. I'm like, I am ready and good to go.

Perked up perked up. Oh yeah, Better than calling it talking about generators, all right. Well, that lets me know how you're doing today as well. I got to tell you there's still a moment before every episode because we don't write a script, we don't rehearse this. How could we? We're live five days a week. This is truly all the value that we have in front of us from the experience, knowledge, collective of both, from both of us, every day of the week, and so when I go to hit that go live button, I'm still like, oh shit, what am I going to say? In my head there's a little panic moment, yeah, and sometimes we mess up the intro and you know what? That's why we got rid of all the fancy shit, except for this lightning bolt. Where is it there?

There it is. It's a mirror.

It's over there. There's a lightning bolt behind us, but otherwise, man, we just keep showing up and giving value, and I love it. I wouldn't have it any other way. So thanks for joining me again this is my pleasure. Beaking of value. If I can monologue for a moment further, please continue. Yesterday was Wednesday. There are about three, four dozen electricians that put their hand up with us in our Facebook platform on the group right now you may be live Say hello, if you are, thanks for joining us. If you are with us in the Facebook Electric Pernur Secrets group, then you may have been someone who put your hand up yesterday and got this incredible value piece that we gave away this week. As we do every week, we're giving away value. This one was all about this generator specialist workshop that we did on May 31st A few hours of information condensed down to our notes, and we even sweetened the deal with links to every generator podcast we've ever done and some awesome testimony from someone I want to talk about today Alan, one of our clients, who actually began his generator journey with us and saw some really cool results. Joe, alan needed your help because he hadn't done this before. We had to build up some confidence, but your confidence was never shook. So let me ask you this why not? Do you truly believe you can help any electrician start from the ground and get started with this, this niche?

I really, truly do. And also to speak to Alan, the dude is an absolute machine. I feel like he's definitely someone who's earned our respect and deserves it. So, Alan, if you're listening to it, man hats off to you, brother. But as far as your original question, do you feel like I can help every electrician? That's a broad statement. To answer it more honestly, I would say if the electrician is willing to put in the effort to change their thinking, then yes, I do believe that I can work with anyone who wants to get into this niche. I say that because generators are almost like playing chess you truly need to think in the shoes of your customer and think how will they use it, how does this serve them, how is this something that will enhance the quality of our life? And because you're able to think that you can position yourself steps ahead before they even came to the conclusion themselves. And when they came to it, here you are with your golden platter going oh funny, I didn't know you wanted this, but I happen to have it right here. I would like to proceed.

I love that. That sounds really, really helpful already to build the basis around this. But what about those who might be thinking like, okay, well, I don't have the technical background to really get started with this. Do you have more concerns there? Or do you think this strategy can work to help even someone who hasn't really worked with generators before?

Yeah, I mean, we all have to start somewhere. It's not like you. Suddenly it's not the matrix, so I'm just going to stick a hose and put in the back of your head and now, suddenly you know generators, just like with anything else. Right? I remember when I was in trade school, doing four waves was very difficult In my head. I remember saying it's so hard. Look at all these terminals and there's travelers. How am I going to figure this out? And you just do it and you're like, oh, you're going to figure this out, but oh, yeah, I can do that. Generators are the same way. They're advanced engine and components and electronics, yes, but the way it generates electricity is pretty straightforward. And once you understand the theories around what it's doing and why it's doing it, troubleshooting it becomes much smoother and much easier. So, yeah, you can have no experience. Luckily we have the experience, so you can lean on us. It's one of the benefits of being one of our clients. You have access to my brain whenever you need I love that.

I want to tie Alan's story back in, because the advice that he took from us was to go out, buy a portable gen In fact I think he grabbed two, if I recall the story right. Play with it in your own home, get used to the installation, play with the manual transfer switch, learn how to do this on your own and then go and sell it. And that ties us perfectly into this, because at this point it's worth saying as well, like Alan, I believe that last time we checked was about 80K in the first few months of offering generators not even marketing them, just having it as an offer. And I think there's some magic here we ought to get into today about building that into your options even where there isn't a generator, and ways that we can build it into the options when there is a generator that isn't our installation. Does that make sense?

I think that's actually a really good idea, because generators in and of themselves, what makes them so successful is, as I mentioned earlier, once you're in the mindset of your customer, you're in their shoes. A lot of times you can look at them and find that, no, it wouldn't be wrong of me to offer this, because I can have a specific reason that would benefit you in the immediate future or prevent a larger overarching emotional concern. So you might have one, I'm prepared for that. You don't have one? Even better, I'm prepared for that one too. So, either way, batter up, man, I'm ready to go.

Yep, I love that, and I got to interject actually because I just realized Drew's joined us today too and Drew said good morning. But he also said thanks for showing up for us and being awesome and being open, horny, vulnerable and awesome. And I'm just trying to connect where the horniness came in. I don't recall in recent episodes being overly horny on the show, but I appreciate you, drew. Oh man, that's a good one.

I think you might have meant corny, and if that's the case I can totally take that this guy right here.

So corny, nice, nice, okay. So what are some situations where someone doesn't have a generator?

but we can begin to build that in and set ourselves up for a potential generator install in our higher options, sure, so let's say we don't care whether they're going portable or automatic, right yeah, we're just going to simply say generator system as a whole. The most common scenario that you would walk into is you go to the panel and you notice that there is no ATS or there is no interlock, or there's no MTS. All right. Well, most homes don't have that, so the first box is they don't have one currently. Now we need to look and see how the need could benefit them. Do they have a home office? Do they have small children? Do they have pets or elderly in the home that require specific needs? Is there medical equipment that could be required? Or now, hobbies Are you a gamer? The amount of people who are enjoying retro gaming in this country it's going up like crazy, and the thought is is that these systems that you would buy, if something happens to them, they get damaged pretty significantly and there's no replay. You can't go out and buy an old Atari system now and get replacement parts. So the thought of now having electronics protection built in, which would come with every generator that's another selling feature that you have. Other things you can look at as well as you say well, what is their future plan? Like I may be called out for a panel change, right, everyone says what we're going to do. I just want to upgrade my service because I'm putting in a Tesla. Okay, so you have 100 amp, now you're going to 200. If they ever wanted a generator, I would actually be wrong to not offer it. The reason being is that a whole home generator operates with meter, then ATS, then panel. But if I didn't offer it, we would install meter to panel. Now if two years down the road the customer wants to consider a generator, I have to separate a path between the two, or I've got to have the ATS somewhere near the panel and now I've got to almost do like a bug loop to get through in order to make it happen. It's not going to be the way it should have been. Or if I wanted to have it empty us, I could have had it where all the wires are routed nicely to it, rather than having to make splices in the panel and route them over with a conduit. It's in the customer's best interest to offer it.

Can I just interrupt there and say that I love that. That's where this all begins is what's in the customer's interest? Yeah, it's the combination of the two. You couldn't help them improve the quality of their life if you didn't understand your job and what you're able to do for them.

Mm-hmm.

Right, and you also couldn't do this justice if you didn't understand what their needs were and why their needs, desires or problems are such.

Honestly, I think the best way of describing it is that a lot of electricians are confused what business they're in. We're not in the wiring business. We're in the customer service business. We truly are meant to have white gloves on in order to not just leave smudges on the face plates. We wear white glove service to be their maitre d. We are supposed to be so above and beyond in our levels of professionalism and care that they go. How the fuck can you call anyone else? Like clearly, this is the guy. He's literally bending over backwards. He's got like a tray in his hand. What more can I ask for from this person? Yeah, there are a little more. But look, the other guy showed up in torn sweatpants and smells like yesterday's cigarette. And this guy comes in and he's offering me everything I could possibly want, because he gets me and he respects me and he knows me. Is there ever a differentiation better than that?

I personally don't think so, but I'm a little bit biased.

Man.

I'll give you that, Okay. So let's assume the sale, then and dive into a little bit deeper and just stand focused on the portable stuff for today and I think there's a big misconception, honestly, about the portable and the autos and which people prefer, and maybe the better word is controversy. Maybe we'll tackle that in tomorrow's episode. Sure, I'd be happy to, but for today, let's assume the sale then. I don't know, man, regular family home, no EVs, just a standard. You know what? We're tired of the power going out around here. I want some backup system. Great. Where can we be able to add value to these options? And, of course, through understanding their needs but also thinking ahead for what their needs might be, Joe All right.

Can you tell how excited I got when we first started talking about this?

It's like you saw this in a minute and everything okay.

The best thing about portable generators is that there's so much flexibility, but you're only able to get there when you have to be in the mind of the customer, right? What is the first thought when people think portable generator? I'm going to go outside, I'm going to grab a heavy piece of equipment, I'm going to drag it outside, I'm going to rip a pole cord, I'm going to plug it into the house with extension cords and I'm going to fill it with gas every eight hours. It sounds like a huge endeavor, right? But people buy portables because maybe the thought of going automatic is too much of an investment. Does that mean that they should not have the same protections just because they're not financially committed in that way? No, I don't think so, no, so now let's focus on how can we make this experience easier. The first thing is, I think, of the unit. So who's going to be pulling this unit? Is it someone who's in good shape? Is it someone who's elderly? The first thing that I would do is say where is the inlet? Let's get this inlet as close to where the generator will be stored as possible. So if you have the panel on one side, are you going to make the wheel a generator from the garage through the snow or drag a 200-foot extension cord? Yeah, let's go, grandma.

Yeah, let's go, it's going to be ridiculous.

So our first option is let's route the inlet as close to where it's going to be stored as possible. Then how is it getting there?

Are we going?

to now cut walls? If we do, we should paint. Are we going to go around the home? And a conduit? If we do, we should paint it to the side of the house, shouldn't we? Wouldn't it be nice? Instead of being a gray pipe, it matched the color of the siding. I think, if you're gonna dig, would it be better that you coordinate the trenching and you do the receding and you come back in the spring to put top soil back down so that the grass actually grows? There's not a huge divot in the future.

I gotta say I haven't seen many electricians do that, joe.

Very few would, because it's not easy and it's not get in and get out To do. To really be a premium service provider, you have to be committed to saying I'm gonna do what's hard because what's hard is right. I'm more interested in being right, not in I need to be right, but I want to be right for the customer. So, now that we have the unit there, now what kind of unit are we installing? There are so many styles. What's fueling it? Maybe they don't want to have gasoline in their homes? There's portable options that run on propane. There's portable options that can have natural gas hookups. There's others that run on all sorts of fuels like diesel and whatnot. So now you think how am I storing it? So you could either have locations built into their home where they can have tanks of gas or not, tanks of? You have tanks of propane and you keep them close by. Are you buying multiple tanks in them for them? Because one tank should last in here between eight to ten hours? Wouldn't it be nice if they already had backup tanks?

Sure, I'd say, why not right convenience cells? Exactly reduce time, reduce effort and sacrifice. I mean, that's the whole value formula, right there.

Yeah, if you're doing gasoline, they have metal approved containers for storing gasoline that actually have pump locations on them. So imagine, instead of having to carry 15 five gallon gasoline cans, you had one 50 gallon metal that was sealed and had a pressure relief valve, that had a hose that you could plug into the unit and, yeah, you may have to pump it, or maybe you can turn on an automatic pump. You add your stabilizer to it and now you've got gas for the next two years.

Lot of thinking about their experience, though. Okay, ahead of just leaving them with a situation where they're left to think about their experience.

Yeah, things like how do they start it Right? How many generators? I mean. Maybe not everyone has experienced it, but the amount of generators I've seen in people's homes that didn't even have wheels attached to them. Then there were just some old rickety thing sitting on a dolly that they had to wheel around. That's not convenient either. So I think to myself now how are they moving it? Will it fit through the door that they're currently storing it in? And and how does it start? I Always recommend having either a push start, but even further for the elderly, I always offered remote start. There are remote start functions where you can have the unit plugged in, already ready to go. You press start from the inside of your house. It'll automatically adjust the choke, start the generator with a battery that's built into it, and then all they'd have to do is go to their one touch transfer switch and press on and and. Now, with one button of the remote and one button of the transfer switch, you've practically gotten an automatic operation for old mrs Jones, the elderly person who lives down the road. We haven't talked about anything else so far. We haven't talked about lighting enhancement, surge protectors, anti-theft systems, but right now alone, do you feel like we'd be different than the average electrician offering a portable.

Oh, it's stacking up, brother, for sure, for sure. Listen, I just, as you were speaking, I just had a new option come to mind If you start lighting, and now I'm thinking, wow, we should actually fluff up our base option a little bit.

So what you're saying?

if you had a portable, any sort of manual transfer setup you include two headlamps for them to find their way in the dark, to throw the generator out and throw the switch. How does that sound?

So you can do that as a bottom option. I do have an option that I would recommend as a higher one. All right, let's go. So I know, as an industrial specialist, you're very familiar with recess backup lighting and emergency lighting and all things like that, right? So we can install something very similar for customers in those situations where imagine having built-in emergency lighting that as soon as power was cut, this light would automatically turn back on. What we would often do is say, okay, where is this system? The transfer switch is in the basement, the generator is in the garage. So if you lost power and it was nine o'clock at night in the middle of September, it's pitch black. How do they get there if they don't have a flashlight or a phone? So we would create pathway lighting with automatic lights that they can now see the transfer switch, see the generator, and they know that whenever power comes back on, it'll automatically recharge these lights, meaning they truly have to do nothing with them.

You know, there's one thing more annoying than the power going out when you need it, and that's stubbing your toe and breaking glasses in the dark when the power goes out when you need it, right yeah and that's something we never want our customers to experience.

Even if you're buying a bottom option or even if you're buying a portable option, portable doesn't equate to low quality. It equates to economic to some extent, but it does not mean low quality, not just in product, but in the experience. My goal is to provide a high quality experience before, during and after, which means they may not lose power for another year. But when they lose power and all they had to do was walk into their garage and it's well lit and they see the generator and the fuel station right next to it and they know oh yeah, my generator was filled already. Oh yeah, there was stabilize already in it. Yeah, it has been maintained already. Oh, great, I could just start it and I'll be safe. Now that service before, during and after, because even though I'm long gone at this point, they're still saying thank you, joe. I'm glad we decided to do that.

Huge value man. Again, we're gonna slow this down and call it pretty well. Time for today. We're gonna have a couple action items, but again, guys, we had this value piece released yesterday. We'll continue to remind everyone about that, put it out there again on Facebook. If you also wanted to grab it from our website at serviceloopelectricalcom, you can send us a message there. All you need to say is gen specialist guide or summary, and we'd be happy to send that to you guys. It's gonna have all of this, the options, other podcasts where we've talked about generators, so you'd have basically all the information that we've put out there for free at this point about generators, and we'd be all too happy to send that to you. Joe, do you have a couple of action items in mind today?

I do, actually if you'd be willing to let me have both. I have both for you.

You got both again, brother, let's go. Great deal all right.

So the bare minimum? Right when it comes to doing portable generators, like, there's two levels that you can do. The bare minimum is simply are you familiar with a product? Right, because you can't offer something you don't know about. Like it wouldn't be something where, as a master electrician, now I'm gonna start offering many splits even though I've never charged an AC system before in the past. Right, like the average electrician wouldn't mess with something like that, or we wouldn't get into welding for no reason. But if we're familiar with a product and we understand how it works, we at least now have the confidence to convey that. So if the customer did ask, you don't even have to advertise. If they asked, at least you would then be able to say, yes, I am familiar with this and I'd be happy to help you with it. I think that's a bare minimum. Just know the product you're intending to sell. Is that fair?

Yeah, it's great. It's a great start. I've seen it work. It worked for Alan, it worked for many others, so I would say it's an awesome place to start.

Okay. The all-star action is now not in the physical, but in the mental and the emotional, because, as you mentioned earlier, as we're going through designing choices, the amount of thought that went into being in the customer's shoes is really what sold this. It wasn't that I had product and I was just throwing it against the wall, like if I just said, hey, you're getting emergency lighting built in. Okay, why? The advanced all-star action is can you allow yourself to be in the customer's shoes and walk through? I lost power right now. What does that mean for this family? How will their children be affected? What are their dietary needs? Is there anyone in the home on equipment? How will they get to the generator? How will they store it? How will they fuel it? When you can be in that place, the options become easy. They really do, because you're just like well, someone has to fuel this thing, why wouldn't it be me? So I'd say that's the all-star action is getting into the shoes of your customer. The best thing you can do is, if you want practice with it, imagine you're doing one in your own home and say if I lost power today, what are the steps that I need to take to get this generator to turn on and then try to find gaps around that.

Love it man, you just transformed from the sales bot to the strategic empathy bot by helping us imagine that experience. Man, I appreciate it so much. Another big day for generators and anyone who wants to deep dive into these things. Again, guys, this has been another episode of Electric Printer Secrets, the Electricians Podcast, episode 156, if you can believe that, joe, time flies when you're having fun, we're nine and a half months in. I cannot wait to keep going for the rest of this year and beyond, helping electricians, master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium-level electrical service. We're going to see you guys again tomorrow for more on generators. Cheers. Can't wait, jens. See you soon.