Ep 158 - Electrician Getting Beat Down on the Bottom Price

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back. It's Monday on Electric Preneur Secrets, the Electricians podcast. Great news for you You've got a couple of master electricians back here, as we are every week with business addictions, ready to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver absolute premium electrical service. Did I mess up the cadence today, Joe?

The cadence, yes, but I like the spin, because it's true when you follow the process, absolute service follows. How can you ask for less than that when the process drives for perfection?

Nice, man, Nice, and I'm really excited about this week's topic. We are going to beat down. If you're getting beat down on the bottom price, if you're having trouble justifying value at your simple service rate, guys, which should not be $100 an hour or anywhere close. Really right, I think we've established that at this point, LFG, let's do it. Guys, if you're still charging goes without saying we're not going to spend a lot of time on this. But if you're still in that bottom of the barrel pricing around this $100 an hour trying to run a successful and sustainable service business, please see us in the chats. We're happy to send you our latest and greatest on coming up with your simple service rates so that you can triple four times that and create value with everything we're going to give you for free this week.

Joe, you got to be pumped for this one, brother, oh my God, yeah, anytime it comes to objection handling or getting people to understand a very tangible step that they can take to put value back in their pockets, I'm here for it. I am ready to go.

So we see this commonly and it's one of the things we need to first address in our program with our paying clients as well, because one of the first things we do is aim to get that perfect offer nailed down. If you've been following us for a while electric printers then you've seen our probably our stick to your offer week at STYO and how important that is, but without having your offer built up in the first place so that you have something to stick to, you have something to hold your staff accountable, to have something to communicate your value with. Unless you have that, then you could be finding yourself getting beat down on the bottom price. Joe, can I just ask why does this seem to happen on the bottom price?

Yeah, and I love the fact that we're going to highlight that, because a lot of times the number you get told is a lot is two numbers out of six the top option and the bottom option, but not any of the options in between. And the main reason why is because the top option usually is over the line of whatever the customer thought they're going to be, because it truly is sheer perfection. So it may just be out of what they can expect, but every of those options at the premium levels were things that they truly saw as valuable. We connected with the client, we learned about their family, we learned about their needs. We presented solutions that they might not have thought of or other people hadn't offered them. So we look different and we're offering something they might not have seen before. So differentiation is very heavy there. It happens more at the bottom option because as we start to scale down and we pull less service, less service, less enhancements, less service and you go down, down, down, down, down. Eventually you're stuck at I'm changing this one GFC I point or kitchen countertop for $368. And at that point, unless you have the reasons why that you believe why it should be worth that much to charge it, you'll always come across as someone who's trying to charge more than they need to, and that just does not work.

Definitely, definitely. I love what you're saying there and about the differentiation. Even if we could really highlight that, If there's all these other electricians in our market, if there's other people also going to provide potentially options for the same job, we really have to focus on this differentiation piece, don't we?

Correct. I really think that it's something important to cover, because the biggest problem with a lot of electricians is that we're trying or not we, but a lot of people attempt to race to the bottom, meaning that they believe that this outlet should only cost X dollars to do and with us having to charge more, it's almost like a stain on our reputation than it is actually a highlight of our service. Some people look at this $368 GFI and they're like what WTF? What are we doing? Why is it that much? I wouldn't buy it for that. Why should they? I have to have some smoothie sales line to convince them to do it If you're thinking that you're going down the wrong path already. Instead, we should be focused on what is the real reason why someone would call you. Why should someone be willing to pay more? Why would you? Would you call your own company? Would you hire you? Because if the answer is no, well that should be a bigger problem now, isn't it Right? Definitely, what are you doing that makes you better than a trunk slammer.

Great question and, as you said, wtf. I had this little Canadian phrase in my head that I just became aware. I'm not sure if people know this. Instead of what the hell have you ever heard, what the HE double hockey sticks?

Yes, I have, but not in a long time. Is that primarily a Canadian thing?

I'm bringing it back.

Just to make an episode rabbit hole here.

I had to take us there. So differentiation education here's something your clients are already educated on, probably posing a problem. We're already kind of touching on it. I know what a GFI costs, because anyone can go to homedepotcom and see it, but you're charging $368. So back to this what the HE double hockey sticks are you thinking? And this is one of the biggest problems. And how the frick do we justify that, Joe?

So the problem that we're facing here is that the client is saying I know what this costs, and a lot of times that causes us as business owners to fold because we're like, oh, they're educated, they know that this is only a $10 part, but that shows that we don't actually have belief in what we're offering, because if we think we're just changing parts, we've already gone down a failing road. It's already slippery slope. Instead, we need to highlight why should they call us when they can call three other companies for $200 less an hour? So what we need to do is start describing the experience itself. When you can put yourself into the customer's shoes, that's how you can perform this process correctly, because how could you be in their shoes and design six options that are customized and relevant? So you need to stay in that mindset in order to properly handle the objections from their perspective.

And speaking of mindset and perspective, can we just take a little detour here briefly, because this is so important, especially on this day where the biggest thing I want to help people do is absolutely have a belief shift in what is in that hour, at the $368, at the $459, some people are breaching over $500 an hour. Because that's the vision You're painting this picture. You're the Bob Ross of your sustainable service biz. It's not on us to tell you what to charge. Only you can do that based on where you are, the conditions you face, the expenses factored into your rates and the growth pieces that you've got built in. That, based on the vision that you have, can you feel the passion I have for this.

I love it. I always love when there's people passionately and from the heart, and I know it's something that you and I consistently do on a regular basis, but you've got an amazing personality and love for this trade that I really love how that comes out on a regular basis, man, so thank you for always sharing it from the heart.

Well, I appreciate that. So again, maintaining perspective. This is actually something that we have written even in our client success values in our program. The reason why maintain perspective is important is because at different parts of a relationship, your customers can make you doubt your own value. And that happens easy and it's not something that someone's trying to do to you, right? But what if a day comes and you have three bottom price, bottom option price objections all of a sudden on your fourth call. What's happening, joe?

So the biggest thing is, you start to almost either expect it or you start to believe it, and there's actually something that I'd like to touch on as far as why this happens.

Yeah.

Now, have you ever heard the common phrase? You know you become like the five people you surround yourself with. Yes, I have. So imagine what the inverse of that could be like, where, if you're surrounded with people who are telling you you're expensive, you're expensive, you're expensive, even if you're like I have a 24 seven support staff and we have a mobile workshop on wheels, and every one of our, every one of our team members they're all licensed master electricians of 50 years Like it doesn't matter how good your team is, if people keep telling you over and over and over and over again you're expensive. You start to absorb that into your belief system, because it's the equivalent of someone casting a vote and saying here's the ballot box expensive or not. I'm casting a vote that you are expensive and they put it down. And at the end of each day you're evaluating your votes and you're like wait a second, I have a lot of votes saying I'm expensive. Do that for enough time. And you start to actually believe it and that's why people get defeated before they even start.

And it goes a level deeper and, if I can just acknowledge that, you may have read the title for this and thought, great, we're going to get just an objection handle, deal with this in a single episode. I wonder what's coming the rest of the week? Guys on the ladder, we're going to help you build a foundation around this that does not falter, so you can continue to solve this objection going forward and even annihilate it before it comes. How does that sound? I?

like.

that Sounds like a solid one, all right. So, speaking again to that mindset and this belief shift, now we have to ask ourselves what is our team thinking about? Our price right now? Because just solving this for you, dear listener, is not going to be enough. When you've also got people out there selling your good products, telling good people or as so they would believe, great homeowners, good people why they're charging them $400 an hour for this, for this Autumn option fix, that can get to your staff too. So can we begin to see how important this really is?

It's really going to affect, almost like do we submit our team to be exposed to poisonous effects? Wow, really, that's what it can come down to. So we're going to be exposed to these situations where they don't have the antidote, which is your reaffirming statements and your belief and your proof that we are providing a sustainable value. There's nothing left. There's no reason why they should believe it if they're always being told otherwise.

As you say, that I'm reminded of really a piece of the phrasing that you would put into beginning to solve this objection. We're not in a rush to get through that, but this piece of the phrase specifically deserves attention. I love this idea of creating before, during and after value yes, and starting with the before, naturally in chronological order and to build your team's belief and maintain their perspective on your good price and the investment that your clients need to be making to have that journey with you. This before again comes full circle back to this offer and building it up with things like If you in mind, sure.

So when you think about these before statements, once again, we have to be in the mindset of our customer. So we have to ask ourselves what was it like when they called our office? Did they receive just there? Were they on hold for four, five, six, 10, 15 minutes? Did they actually get to talk to a person? Did they have to input a lot of codes, or was it a pleasant experience after the third ring? Did you have a 24 seven support staff? Did you have someone who's able to get them on the calendar in a tight time frame? Did they seem knowledgeable? Were they friendly? Did they care? That perspective alone, if you have that kind of office compared to oh yeah, well, I have someone who's a high schooler who's planning on being a nursing student but just decided to do this in summer is in between a per $8 an hour. What kind of difference in perspective would you get as a customer between someone who is paid to care and cares from the bottom of their heart about getting this done and someone who's just trying to do part time to get through college? It's huge.

Here's the proof that it's huge. Most times, when we give someone our brighter day process, it's first met with the cheese resistance. You know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah, this won't work here, mm hmm, why not? No one actually says this stuff, isn't that the point, mm? Hmm, you want to speak to that Joe at all.

Yeah. So we need to be different, not just in our presentation with the customer at the price point. We need to be different from the moment they call, so that the price is already understood to be more premium before we've even rang the doorbell. What that looks like is, when you're calling, you have a consistent process from beginning to end, that you know that whoever employee were to answer the customer gets the same high level, quality experience every single time. An example you like to make that I thought was really awesome was the McDonald's reference, where you and I could both leave our offices right now, go to McDonald's somewhere, order the same thing and have it be made by a 15 year old, and it's going to be the same burger with the same quality in the same timeframe. That means that you can get a quality experience no matter where you go. We should be able to provide our customers the same experience, regardless of the mood that we're in, regardless of the weather, regardless of the economy, regardless of what they call us for. If we're pleased and honored to serve before now, we're able to be in a position to where the during happens.

I love that. To again serve the example you used if we brought in a high school student or any untrained individual and I like to put this word trained in there because that's part of the investment, isn't it Correct? Your clients are investing in you because you've also got training attached to it.

Mm-hmm.

Oh sorry, training's free right. That doesn't cost us anything.

It's crazy how people would sometimes think that where it's like, oh, we'll just watch a video or watch a script and that should be it, it's like, okay, well, are you inspecting what you're expecting? Are you checking and seeing what needs to be done? Are you seeing if this is something that really is being delivered by your team to your clients? And how could you without consistent training?

Just wouldn't make sense 100%. What this all wraps up to really is do you have intentional value built into the planned exchange for your business? Because what most electricians are facing is well, why does it cost 350 bucks? Why does it cost 402 bucks? And your knee-jerk reaction is well, that's the cost of doing business. You never run a business before. It's common sense. What the hell are you thinking? Obviously, we can't say that, but most of us are getting caught in the headlights, right there, right, the deer and headlights analogy. So what does that mean for us? Well, it means that we've got to know a thing or two about building value and how to articulate it at that point, and that's what this whole week is going to help you guys do so today. Would we be wrong to keep it foundational, joe?

I'm totally fine with that and thank you for reeling it in, because I'm certain that if you take the collar off, I'm just going to start going at it like a rabid dog. I can't help it. I just love talking about this stuff.

Absolutely so. Let's lay out that foundation for you guys to get through this, pass this and annihilate this in the future in a way that is going to be sticky and not just something you heard on a 15-minute podcast on Monday and forgot by Thursday. That sound fair, sounds fair. All right, let's lay out a couple of action items to get people going on this. I would like to start with the action, if that's all right.

Sure and I, because I definitely have an all-star top of mind.

Awesome, awesome. So, guys, the anticipation is going to be huge this week. Just give us the objection handle. I can feel it already. Don't worry, we're going to break this down step by step. We've mentioned the offer a couple of times. I really want you guys to look at and examine what is in our offer. What is in there that is intentionally building value. Is there a price that we're being held back from? This action item is all about examining oneself, and do we believe in that price? Do we currently have anything we say to justify that price? There's a few things there, and they're all introspective. The reason for that is it's going to be incredibly important to laying down the rest of this foundation as we really unleash all the steps to get you there so that, by time you answer to this objection, it's literally everything you've built into your business as well. Does that make sense? It does, I'm waiting, there Is that not your all-star.

Similar I was going to say. I have a mindset exercise that I feel is very, very important for people to take in order to understand and even apply any of the things we're going to be teaching this week. So the first thought is this At the all-star level, you need to be able to perceive your customers as no different than how you would experience things differently. What I mean by that is this Anytime you're in a situation where you get bad customer service whether it's over the phone or whether you've gone into an office or you've gone to an office, whatever it was you went somewhere or you experienced something that wasn't the best. You already knew that before you even got to a price, you had some doubts about this company or this group. It just was. So wouldn't it also apply that the customers that are calling you are facing that same dilemma? And if they're not getting wowed at the front door or at the beginning of our process that they're not likely going to be able to show up looking at a get 10 out of 10, they may show up thinking the 10 the technician is a 7 out of 10. Where you pass me an 8 out of 10, we want to give them the strongest chance of success possible. So in Order to think of this all-star action, you need to be able to say to yourself if I was my customer and I were going to call my office, what kind of experience would they be receiving? The all-star action I have for you is to call from an unknown number to your own office. Call and do a secret shopper to your own team. It could be you asking a friend to call on every half a family member, someone. But ideally your CSR process is recorded, which means that you'd be able to access it later and hear directly how they experience that service. Then you could compare it from your CSR's perspective to the person who called perspective. You can see where the gaps are and then you can solve them accordingly. How's that for an all-star?

really big man love it. Absolutely. Remember if you're not sold, they never will be and we got to maintain that perspective right. A perspective shift would be a landslide for us guys. That's a great start to this week's topic. We're going to absolutely obliterate the subjection with you guys and give you some more tools for your tool belt to run this Sustainable business as you aim with us on electricpreneurs secrets, the electricians podcast, to master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level Electrical service. Can't wait to see you guys again tomorrow, tuesday's episode, as we further break down this problem solution in the benefit of solving this for your business. Can't wait to get into it in Cheers.