Ep 170 - Making Allstars, Levels & Strengths

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back, Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back. I don't know if you're sitting on this podcast, but this Wednesday, this action Wednesday, I thought I got to take action and just do something. That honestly makes me a bit anxious. If you just heard that, you could probably tell why. I'm Clay Neumeier, the host of this program. Along with me is my esteemed co-host, joseph the salesbot Lucani, and we are the electricpreneurs here to help you, five days a week, master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium, premium level electrical service. Joe, would it be wrong of us to want to do that for them?

Not at all, and I got to admit, man, I never know what the intro is going to be, because we always go live. My first thought was like oh, we did three hello's. All right, we're on pace. Why is he singing? Why is he singing? Why is he singing? I love it, I love it, I love it, I love you. I think it's awesome.

I appreciate that we're trying to have a little fun here too, right as we should. Right Just before this, you were giving the old header up there. I feel, like you got a little extra friction up top, joe. What's going on, man, bring us in.

So for those who can see, it may not look it, but this is the longest it's been in a long time. I actually shave, not because I'm going bald, but because someone has like myself who's on the spectrum. I have the fun ability or not so fun as I can feel the hair on my head. It's reasons why I'm shaving on such a consistent basis. So whenever you see me like touch my head, it's not because I'm just ooh, I like the feeling of soft skin, I can feel it and I want it gone. So I guarantee after I'm done with this session, you will see a very smoother, saved individual.

That's awesome, man. If you guys are watching us engaging with us live in the Facebook ElectriPrinterSecrets group, please say hello, put a hand up if you're having a fantastic Wednesday morning, as you can tell I must be. I've got a little extra. I have all that you say Little extra spunk, little pep in the step this morning Not that I'm stepping that far. Can I just generally make a statement about podcasts right now?

I mean, you can't not. I've just had enough that way. It's a good word Perfect, perfect.

My partner just sent me a podcast and she said you've got to listen to this. It's a great podcast. Hmm, and it reminds me of even yesterday. One of our friends, brian, was in here tagging a bunch of his team to come and listen to. And the problem with being tagged in a podcast or someone sending it to you is, like I acknowledge how you thought of me and I'm flattered, but they just don't have the. You can't speed them up. Hmm, like it's way funner to listen to us on 2X, like our clients do in the intro videos to each of the sections in our roadmap. It's so much fun and it's so fast and I'm really a fast guy. There's not a lot of time, joe, how do we speed up a podcast?

I mean, how do we speed up a podcast? I mean realistically, I don't know if you can. I mean some things that are good are sometimes worth taking the time to do. It's one of the reasons why I often speak slowly, because you want to often have the gravity between the statements. Sometimes the greatest piece and the greatest weight you'll know is in the empty spaces between two words.

Oh, that's deep man. That's good stuff, though I think you're right that pause is worth millions to master it, and not that it's just a reflection of money, but influence. How much better would this podcast be if we just paused a little more.

I think it would be helpful. I mean, it's interesting how you do that, just for blank space.

That's what you need More time consumed by blank space out here on the airwaves.

I think targeted pauses are the way to go about it. I mean, if you actually not targeted intentional pauses, because too often it feels like this world and this society that we live in is just everyone's attached to their phone. We need it now. We're all in the ADHD culture. We need immediate gratification, and sometimes that pause is more important because it allows you to take a moment to breathe. Have you ever had that moment where you realize that you've got this weight in the center of your chest and you don't realize you've been breathing until you finally call attention to it and then it's Mm. My god, how long was I holding that for?

yeah, yeah, and then your cores like sore from just like holding your whatever. Yeah, yeah, for sure, as you were saying that I was doing it, I Do it when I'm listening, like I don't know why listening is kind of hard for me. It's like I'm preparing to speak again, maybe, or there's something. It's like okay, I got to take something here. Listen, guys, if you're doing that right now, we're listening to us. We urge you to stop. Relax, sit back. It is action Wednesday, but you don't have to start right this moment. You get to just chill with us for a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

Let's tie in that big pause to a big statement. Ready for it? I'm down. You don't need to necessarily find all stars. You can make them.

Mm-hmm.

Wow, it was that pause effective. Do you think that added weight to it?

well, it all depends on how we interpret the pause. But yeah, I mean as a whole, we were all looking and seeing what you're gonna say afterwards. Okay, so we can also almost be considering it like a drumroll between sentences.

Hmm, Well, that's the title of this episode, episode 170. If you can believe that making all stars, recognizing the levels and the strengths, be a superpower for you and your business. We had some people agree with us in the group yesterday. They've tried hiring. If you don't have the processes, the systems in place, then really we're kind of relying on old lady luck and the 2a rule that I said yesterday, which I made up on the spot, by the way, and it's fantastic and I love it, and now I'm adopting it forever. That's how this stuff happens. You take a new perspective, say it in a new time. We have a conversation with someone new and all of a sudden it clicks. Oh my gosh, there's a rule of thumb here. You bring someone in. You're either going to adopt what their knowledge and process is or they're going to adapt to yours. Mm-hmm, it's really two options. Now, if you've got that process, those systems, laid out, then you can raise your own all stars. And would it be wrong of me to say, joe, that that might be the best all stars you have in your business Over the course of the time?

I want to actually do. I want to double down on that, because it's not just that they'll be the best, but they'll also be the most consistent and the longest lasting. The reason being is that when someone comes up in your culture, like imagine you started off as an installer, you start to sweep in the floors and you climb, and you climb, and you climb. Do you really want to go somewhere else? Learn a whole new culture, learn a whole new endeavor? Climb the ranks back up? No, yeah, they've invested themselves. They've invested themselves and, if anything else, you're invested in them as well.

Yes, yes, I love that and, as I'm you're saying that, I'm reflecting on times of my career working for others where I was highly engaged Is definitely at points where a guy like me, a grower I mean, I love thinking about where I'm headed. I'm the big picture guy. So anytime I had that situation in front of me where there was room to grow, a runway for me to go down, I was happy. Man, I Was happy and a part of that was even social status. Honestly, part of that's recognition of the value one brings to your asset, your business. But if it can be this shared thing and the shared experience and room to grow, I think it's a really powerful sentiment. I agree 100%. So Making all stars Actually could be harder sometimes if you're again what we talked about yesterday bringing someone in that's already Trained in their ways. Mm-hmm. Experience could be nice and maybe it gets you out of a bind today, but at some point it will be trouble for your business unless they're adapting to your ways.

I have a specific reference for this, please. So I remember I hired someone who had a lot of commercial background, like they were Primarily just projects and we were primarily just residential service, and I remember we had this crossover moment where we were very meticulous with our uniforms, like I'm making sure your belt is the right way, your shirts the right way. Everything was intact. I was very OCD about it, yeah, and I realized that this individual I showed up on site and he wasn't in uniform. He was in his project clothes, like your flannel, your backwards hat, and he was like well, we're working at a warehouse today. It should be. This is project uniform, right?

Yeah.

And you realize that, no matter what you do, if they don't understand the why and they can't see how it Adopts to serving the customer better, it's just another rule that they're supposed to follow when you're watching. Hmm, so by able being able to say I raised this person, I showed them the ways we do it, I they understand why we're doing these things. Now they can represent it to other people when you're not watching.

Yeah, really powerful, really powerful man. As you say. That again I'm reflecting and I'm thinking there's an opportunity here. I know most residential companies, most Resi service guys are not looking to hire someone from projects, not looking to hire someone from commercial or industrial. But there is an opportunity here and I just want to point this out for a second. If you truly apply the higher for attitude, not for skill, you already know that this is a licensed journey person coming from that era, that sort of not the era, but that segment of what we do I mean electrical is so vast. Right, there's so much we could do and learn, but they'd have the fundamental skills. You could train them to Resi. That's going to take a bit of time, but they have the journeyman status, they have the fundamentals, the theory behind it. So I mean they could learn quicker. If they've got the right attitude, then you can train that customer service in your process, where that could become an all star for you. Heed this warning, though. There's a lot of inputs happening in construction and projects. People right Like the unlaced boots, the swearing foul mouth, the, the, the nicotine in the mouth and spitting and all throwing wrenches, throwing wrenches.

I've had wrenches thrown.

Yeah, man, all that stuff comes with it, so worth paying attention to. But hey, I just wanted to throw that out there. I think there's a lot of value if, again, following the higher for attitude, train for skill. It's a huge piece, huge piece. But that said, yesterday we tied on really into the installer piece and how everyone needs to be an installer. Today, as an upgrade to what we said yesterday, I actually wanted to give away our installer upgrade process. Nice, yeah, it's action Wednesday. We're always giving a value piece away every Wednesday to help you guys out in your journey, and we discussed this in pretty good detail yesterday about an installer being able to, at the right time, represent the options and in doing this and training for that, of course, they become more empowered to climb the ladder of your business and grow if their strengths allow. So, guys, if you want that installer upgrade process, we're giving that away for free. On the Facebook page, throw a hand up installer upgrades all you need to type. You'll see the action posts as well on there on our page. Feel free to grab that Please. Joe, jump on in man.

I wanted to say one additional benefit of the installer grid process that may not be immediately picked up at face value, but as someone who's running, I want to explain some of it. Is that okay? So, one of the main benefits that you guys may not pick up With the install upgrade process. It implies that you already have a good work order transfer that your team can have from salesperson to installer and that they understand how to best communicate that. If you were to try to run the install upgrade process, you'll find where your team's gaps are. The benefit is that once you've learned to close the gap, even if they've never offered a single product to upgrade, you have already have made them a better, more cohesive team. You may look at it and say, hey, I want to do this so they can be a revenue generator, which is very likely. Or, if nothing else, you're still tightening up the service that your team can expect and that your clients can expect, thus making sure that every individual person in your team delivers a better experience. I just wanted to make sure that was also brought up to attention.

Really powerful Now in your business, joe. If someone was using the installer upgrade process and seeing great results, they were continually connecting with your clients, building rapport and thus having clients choose taller options while they were there. What would that tell you about that individual, that installer, and maybe what they could be ready for?

That was usually a great place where you can determine whether they're ready to be a service tech, because one of the reasons why I considered myself such a good salesperson was because I had the installed background. You know how long things are supposed to take. You have a certain level of credibility in front of a customer If you can have someone who's on the install team, who you notice is consistently offering things you're like wait a second, this person has had two upgrades in a month. Yeah, they've done 10 calls, but at least it means they're running into play. Okay, this is someone who's trainable, this is someone who gets it. Now the obvious next choice is to bring them into a service truck, because if they know how to do the work, they'll know how to troubleshoot it. Because I know how it's supposed to work. It's not okay, now I can reverse engineer it. But also seeing they had the customer service attention to want to educate the client shows that they're willing to make an ethical offer in as well. So you have someone who has technical background, decent or at least passable customer service and communication, but mostly that they understand the why. Those are the three categories for an all-star.

I love that, so you'd be able to take this person then from solely doing installs primarily on opportunity calls larger projects with quotations.

That's a good site yeah.

But then they'd be able to move to a demand call role, even in serve, on those demand calls.

Yeah, I wouldn't see an issue with that, because, if you think about it, the demand call is going to then test their knowledge and actually would, as a result, make them better installers, because when you see how something breaks, you see how something can be prevented in the very beginning. So what you're seeing is that not only are they better at what they're doing, but they become better for your company and your customer as a whole a more well-rounded individual and a professional Great point.

So they start generating revenue on a sales sense as well. This is really powerful and I feel like the only gaps there. Then if they've got that install on lock, they've mastered the installer upgrade process, which, again, we're giving away for free today. Guys, grab that. Then they're also able to just need training on really that demand call process and the options training. Thank you, because instead of which they've, they've had great exposure to now reflecting on the options and seeing how it relates to the work they do, but now they themselves would be creating them. In our program, we address this by pulling out the options and the options training from the sales process and literally even creating templates so your team can run them on a timer and come with close pricing and make sure that they're able to do that advanced ahead of them going out on their own.

Those are really fun exercises. I remember doing those classes. They're a lot of fun.

Super powerful strategy. Now, if said installer truly then adopted this strategy, or service call strategy the demand call process, as it were for us, and the options training, you've now got a lethal guy in the field that's able to be well rounded and even continue training up to a sales tech position.

That would be the apex right there, because imagine the level of credibility that you could represent as a salesperson where you say I understand what needs to be done because I've been doing it for the past 10 years and I've been doing service calls to learn how to improve my customer service and now I'm only going to offer you things that I truly feel you'd either need, want or that the situation now requires.

I love that.

That's not touch for individual.

Now, at some point, joe, if an individual is that powerful and they become this all star, this apex player, and they're able to then have a really strong opportunity call, and so they're selling the 80%, they're doing over a million, maybe even beating your 1.3 million that you were doing under your service van At some point you transition that person to just sales and have them focus as much as possible on just the opportunity calls so that they can continue to grow and even take it to 2 million for you and your team.

It would depend on what they want, and the reason why I say that is this you can lead a horse to water, of course, and you know there's granted, there's many expressions of how you get them to drink, but at the end of the day, they need to want it more than you do. You can't make someone want something more, but you can encourage them to show them the benefits of it. So if this person truly loves to turn tools, then maybe a service tech role is the best thing for them, because they can do revenue generation and be in their queen B role. But if we find that that person really loves the conversation and they really like the bonding and they like the design and the options of it, then it would make more sense to put them on a path where they'd thrive, because when someone really loves what they do, they're going to do it to the best of their ability because it makes them happy. But when someone does something because they need to make money, you have a completely different person because your perspectives and your why's have polarized. That's why I love what I do so much. This is what I've always wanted to do and I feel like my entire life, from when I first got into the van at 14 to now, brought me to this moment, so I can help change this industry.

I love that man Really. Good share. And it reminds me of something else that I think we'll need to touch on tomorrow, about this queen B role and about that evolution and about the retention of staff and the things you just said. I really feel that's a whole podcast episode that we need to go into, because it's true, you need a conjoined vision. It's not just yours, it's theirs too. If you really want to build a powerful business, you got to have those visions and values aligned and be able to serve your staff as well. I agree, their strength is only going to be their strength so long as they want it to. I can really appreciate that, joe. But coming to the 20-minute mark here on this one, we've had some fun today. I even sang to open it up. I'm not going to sing us out, but what could we put down for some action items today, my friend?

Coming back to understanding what your team wants, it's also more important to understand the why they want it. I would say for your basic action, basic, basic basic is simply saying do you have an understanding, as their employer, what they actually want to do? It doesn't mean you have to actually do anything about it. Your bare minimum is do I at least know what they want, or do I have at least an approximation? If I were to throw a dart against the board, would I even hit near the target if I thought what do they want?

Love it. I'm really good.

I have something that we could do for the All Star, but I don't want to step on your toes. If you have one on lock.

By all means, man, my All Star or my action is biased. Anyway, it's coming to the Facebook group and grabbing this all. Installer upgrade process. Another piece of the puzzle, that is the service loop electrical entire process to help you build this team, from first tire last week to last tire and your next tire, of course, this week, joe. So other than that little plug, jump in man, throw it down.

Well, believe it or not, I was already going to do that, but I'm glad we're on the same wavelength. So, as far as the All Star action is, there's actually an assignment and an exercise that you can do to better understand your team, to determine who would want to be the ones who upgrade. So it's an exercise called what do you want, and I remember learning that from a trainer years and years ago and it really shocked me, because what it is is you need to have an opportunity to be asked what do you want? But multiple times 30, 40, 50 times and you ask your technician or your employer or your employee can you tell me what you want? Give me a list of 50 things that you want, things that you can be, things that you can do, things that you can eventually acquire like what is it that you want? And you'll find in almost every single person. The progression is the same. The first 15 to 20 are things they just want stuff right, getting out of survival mindset. But as they run out of things, that's where the magic starts to happen and you can see what really is driving this person. Is it health, is it family, is it passions, is it faith? What is it that they really are driven by? And once you have those metrics on your employees, you can now learn how to best position them into roles that they would be happiest with, thus allowing you to retain more people. Train them in ways that they can be trained in that they would retain as well. As well as then, how can I retain and keep their interest in what we're doing?

Wow, man, really deep, really powerful. I would agree with that. You took it to a whole other level. That's a great mic drop moment for Wednesday. I would $170 y'all of making all of this. Sometimes I get made fun of for saying y'all because I'm so far north and you're rubbing off on me, joe Not that you say that often.

Yeah, no, I tend not to do it just because I've traveled the country a lot and it doesn't get better than Texas sometimes. Man, I just love the culture, I love the community and sometimes the words stick.

There you go, man. Again. Guys, we're here five days a week to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. We're doing everything we can to help you push that rise up and build something beautiful, something great. And this week, specifically, with that next hire and raising your own all stars, build this brand up, tell that story in your community and be something truly different and special. Thank you, guys. We'll see you again tomorrow, looking forward to it.