Ep 175 - Get It Right - Hire With a Target

Hello, welcome back and happy Wednesday. It's one of my favorite days of the week, Joseph. On the Electric Paneer Secrets, the Electricians podcast, we're back with episode 175, Getting it Right and Hiring with a Target, In another effort to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium-level electrical service. Joseph, how the hell are you man?

I'm doing good, but I gotta admit you threw me when you first did an introduction. You were short, two hellos.

I was.

One hello, it was just one hello.

Hello and happy Wednesday. I'm more like someone reading a book. Today I've got an entirely different personality.

There you go, Slow, calm, cadence pure.

Love it, I'm with you. Little pause, little voice inflection.

Today has been a great day for your boy. I ended up. I've been really making a conscious effort of going to bed a little bit earlier and also waking up earlier. For those of you listening that are into the shock watch that I announced earlier, I dialed that sucker up to 100% and that wakes you up.

I'm so interested in the electrician that gets shocked, shock therapy every morning to get out of bed. What does this thing feel like?

It's not actually the best example that I give, because I have what's known as hyposensitivity to pain, meaning that it takes a lot, a lot, a lot of pain to register. For me it's the equivalent. I would say the equivalent would be grabbing a 120 line with about one amp on it. It doesn't sound like a lot, but if you've been shocked by something, it's just like ah, what was that? Doesn't shock you, doesn't surprise you, but it's more like what was that it's not quite keen on the electric fence. Well, to give you a visual, it shocks me so hard that if I have it on my wrist, my hand contracts. Okay.

So the whole hand contracts Pretty serious then.

Yeah, pretty serious. It's just enough to get me out of bed. I am a heavy sleeper.

Awesome Dorian's with us. What's up, my brother? Good to see you here. If you're not with us engaging, live in the Electropreneur Secrets Group where you can watch us five days a week make fools of ourselves and try to kick some knowledge to help electricians again. Master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level service. You are missing out, and especially today because it is Action Wednesday where we're giving away a big fat value piece. This is a good one. It's a framework for attracting, engaging, hiring and retaining good staff the very thing we've kind of been on a bit of a banter about for three weeks in different ways, but it's not important. It's the next thing after we help you solve your pricing and your sales and your offer and your marketing problems. So would be wrong of us to touch on this again, joe, no, sir.

It wouldn't be wrong because it's the next evolutionary step you need. What good is having all the sales and having all the customer service and getting no one to help you deliver on it with?

Yeah, that's huge. I mean, as we've said, as we'll continue to say, your greatest success will come through the leverage of others people. You need them, you need them. So how do you get the right people? How do you get them on your team? How do you get them to stay on your team? We've been dancing around this topic. Today. We're going to get hyper tactical with it. What does that even mean? It means we're going to deep dive into actually hiring. Actually hiring that person is a big piece of that value piece. We're going to talk through it today. What do you say, joe? You want to jump into this?

I think it should be enough of a sign itself A little stimming.

You're hearing his hands run together. That is what we call the stim and that is what we call excitement for what's about to come here. Some of the focal points of this session and what we're talking about today is really getting into even the meat and potatoes of the interview process. Let's assume our dear listeners have been able to attract some new talent for their team Through the various ways we've discussed. Maybe they hired Applicant Pro and really cast a big net. Maybe they've got ultra detailed or ultra specific in their marketing and attracted there. Maybe it's from being laced up and looking great at the supply host and that great attitude Someone just said what's up over there? You're coming down to engaging this person. You're coming down to inviting them for an interview. How about starting there today, joe?

Okay, so how do we get? Let me just make sure I'm on the same page. So they've already arrived, they've already set up, they're in your office. Now how do we get them? Answering the customer service questions.

You know what, maybe I'll back it up even one notch and just say the engagement. I'm like hyper specific today and I think the reason why is because I just don't want anyone to have an excuse of like, well, they didn't give me this piece, so I didn't even do anything. Sometimes you get questions of like well, how do I reach out to that person? I think they're the right fit, I like the resume, I like what they've done. What do I say? What do I do? What would you do from that point? Joe, if you got the resume, you got the applicant, you'd know hey, this is someone worthwhile. Where do we begin here?

So the first thing that I do want to do is I would not want to make that call personally. The reason being not because we don't like the person or we don't want to do the work, but it's a leverage of delegation. I'm going to give you an example. Let's say that you're applying for a top tier job right, doesn't matter what it is, you are a industrial form and electrician. Salary $150,000 position right, okay, okay and the you wanted to apply for the job and the person who calls you for the interview is the actual guy. He's like hey, I'm the owner. I'm actually the one I was out doing service calls earlier and I just wanted to make sure that, hey, I've got a gap in my day between like three and four where you can come by, where I'm not busy doing options, so would you be cool coming around that time?

Do I even need to ask what I immediately think about this company?

Yeah, I mean go ahead. What would your thoughts be?

Well, these guys kind of small, can they afford me? Can they keep me busy? Is this job stability? Why aren't they bigger? Did they just start? Are there some lessons to learn here? Yet Do they lose people? Is there even a team?

That's the weird part, because normally at first instinct we're like oh, the boss is calling, that should have some gravity to it. But not the person who doesn't have a job. They need to know that what you are represents where they're trying to go. So the first person that would call or ask the call would either be our CSR or our office manager.

And, by the way, if I can interrupt your flow and just say this, reminds me of our good neighbor process not the good neighbor, sorry the brighter day call process and the problem that intuitively comes with that. So we take a lot of our smaller electric printers who come on board and really want to grow their business. One of the first challenges they have is like Well, how should I answer the phone? A you shouldn't, we've touched on this but B if you are still, you should use the brighter day call process. And a lot of times what they find is like Well, it's giving the impression that I'm bigger than I am. Yes, that's the point. It needs to be a bit bigger. You need to act as if, a little bit, we got to get ourselves out of where we are, to get where we're going right.

You're right. It's one of the reasons why we use the word we and not I. So like when you say, hey, we have the availability of helping you today, versus I have a gap in my day and I can come out to help you, one sounds like a service company, the other sounds like just a guy. So, just from the very first inflection, who makes the call determines whether they even want to show up to the interview or not.

That's important, right? I'm glad we started there. That's really important. Okay, so we've got someone else to make this call on your behalf. And just to take it to the extreme, if you don't have that person hired yet, go back two weeks, listen to the first hire. That's what we suggest. Get someone in the office position, get help with this and make them make that call. They're the right person to do it for you. If you still don't have it and you really need to hire this person, get your partner, get your wife, get someone, get your mom, get your sister, I don't care. Get some help with this. It's going to help. All right. Moving on, so we're setting up an interview. What should this first interview contain? I mean, the next question we kind of see is well, okay, they're coming in. What do we say? What do we ask? What do we do, joe?

Ah, all right. Well, the first thing is is that you want to determine where you want this to take place. Ah well, now I like to view it in all things like sales. Sales is a reverse engineering, in my opinion. You need to know what outcome you're hoping to have and then say all right, if I'm going to get there, what steps need to precede it? So if we're trying to give the impression that we're an established company and that we're someone that you'd want to work with, would you expect that person to be working in the back of your shop, in the warehouse? How will we earn the parking lot of McDonald's somewhere? Like no right? So it really comes down to one of two directions If you have a shop, if you don't have a shop, do you mind if I cover both?

Let's hit it.

Okay, now, if you have a shop, what you would do is you'd want to first have the location being in the most customer-facing area of your shop. Whenever we did any kind of applications in hiring process, it was in our front office, meaning the CSR was right there, they had the desk, the front greetings, so you could see people coming in and out. We were available with a nice white table and clear chairs and good couches, and they were all available, so it had this warm opening environment that someone would want to come and sit with you with. The availability then is to sit them down and try to figure out why are they here. Now, that won't happen just by a direct question, like if you were brought in and I sat you down, the first thing was just question after question what would you think about the company?

That question, man. I'm interested in your thoughts here. I'm let us try on that one.

No worries. So if you get sit down and someone immediately goes into business, all right, you're here, I'm here, I've got 15 minutes, let's get into this. The rush I feel rushed. Yes, if they're rushing my interview before I even sat down, how could I then convince the same person that treating the customer with longevity and giving them the extra time is valuable? So the first thing we need to do is to break bread with them, bond with them in a way, from person to person, get to know how it is.

So I interrupt. This is that moment where everyone's always told well, just build more rapport, Just build more rapport with your client.

Let's talk about how, yeah, yeah. So a couple of things you have to figure out is, you know, some people are always saying like, oh, just talk about the weather, now talk about things about them. Get them to talk about them. The more they're talking about them, the more they reveal their cards. You can keep it reserved, but if they're talking, you're learning. So ask them how is their commute? If their commute is long, think about someone who gets stuck in traffic. When they get stuck in traffic, they like to complain about it, right, oh, yeah. So when you get someone to start complaining, if there's a situation A, are you a complainer? And B, to what extent do you do? Are you an exaggerator? Did they show up on time? If not, be like hey. If they showed up early, hey, I give you a lot of credit for showing up early. What was your logic in doing that? Is this something you normally do? Do you show up on time? Hey, do you normally just show exactly on time? You show up late, hey. I'm curious, what's your schedule usually like? How do you usually plan on when you're arriving to things? You notice how I didn't call the last person out for being late. Each one was just a neutral statement. Tell me more about this. Then, once they're physically sitting down and you're able to break the bread, which meaning you could literally offer them a cup of coffee that you have next door right. So we literally were right next door to a bakery, so we could have been like, hey, can I get you a sandwich? Would you like? Some coffee, would you like? If not, I got a coffee machine right behind me. Can I get you something? Let's sit down, let's take the brush off. It's okay. Even when they're calm, they're relaxed. You've had some small banter between the two of you. Now you can ask them certain questions. Now, for us those questions always had two different directions Customer service focus questions and technical based questions. Now, I'm not sure we can get through all of them today, but, clay, do you have a preference on which one we should start with?

Yeah, to me I feel like, okay, a couple of questions in the gap and to answer yours is kind of the sense of I'm an advocate of multiple interviews. This is a situation where we could split that off and say, okay, let's focus on values, alignment and how they act as a person to qualify them for a second interview.

All right, then we'll start with the customer service ones. That makes a lot of sense.

Because even the best tech in the world, if they don't fit your culture, if they don't fit your values, then what good are they? They're just going to be a stray animal causing trouble and breaking the fence.

That's a good way of putting it, because you can teach the skills, but you can't teach character. Character is something that has to come either through fire or flame and like you've got to either learn it or it's got to be deeply instructed to you at a necessity.

And so for this reason because we're focused on service electricians, hiring that fit other service electricians, specifically here I think that values alignment is so important and we should stay focused there. And I also just want to add to what you said before, which, given a lot of credit, joy, I love your sentiments there. I think the big question electricians have that they haven't answered yet is like what are my values? What is it that I'm striving for? What am I looking for in these questions and these moments of additional rapport? What am I seeking out of those questions? They're open-ended, sure, and I want to give you guys just a little tip, because I can't tell you necessarily what your values are and we can suggest them from a customer service standpoint, we can make some broad suggestions, but you specifically have the opportunity to set the tone in your company, in that culture, and so that's worthy of some serious thought and thinking time. Maybe I'm jumping ahead on an action item here, but it's going to be absolutely critical that you get that figured out. Pause, get that figured out is future tense. It doesn't necessarily mean you got to have it nailed right now. Something that's a miracle that happens in business is we tend to find ourselves through our interactions with our clients.

Mm-hmm.

Example, one of our great newer clients the other day said well, you know we're embodying the premium service provider, but I don't feel all the strategies have caught up yet. Now I'm doing a presentation about this in front of people and I don't know how much to commit to necessarily that premium service person, because if we're not there yet and we let them down, well then what? But that's part of the process. So I just wanted to drive that home. Joe, we have to trust the process too. It's important that you think about your values. It's important that you begin to articulate them. Take your best shot at what they are now and, as you grow, be adaptable and understand that they will grow on you too. Does that make sense?

It does and the thought of having a text girl on you. It's true, there are some people that I remember hiring, that I'm like and then ended up being like this is a really good person. They've got a good rapport. Sometimes they just need to come out of their shell a little bit, start using their words and talking.

Awesome. And so, to answer your question before, and what you touched on was sort of like the skills on the service side, almost like the soft skills and the actual hard skills, the field skills, the knowledge and experience that we tend to put so much extra weight on. Well, let's start with those soft skills. Let's give a couple examples of some great questions that you can ask in that first interview, or if you're doing it all at once, not what I suggest, but if you're doing it all at once, I mean, either way, get those questions out.

Sure, okay. So off top of my head, here's some questions that we can come up with. One of the first ones was more of a question to try to see with their integrity and what they felt was appropriate to do. So usually an example we would give would be all right, clay, you know? Let's say, you and I are working with a customer we've had for a long time. We've done a big project for them. We a whole new rewire or we did a redevice to it, the whole thing, right, we're there for a little bit, yeah, and the customer approaches you and says, clay, you've done an amazing job. I'm really happy with everything you're doing. The only thing is that you know, I have one fan that I didn't include. That I'm just realizing I do want to get done. Now I'm curious if you'd be able to either help me after hours or come on a weekend or wherever it is. Can you help me out and I would go out in real life. Yeah, people do that, of course it happened. You threw me for a second. I was like, yeah, bug me, man.

People used to ask me like I'm the owner of the company.

They'd be like hey, would you come on the weekend? I'm like are you asking me to side job my own company? So okay, so following this logic, right, they've asked you to come back out. We wouldn't say, would you sign job, because that's an obvious yes or no answer. Instead, we'd say now, obviously, this is a great customer, what do you feel be a fair rate to charge him for this? So we've got out there that it's like we're in his mind, it's what do you think is a fair number? Now, if someone has integrity, their first thought is, well, I'm not going to side job, I would refer him back to you. But if someone didn't have integrity, we're giving the impression that we think that this is okay. I'm just asking what number you think is fair. I've actually had people give me numbers that they think will be fair to side job. Well, I mean, when I used to work with my old boss, he would say just take $50 and put gas in the truck and you should be good. I mean I'd say just take $50 and put gas in the truck and you should be good. It's like your old boss would let you take his truck and side job his cusp. Yay, I didn't want to do it on the weekends, it's fine and just to be ultra clear, like what's the danger of that? Oh my god. So what's the danger of having someone side job? The problem is multi-fold, because let's just say they're in your truck, first and foremost, right, you know a, I'm fueling it. I'm doing that. But if they drive incorrectly or there's ever an issue, they're driving a 14-foot billboard Mm-hmm. So anywhere they're going, you now have your name attached to. In addition, if they're side jobbing it, there's no license and there's no insurance. There can't be unless that you're having a license electrician side job, and even then they're not usually carrying their own individual insurance. So now this customer is in a circumstance that if something goes wrong, they have nowhere to point other than their own homeowners insurance, which means they're more likely going to point at you and try to be like well, your guy came your truck. I've got a picture of him doing it in uniform. I Got a picture of your truck in my unit in my driveway Course you guys came, you're not going to warrant it. So now you've got a situation where One the customer doesn't have insurance not getting done by licensed technician, now has an issue where your van is being additional maintenance, additional false advertisement, but it can continue on, where now it also affects the reputation of everyone else, because if this person didn't do quality work let's say the technician came out it was a helper apprentice, right yeah, and this person goes and does some device changes but doesn't do him right. I actually had a circumstance once where a Inspector called us and laughed at some work that we did and said we did a terrible job. And when I looked up the address I was like I was never there. I Literally we, we never went to this house reputation Through. We found out that we had an employee side job. Us, without telling us, went and actually did the job and then tried, using our name, to get it past inspection.

Yeah, so obviously bad stuff. I want to thank you for going into that a bit deeper. I would love to get to another question, another customer service question. Do you have any other examples that we can give away here today, joe?

Yeah, be happy to so going into it. Another one was let's say, you're the technician and you've just installed a new ceiling fan in the customer's home. You think you did a perfect job. I mean, I'm talking. The escutcheon is great. The silicone is seamless around the edges. You sit back old inside of it so there's no dust that's ever gonna fall on it. It is mint. Customer walks in and goes man, that looks crooked. What do you say? And what we're doing is we're trying to test when their mind is at. Are they open to customer feedback? Now, I'm not saying their job wasn't right, but you believe your job was right and the customer doesn't. Do you argue with the customer? Are you going to try to improve it to the customer? Are you trying to escalate it further? What is your goal?

Great lead to another one too, by the way. Is the customer always right, joe?

No, the customer isn't always right, and the customer shouldn't feel like they're always right, but they should always feel heard. I Think that's a very big difference. I'm not going to make you feel inferior when I tell you that I disagree. I'm not going to belittle you, I'm not going to insult you, but I will prove my point. I'd be willing to go out and say look, I'm gonna literally put a level on this blade. Look, I have a balancing kit. You can watch it move. We can have a piece of paper in any place of this room and I'll show you the paper moves. Tell me your thoughts. Would you like me to adjust it slightly? I mean, it's got a wobble fan. I could adjust the blades, I could adjust the frame. What would make you happiest knowing that it actually is currently level?

Yeah, great way to spin that around. So that's the kind of answer you're looking for From this prospective hire Something that can acknowledge the clients can, or, yeah, the clients concerns. Mm-hmm and pivot in a way that still finds the answer in the middle, which is ultimately meeting the expectation.

And I've got one more, if we still got time for it.

Let's hit one more, then we'll smash a couple action items, sweet deal.

So another good example would be you're the technician and you didn't sell this job, but you're here to now install. Whatever you're doing, you show up, it's 8 am, you knock on the door, you have your full thing. You followed your pre arrival process, you look nice, yeah, everything's good. But you get to the door and the customer opens and they're upset. They're like, you know, clay. With no offense intended, you, I know you're not the owner, I know you're not the sales guy. I get it, but I'm really, really upset Because I actually last night I talked to my neighbor who was a retired electrician back in the 50s and he told me that when he was doing this, this should only cost this much and this is like four times what he thinks it's supposed to cost. And I feel like I've been taken advantage of. What do you say to the customer? That's me, that's really it, because we're trying to figure out. Can they think reactively and are they going to push the ball onto someone else? Are they going to say, well, the work order here says we got to do it, or are they going to be the person that says, well, I mean, we are a bigger company, or will they go into the customer and explain. I truly want to help you and I know that we are competitive for the quality we deliver. Let me contact Joe, who was the one who went out and set this up, and let's see if we can get this figure out together. Give me about two minutes and we'll see what solution we can come up with.

Okay, now the hard question again Do these questions and their answers disqualify people from your second stage and the technical skills, or is it really more of a noteworthy and an understanding of the type of person and the type of experiences that they've had?

It depends on the question that they answer. If the first question is oh yeah, we side job all the time, I'm not hiring that guy.

That's a risk.

It's a hundred percent disqualified. But if he says, personally I wouldn't side job. But if the customer asked me, I'd ask you first and then if you weren't cool with it, then I would give him your card number, or I'd give him your card and then if you didn't care and you didn't want to do it, then I would do it. Yeah, I wouldn't disqualify that person because at least he has the integrity to say hey, the customer asked me this do you want the job or can I take it on the weekend?

Yeah, Fair enough. I think that's fair. Question two Sure, plumbing Square of the World looks good. Client disagrees. What's the failing remark here?

Okay. The failing remark is where they start arguing with the customer and belittling them, like I've actually had some circumstances when we asked this question where they're like listen, I've been an electrician for 35 years, if I know. This thing is level, it's level, look at it. It's directly against the ceiling, it's exactly against the frame. It's probably this wall, probably the ceiling, the ceiling itself. It all warped, probably because, and you see, they just start going into it.

But how it's everywhere, it's all but theirs. Yeah, Great. And lastly, lastly, was the not letting you in the price. What's the failing answer here?

The failing answer is usually where they're like yeah, I know, we're a bigger company, you know you probably would have been better off going when someone's smaller, or hey, I don't make the price, so I'll just go home.

Tie back to question one. I could do this for about a quarter of the price.

Yeah, you know what I mean. Like if they're going to side job it. But the disqualifier would have been like I just turn around and go home. Like you turn around and go home, it's like, yeah, I didn't sell the job, I'll just go to another job. What do you mean? You go to another job. Well, I just assumed you've got other jobs on the calendar, I'll just go to that one. It's like no, no, you won't, this is the job we have today.

Man brother, we've gone a bit long here today, but listen, let's wrap this up with a couple of action items. Honestly, I think the writing's already on the wall. Would you like the basic or the all-star?

I kind of want the all-star on this one, if you're cool with it.

All right, that's easy. The basic is simple and we talked about it pretty well. First thing, get someone else to do the outreach. First impressions matter, right. There's no impression like a first impression and you want your first impression to be professional, to be big. You want to act as if you need to be in your head, clearly the vision that you have for your business, as we always like to go a bit deeper, so get your first, hire that office admin, your CSR, get someone to make that outreach for you, to help you with that, and give them that element of you know what this is worth it. This is a team here. How's that first start, joe?

I like that. That works All right. Now the all-star action. I want to advise almost two different things, but they line up together. If that's okay, all right. So the first half, no worries, I'll make it work. The first part is that I want you to really try to visualize the technician you're trying to bring on. The danger of it is don't be specific with their physical appearance. I don't want like if you say I'm going to close my eyes and I want to see who's going to walk through the door. I don't want you visualizing a person. I want you visualizing ideals, qualities, characteristics. Who is the person who will serve my client? Are they trustworthy enough that their yes means yes and their no means no? Are they integrous enough that I would bring them to have dinner with my mother? Are there qualities that we can find in this person that follow our mission statement? Search for the qualities, not the people. Qualities cannot be taught. Skills can. So if you had the ability of looking for quality, that's the guy you want to invest in.

Love it. That's all of it. That's all of it. You told me 90 seconds.

You told me 90 seconds. You hit it.

You hit it. Here we are Just under 30 minutes on episode 175 of Electricpreneur Secrets, the Electricians podcast, where we go live five days a week to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver. Deliver Deliverage today, deliver premium level electrical service Nail in the finish guys. If you're not with us on the Facebook page then you might be missing today's action post to get an actual hiring guide or hiring secrets and some of these questions, along with the additionals. Some of the stuff will go over tomorrow as well. But if you want to grab that, jump on in, throw a hand up on our post this week and we'll be happy to send it your way. Otherwise, jump on our website at serviceloopelectricalcom and you can engage with us there. Ask for the hiring secrets and we'll send it your way. Thank you very much for your time and energy today, joe. Can't wait to do it again tomorrow, brother.

Couldn't ask for a better person to work with. Then I'll see y'all tomorrow.

I'll see y'all tomorrow.