Ep 179 - En-couraging Specialists

Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of Electricpreneur Secrets, the Electricians podcast, where myself, your host, clay Neumeier, and, of course, my esteemed co-host, joseph the Salesbot, luke Canny, go live with you five days a week to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium-level electrical service. Joseph, how are you doing today, my brother?

I'm doing really, really well. You know, it's one of those random things that you may not always notice, but I'm always carrying a fidget toy of some sort, and today it is my daughter's favorite rock that she's decided to put in your pocket. You know what. But it's actually now a different rock, because that one was not her favorite. So I know I'm starting to acquire a pile of pebbles on my desk, but you know, it's really one of those things that, as a dad, I just love doing, things that matter to my kids. And then when they come down to the office and they're like, oh, it's my rocks, it's like, yeah, of course, I think of you all day. So I'm just starting the day with that level of intention, man.

I love that. I love that and, as you say that, I can't help but reflect on yesterday. I had, like a memory come up on my Facebook feed, of course you guys have been listening for a while. You know we do a lot of our work on Facebook and we're encouraging specialists right here, just like the title says, on our Facebook and in our audience. Currently, you could be live with us on the Electricpreneur Secrets page engaging with us and, if you are, please let us know how you're doing today, on this Tuesday morning for me, afternoon for you, joe, and maybe after some of you. But I'm reminded of a memory that came up with my daughter, and it was from a few years ago. We were at this vineyard and she was into the TikTok dances oh no. Ever, see the kids just hooked on that.

You know it's funny. It's like everyone who's ever tried doing a tick to understanding TikTok is like what is a floss and how does one do it? It's literally like that was a few years ago. I remember that.

Yeah, exactly, and she was trying to get me to dance and whatever it was. I just kind of turned it into the Macarena and she kind of lost it a little bit. But yeah, it was funny, man, and you know what, I just love the memories. I love that. Shit Brightens up my day to see where we've come, how our kids have grown, how the times have changed, how the rocks have changed, apparently, joe. And what's in store for the future right.

Yeah, I mean, our kids are the best blessings you can ever have because, at the end of the day, you have two things you have your knowledge and you have your legacy. And I'm not making them live, I'm not living through them, I am living for them.

I love that. I love that A couple of girl dads right here live with you guys. If you're a girl dad, please throw your hand up, Give us a hello in the comments, Let us know If you're a boy dad. There's a conversation I had recently. It's about like the ceremony of manhood. I feel like that's something that's kind of lost in tradition and in Western civilization. Me and my buddy were talking about that a couple of weeks ago and he takes his kids hunting. He's an avid hunter and for him that was very ceremonious and like being able to teach your boy something and give him something that brings him into that identity of being a man and being independent and being able to provide sustenance and provide for himself. Interesting Whole other topic. Go down and rabbit hole for either. Joe.

But no, it's all good, just before we switch it. I do pretty much the same thing Every time I fix anything in the house, doesn't matter whether I'm sleeping on a floor or whether I'm installing a security system. My daughters are doing it with me. Even if they can't hold the tool, you're present, you're nearby and they're going to learn. Plus, the coming of age will be when they move into their own home and they're able to say I don't need to call someone, because I have a memory of doing this with my dad and what I do is I take pictures of every time we build something, a little selfie with them, and I'm going to create a catalog for them, years and years in the future, of all the things that we built. Be like here you go. You now have something you can always reference in the future.

Well, yeah, I love that man. Really powerful stuff. Now let's jump into the topic today, because encouraging specialists something that came up in our team meeting this morning, our client success meeting something just to again demonstrate guys, don't listen to what we say, watch what we do. We hold a couple of client success meetings every week internally to just discuss between yourself myself, rana, our client success manager how to better serve our clients. I think that's a really important initiative for every business out there, especially if you're sold on providing premium service, like the topic of this week our friends at the right connection, our clients who have become sold on this and seeing the revenue effectively double in five weeks, which is a very impressive thing. We want to continue this trend by looking at the title of today's episode. Let's break this down a bit, joe, the word encourage where does that really mean? How has it changed now that we've broken it up in this way, with the in and the encouraging separate?

I thought that was actually a really good example that we talked about earlier today. I think it's really awesome to bring it in now, because it struck me as soon as you first described it. Being in courage is not the thought of having a safe space, but the thought of having a courageous space where people can come and speak the things that they feel are most important to them. Also, inserting that courage into their life could then give them the skills, or at least the knowledge or the ability, to take that next step on their own.

Yeah, I don't think I was prepared even with the definition on this one. But if I had to define courage, you tell me if you'd agree or not. It may be even temporary in some nature, but the state of being able to face your fear.

Yeah, I'd say that that sounds fair.

So encourage is, like the verb, the activity of bringing others into that state, isn't it?

We're allowing. I mean which, at the end of the day, is true, because when you introduce a sales process or an SOP or anything that's going to affect your business, there's always going to be this fear Like take of argument. If you were to tell someone you've got to raise your rate, like anyone will say that. But then now how can you go through and articulate it? Like your customers who you've worked with over the past 10 years, how do you then encourage them and tell them that the price is going up? That's why putting them in that courageous space is so helpful, because then they can say I mean, even in the worst case scenario, I may not know how, but I know what and I know where we're going to go to get there.

Totally, and I love that example. I mean that one comes up often. In fact it ties directly into what we're talking about today, which is not just the encouragement piece but the specialist piece. In our industry, and not just electrical, I mean even service coaching, etc. There's many coaches, there's many people. Anyone can say, raise your rates. But, as, Joe, you just pointed out, like it has that innate fear attached to it that's like well, projections about to increase. Yeah, I'm about to get more knows. That's a problem for a lot of people.

Yeah, and literally I remember we were 165 an hour. We were broke as a joke, like I remember it was really, really scary and we knew that rate had to go up, but there was no real try to reason of what it needed to be. We just knew that we were broke and then the thought of saying, well, we got to go to 250. It scared us a lot and it took a lot of like I don't want to say courage, but it took a lot of fear facing to go in there and say we're going to do it anyway and face the nose. And some people can't get into that space because they don't have the right person to tell them that it's going to be there, because they've already done it themselves.

And can we break that out for a minute? So for you, what was the realization point Like? How did you come to the conclusion that you needed to raise your rates in the first place?

Well, the thing was is that at the time, it was just me and my partner and we were doing everything right, Like I'm going to answer the phones, I'm going to do the service calls, we're both going to do the installations, we're both going to manage the operation. It's like you had so many hats that, in order to scale, we knew we needed to take people on. And when you actually do the numbers and you're like, well, this is what we're producing and this is what we need to spend, you realize really quickly there isn't a whole lot left over, especially with a rate being competitive, Because I don't mind competing with price if they're willing to compete with my service. But the time we were competing by offering better service and trying to match their price, and that was the losing battle.

And so at that time, did someone encourage you through that transition.

Yeah, I had a coach at the time that was like you need to double your rate. And I was like why? And he was just like, well, you just need to double your rate. And I'm like, okay, like how Well, you need to just raise it. I'm like, no, I need to know how we're doing it. And eventually we did, through stubbornness and belief, but we eventually did, and it was scary as hell. But I really feel like if we didn't pull it off, it could have been a really dangerous situation, just raising your rate on the blind 100% and I'm so glad that we went down this road Again, unplanned, as usual.

Right, we just end up where we end up. But ultimately I am reminded of this because also our clients that kind of received a spotlight this week faced the same challenges in the past and, as we know, electricians tend to want to understand what they're signing up for. It's not just that arbitrary encouragement that necessarily empowers us to just go out and do it. So hats off to you for getting that done, even though you kind of had some generalist advice to do so, whereas, like in our program, we've laid out our pricing structure to four stages, including even your personal budget that impacts it, to make sure that you're profitable throughout and that you understand why and that you understand how you get there. And even as you guys have enjoyed this ride with us I mean you must have heard us do a whole week on the value price objection. So also helping with pre-articulation and making sure you understand, okay, how are we going to make this change and how is that going to impact our clients and how the fuck are we going to sell it at this new rate? You?

know it's one of those scary things and I don't mean to sound like the wrong way here, but I honestly wish that we existed when I was running my team. I know that it couldn't at the same time, but like just having that framework would have been so helpful, just to be like I don't have to go based off faith. I could have had a document that showed me every single number plus growth rate, plus everything factored into it. It would have been way more confidence inspiring than just sitting in a room with a coach who was like raise your rate why? Because it needs to go up? Why Because you're already broke? All right, Well, I already knew that. Just tell me how.

Yeah, how much this much? Why Because Because?

Yeah. That literally was the conversation.

It's great to be encouraged by someone and have belief in that person because they've got evidence, but I also like to know what I'm doing. I like to understand, and I think that shows through in a lot of the training we've done. And so just to add this piece, I would say for the right connection, these clients this week that experienced that great growth through really just three things. We asked them, well, what happened to cause this growth so soon? And they said look, the mindset changed through this full immersion with you guys, the daily classes and then the podcast. Every day, the one to one chat supports Raina, our client success manager, checking in and making sure we're able to take the next step and clearly understand it every day. Through that, the mindset has just shifted. We've become premium service providers ahead of providing premium service, which led to number two right Again, if you believe in premium service and you start to understand this specialist approach that we have, then it becomes blatantly apparent where we're letting that bull slide a bit, where it's slipping. Number two for them was just the recognition of the gap, and so they start acting. But what wasn't mentioned is the pricing that we're talking about. The pricing did increase and they did learn how to articulate that better and they did build in some additional value and recognize additional value to bring forth. That resulted in these larger sales and more of them, which is essentially kind of the backbone of this growth. And then, of course, third, that we talked about yesterday, where Mandy said, now that I have that additional level of confidence she's been out doing presentations, right, she's been out working with the local networking groups and just that new confidence to say, look, we're premium service providers and this is something that's missing, right, like how many of us can go in a room and say, just ask this question, how many of us have ever need a home service provider, made phone calls and not got answers?

I mean literally every hand of the room is going to go up.

Every single person. Why is that? It's because people aren't committed to solving the problems, the pain points that are driving us nuts, because everybody knows it. We hear people say this in our group, outside of our group, in REBS and Electric Pinner Secrets and in every circle on the planet. We recognize it's even in the reviews online. I wish someone would answer their fucking phone. And yet we got contractors everywhere, service providers everywhere, not answering the phone Seems obvious, joe. I see your hand up, brother, help me Help me no worries.

No, I was going to say it sounds like you don't need any help. Man, You're rolling I love it. I was going to say. There's an expression that I use that is actually also a good gauge and a motivator at the same time. So whenever we go to our clients and we want to describe what premium service looks like, we would let them know you don't have to do anything except for write the check. You do nothing, we do everything, you just need to pay for. Now. That's obviously a great value builder, but if you actually look at that statement and determine, it tells you where your gaps are. What does my client need to do if I'm not doing it for them? Does that mean they're painting? Does that mean they're buying material? Does that mean that they're doing the landscaping? Are they coordinating with other trades? Are they coordinating with permits, utilities, towns, insurances? What are they doing? What kind of warranties, what kind of maintenance is like? There's so much that goes into it. So for you to ethically and honestly say I do everything, that is the gauge that you can follow to say am I really doing everything? And if you were, you'd already be so different than your competition that your price increase wouldn't matter.

It's massive, it's massive man To go deeper with this, even because there's kind of this problem that we've been circling around. But in our industry, in coaching, in these training programs where electricians have unfortunately had to go because there wasn't something tailored to them, even in the programs where they're started by electricians, it just doesn't seem to be a continuous thread. Not that we've experienced, that we keep hearing about on the calls, and what I mean by that is like there's this generalist approach. Hey, this sales process works for plumbers, it works for HVAC and it works for electricians.

It's funny how that's always at the end right. How could that possibly be true? I mean, in a generalist sense, the advice that you could give, as long as it followed a certain baseline, like don't spend above your means, make sure your marketing answer the phones, like all that would apply 100%.

Ask if the van's parked right. Yeah, like, by the way we do that too, but so does everyone else. That's not differentiation, that's just getting started. That's like basic pleasantries, if I may as the pleasant peasant. There you go.

I would say for an electrician to understand a process, it needs to be broken down into a language that not only we understand, but in a flow that we also can get behind from a technical standpoint. So, which is why, in other words, we always start at the panel. No matter what, we're always going to be there. But how can we teach that process to non-electricians? Because, if you think about it, they don't need to go to the panel. Yeah, I'm gonna want to change a hot water heater. You're gonna go check the water main source, you're gonna check the water filtration and you check all the content attached to that. You're not gonna check the panel. So that's why we do is meant through the lens of an electrician.

Totally, or when people buy the, the prefab price books or the new flat rate and it's, you know, it's got your upsell options as a capacitor, great, great. I just haven't recorded any wins in our program related to capacitors. That's all. It's just different, man. It's just not in tune for us. And one of the biggest things we see and we said this before but the difference between a demand call and an opportunity call. We can all agree there's a difference, right?

Mm-hmm.

One. There's something wrong. That person's likely frantic. They're feeling pain. Currently they're calling, people are answering they need a fix. They they're having trouble getting it, getting trouble getting on the schedule. That's very different than an opportunity where someone's finally decided to call. They're fielding a few estimates, trying to make a logical pass through this installation. If you approach those the same way, how?

are you guys?

At a higher rate than someone like us, who differentiates and has a separate process for it.

And in addition to that, not only would you not be able to close effectively, but the client would start to see that as a generalist process, like oh, I see you're asking certain questions. I see you walked in with a clipboard and you're checking off a list of questions to ask to make sure that you've provided value. Good job, I've seen that before. It's like no. But once again, talking about demand and opportunity calls, if you didn't understand both of them, you won't know how to pivot. Because when we start at the door, we're determining exactly what you want to call me for, but it might change from person to person. You might have gotten a call saying something's broken, but then when you get there, it's hey, do you guys do generators? And now you're needing to pivot. If they only sent a diagnostic tech or a salesperson to that call, you wouldn't be able to thrive. But now, by understanding both processes geared for electricians, you could do the same call with the same person. You just know which process to pivot to definitely.

Do? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and maybe, maybe get myself in trouble here where I say too much. Okay the reality is that companies that serve the big three and don't niche down to one home service or I shouldn't even say the big three anymore, because there's so many other services lumped into home services these days that are big as well, but if you don't niche down to serve those people at the highest level, that generalist strategy is the same thing that electricians come across, which is we feel like we're not gonna have enough clients. Therefore we're not gonna get enough revenue. Therefore, we're not gonna get enough profitability if we just focused on one trade. But if other providers focused on a single trade, they would undoubtedly be able to provide a better service for that trade. I would agree, hundred percent, I really would Generalist process that aims to blanket to make sure they can make more money. A little bit from everyone you could get specific Mm-hmm and that's all we've done. So from everyone that said you know what we're not doing. An electrician specific program. You know what Electricians are assholes. You know what electricians are pain in the ass. Electricians are too picky. Electricians are this, that and the other Allegedly. They said that allegedly Not to start a fight or throw sand, but like it's just the facts. Let's take it back to you guys right out there working hard. If one of your prospects wants a generator installed and you're a generalist, Are they gonna call you versus your neighbor who's a generator specialist?

Mm-hmm. That makes a big thing. And in addition to that, not only would you have that situation, but then how could they guarantee that it's going to last the investment? So, like to break into that example, I've actually sold generators where I was drastically higher than my competition because I could walk in and say, as a specialist, I do the fuel, I'll do the propane, I'll do the gas or the whole installation will maintain it. We understand what services are required here the add-ons to make sure you're extra convenient and I'll do the whole process. You do nothing, whereas most electricians are like all generators aren't profitable and they won't even touch them, whereas I'm looking at generators like these are the best things to get into if you know what the hell you're doing. So I'm passionate about that man. What can I say?

Yeah, the, the niching is just a superpower. I mean did a post on it the other day and ultimately, you know what? I'm transparent. We're an open book guys. We help people. I think anyone can see that we're all into this. We help electricians and for that reason, the culture on our inside group is fucking amazing. And I say that not with an ego, with like a stroke of pride, not for myself, for our group, like for our clients that all contribute and are a part of that, for the change that we see, for the nearly Two and a half million dollars in reported wins from from this, this little group of electricians that has such a big heart, and it's equally Joe. I'm equally proud of how it qualifies people out as I am how it qualifies people in, because the result is our hearts are on our sleeve. We're here to help. We do everything we can, and the people that recognize that Truly come in and blend with us, and the people that recognize it and don't want it, they stay out, and that's okay too, because the last thing I want to do is try to please people that aren't our prime clients, that aren't our perfect dream clients.

Rather, do you I agree with you a hundred percent, man, and realistically, we need to only work with the people that fit what we need to try to serve. We don't want to work with everyone because we don't know that everyone's going to use our skills for the right reasons. I'm not looking to teach sharks. I'm looking to teach premium service providers. I'm not looking to make closures to go out and get deals. I'm looking for closures to change lives. So you need to be the right person for me to willing to teach you my skills.

To wrap that up, man, I got to say this the very thing that Mandy from the right connection told us about their growth and the things that have helped them helped us to Mm-hmm and we know that we serve at the highest level. So our confidence in our marketing, in our follow-up game if you're someone listening to this that's been annoyed by our follow-up, a I'm sorry and B I'm not Because we're just that confident in what we do here and when you know that you provide the best, isn't it the right thing to follow up? Isn't it the right thing to make sure that you're there at the right time for when people are ready to take that jump and realize their best selves, their best company, their best potential businesses? Because, just like the many of you who have been close to an investment, like we have here, the right connection almost didn't invest to Many of our clients, almost didn't invest to Many of the people whose lives are changed, almost didn't change their lives with us. And it's important and to recognize that. Mm-hmm, brother, we went deep here a bit today. We got to end this because we just keep going long. I could talk to you, I could talk to our friends forever, I could keep shooting value, but let's just focus on a couple of action items.

I'm down.

I've got one. If I may fire off, I'm I want to. This is a game. Now Listen, guys, if we end up pumping up a value piece that we have, it would be unfair to not offer you that and I don't mean offer like there's an exchange. I mean, the only exchange here is you say you want it and we send it to you so you can start realizing your better self tomorrow. It wouldn't be fair of us to talk and brag about something We've got that we feel is so strong and then not give it to you. So if you want that price tool, if you really want to work through this, the latest version of our price tool is actually receiving amazing feedback. Incredibly intuitive, super simple, guides you the whole way through and even helps do that pre-articulation. All you got to do is comment on this feed Price tool, that's all you got to comment. Or go in our group and say it, or jump on our website and say it. We do check the emails for the website every day. That's my base action, joe.

Mm-hmm, I love that. So the base action, understandably, was put your hand up for the tool. I Want to take it a little bit further and the all-star is the action that comes before that. The offer action is recognizing exactly right, the Thirm enough for saying, anyway, okay, it's okay. So the pre-action is going to be the mindset shift required to even recognize that you need it Right? So what I'm gonna ask you is this if you've ever thought you needed to raise your price, but you're afraid of doing so because of XYZ, instead of thinking of XYZ, I want you to only focus on the fear itself and ask yourself when is this fear coming from? The reason why I say that is because fear is a path. It often tells you whether you're going the right direction or the wrong direction. But the funny thing about fear is it's not an indicator that you're going in the wrong direction. Sometimes fear is just saying holy shit, this new thing that's happening could change the game and I don't know what I'm gonna do about it. So the first is if you're afraid, it doesn't mean you're in the wrong. All you need to do is understand where is it coming from, and is it coming from a place that could benefit you? If it is, there is no risk in putting your hand up, because, at the very least, you got something for free and your fear can be satiated.

That fair that is men, in fact. Let me just say this you just took the all-star action. You just encouraged some specialists. Man. Cheers to your success, guys. This has been episode 179 of electricpreneur secrets, the electricians podcast brought to you by Service Loop electrical. Doing that little bit extra for future service ability. Can't wait to see you guys again tomorrow for action Wednesday. We got Dustin in the group engaging. Live once the price tool. We're sending that out to you, brother. Thank you guys, we'll see you tomorrow. Cheers, hey, you soon.