Ep 213 - Why You Shouldn't Ask What They Want

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to yet another episode of Electric Piner Secrets, episode 213. Joseph, can you believe it?

213, man that feels like an incredible amount of time in just almost no time at all.

I can tell you what. It's definitely a testament to one of the biggest strengths that every and any electrician can take hold of right now, today, beginning today. You know best time to start was the day you were born, but consistent activity is what I'm talking about. I'm Clay Neumeyer, your host, with me, as always, my esteemed co-host, joseph Lucani. We're the Electric Piner's, just a couple of master electricians with business addictions, and welcome to our daily freemium podcast, your coach call. The investment for these is simple. Just take the hot seat and give us your attention for a moment. See what you can get from this. There's nuggets in here five days a week. It's totally fair to use everything we give you, so long as you report the winds back and help share that with others who need to hear this same message on our journey to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. Woof mouthful, joe. How are you doing this Fantabulous Monday man?

I am feeling the word inspired is one thing, blessed is another, and I'm somewhere in between. I feel like I'm living my best self, my best life. I'm finally getting over being sick. My energy is full force. I feel like I've got ideas that are almost bursting out of me. At this point, I feel ready. I feel on fire.

Love it, man, love it. And you know what I feel like. I'm in stage three of this illness, this plague that's running around the cold, the man cold, is in high alert here, man, and we've been struggling through it. I feel like we're in full elimination. So we got some energy back, ready to inject it in this audience. Are people engaging with us live in Facebook or listen to the replay on your favorite podcast channel? Either way, buckle up. We've got a crazy one today because bit polarizing. Let me set the scene for why you shouldn't ask what they want. Okay, first off, you're an electrician. You're producing options for your clients and sometimes you're torn between this place of should I just ask them if that's something they'd be interested in before building options around it? And likely that's from a place of A trying to save scarcity mindset, the fear of like I don't want to offer more than they're even interested in. But B, I don't want to take the extra work and spend it on areas where we're you know they're not going to choose it anyway.

Joe what do you? say to this man I want to just chomp into this subject and tear it to pieces, because I actually have done blind studies in my own company on this exact situation and found that it's extremely polarizing and that, just to give you a heads up, I'm on the side that you should not ask what they want. You should instead offer it, provide you have a big cause frame. And here's why, clay, I'm going to break this scenario into a real life situation that you and I can experience. All right, man, let's say that you're on a service call, right? You're the electrician. You go to a customer's home and somewhere during mid-lunch lunchtime, the customer comes to you and says you know what, clay, you've been doing a great job. Hey, do you want any coffee? Do you want to make you a sandwich? Now, then you say, yeah, sure, I'd love one. Do you have any? And they go oh, no, no, actually I don't have anything. I would have to go to the store and I have to go get it. I don't have, actually don't even have anything, right here, I was actually going to go out and maybe get some coffee and sandwiches if you wanted something, but otherwise I was just going to stay home. What are the odds you're accepting that sandwich right now.

No, not doing it at all. You're just not going to right. I don't want to impose on people. I mean, that's my style. I feel like a lot of people are like that, though.

Correct, right? The reason being is that you yourself didn't want to be an inconvenience to someone else, right? The same applies with options. So, let's say you're getting ready to design a range of choices and you were to go into a customer and say, hey, you know, before I put this together, I was actually going to put them. I know you called me for this for your Tesla system, but I was going to also include some things for a generator. Would you want me to put in that? Yeah, what would it cost? Well, I don't know right now. I'd have to go and factor it in. I'd have to get all the numbers. I have to really crunch it. Really. I'd go back to the shop and really figure this out. Would you like me to do that for you? No, even if it was something valuable, something you would want, the thought of you in convenience thing made to do it almost always makes you not want to do it. The reason why I figured that out was when we tried it with our own teams. We would literally go ask the customer what they want, vers, make the offer and see if they want it, and we found that if you made the offer, people often were willing to take it, because imagine that same scenario with a coffee in the sandwiches. When you asked, hey, would you like some? I literally have them already made. I actually made six sandwiches right here. You could choose whatever one you want. I also have coffee. It's fresh, it's ready to go. All they gotta do is just a yes and fall. Here. They're ready, available for you.

I'm taking almost a little me salivating over here.

I'm hungry now, exactly right, yeah, so I mean, obviously, clay, you got to get your snack tray buddy. But the thought is is that you would almost feel rude not entertaining it because I already made them right yeah. So the same applies with options. If you do them verbally, your client will say no, I'm not interested. But if you've already written it out, you'll find that the client will say well, I mean, you already took the time. At least I could. At least I could do is hear you out, right?

Totally so. Can I add something in here? I just want to say like I can see how this is polarizing and it gets right backwards and I think the intent behind it is top shelf for many people. If it's truly about the customer, hey, you know what, it would save me time and let's just get their consideration, let them weigh in on it. It's just kind of missing a couple of key facts that you're pointing out here. Right, One is the path of least resistance, which clearly you've just demonstrated that in different language. Right, Eventually, if there's something where you're adding resistance to a scenario, it's just easier to say no quickly and it kind of falls in place. Joe, I'm feeling like it's the same with like hey, how you doing, and then you don't even listen to see how someone's doing because you're just going through the motion of asking how they're doing. Oh my God, You'll get nos in that same place just to save that. So, even though it feels like the right thing to do, let's just have an open conversation. We also have to acknowledge that this client really doesn't understand the effort going into this. The homeowner doesn't understand the efforts or the code or safety requirements around it that you've been so well trained in.

The reason why this came up, and I agree with everything you're saying, but this came up in class today where someone said you know what? I'm getting a situation where I went to a home and they actually asked it for most of multiple Tesla chargers. They have multiple car chargers in their property. It's a larger home. Are we justified in offering a whole home generator or should we just ask if they'd want a whole home generator? And I could almost imagine it going in one of two ways. Customer called for Tesla and I go hey, by the way, do you want a generator with that? They're going to say no because they don't know how. It's directly related to them having that benefit versus the way that we teach it, where I've designed a complete menu from the finest money combined to the most bearable you can do. This top option is probably more than what you're looking to consider. It's probably, don't get me wrong. At the very least, I felt you deserved to know about it, but since this is your primary vehicle and you have two of them being installed God forbid you ever lost power, let's say hurricane, longest end of storm I wanted you to have the ability of being able to charge it at home regardless of whatever is going on, so you're not forced to go and wait at some charging station. Was it wrong to me to want to do that for you?

And no, absolutely not. And what I'm picking up on, kind of underneath the surface layers of that, is you're actually engaging both sides of the brain, whereas before, without any story attachment, without any vision of what could go wrong, without any depiction of some reasons why you might want this, even in a non-threatening way, like you established it, like I'm sure you wouldn't want this, but hey, if I didn't offer this and a storm happened. Now you've engaged not just the left but the right side of the brain as well, and actually they've found I recently read this in a book which is really interesting where people have had substantial brain damage to the right side. I believe it is the emotional side of your brain. Those same people have difficulty reaching decisions later on in life. So it's not just the logic base that makes decisions. Actually we need that vision, we need the emotional side. So it's not just playing to the emotional, it's recognizing the need for it. So now, when you look at this under another land, it's like, okay, well, in the first concept all we gave them was a logical little hey, is this something you'd be interested in? No, easy non-decision. Whereas now you're inserting it in a way that's engaging both sides of the brain and allowing them to actually have a vision around that, and I think that's absolutely genius, joe.

Thank you and, believe it or not, you actually touched on it really, really well, and I love that. Psychology is one of those things that if you can apply it in everything that we do, we're just better off for it. But I want to now also address something that is attached to this thought that is direct in conflict of the person who's making the options, and that's why do we offer it. The reason why a lot of us will say, do you want this? Is because for two reasons. One, we don't want to feel like we're pushing something on someone else and therefore risking sounding sales, which means you don't have a strong because frame, but we're trying to avoid selling sales. The second is actually worse in that we're hoping they'll say they're not so that we can save the time of having to design it, and I'm guilty of that as well. I remember there were some jobs where if I was really iffy on this customer and I'm like you know what, like I'm really not getting a great vibe this is a real estate agent who's trying to get the home sold I could bro like, hey, is this something you'd be interested in? Us doing the whole project for you or you kind of looking at piecemeal. Oh, we're definitely looking at piecemeal. Okay, great, but if I had made the offer and a compelling reason as to how it would have benefited them, and I already had priced it out, I'm far more likely to get a yes than hey, you know that thing. You didn't call me for that you have no idea whether it could benefit you or not, that you have no number to quantify whether it's valuable or not. Would you want to hear about it? It's like I have to know I wouldn't move on with the thing I told you to. Oh, great, well, good, I didn't want to do it for you anyway.

I got it because it's Monday, Mindset and marketing. We've got to fit both of those things in here. There's a huge mindset shift here. But also there's another marketing piece that I just advanced level guys. I got to throw this down. What if, then you make the offer, as Joe suggested? Now you have the six option roadmap and they took somewhere in the middle but it didn't include the generator on this particular EV situation. Then a storm actually happens where power outages are occurring. Do you, are you the type of contractor that then picks up the phone and starts calling the people who you know you offered these solutions to, to just ask if they're okay?

Yes, and there's even another level higher than that.

Uh-oh Okay.

Getting subscribed to your utility company's auto power outage notifications. You can get notifications from your utility company saying whether there's outages in certain areas. So imagine if you were to say every day I'm going to check the bulk emails that we have, that would get the utility notifications and I'm going to see which of our areas currently have power. Huh, Warwick, let's look and see which clients are in Warwick. Oh, yes, the Johnson's. I remember them. Let's call them and see if they want a generator. Oh, you're still out of power. What would you like to talk about? Having a generator system to prevent this in the future and hopefully get you power on today? I'd be on my way.

Awesome and super, super power here. Holy man, we unleashed a lot of value here today. Is there anything else you want to add to this one, joe?

Not without biting off more than we can chew, because I feel like once I get my brain starting to roll, I'm not going to be able to stop it.

Okay, for the electrician in the hot seat, riding in the van between jobs, wherever their situation is Maybe we're in the headphones we're going to do the actionable item we can give them here today to start making moves with this. Obviously, we're not saying you shouldn't ask what they want, but we are saying you shouldn't ask what they want until the presentation and you've designed the whole six options with everything you've possibly included for them.

So I have both actions that I feel like are directly connected to one or the other. Do you mind if I stab at one and then you tell me if you're willing to take a second?

You got it man.

All right. So the first, most basic action right, like the basic bare minimum, is just offering right, like we're saying when in doubt, just make the offer, don't. You don't have to ask the permission, don't ask them to roll at the car, but just make it bare minimum. But I feel like the All Star Action is so directly connected to that that you need to understand your why in order to even access that All Star Action. The why is are you offering this to someone so that you can sell them more, or are you offering this to someone because you genuinely feel like their life would benefit from it? And if you believe that their life would benefit from this new thing, what kind of person are you to now intentionally withhold that information that they would not have known unless you told them about it?

Boom Like drop moment. That's huge. Okay, we got the why piece. Go right on. Man Hit us for the second.

Okay. The second, going on, is assuming you know your why right Like you know that this is going to benefit them, you know everything that goes attached to it. The next level is then determining am I willing to take this little bit extra effort in order to connect them to that why? So it's a multi-part thing. One I'm going to make the offer regardless. Bare minimum. Two I know that if I make this offer to someone, their life would drastically improve, and they don't know about this unless I tell them about it. The third is are you really willing to make that slight time delay leave not only money on the table but potentially leave your client in a situation that they have to dig out of later?

Wow, man, Huge, huge, huge. Just like this whole week, we have lined up for you guys. That was a massive 15 minute high impact session as we're helping you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. We've got a couple of big things that we're going to unveil in this podcast this week. One is how 74% of our last 146 calls thought they had sales problem, which actually turned out to be an easier problem to solve. I can't wait to unpack that with you guys. But also we've got one of our clients, Zach, who's been with us a while, who's done some huge things looking to double up his revenue, hit his biggest months this year, and all while having part-time hours put into the business because he's an avid hunter with his son. Wouldn't you want to know more about how he did that? We've got that interview coming up this week. You guys stick around with us. Keep on enjoying this. This has been another free Coach Call, another episode of Electric Pinner Secrets, and I cannot wait to see you guys here again tomorrow.

Take care.