Ep 218 - Create an Option-friendly Mindset

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to yet another episode of Electricpreneur Secrets. This is episode 218, and it's Mindset Mondays we're bringing live to you, creating an option-friendly mindset. I'm your host, clay Neumeyer with me as always, co-host Joseph Lucanian. We're the Electricpreneurs Just a couple of master electricians with business addictions, here and ready to serve. So welcome to your freemium program, your daily coach call and the investment for you here is just a little bit of time, so sit back in the hot seat, join us and have a big take away, a big breakthrough for your week. Joe, how are you doing today, brother?

I'm doing good man. I'm feeling really blessed today. It's a really really solid day. We had a great day in class. I'm loving what we do, so I'm in the right mindset.

What about you? Awesome man? Yeah, living the dream, had an awesome weekend. I took an extended weekend, as you know three days and we went right to the West Coast, got some ocean. So my mindset is actually pretty peppy right now. I'm fired up, I'm ready to go Love it. Where does this problem come in, man? Create an option-friendly mindset. I mean, I'm kind of recollecting all the calls I've been on where people say, well, how do you create options for this?

It's just a.

GFCI, or it's just a receptacle or other.

So it's actually a step before that thought even happens, because I've realized that what we've done not we personally, but we as technicians is we create things known as self-fulfilling prophecies. Let me explain what I mean by that. Let's say you're start off and you're saying I don't know how to offer options because I'm worried that I'm going to sound like I'm pushing something on this customer or I'm offering something that they don't need. You'll naturally have that belief and whatever words we teach you after that. If you have that mindset to start with, somehow it becomes communicated to the client, whether it's to your body language or your tonality or your posture or anything. As a result, the client notices, becomes a little more skeptical as a result, ask you why you want to know these things or why it is you're trying to offer these choices. As a result, you then feel that the client has opposition to you and that options were the cause of it.

I was just going to say you give me that dirty chicken skin when you say that.

Exactly right, Because that's the whole start of it. If you yourself feel like you're trying to push something on your client, then naturally it's going to come across in your language. That's what you're trying to do. But if you shift the mindset to how can I serve this client in a way that, when they hire my company, they'll have the option of doing everything or nothing, depending on what they're willing to spend, Is it wrong of us to want to offer that solution to someone?

Not at all, man. My Facebook post was about this Did you read this? Come up with a topic and then pitch it.

No, it actually came today in class believe it or not where someone came to said well, we have a situation where we need to move a single pendant six inches to the right, all it is. The funny thing was they kept saying that's all it is. That's all it is. That's all it is. It took us about four and a half minutes to come up with another five options on top of that.

By the way, that's no offense meant to them or anyone else, it's absolutely just a mindset shift 100%. Maybe on a Monday morning that's the hardest time to have it.

There's no judgment whatsoever. Of course it's the thought of trying to say, well, are we focused on the technical or are we focused on the service? Let's say you take that six inches fixture, You've got to just move it over a couple inches. I can imagine someone saying, well, it's only that the customer only wants that. Do you mind if I touch on a couple of things that could take it further than that.

I just want to throw one thing in there. There's also this limiting belief. I could hear echoes of electricians saying I don't even want that call. Oh great, another minimum call out fee. That's a huge, huge limiting belief here, in an assumption that there's nothing else. But please, man, jump back on it.

To take it in the most basic level. A lot of times, when you're struggling with building options, the best thing to do is start from the bottom up. If everyone can agree, from a logical standpoint which is where most technicians live that this is what the customer called me for, then the best way to go above that is to say how does this either directly relate to the thing they called for or how does the thing that I'm offering significantly impact their life for the better? So, with that being said, typical fixture things is this First and foremost, we'll go right to the curveball. You've got to move this fixture right, but what's going to end up happening when you move that fixture? You know that there's going to be a cut in the wall, and unless you end up having a giant scotch in the center of the room, which is not going to look good, it's going to look pretty gaudy. If you had a giant fixture there, you now need to paint that room, or you need to paint that spot, so your option above it could simply just be spot fixing. Okay, I'm going to spot fix that area. Above that, though and for someone else who may have OCD tendencies like myself, I would know the difference between someone who blended paint and a complete fresh coat of paint. So would it be wrong of us to say why not paint the entire ceiling? If we're going to paint one area, shouldn't we paint the whole ceiling for the customer's full satisfaction?

Yeah, I'm with you, man, why not?

Connected. On top of that, you can say well, if we're going to repaint this entire ceiling, would it not make sense to do things that maybe the customer would want long term, such as, okay, we can put in the recess lights over your kitchen table, since we're going to repaint that room anyway, might as well. Or let's address and cut in additional control points on the wall. Maybe they only had one single pole switch and a three-way could be beneficial. So as we scale further and further up, we have to imagine and say if I do this for this customer as a direct result, what would they have to do? And when you take what they'd have to do and you simply say why don't I do that for you? Now, it's not you pushing something, it's you simply thinking service-minded forward and saying how can I serve them? So all they'll have to do is write a check and sit back and relax and let service-oblectual take care of this for them.

I love that you went there and service-minded forward again because that's the word that was coming into my head where some people are thinking well, if I offer anything else right now, that's salesy too. Like many electricians, go in there, go to move that six inches and then whip out a 10-point inspection and try to go through the whole house now.

And now it actually looks salesy. You're going about it that way Because in one light you follow our process, you get to the panel, you see the infrastructure, you get to the room and you can design anything around that. But if I was a customer and someone looked at a light fixture and just kind of stood there staring at it and goes hey, by the way, while I'm here, you want me to look into a 10-point safety inspection, my first thought is they didn't find enough to justify more than $200. I'm like nah, you know what, just tell me what this is and then later we can always add an inspection if you need.

Yep, on an earlier podcast you said something I thought was brilliant, joe, and I think it fits here too. It's not just like, okay, what gap is left after I do this technical side of the work, and I agree with everything you said. But I believe at one point correct me if I'm getting this wrong in any way you said never do the thing without understanding why you're doing the thing Exactly.

Yes, that is a very big concept that we have to apply here, and the reason why we do that is because when you have your because frame, it not only helps you handle your objections, but it then directly links it to where the customer asks and says why would you do that? Imagine if someone were to say, well, why would you paint my whole ceiling? And you just did there and just completely glass. Eyed them like, well, hmm, like I wouldn't have anything. I'd be pretty, I'd be kind of sold. Yeah, no, I'm completely. But when you're saying that's a great question and I'm glad you asked here at service electrical, we want to make it so you have to do nothing whatsoever other than the right to check. We would like to handle everything for you and I figured since I know you mentioned very meticulously that you like to take care of the home I didn't want to just have a spot paint on this brand new ceiling, so we figured we'd do the entire thing so you can have complete peace of mind. No, it's a perfect finished product. You'll never have to come back to it as the colors change over time. Is it wrong to me to want to ensure that that gets done for you? I?

Don't think so, man. I can't see it being wrong. I mean, the reality is and I think we've touched on this a time or two before but the reality is even the person, the homeowner that is with intent to take care of that themselves, mm-hmm, is likely not to do it, and if they even were going to do it, it's likely not to happen for weeks to months to sometimes years. Projects like that go on.

Please jump back in that was an exact situation that I had in my own life, where what I completely renovated my basement like we had just an empty space, and I built the gym and framed it and wired it and all this stuff. I had my intention to say I'm gonna floor, I'm gonna paint. But after I finished the spackling I had no one had nothing to do with this, this room. After that. So literally while I was having my floor, came in. He was like you know what? We could also spackle this if you get through the sanding and get this painted so you don't have to anymore. And I was sold. I was like I already wanted to put it on someone else, so you're gonna offer it while you're doing the flowing, off course. Well, it makes sense. You can't put it in the floor, you just not painted. You should do it. And I was grateful. I was grateful that he offered it because then I didn't have to ask and I would have never even thought to have asked because it was already in my mind. So not only did he remove something that was on my plate, but closed an open cycle and I just have to pay for it.

Yeah, man, I love it. Back on up. Let's give this a little situational analysis. So electrician A offers to take care of that whole do the paint, and is able to do that for them and save them that time. Electrician B does not offer that. Let's say that homeowner had full intent of not doing it themselves. Now look at the extra time and energy they've got to put in to now organize another contractor. Look through yet another price. Deal with yet another relationship. In fact, even if they just you know what they chose electrician A, let's take B off the table and then at a future date, A wasn't available for some reason, or? They decided to call someone else for a similar scenario and the electrician doesn't offer to paint it. What are they thinking?

In mall. Honestly, they're probably thinking that it's just another problem that they have to deal with. And that actually came up specifically as well this morning where the previous customer was saying well, I was just planning on buying a great big scutcheon and just putting it and that's going to cover the whole the six inches gap. And the thing was, is that, even if they did that, not even counting the fact that they have a six inch gap, probably not conversion breathing through? But then you could also offer and say well, why not put matching of scutcheons on the whole floor? Wouldn't it benefit to say I'll do it for the kitchen fixture, I'll do it for the dining room chandelier, the whole floor now have matching fixtures, just like you'd have crown molding in one room, wouldn't you have it in another? So even if that was the case, you can think one step further and that customer would not blame you for it. If anything, they'd thank you.

I love it, man, as you know. I love it. I'm a huge advocate of it. I'm your partner in this thing. Let's create an option, friendly mindset. If you're listening to this right now, if you're engaging with us, live in the Facebook group. Let me challenge you for just a moment. Are you creating an option, friendly mindset? Are you first seeking to understand why, before you ever take care of these tasks or someone, and are you picking up on these areas or we leave in a gap when we're done? I mean, think about, can I take a picture of this great installation or repair when I'm done and if you've still got a hole in the ceiling? In this case, could you? And the answer is a resounding no, right. So, you can do this too. The question is, are you? And then the next question is what would happen to your business if you did? What would happen to your relationships if you did, if you could truly present these options in a non-threatening, simple to understand verbal format so people could just make the choice? What would happen to your business then, joe? What do we got for an action item? Before we wrap this up, brother?

So I would say, as an action item, the first thing we want to do is a mindset shift. Go figure for the episode, yeah, but the thought would be okay if I was going to leave this job. Well, what do I suspect is the next thing the client will have to do? It doesn't mean that you're offering options In this basic exercise. It simply means, after I've done the job I'm already doing maybe it's a previous job, you quoted previous options you're there and say, all right, I'm done with this. Now, what will they now have to do? What can I at least suspect they'll have to do? Then you take that knowledge and you add that to future options. You could use the language of. We've worked on a project of this, similar before, and because of that, we've seen that the customer often has to pick up this, this and this Because of that. That's why I'm offering you these choices, so you can have complete peace of mind as well as be able to delegate it elsewhere. Would it be wrong to me to want to serve you in this way?

Absolutely not, and I love that. I'm just going to go a step up and go now. Imagine you were an environment that influenced your mindset to be this way, five days week in classes that are an hour to 90 minutes. That's how our clients are seeing great success. Beyond the podcast, they're mass consuming this. Like Eric and Mandy on their interview, like Dorian, like Zach Bennett, who we interviewed last week, and like the others who we've got interviews coming for this month, we are absolutely loading you guys up with value, and today has been no exception, as we've created this option friendly mindset. So imagine your business having all of this in place and then imagine coming back tomorrow with us again to learn and even more on mastering your sales, simplifying your pricing and delivering premium level electrical service. I'm Clay, this is Joe, and we're the electric entrepreneurs. We'll see you again tomorrow.

Looking forward to seeing you then.