Ep 219 - Why Neutrality Is The Worst Objection

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to yet another episode of Electric Pinner Secrets, the Electricians podcast, for an episode 219, and today you're going to find out why neutrality is the worst objection. You're not going to want to miss this because I have a feeling Joe's about to break this wide open and help you deal with this kind of person. It sounds pretty important. I'm your host, clay Neumeier. With me, as always, my esteemed co-host, joseph Lucani. We're the Electric Preneurs, just a couple of master electricians with business addictions here to serve you once again on your free coaching. Call this Articulation Tuesday. The investment for these calls simple Sit back in the hot seat, listen, take everything we give. Just promise to take action and report your wins back. Joseph, how are you doing today, brother?

I'm feeling really really good, man. The office is hot. Like the lizard that I am, I am enjoying a beautiful day. I got to have a really, really great class and when we introduced today's topic, I got to admit, like everyone who knows me, when my hands start rubbing together it means I'm excited, I'm pumped to get into this one.

How, about you today?

How are you holding up, brother?

I'm doing good man. Thanks for asking. I've got two questions on that A. Did you just offer up a metaphor as yourself, as a lizard?

Yes, Okay, so I like it hot, not just like some people like it hot. You remember the old heat, misers, snow, miser, like claymations from back in the 80s that you remember what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah. I'm heat miser. I like it hot. My average temperature, if you can give me the ideal temperature, it's anywhere from 80 to 100 degrees. Nice dry heat.

So I got space heaters in here.

I'm being dead serious. Okay, I was in the hot tub with my wife and I was in the hot tub when it was 95 degrees.

Yuck.

But I like the heat.

You like the good soup, even in the heat, hey.

Even oh, I like heat, so when I say I'm enjoying my space, it's a nice blistering 80 degrees in this room and I'm loving it.

All right, all right. Well, let's jump into this. Let me give everyone a little bit of an understanding of what just happened behind the scenes. I said, joe, what's the worst objection that you face? It's not a question I've really asked you before, and you said this neutrality. Can you help us understand? What is the problem here? What does neutrality look like, and why should we even be cautious of this?

Okay. So there's a lot in this, so I'm just going to roll with it, all right. The very first thing is that almost all objections are able to be overcome if you can identify the emotional reason why someone's either A saying it or why they naturally believe it. Because most people approach a situation with logic, but there's usually an emotional reason why they're using logic as a shield. Usually they're the engineer type and they're like if I don't do this, you'll take advantage of me and I'll lose control. Or they'll approach you and say I'm looking someone will say I'm looking for a breakdown and emailed over, but that's also from another emotional place. I can handle, yeses, positive people, and I can handle negative people, because both of them, as of course, are emotional in some degree. Neutrality is hard, and I'm going to say that I do not like handling neutral customers. The whole reason being is because when you're neutral, that's when you genuinely do not have any stake in this situation, nor do you care about the outcome, and things like safety, quality, customer service are not involved. Now, going further, some people are like well, who could this person be? What archetype of person is going to?

Right, I'm wondering that right now.

Okay, the archetype that would fall into is when let's give you an example. Let's say that you go to a project I'll speak in the project terms. Right, you were going to go to a project and whether it's a bid or it's a construction site or a commercial site, there is one person who is going to be the guest person between all the levels of management. His role is to get the bids. His role is to deliver the bids, not to question them, not to take accountability for them, not to care about the delivery of them, simply to get this paper and hand it to this person. Those kind of individuals have no stake in the game. But actually I will teach you how you can actually leverage. There is one emotional lever you can pull. Yeah, the most part they don't care. The same kind of situation for a residential customer could be imagine mom and dad just passed away and the four kids are now having to divide the property. They don't really talk all that much. They don't really interact. The home is not sentimental. They don't care if they bulldoze it and turn it into a parking lot. They don't care if they just need to pass bare minimum and just sell it. You talking about fixing it and restoring it and passing it the next person. They don't care as a result. They're strictly in logic based, because that's the only place they can grasp at something Make sense. So far about this kind of person we're dealing with.

Yeah, interesting. I'm trying to recall the sales book I read. I want to say the guy's name was Orin Kloff. Anyway, there's this high up and he's like a Wall Street kid, essentially. Who would hire him to do big proposals to big heads and big tables? He said the worst place he ever had to do these proposals was Walmart of all places, because Walmart fills a room with essentially pricing engineers who have no stake in the game other than to just shut down all emotional, any storytelling and just base it on the facts. Their next job is to, of course, lower your price to increase their margin. It sounds very similar. That's where my head's going.

That would make a lot of sense. It would be the kind of person that's like, or even a property manager. Even they have a reason to be involved. A property manager, someone who's like you know what? I manage this group, but if the tenants are upset, they will eventually cause a problem. Even that person has an emotional involvement to it. Once again, you had a room full of engineers who were like I don't give a crap what's going on on this. I simply am here to break your will and to lower this so that we have better margins.

Which, in many ways, I think that's how projects present. We hear people and see people, actually even feedback and just our content. They'll say things well, I want to take what you guys do and bridge that into the commercial world. Take what you do and bridge that into projects. While that's a noble cause to want to serve people at a higher level and there are the odd exception that can be somewhat conducive to that it's typically in a business to business. It's just someone else guarding their margins. To do that, they need to limit your price. It really has very little to do with the experience, so long as you've got two feet, a heartbeat, a tool belt and a license to wire, essentially.

Pretty much In those situations. That's when a lot of people can feel defeated. That's why commercial and industrial is different than residential. Yeah, of course the wiring is different scales, of course. At the same time, the heart of the problem is that you're trying to serve someone for things that would make their lives better. If they're in a position that doesn't emotionally or directly impact their life, only their work, they could say it looks fine from their house. If you're in someone's house now, it's a lot harder for someone to completely push you off, because if you're doing the process correctly, you are engaging the emotions, you are finding out the particular levers that are moving them. Then you can be in their kitchen table, sitting with them side by side, looking at the problem together and bringing an emotional reason of why you're the right fit. It's a completely different ballgame. Not that we can't help people in those spaces, but you have to understand there's a difference in what you're presenting.

For sure. Okay, so in recognizing and qualifying sort of the neutral based individuals, then it sounds like there's some specific situations within residential service that you could actually take action against this, correct?

So one of the situations that I found was very effective is when we're remember we talked about project managers or like property managers in a way. Yeah, a lot of times what you'll find is that there's a board, there's a direct group of people or an individual at the top who then commands individuals in the mid tier, almost like your middle managers, and their role is to gather the proposals, vet the people and then bring those proposals and say I'm going to give you the top three people that I've suggested are the right fit. That's actually a leverageable point, because at that time, if you didn't change anything of how you're going to deliver it other than just I'm going to give you my proposal and you hit it in someone else, there's no issue there, right? But if you were to go into a situation and let them know or show them the light of how they actually are directly responsible and how it is a mistake or a bad decision could in fact impact their lives, right? So that's the reason to be invested and let's talk about how we can get into that. Okay. So let's say you have this property manager and his goal is just to get your bid. The first is to acknowledge and show appreciation for this person. You want them to feel like they are your friend. You want to have them at a point where they're building a relationship and that you're saying you know what, point out the good things they're doing, like, wow, you were a contractor 15 years before you started with this firm. That's really great that they have someone with your level of experience. How do you feel like that's helped you do your job or how do you feel like that made you stand out from other people trying to take your position?

Okay, some advanced rapport here.

Okay. So we're building up the mindset, we're building up the rapport that we have with this client. Additionally, the next step is to say, like so what's your role in all of this? Like, how do you help get this project taken care of? Oh well, I gather all the proposals and then I submit them in and I'm the one who vets everyone. Wow, so are they compensating for taking all that risk? On Now, what did we say here? We broke down and said, first, are they compensating for taking the risk? So it promotes either A are you being treated well enough? Yeah, or B where is the risk? More than likely, that's going to cause someone a place of pause and be like what do you mean by risk? Like, well, you just said you're the person who has to vet all the contractors and you're the one who has to gather all the proposals. But if you deliver the information wrong and I now give you the wrong quote, who then is left holding the bag? It could be you versus me the entire time. Do you feel like that's in a situation where you want to be?

Nicely done. I'm feeling the gap growing here Now as you continue further.

You could say our role here at Service Oblactrical is to make your job as easy as possible, because what we do is we're going to design a range of choices. So instead of you having just one option and then they take it apart and ask you to break it down, we're going to do that in advance and we're going to give you six choices, from the finest money can buy, the most bare bones you can do. Then you can feel in control of which one of those choices, or which two or three of those choices, you feel would best benefit the team on top. What we'll do is then we can approach them together, meaning that you can introduce us, I can ask your questions on what you're doing, you can feel the responses that we've given and then if there's something wrong, it's not on you, because your only responsibility was delivering me and it's my responsibility to deliver the solution. So at the end of the day, you don't lose here, you only win. So would it be wrong of me to want to make your job easier?

Not at all, joe, not at all.

But you can see the angle we're trying to take here. It won't work every single time, but the framework is this Build the connection, Boost up this person's persona of their own self Whether it means that I'm not saying like you know, make them feel more important than they are, but recognize the contributions they've put into their company and into their life. And once they're feeling good and you have a relationship established, then you can ask how they're directly responsible for getting this impact moved. Once you've determined that, bring in the risk factor or anything that can make their job harder, that you can then immediately alleviate by following your process. As a result, if you do it the right way which I can say I have, because we pulled these things off before, it would say you then end up in front of the board itself and now you're more likely to succeed, where everyone else is just sending in a quote and you have the actual company representative vouching for you during the process. If you're going to be there in that situation, this job is yours to lose now.

Nicely done Joe, nicely done man. I love that and I want to sit here and maybe reflecting on that in a moment. Like, did you also just drop the action items or do you have more to give for that?

We can do more.

Okay, Well, lay them out, man. This has been your show. I'm learning a lot here too. What would be wrong with me to be extremely impressed by you in this moment?

I'm grateful for that, and in all things I consider myself skilled in the ways that I have, but it's only because I've learned from bad judgment at the same time too. So if I can make other people better and they don't have to make the same mistakes, I consider that a win in my book.

I thought you just woke up this way.

I woke up at 4.30. No, no, I was going to say that's the 4.30 prayer. Talking man.

That's what it is.

But all right. So action items for this is to first go in with the proper mindset, because a lot of times we'll see this on the work order right from the very beginning and it'll be like, oh, I'm going to Lowe's, like oh great, they've got a bad fixture in their warehouse and I'm meeting the project guy Great. Instead of saying this is a sale to make, transition it to this is a relationship to make. Without the relationship, you have nothing. You truly have no leverage whatsoever other than your number. But with a relationship you at least can get some footing to get to the next step, the All Star action is a little more involved, because the All Star action is being willing to say I will walk away from this job if it does not go according to how you want to run it. The reason being is that if we look just logic based, you know that you're competing against other individual contractors who, if you're a service provider, are likely lower in cost than you are. And when you say to yourself if I'm just being considered, if quality, reliability, customer service, additional value, if all those things don't matter and the only thing that does is us being the lowest number, then you can already disqualify yourself and save the two and a half hours you would have put into a project redesign. You can just save that time and do something else with it, because whatever you're going to do is probably going to be more profitable than you sitting down and setting a bid that you won't get. So All Star action, be willing to walk away from a job you would have never gotten in the first place.

Wow, man, hot fire on the mic today. We've got to wrap this up because we've been over the 60 minute mark here, but, guys, if this was fire for you, please let us know by engaging with us in the Facebook chat. You can always come back to our website, as well as serviceloopelectricalcom, and reach us there. Otherwise, we're looking forward to seeing you again tomorrow. This has been another episode of Electric Pinner Secrets, the Electricians podcast, and why neutrality is, as per Joe's statements today, the worst objection. Guys, we'll see you again tomorrow. Okay, we'll see you soon.