Ep 221 - Please Don't Qualify With Price

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to yet another episode of Electricpreneur's Secrets, the Electricians podcast. This is episode 221. You don't want to go anywhere? Please fasten your seatbelts because I'm asking you a favor. Today, me and Joe are actually please do not qualify with price. Some of you already know what we're talking about here. I'm your host, clay Neumeier. With me is always my esteem host, co-host, rather not a Joseph Lucani. We're the Electricpreneurs, just a couple of master electricians with business addictions here and ready to serve at the highest level. Of course. We've been showing up five days a week all of this year 2023 to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level electrical service, and this is our freemium coach program. All you got to do is sit back, take everything we give, which promise you'll also take action and report the winds back to us. Woo, joseph, how you doing today, brother man, I am feeling great.

We had an absolute fire offer class this morning and literally if anyone who's watched me or heard the podcast when you know I'm rubbing my hands together, you know I'm excited. It felt like a praying mantis All class. I was just doing this.

It was.

I'm feeling inspired. And blessed.

Is that what praying mantises do I think of like a?

grasshopper I think of like a grasshopper or a praying mantis rubbing their hands together, constantly Making music right. Yep, yep, I know, but it's just one of those things where, hey, I'm just letting the autism run rampant. What are you going to do?

Yeah, by the way, that was my best cricket noise.

Well, it checks out, don't worry.

Yeah, man, I'm doing good too. Thanks for asking. Oh, forgive me, Today, pretty important one. I hear this time and time again. Joe, have you ever heard of someone throwing ballpark pricing over the phone to kind of test the waters? Dip a toe, if you will see if this person's actually ready to pay. Yeah, First off. Actually, that brings up a good question. Why would they be ready to pay? They just found out about you or just called you for the first? I'll let you dive into this. brother Help us, help us, please help us with qualifying with price over the phone.

So I'm going to admit something terrible is that the reason why I'm able to speak to this from such experience is because I've actually been that guy before. There was a lot of times when I used to qualify over the phone and it would blow up in my face and I never quite knew why until I started doing the inverse of it. So let's first talk about why it happens and why we're so tempted to do it, and then actually why it's such a detriment to your process.

Let's dive right in, brother.

So the first thing that happens is why are we doing this? A lot of times, when you feel like I don't want to waste my time, you start trying to guard your time, which I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to consider. But why would you go into a customer's home and be a waste of time? Isn't that what you signed up for? Isn't that what your goal is to get from someone who calls me to be getting out there and offering them an option?

Well, it'd be a waste of time if they're not ready to buy with me and now. I'm going to go there and what? Just to hear a price objection? I don't think so. It's true, it's just tire kicking.

It's possible. Now the thing is is that just that thought process alone could set us up for failure, because there have been calls that I've gone into which were just absolute dumpster fires of a call but ended up turning into real serious, top tier options, and the reason being is that we were there and present and willing to make an offer after we've shown the value. That's the tipping point. When you qualify in advance with a price, what you're saying is to receive any level of service from me because they don't know that you're different from someone else. They just know. Well, if I work with service of electrical, it costs this much to get them just to come out. If I go with Chuck in the truck, he doesn't actually charge you, just free estimates. Yeah, you know what I'm going to go with Chuck and maybe they don't like his service, but it's free, so they can't really complain. But they would have never experienced your service. And as a result, you're saying you know what? They were too cheap. Yeah, I'm good, I didn't go to that call. I would have wasted my time. They didn't want to pay $150.

And I think now there's an important distinguishment here, because we ourselves encourage a diagnostics fee for a demand call specifically. But that's a different lever in a different situation. What we're speaking to specifically here is ballparking, the actual install or repair price in order to see if they would be willing to pay you that after this short time on the phone together.

That's true, and I'm glad we're clarifying that any further, because my brain goes in all different directions.

But there's actually a story though, if I can too.

Sure, by all means.

I think this story really applies to what you just said. One of our clients, edwin and we may have even said this one a time or two before gets a demand call and for his fee I think he's even under $100 for just the diagnostic trip fee Just to get us out there $89, let's say. But this specific call was for a receptacle deficient in the master bedroom. It's not working, whatever's going on right. And what I love about this story is how Edwin ran the play. So here's what happens. He could have, over the phone, said oh yeah, no, this fix ends up being our bottom option, which is likely going to be around $350 for you. And the guy on the phone may have then said yeah, don't bother coming out, I'm going to call someone else Because that's pretty steep to go from. Just met you. Hey, this receptacle doesn't work. Maybe this is a 10 minute fix you could come have a look at. But what happened instead is Edwin ran the play, says no, for $89 will come out, have a look. Reassess that. $89 is going to roll up into any solution that you take. Sounds fair. They go out there, run the play on the way to this house. His apprentice says Edwin, I don't know about this area man, I don't know this guy. This seems like a waste of money. This is a waste of time. Rather, this is a tire kicker. Right, this guy's not going to spend. And about two hours to two and a quarter later, they're walking out with a platinum $18,000 sale. What are the chances? Qualifying with the price over the phone even a ballpark might have scared that person away, even if they later became the platinum buyer.

I would have been extremely high because, if you think about it, that person, just as you mentioned, is not likely going to see the value in working with you. Because from electrician to electrician, yeah you know what a service rate of 350, that makes sense. We've all run businesses. We know things have to charge with the charge, but most homeowners still think we're charging 1960s prices and that everyone should be $100 an hour and if this is only 10 minutes it should be under 50 bucks. That's their mind and you can't blame them for thinking that. Until they've seen the value, until they've seen why you're more. So a lot of times we would get that with generators. A customer would call and say, hey, how much does it cost? I got a 24kw generator, I'm looking to have installed meters right there, gas right there, what's a ballpark? And when people would give you the ballpark. There's really only a couple options. You either have to guess low to not scare them and get your foot in the door, but then face the price objection when you actually have to charge them the real price, or you have to guess high and as a result, you have to say I'm going to cover my butt so that you're not scared, but you're likely going to scare them. So that's why what we advocate for is the middle road, which is what we're going to do is let's just first get to the call, let's build the value, let's establish the trust, the respect and the mutual appreciation, design a range of choices from the finest you can buy to the most bare minimum you can do, and then, from there, let the customer choose, and you'll likely find that they're not going to take the option you would have thought they would have taken. People in mega mansions could take your bottom option. People in a trailer park community could take your top. It's happened both ways.

I love the choice aspect. I mean, I'm biased, obviously, but even yesterday on the call and sometimes sometimes I've found like it's when someone brings a partner on for the first time and they don't quite know us or what we're doing, right, they don't quite understand, they haven't heard us talk about it before, so they might come on to a call and go six options. Are you serious? What kind of salesman are you? But in the way that this is positioned, Joe, I've never felt better I could speak from the bottom of my heart that we are truly here to serve. And one of the favorite things that I've absolutely actually learned from you in our time together and been able to propagate and loving it, is this idea that, hey, if we're not the perfect choice for you, if this isn't the right fit, I will literally throw our proposal in the garbage and spend another five, ten, fifteen minutes here. I've got nothing. I mean, I'm meant to be here anyway and I will help you choose the right fit. How would you like to proceed?

I love that in a moment, because at that point what you've done is you've proven to be so significantly different than your competitor because if you imagine the typical contractor comes in, you say, hey, you're too much. What are the odds that person to be like? You know what. I'm okay with that, but I want to serve you regardless. So even if you don't go with me, I want to see you and your family taken care of. I honestly would pause and be like, well, I might actually look at your proposal again because that's from the heart, that's an intense statement to make. You got to really care for that to happen.

And even if not, guess what? After I hook you up with someone else, I'll still care and follow up, if you don't mind, to make sure everything went okay, and if it didn't, I'll still be here because I'll still consider you a friend and someone that I would love to work with.

I love that. I absolutely love that.

Where's the salesmanship? We're absolutely shooting from the heart, and I couldn't be happier with that, man. Okay, so qualifying with price. Back to the bigger topic here. What we're really saying ultimately is that and I mean through this action, I'm just 30,000 feet up here again, Joe and you may have to reel me back down, but when we qualify over the phone with a ballpark price, we're actually saying that we're not confident in our process and our ability to go and create a lasting friendship, a relationship at this home and a lasting impact that would cause further touchpoints down the road.

That's 100% accurate.

If I went to any business owner and I said well, here's the deal. This is like a multiple choice really, but we're going to have a few outcomes. We can scare them away over the phone, or we can go there and, either way, create a situation where there will be follow-up and alternate sales opportunities, or you'll get a client. Two out of three wins which would you choose? I mean, it seems like a no-brainer from that standpoint. It's just this fear of wasting time that we seem to have and that fear of our ability to be able to create that lasting impact. Then I mean, what else could it be? Go ahead, brother.

Well, I want to also explain it from the inverse, because I'm sure there's someone listening to this that's still feeling like I'm not going to do it for free, and I want to explain that you're already doing it for free. Let me explain how. You go to a call. You've qualified, you tried saying that hey, I'm going to be a ballpark, and they actually let you show up. Let's assume they actually let you show up. They've got an expectation of a price in their mind and they let you come and you finally show up. You've boxed yourself really hard into only being in a certain price point, because anything more than that approaches a bait and switch. Getting less than that seems like you're trying to undersell it. So when the customer eventually does ask you to email it over, you've already put the price in there. They already know what it is. They already have full control before you even ran the play. They know the end result. They have the bag of goodies, which means your ability of pivoting and taking control of this call back is diminished significantly. So when they do ask you to email it over, you have less grounding to say no because you're not following a process. Or when they ask you to say you know what? I want to break this down. You've already sunk the cost of being there. But if you can control the call from the beginning, allow them to see that you're so and they trust, like in respect. See that the value gets built in the relationship. Now you get to control whether you give them a price or not and because you haven't given them a ballpark, you still have the scarcity and the authority to make a decision 100% men, and the benefit, of course, is massive, massive growth.

With this shift in mindset, you will change your business. I've got a quote on the board, because what happens is thank you for the pause what happens is, at this point on the phone, you just don't have rapport and you need rapport to increase, improve their model of the world. I love that word, but it comes from the relationship and that's really what we're trying to do. Right, if we can wrap our minds around the fact that every single person has a unique model of the world, we're trying to gain sufficient access to their model through trust to just influence that, to be a bit brighter than it was yesterday, and you can see that through a proper process, and that again will change the game for you. Joe, we've got to wrap this up here pretty quick. So what do you think for a couple of action items today? On this one, I got one.

So at the most bare minimum level, we're going to tell you don't ballpark over the phone, Like right, obviously that's like established, Don't give the ballpark. But I want to say the minimum before. That is to just understand the why is to say like if you ballpark someone, there's only two outcomes to it You've either paid for a lead that you cannot move forward with, or you have someone who you paid to get access to and you're going to try to have a conversation. If you're not willing to at least entertain a conversation with someone, there is no chance you'll have the opportunity to build a report. So don't build ballparks, because ballparks kill your relationships.

That's I'm trying. I'm thinking to literally, when you say that like don't build a ballpark, don't build, don't build a ballpark, anything else there to add, joe, no, I mean, I could go for an all star if you don't want to. Go ahead, man Okay.

All right. So continuously with this. What we're going to say is it's better to also have a preparation for when someone asks for it, because it's one thing to say I won't do it. It's another thing to have a prepared response for when someone does ask. As I mentioned Clay, if I were to say, hey, can you give me a ballpark? Well, not every job's the same and because of that we can't quite really give you a ballpark, but we could come on out. Are you going to trust me? Does that sound like a confident response? No, of course not. So have a response prepared. Whatever you want to use, it's fine with me, but it should communicate a couple of basic points. Just saying I'd be happy to help you. You to reframe it by saying in order here at Service Oblactical, what we do is we design a range of choices from the finest money combined and the most bearable ones you can do. So you're in complete control of the budget. All we need to do is schedule a time to come out to your home and we'd be happy to be of service by providing you that menu. When would be the best time we can come and serve you? And now all you have the option is I'm going to move forward or not.

Absolutely, man. I love that all-star action and I really want to highlight guys, double underline, highlight, italicize, couple exclamation marks on it the voice inflections that you just heard, like, if you can right now grab your mobile device that you're probably listening through, and like rewind 20 seconds and listen to that again, because that was off the cuff, but the voice inflections were still there to show belief and a smile. Someone who's happy to actually wants to come and serve us. That matters. It's a huge piece of this, as this has been another episode of Electric Pernurse Secrets. By the way, if you're with us engaging in the Facebook group, then you probably also saw our recent post where we're looking for currently, at the time of this, recording three electric pernurs who want to get their pricing fixed, master that pricing value objection, to get over that one and learn to 50 to 100%, double your sales per month, and that is something that we're seeing real results with. So if that's something that interests you, go ahead and send us a message on our website, serviceloopelectricalcom, or by commenting on the Facebook group. Guys, five days a week, we are here helping you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level service. Today's been no exception. I cannot wait to see you again tomorrow. Cheers, see you soon.