Ep 245 - $1M Launch Series 2024 - How to Find Your Rhythm in Residential Service

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to yet another episode of Electricpreneur Secrets, the electricians podcast. I am your host, Clay Neumeyer, and with me joining me, as always, my esteemed co-host, joseph Lucani. We are the electricpreneurs just a couple of master electricians with business addictions, here and ready to serve on your daily freemium coach call At the same cost. Sit back, take everything we give, just promise to take action and report your wins back to us so we know just how well you're doing with this stuff, joseph, how you doing today, brother.

I'm feeling really, really good, man. It's one of these things where I've really enjoyed doing podcasts with you on the daily, but for some reason today I'm just extra appreciative, in that I really appreciate everything that you do and everything you bring to the table, as well as your intention of wanting to serve electricians to the highest level man. It's really, really respectable and it's another reason why I'm so grateful being a part of this mission.

I appreciate that Gratitude strikes again. I don't even know how to repay the debt of that gratitude Other than to keep doing all those things I just received praise for. We're going to show up again, joe, and launch this one. This is actually episode 245, if you can believe that. I keep saying that the number keeps growing. I'm surprised every day, every time we do one of these. But this in our Million Dollar Launch Series, this episode super important how to find your rhythm in residential service For us in our Million Dollar Launch, and the progress we've made in this series. We're kind of to this place now. We've reestablished the why. We've got the generator stuff happening for us, organic marketing Started with our network. We've been working up to this point, our pricing's right Loop method active, but there's a missing piece. In fact there's missing pieces. We haven't really trained or found some help with or understood the actual sales process. If I could back up for just a second, it's kind of like we have our why, our ground post to hold on to, to ground us in all of our efforts, to keep us holding headstrong in this. We've got our what, which is what we offer. That loop method really helped us with that. But how are we offering it? How do we go about these calls? How do we recognize, differentiate and execute on these calls? Because I have a feeling we're starting to see some KPI. I mean, we've got our CSR, we're getting data now about our calls. We could probably compute a conversion rate. We get to see sort of an average ticket. We're seeing some highs, some lows, but to get consistent, we're going to need this. How aren't we?

Yeah, I have an immediate idea for the new business that hasn't had any exposure, hasn't had any training. That first is establish a ground work or at least a ground level of your performance. In order to do that, you'd have to come to an acceptance of you may not be as good as you think you are. A lot of times when we start working with new individuals and I remember myself being in the same situation I thought I was decent at sales and really, when you look at the averages, I was terrible at it. But it wasn't until I saw the actual averages that I recognized that something had to change. So, at the very, very first step, it's should you and can you document your results in a way that you can come back and unobjectively look at them. If that's your ground level, then you can start to establish where you need the help. Because, like you mentioned yourself, if you wanted to type in how to increase my residential sales, how many results would you receive within three seconds?

Oh yeah, in the small business exercise. Yeah, we typed in how to improve sales in your small business and it was like 3.6 billion results in half a second.

So like, if you think about that, if you don't know where you need help and you look for a generalized coaching, you're gonna find generalized answers. But if you say I struggle with the closed portion of my call, or I struggle with the option building or I struggle with the rapport building, now you can look for specific help for those areas that you're lacking. So I'd say, before you do anything else, we should be tracking our result after each call.

I love that. So, like post call, facts is a tool we use that demonstrates our flow without every bit of script, so that you can live still authentically through the process. Well, almost like a checkbox saying hey, we did it, we did it, we did it, oh wait, trouble right here, and this has happened a few times now. Maybe we should focus and train in this area Exactly.

And the thing is it also allows you to correct, like for a course, correct in real time. So let's say, think of argument. You're having an off day and you realize that you're struggling with your clothes because you're not all the way mentally with it right now. Something happened at home, truck got hit, whatever it is that's throwing your mood. Well, if you're recognizing I'm bombin' the presentation, I'm bombin' the presentation, I'm bombin' the presentation. You know, maybe you're better off calling a timeout, taking the rest of the day and coming back to the rest of your calls with a fresh head. Sometimes, even just looking and seeing where the gap is can make you have more effective actions going forward. But without data to come back to, you're just swinging off intuition, and intuition is unfortunately a great tool, but also it's a great liar, because you can believe you're doing well and not have the results to back it up.

Yeah, Now this brings about an interesting question and obviously again, we always present with a bias because we just know this stuff works. But I'm also gonna use demonstration in the answer for this question as well. Sure, Appreciate your help with it too. It's like okay, there's a couple of routes to go here for a new company. Are we going to get outside help and accelerate the process? Of course, in this series we're trying to hit the million in a year and that's actually a pretty strong feat, as we covered earlier on another episode. Like not a lot of small businesses make it to a million bucks. It's a very small percentage. So trying to do this in our first year in business, the likelihood is low and without help, even lower. Go ahead, Joe.

I actually can give real data answers that could support this answer. Wonderful. In my first year of business without having any kind of outside help, without understanding myself, without knowing anything about me, our total yearly sales was around 90 to 98,000 for the whole year. Wow, the thing was is. Then, in a very short period of time, we consistently doubled our sales. The reason being was that we were searching for outside help in any avenue that someone could help us in. We employed HVAC coaches. That's how all is there. We worked with plumbing coaches because that's what was there. I talked to garage door people because that's what was available. None of them were electricians. The fact is is that once we started getting guided help, I was able to then start establishing this process. That would work. That worked for us. But if I had no outside help, I don't believe I would have been able to be where I am today.

Yeah, 100%. The two examples we have that are prevalent in this series are service loop and what we did in 2023. And Dan, our client, who we brought on, who got our help. What I can say is this in order to do a million dollar launch and hit that number in the first year, we're going to need a few things, and it's why we had coaches, honestly, and mentorship and help with that for 11 out of 12 months of 2023. To accomplish that, okay, so it applies to us too. Here's why we need to be able to have the ability to measure and manage with clear thoughts and, as we know, law of separation says hey, emotions get in the way of stuff. It's not so easy to just see the data Right. What's that expression? You can't see the forest through the trees.

Yeah, or sometimes I've heard you can't read the? Why can't read the label while you're inside the bottle, Things like that. There's a lot of expressions for you. If you don't have proper perspective, you cannot read what you need to read.

Absolutely so. Then it's having accountability, so someone to hold you accountable to those next steps, those actions. Because number three is focus. If you can have those few things, and that again, third party brings their expertise to the, to this puzzle, then you can accomplish incredible things in a very short time. And I promise you this first year that million dollar launch year flies by because you are busy trying to make it happen. So that's, personally, why we got invested. Now, that said, I could appreciate if anyone's feeling like, hey, you know, sales processes isn't that hard. I want to kind of break down a bit of a process for someone to come up with this thing on their own. Is that fair?

I love you.

I've found in developing a sales process and you reflect with me and tell me what your thoughts are, joe I've found that through just doing what's intuitive and natural, you'll find very quickly where the boards are, where the limits are, where the common objections stand, and even by just keeping a sales journal and keeping track of that, you'll very quickly begin to understand all the hard questions that you know your process needs to answer in order to get to this place of trust and exchange.

I'm 100% with you there.

Okay, awesome. So what that does, then, is actually gives you the framework for flow of the process. It's not quite all the details that we have in our process, and I wouldn't expect it to be as fruitful as it could be for many years to come. In fact, joe, in you developing the process that we teach today, I mean seven years, was it, even with help?

Yeah, seven years with help, and the thing that I really want to throw out here that particularly my approach of what helped me was you said that you learned where the borders were. I learned by figuring out when I passed the borders. So like I am comfortable doing these things, but I'm not comfortable when this comes up, so I need to expand the borders so that I can have an answer for when those situations happen, so I won't feel the way I'm currently feeling. So taking the wins and taking the losses are equally important when you're designing the process 100%.

Here's the added bonus, and this is where it gets kind of tough Now to take that sales process, the systems that you're working through to develop and then hold them to your renewed values and make sure that you're acting congruent with that vision that you have for every client in this loop method. I mean, for us, obviously, the decision is quite straightforward, but if you're ever thinking outside of that and bringing someone else's method in or making your own, you also have to ensure its congruency with your values and where your team is leading your customers. Does that make sense?

It does.

Because if you're not, then you're acting incongruent with those values and this whole thing becomes a mess again that's very difficult to clean up.

One other thing on top of that if you don't want me interjecting, go ahead Is that I like the fact that we're leading off of values, and the reason why is because values very rarely change. For a person, thoughts, emotions and scenarios can change, but your core beliefs are usually your compass that keeps you guided. So if you've based your process off the thing that innately makes you you, then it becomes very hard to stray from this process and it becomes much easier to bring your passion into it, because you're like this is how I am as well as how I want to be, and therefore everything I'm going to say and do lines up with that.

And I, my own compass, can keep me accountable to my process, even if I had no help, because I know I can listen to at least myself 100%, and as an example of how ridiculously useful that could be, is finding comfort in addressing the elephant when there's a situation where someone is maybe accusational or upset or misunderstanding your communication to a point where you could literally call a timeout, express that value that you're trying to follow and ask where the miscommunication is or where you feel off track there. Go ahead, man.

Yeah, I actually had a really good example of something that came up in classrooms, which was how we handle landlord tenant situations. And the conversation came up where I was like we need to establish the relationship with the tenant so that the tenant itself can now be the leverage point to serve them. And then, as a result, we now have a standing chance against the landlord who may not care. And one of our clients did misunderstood what I was saying and was like well, it sounds like you're baiting the tenant against the landlord, but understanding our why was the misunderstanding was we were talking about a slumlord scenario when the landlord himself was literally like I don't care if you have a single wall pipe, and the reason you called me was because that thing gets over to 1500 degrees and your clothes caught fire because you're hanging out to dry. I don't care as long as the rent comes in. So my why was? I want to serve this person and make them safe and I'm willing to do that by any means necessary to make sure that they get what they need and avoid a life-threatening situation. And ending it with was it wrong to push to avoid a life-threatening situation?

Really powerful. Really powerful, so knowing you.

I will also help you handle your own objections.

Sometimes, when I listen to you on this podcast, I realize how much we give away and like, oh, should we even be saying that much? It feels so good and so counterintuitive at the same time to just help electricians rise up with this, so so powerful. Okay, so we've mentioned now and great example, by the way but mentioned developing the sales process. How often should we be training it, Joe?

Well, how often would I like it? Or how often should the minimum be?

Because in our million dollar launch this is our first year we've got a CSR there's us helping this thing along. How long should we train it? Starting out, would you say? First and foremost, starting, it should be every day.

And the reason why I say Well, that's more Okay. Yeah, okay. The reason being is that you need to establish your foundation. I mean, there's an interesting book that says build your house on a stone foundation and not on the sands of summer. My personal belief is that's true, but your belief has to be. I'm going to do this to such an extent that it becomes solidified into my psyche that this is now the way that I communicate with people, so much so that it becomes your autopilot. When you hit with an objection that throws you, you can recoil into your process and then come back out. But if you didn't train like a maniac when you first start, you'll find every reason not to train in the future. If I have one hour between seven and eight every day that I'm going to do this and I can't start, my van won't turn on like almost like a sobriety button where I'm like I can't physically turn this on until I blow in it. I can't drive, I can't go until I physically do this training. It becomes much harder to break that routine in the future. Right?

100% man.

Houston is short and you're better prepared.

I love. I need to call attention to something you said. If that's all right.

Sure go ahead.

You said that. I believe word for word. If this isn't something we'll take action on now, it's not something we're going to take action on in the future.

That's correct.

There's so many electric printers out there that are waiting for the right time to train that time's not coming. Those people that don't make time management their bitch and take control of this situation, follow the law of open cycles, get the help in the office, set the training hour and just do the thing. Those that don't do the thing never get to doing the thing until later a realization comes and they have this moment of clarity and they go oh shit, I should have been doing the thing.

There's an interesting place where I learned this lesson from, and I feel like it applies, and it's the concept of generosity. I was taught if you're not generous when you have nothing, you won't be generous when you have everything. And the concept behind it is I need to train now while I have nothing, because once I have something, if I didn't make the time to train, I won't see the need to train then, and that's usually when empires decline. If I built the foundation on ensuring we were perfect and we did everything, on our power to get better and better each day, then your natural trajectory is going to be up and if you're winging it, there's no way of tracking it and therefore no way of scaling it. So is it wrong of us to want to establish that kind of process?

Not at all, and when we get into recruiting our installers later in the week on this series it's going to be all too important. Instead of trying to figure out the training problem, we're going to already have a slot for training and just welcome them into it, and I can't wait for that. Okay, man, we got to crank out a couple of action items. Do you want basic or all star today?

I'll take whatever you want to do. I'm cool with both.

Okay, I'm going to hit the basic, even though my mind's blank right now.

Okay, no worries.

We talked about deciding on a sales process. Again, this is a million dollar launch, so our our path forward is actually straightforward. But if you're listening to this right now, if you're engaging with us in the podcast, live in the Facebook or listening to the replay at your favorite podcast service, and you don't have this service process, this sales process that doesn't have to feel salesy, and yet you have aggressive goals for your business, I want you to really ask yourself who's going to be doing the selling forever here, cause if you don't put a process in place, you can't train, and I have a feeling the all star is going to get into training. So what is it going to be? We're going to develop a sales process or we're going to adopt one. The choice really is yours, but either way, you need it to be consistent in your delivery and to have consistent results. So make the choice, go ahead, joe.

So the all star action actually ties into my why and I feel like it's really, really important to say both. The reason why I love doing what we're doing right now so much is cause I know I would have killed to have had it when I first started out Like we're helping electricians specifically. And I look back at it and there was no one to help electricians. There were multi-trade coaches, for sure, there were HVAC and plumbing specialists, there were even garage door people that were out there, but there weren't any electricians that could tell us how to grow a sustainable residential service business. So my why here is I want you guys to have something. I didn't, because I know how badly I wanted it when it was there. So it seems almost silly for me to say but there's already a company that you could go to that could give you an actual path for residential service training. Not going to name any names here, but I'm pretty sure we know who I'm talking about.

So it's always stuff to call your own name and raise a flag, right, I know right.

But the fact is is that, if you truly didn't know, the All Star Action comes out to two lessons. Do you know who you're trying to serve and why you're trying to serve them, and are you willing to expand out of your comfort zone to learn how to? If those two things are established, the answer becomes clear, because it's either you don't know your why, or you don't know your how. I can promise to give you both. It's up to you. I'm going to take action, but either way, know that we're here to serve you 100%.

Men love everything you said. The only thing I would add is hey, people keep coming for a transformation and they keep staying for this community. There's this triangulation of content, group community, and it's just a remarkable piece how powerful that community has become. So if you're part of our community, you go ahead and give a little self hug there. You guys rock right, know that you're a bigger piece of this than even the content. At this point, huge shout out to you guys and everyone we've been able to influence. It feels like an award ceremony speech or like we're done this series, but we're not. We're just getting really I mean maybe two thirds of the way into this. We've got some impactful stuff coming, so you guys stick with us as we continue this series, but this one has been episode 245, how to find your rhythm in that residential service in a way that's meaningful. You can develop some KPI the post call facts. If you want that value piece, by the way, type post call facts or send it to us on a contact form on our website at serviceloopelectricalcom. Guys, this has been another great one to help you master your sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level electrical service, all in this million dollar launch series. I can't wait for us to be done and build a mini course around this man. This is going to be great, joe. We'll see you next time, brother.

Truly a pleasure, namaskaram.