Ep 254 - 1M Launch Series 2024 - We need field help!

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to yet another episode of Electricpreneur Secrets, the Electricians podcast. I'm your host, clay Neumeyer. With me, as always, my esteemed co-host, joseph Lucani, and we are the Electricpreneurs just a couple of master electricians with business addictions here and ready to serve at the highest level. Of course, welcome to our daily freemium coach call, where you get to sit back in the hot seat, take everything we give, just promise to take action and report those wins back to us. This episode 254 now, and this is that another one in the series of this million dollar launch campaign, joe, and we're finally through the sales process, like we got our offer, the loop method working for us. We've got repeat transaction happening from repeat customers. We've got a CSR in place. We've got our sales process dialed in. We're multiplying. Now We've got reviews and good neighbor program. Isn't it about time we multiplied our efforts in house and start thinking about hiring some field staff?

Exactly because the thing is is we can't create a bottleneck where we've done everything. Obviously, we cut our load in half by hiring a CSR, but a lot of us want to work ourselves out of the field, because how many times we feel like we're working on the business rather than in the business?

or vice versa. Yeah, I was going to say a lot of times you're working in the business and never on it. I want to point something out, if I can.

By all means.

The CSR was great because again it gave us the leverage to be in the field, making the sales process really chuch, if you know what I mean. Exactly the next place and kind of. It's a fallacy at the CSR hiring place, where we usually want to hire someone in the field. A lot of times people feel a pull to hire this person too soon, or even maybe hire an apprentice at this point. Now what do you think? What's your take on who should be the next hire? Who's the first field person? We need to really help us in this journey to that million dollar launch.

The standard is usually I'm going to have an office manager, I'm going to stay in the field and I'm going to have one person underneath me. Get an apprentice train the journeyman level, then have them train their own team. That's a long play. That's a long play, and that's also assuming that this installer apprentice that you hire, that you're going to build from the ground up, stays with you the three years that's necessary to turn them from nobody into a top tier service expert. So, if we have the choice, I'm going to be leading for a journey to person or even another master electrician, someone that I can drop onto any job like an ODST and be like they're going to drop ship down onto it. They're going to be able to handle any job we do and then they could get an apprentice Nice. But the first goal is to get someone who has your level of skill or hire.

I like that, I like that and that's kind of what I saw two men. So really looking for then, at least in a good position, would be like the installer type with some service experience. Maybe that could be really helpful, not maybe just a complete construction hand. I mean, that's a bit of a gap to bridge. I'd be looking for someone with some service experience, but still not necessarily over qualify. We just need to be able to shape this person up to understand the experience that we're creating with our customers. Go ahead, menace, I'll do that yeah.

Because when you mentioned, the thing you stood out was setting in the commercial space and I really want to point out that we really don't want to be hiring from that avenue if we have an initial choice or choice in the matter. The reason being is, if you think I mean you're a project guy, you've had that experience for a long time how much customer interaction did the typical journeyed person have unless they were leading a project? Very little, it's a week or so for sure. They would be able to experience each other. They knew how to talk to other contractors and you probably had to talk to other trades, but they didn't know how to talk to a customer. So you have this person who has all the skills, the hands on skills, but none of the customer service, and then you plan on dropping them into a residential call where they're now directly one-on-one with the customer and we expect it to go really well without training. Not ideal either.

Not.

So we realize we can't get an apprentice because it takes too long to train them in a sake of replacing us. We don't want to get a commercial individual that has no residential experience, because then their customer service is going to drop and we have to teach them that. Yeah, so the ideal person we want to go to is already in our network. It's likely we were working at a previous company where we had people we were familiar with. It's likely that we had people that we either went to school with or in our trades. It's likely we had allied partners. It's likely that we have other people we knew from the supply houses, those we run into at Home Depot and Lowe's and all the other places we go to. Yeah, and we also haven't even touched on our online network. So I would want to be casting the net for a journeyed person level skill who also is in the residential field. That's who I'm going to be targeting for.

For sure I'm going to go out of bounds here too and say some rather adventurous stuff on this. I'm going to take a stand, maybe a bit against something and give it a pivot of how that could work too. I feel like there's a great deal of conversation, including our conversations, around these Apex players. Maybe someone that's already got a sales skill set, someone that's already doing good numbers as a service technician. Maybe they're interested in jumping on board with you for XYZ reasons. It's fresh, it's new, they've got to have influence, they could be bigger in the company, whatever reason that is. But I want to throw word of caution here, because I think this is actually a big mistake that people make is not pulse checking the congruency on that. We've just worked really hard to get our process down and we did that aggressively. It's not to say we're not flexible, because the one year mark we're absolutely still going to be flexible. But I really don't want to be steamrolled by someone, an old dog that can't learn new tricks, because what we've done we've already acknowledged a few times it's kind of outside the box of what we usually experience, unless you've worked for a top tier, performing, premium service company.

And the thing is is that? How often does it even happen? The people who leave premium service companies usually aren't the ones that believed in the culture and the value that was there. It was a lot of well. I don't want to sell anything, so I saw myself out of there. That's not the guy you're recruiting. You don't want that one, because what's going to happen when you bring them into your culture? Oh, you're the same. You're just trying to sell people things. Your work should speak for itself. No, coming from someone who had to learn how to articulate, if you cannot articulate the quality difference of your work, it won't speak for itself, because your work can't speak. You have to be able to communicate to the right people so they understand what they're going to be getting. So you want to make sure that whoever you're bringing in is able to do something to at least a relative level, skill level.

Yeah, I agree, and I think the work around for this that I promised a bit of a pivot for me at least I mean we can even leverage our own partnership in discussing this too is you have to center on values at that point. Yeah, at least with values and a vision, you can center each other and be each other's answer to why you need to do it the way that you're doing it. Again, like I said, we're flexible, but that level of person is likely looking for a seat at the table too, and you're likely looking a little more than an employee, which again can be a huge benefit if your ducks are in a row. I think that's a whole other discussion that we could go further with. The important point for this discussion is to recognize sort of the boundaries of each of these and who we would focus on getting, and I really believe that there's a good chance in every market of being able to find someone, like you mentioned, that you've brushed shoulders with along the way, that you already know a thing or two about their personality, their characteristics and you can make a great judgment call on how they could fit at least a, for now, installer situation, with a bit of a roadmap as to how they could grow and how you could grow together in this young and impressive and aggressive company.

It makes a lot of sense in a lot of different ways. You know, if you're going to hire someone on and they're at a high skill level, it's likely they also have ambitions to go with it. So you just saying that I'm just going to hire you to install isn't going to take them anywhere. But hiring them for install to transition into a service manager now that's got some roots to it and I can see a higher performing person saying I'm willing to stick it out here because I believe in where you're trying to go 100%, and that's a good direction to take this.

Anyway, I think it's a good idea to really discuss what that roadmap looks like and in our minds and what we train in our program is really to start as an installer with the company, because there's so much to learn at that stage, and that doesn't actually preclude that they won't learn options and doesn't preclude that they won't learn pricing, because that stuff's important even in the transition from a sales representative or technician to an installer, right.

I mean the goal is is that we actually have install upgrade processes. We have our work order reviews where the options were described to the technicians for their proper objection handling. We make sure they understand how jobs are priced so that when they go through it and they need to defend it they know how it was calculated. So, even training them in the installer, they understand your process, they understand your culture, they understand your values, but they also understand your quality levels and articulation. So, bringing them through. Installer is ground floor solid rock foundation that you can build the next level player off of.

And, at the same time, a huge lever, not just in your business. I mean, we've talked about it many times before 1.3 million in sales from your van alone. Well, that's with the support of install teams, correct. We know that we can replicate that experience and we see our clients doing that, even to date. I mean, we mentioned Dan the other day doing something very similar, hitting massive records, close to a $200,000 January at this point, to the best of our knowledge of the numbers. I mean that's pretty incredible what a single person can sell with the support of a team around them to install, isn't it?

Yeah, you know, because at the end of the day you realize if someone calls you out for a service call, you don't want to limit yourself by your options by saying, well, I could only do this for this right now, while I'm here, and then I could always do this in the future. Offer them the choices while you're there, for the grand scheme of things, because if it's something you can't do yourself, like all the way, all the way well, that's fine, because your team is following you. Get them the power they need back on, your team's going to be here within the next hour and a half. Transition it and then see yourself out so you can still scale properly without having to do everything.

I love that man. And as a simple roadmap, you know, you bring in, you train the installer in our special way, the service loop way Right To the loop method, to these things, to the little bit options, to the work orders, and then they have a good foundation of skills and a path forward. So you might be thinking, well, that person could leave us now with all these skills. Yeah, but we've already painted the roadmap for them and they're about to get a big raise and maybe even some performance incentives as a service technician that will then trump and increase the value not only that they bring to the clients, but the value that they bring home with them at the end of the day. Go ahead, Joe.

You mentioned something that I think almost every business owner has a fear of, which is if I train them this much, are they going to leave me? And the question I have for you is well, what would happen if you didn't train them? Who suffers then? You're the one who's holding the bag. So the concept we should be following is train them so well that they could leave you, but treat them so well that they won't. That's the gap difference between the two of them.

Yeah, I like that, I do. So we've got this installer to service tech. And then there's more skills like learning our demand call sales process that we now have in place. That's proven and winning right. Further understanding the options. Of course, now they've got to build their own options from scratch. So advanced options training, advanced objection handling level training, then at the demand call level and after they prove proficiency in that, guess what? And if I should add, if, because not everyone's going to, we hope your electricians will. Some will just want to be installs. But getting to a proficient service tech and bringing the company five, six, seven hundred thousand dollars a year, I'm not mad at that. But if they start looking like, hey, they could bring more if we got them off the tools, and wouldn't it make sense to train them up to our position as a sales technician for this company and really help drive some advantages? And now keeping other install crews busy, we start to see how this really unravels pretty quickly if you get the right people.

Yeah, and you know, I remember a conversation my former partner and I had was you know. He told me every time we see you with a tool, we lose money, because if you're holding a tool, you're not in front of a customer and we need to make sure you're always in front of a customer. So the concept is that if you have that kind of person on your team, get them off the tools and let them loose, because I guarantee they're going to have more to give once you let them have their stride.

Absolutely, man. This has been a really powerful introduction to growing that team. Where we'd go next? What would you say for a couple of action items for our listeners, if anyone's, at this stage with us, ready to hire their next field person here?

So I can handle all store or basic. Do you have a preference?

I want you to go with basic brother. Okay, sure.

So, in the basic, the first thing is addressing the fear, because we mentioned earlier that every single one of us I know myself, and I'm sure you had it as well is that if I train this person with everything I know, will they eventually become my competition, will they eventually leave and start their own business. This thought hamstrings so many businesses because it's a horde mentality, where it's scarcity mindset, where they're saying if I need to hoard it all because someone else might take it from me, instead, look at the inverse of scarcity and come from a place of abundance, in that we all have knowledge and the knowledge is like a candle. I can light you and not diminish my own flame, but the two of us now have a brighter room. So the basic assignment for today is put aside the fear of what could happen and instead focus on what you want to happen. Put your focus and manifest that and you'll find you'll be more likely to sleep through the night.

You know what I love that I'm going to tack on one more fear to overcome, and we're going to tie it right into the next episode, and that's the fear of well, if I bring a guy on, do I really have enough? This might have been a similar fear to the CSR, and this is the kind of thing that will hold you down and keep you up at night. Now, granted, maybe it keeps you up at night to have another mouth to feed, but think about your leverage again. We've got a proven sales process at this point. The more time I can focus on selling, just like you said and be off the tools, the more opportunities we can seize and create sales and improve our sales, even if we're not quite at that perfect place we want to be at yet. That making sense so far.

It really does.

So we've got to really acknowledge this fear, call it out and just really deal with it in a sense of like this is the next move. There's no other way to go. If you want to increase your impact and your leverage, you've got to free your time to do so. Allegading is the only way. It's the only way to do this, or will be limited to that place, forever having less sales experience, less growth and less results as a result. So that next thing we're going to deal with hey, guess what? We're going to get this person in place. We're going to afford it through the money we've generated already. And then, next episode, we're going to talk about again increasing our leads and investment in leads to make sure that we're keeping people busy and, of course, the leverage on that network as well. How does that sound, joe?

I can't wait because I'm already having ideas I want to throw into this, but I'm realizing we're trying to end the episode and not keep it going.

You got it, brother. So, without further ado, this has been another episode, episode 254 of Electric Pinner Secrets, where my brother Joe and I keep showing up to help you guys, five days a week, in mastering your sales, simplifying your pricing and delivering premium level electrical service. We're going to see you again tomorrow for more of that.

Namaskaram.

Can't wait to see you soon. Bye for now.