Ep 265 - Is Building 6 Options Too Much?

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to yet another episode of Electricpreneurs Secrets, the Electricians podcast. I am your host, clay Neumeier, and with 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. Serve her, serve her.

Yeah, if you're a her, serve who.

Serve you. If you're an electricpreneur looking to master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service, then welcome. Thank you for joining. This is our daily freemium coach. Call the admission costs for you. Sit back in the hot seat, take everything we give. Just promise to take action and let us know your wins. We know it's working for you too. I should add that too. On there more often, joe. How are you doing today, brother man?

I got a curveball for us today, but this is fun. I think it's safe to say that most business owners run on coffee right, or at least something we had to have some in our system. I had my coffee pot completely just crash and die on me. And it was like I was getting ready to make that morning cup and it just didn't turn on. Wasn't the GFI, wasn't anything? I took this thing apart, tried finger and now, before my first cup, we know, sir, we know.

Oh man, do you got figured out now?

I'm going to say grateful for a target for having two hour pickup which we are going to get our coffee ready to go, and I have a new coffee pot ready and pumping the glorious energy juice. So I'm a happy man.

Love it Love it.

What about you, brother? How are you?

I'm doing good, had a good weekend, spent some time by the river yesterday. Nice fire by the river. Can't complain about that. One thing I can complain. Actually, I've got one complaint. I don't know if this happens in cities around you or wherever the listeners are Right now, but like everywhere that's beautiful around here that any old car can drive is littered with shotgun shells. Every sign has a hole in. It Is garbage bags full of like diapers and crap that people just leave behind. I just don't understand that. Why do people leave litter in the bush?

I don't. I see I both understand and don't, because I love to extreme backpack. So, like the thought of saying like oh, I carried something in I don't have to carry out is appealing, but at the same time it's not just our, it's not our planet, right. Like, just because you don't see it, just because you take it and bury it under the bush, doesn't mean it's gone. It takes forever to break down. So why do people do it Same thing as a shopping cart? Why do they not return it to the thing? Because there's no one keeping it accountable to do it. So if no one, looks, and they can look both ways and chuck it out a window. They're not thinking about it 60 miles later, but it's going to be there 60 years later.

Yeah, we see fines Like it's thousands of dollars maximum penalty. I've never seen anyone hit with that, though I don't know. Anyways, today's podcast episode is a good one. Is six options actually too much, joe? I mean, there's got to be some times where we could not do six options. Otherwise this is absolutely tiring. But I know it's a big topic, I know it's a huge controversy, I know there's a lot around this, so why not revisit this topic and really help people understand why we choose six options?

Sure, I'm actually really excited about this because this actually came up on a post not that long ago where someone on our page actually said something along the lines of like what's the best six options you can do for a fan, and people just kept listing material on it like, oh well, I'm going to put a better brace box, I'm going to now have it with. Everyone said surge protection, but very few people thought of things outside of the physical product itself. So in order to answer this question, I just want to call the reality into it. Is that okay? Yeah, man, all right, six options is always going to feel too much if you're focusing on the product and the commodity itself. Because you look at the fan, you're like all right, well, the fan's got a spin, I got to get it power, I've got to box it. But outside of the physical installation, we kind of draw blank and feel like we're just stretching for things In that capacity. Six options, 100% too much. But how we do it was that techie brain. You're right, tech brain. How we do it, on the other hand, is instead of focusing on the thing, we're focusing on the people. So a good example that came up with it was a customer wants you to install a fan. Right, they have a fan existing in the room and you notice that they have a remote for that fan. Now Clay, if you have young children, what are the odds that that remote is going to go disappearing at one point?

Yeah, I mean forget the young children. I mean, there's dogs, there's even adults in this household that don't put remotes back, so it's going missing for sure.

So the fact is that this customer would then have to walk through the room in the dark. Theoretically, because if the remote's the only thing that engages the light, whether you turn the switch on and off that remote, is the switch now right? So, as a result, if that is on, let's say you walk into the room that you're quoting and you notice the remote is on their bedside table. An option that you can consider is saying, well, would it not benefit them to at least acknowledge that you're walking into a dark room and then, secondary, say it's likely that they were using it near their bedside. So would it a good option then be saying why don't we cut an extra three-way pair and you can have one switch by the bedside that does the fan and one switch by the bedside does the light, and the same things by the doors, so you could walk into the room, turn on the light, walk to your bed, turn off the light.

So what I'm hearing is more of a focus on their experience and how they're going to use that device and then applying our nice techie brains to try to solve that problem using our device.

So it sounds like a smarter way of saying it than I did. I love what you're saying.

I'm just paraphrasing in a way that my 30,000-foot view sees it as like how do I, as an electrician, get out of this focus on trims or circuit size and just focus on for a moment the why I'm there. The real why, though Not the why is in replace the ceiling fan, the why find replacing the ceiling fan.

There's actually a great way and actually a question that you can ask your client to help find the answers to that, as well as learn how to build your options.

Okay, let's hear it.

It's going to sound a little weird, but it's asking so why do this at all? Why not just keep it the way it is? If it's not broke, why fix it? Why don't we just leave it the way it is? And it's weird because so many people look at that as well. Are you saying that you don't want the work? No, I'm not saying I don't want the work. I'm saying that I never want to risk quoting you for something that's not in your best interest or something you really don't need. So is it wrong to me to want to just know a little bit more of why you want this done, because I'm not totally convinced. We have to change it when you find your why. Now you can circle around the emotion attached to it. I don't like having the fan not run because I like to have a fan when I'm sleeping. Okay, let's figure this out. What is the fan? Now? The fan is a good night's sleep For all of us with kids. Is there not a number we wouldn't write to get a good night's sleep? So the difference is it's not just quoting a fan that was from Home Depot for $100. It's to them. This equates to I'm sleeping through the night, which means I'm rested for work the next day, which means I'm a better parent to my kids. All these little things are attached, but you would never know unless you figured out. Well, why don't we just leave it the way it is?

Yep, and Tiffany just said something that I think is really instrumental being able to use their words then to also build those options, which puts you light years ahead of other people who may be providing on this estimate as well. That said, though, joe, if I could take a step back and challenge you here, especially with the title of this episode, so why not find out why, and just offer good, better, best?

So the reason being is that we don't want to push a situation to where they're able to just say yes or no, because in a situation where someone can say yes or no, the lizard brain kicks in and we always go for the thing of least resistance. So the reason we're going for six options is because it allows us to better speak to the emotions we were just creating. We know that there's two premium options, two mid-range options and two economy options. So as we've built those choices, we know one that we're set for every buyer archetype before you even sat at the table. So we won't ever risk under or over quoting them. We'll have everything available Additionally once they find their buyer archetype. They're then still in a position to say this choice or that choice compared to this choice or nothing Additionally. The reason why six is that there are sciences that say that you need to be able to handle at least six nos in order to get a yes. So by able to start the top option and remove piece by piece by piece until you're at your bottom option, you become more skilled and able to handle objections. So if you think about this big 30,000-foot picture, we are able to identify our archetypes, we're able to present things without yes or no, we're able to go through it and describe it in a way that actually resonates with the customer and, lastly, we can handle their objections without having to use sales tricks. We're simply just saying here are your choices. How would you like us to proceed?

That's actually my favorite part, and this is going to lead me to another question, which I feel is probably going to lead to another episode. But are there any exceptions to where you would offer six options?

Yeah, there actually are, and they're few and far between. Do you want me to jump into them now?

Yeah, if we just touch on it, and I think we could go into that more tomorrow.

actually, Sure, not a problem. So the one particular example that I like to reference is you have a landlord who's called you to take care of their property. They themselves live multi-states or, in your case, in another province of the country, and they are asking you to come to their home to address something small. In their mind. They think of it as the ceiling fan or the trip breaker, whatever it is that they call on them. The odds of you getting them to drive five hours south for a presentation is not going to happen. They will not do it. And then, if you give them six options over the phone without them visually being able to see anything, it's very expected to say can you just email this over? And if we do that, we're now forcing them to have to do our jobs for us and hope that they make the right decision and hope that they don't share all our design secrets with our competitors and shop all that out. So in those circumstances, we actually have processes for designing three that are meant to be communicated over the phone.

Nice, I like that. Yeah, let's touch on that again tomorrow For this one, then, and I recognize that we've got to keep this Monday a little tighter today, but what would you say is the biggest action item for someone here today Maybe asking this question? Maybe they haven't explored six options yet, or maybe they're just starting to come around to this. What could we do as an action item to help them embrace the six options and start using it?

OK. So I got something right off the top of the dome, which is that if you're struggling making options consistently meaning that it doesn't matter what the call is, it's just you're struggling making options I'd be willing to put money down, not gambler, but I'm willing to say you know what? I have a bet that you are focused too much on the technical. The customer has asked for this and this is what you're trying to quote them for, compared to saying why do you want this? How does this benefit you? Why aren't we just doing nothing? Why this specifically? And by asking the why questions, you learn the more, and in that more you then become either justified or at least it's relative to bring their attention to these additional things.

Awesome, then what would you say the All Star would be for this?

The All Star is a little more advanced In that. For the All Star, when you're doing six options, is to understand that the customer is going to buy at a level that you may not agree with and that's still OK. Meaning you like myself. I consider myself a premium buyer, but it doesn't mean that I would decline an economy option if it was properly presented. On the other side of the coin, you could have someone who's an economy buyer and that doesn't mean that they're going to object to a premium option. You have to assume that, no matter what someone identifies as you, present the full spectrum of choices and let them decide how they want to proceed. Don't let your own impact say oh, they're selling the home, they're probably not going to want to do anything, they just probably want us to sign off on the inspection sheet. No, offer the things so that they can know that they're not leaving the home unsafe for someone else. You'd be amazed how many nice people there are out there.

You know what they say about assuming we can ask you and me. We can ask you and me, guys, if this helped. Let us know. If you're playing with six options out there, let us know that. If you're thinking about it or you have arguments against it, please let us know that as well. Whether you're engaging with us, live on the Facebook group right now or you're listening to us on your favorite podcast service or our YouTube channel, go ahead and comment where you found us first, but let us know what your thoughts are on the six options. We'd be happy to go deeper on the next one for you. Other than that, guys, this has been another episode of Electricpreneur Secrets, where we help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. We're going to see you guys again tomorrow. Thanks, joe, can we see them?