Ep 266 - How to NOT Offer 6 Options and When

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to yet another episode of Electricpreneurs Secrets, the Electricians podcast. I am your host, clay Neumeyer, and with me, as always, the ever-beautiful, the sexy Joseph Lukini. We're the Electricpreneurs just a couple of master electricians with business addictions here and ready to try to make you laugh with corny intros. On a serious note, welcome to our daily freemium coach. Call the admission costs for this. Sit back in the hot seat, take everything we give, just promise to take action. I assure you today will not disappoint. We're tying right back into yesterday's episode about well, is six options? Are six options too much? And if that was the case, which we very clearly made a statement yesterday, but when? Is it okay to get away from six options, at least the way we see it in this premium service endeavor. Joe, how are you doing today, my brother?

Man, I'm doing really, really good and I wish, I wish people could see what was going on in the background, because you and I are making such developments at such a pace that it's like man, sometimes it makes me go. I'm just breathing out heavy sometimes, but I'm feeling really inspired every day and I want to just carry that vitality to everyone that's listening, because big things are happening and I couldn't be happier.

Love it, man. I'm feeling definitely inspired. Just a big ball of motivation.

You can always tell when I've got a little energy, because I say goofy things in the intro that hopefully I never say again right, all good, dude, it is all good In fact, you know what I appreciate the goofiness Because, if anything, it shows we're a goofy bunch of individuals and I would rather show that on our sleeves than hide it until people meet us in person. We're goofy, we're nerdy and we love it.

Yeah, man Like lightsaber style.

Oh god, yeah, you know, I'm tempted to make another video. I'm genuinely tempted to make another video.

Okay, man, let's dive into this. We've got some big value today I want to share with people when it might be okay to get away from six options Now, just tagging on, yesterday we established why and these three buying archetypes and really offering an option for each. You know what we see this, and this is a whole other podcast episode, by the way. Again, I'm branching out a bit but we see big businesses doing incredible things that leverage these same principles all the time. Can I leave an example here here? Go for it. Anyone here ever subscribed to Amazon Prime? Never, right, never. Oh, no, zoom's at it again. I just raised my hand For those of you engaging with us live in Facebook. You get to watch if I move around from the Zoom gestures. But Amazon Prime is a fine example of where the middle class spends a little bit ahead of time to be prime members, to be celebrated and to what Receive priority service. Right, he's solved the last mile problem by just saying, hey, if you pay us upfront, we're going to treat you like gold and make sure you get all these prime option for shipping, to get it even same day sometimes. Go ahead.

And what's wild is, I remember when I was younger, we used to take five to seven business days and that was normal shipping. Fast shipping was three to five, Expedited overnight. You paid $100 for it and you got it in two to three days. Now, Prime, you get it 24 hours to your doorstep and someone's high fobbing you in the drop-off. It's insane.

And again drive it further. Who are the majority of prime members? Is it just rich people? No, it's homeowners, just middle class homeowners. Middle class homeowners who sometimes will buy your lowest option and sometimes will take you at your top. Would you agree with that?

I 100% would, because I've also been that guy.

Me too, man, me too, I yeah, I'm not getting into that. Two more examples, just quick. Starbucks you download a Starbucks app and you can literally put money on it ahead of time, and the entire reason for this is actually because of time delay, because Starbucks actually competes in a fast food marketplace. But what's the problem with Starbucks? Anyone just gone to Starbucks in order to coffee?

Not anymore. You're going there, you're waiting online, you're walking out with something.

Waiting in line. If you go to the drive-through, it could sometimes take like 20, 30 minutes, Like that's insane. So the answer to that grab their app, pay them in advance and when next time you're thirsty for one of their coffees, you can order it using money that they own. That's yours.

Yep, it's wild, but I've also done that as well, because the funny thing about it is I'd like to cut ahead of the line to get my wife her favorite coffee, because happy wife equals happy life and my wife is an absolute angel, so get her the coffee she wants.

And finally Costco. Who wouldn't have a good life without Costco? Or what's the equivalent in America? A BJ's, I think it is.

BJ's? Yeah, there's a couple. William Jensen is a large Costco-esque kind of thing, but. Costco's big here too.

Buy bulk, get it all there, pay for a membership up front and then go in and spend more than you ever would at your standard grocery store and Jared says love me a Costco pizza. Thank you, jared, for that contribution. I've had the hot dogs. I used to love it as a kid. As kids love Costco, it's their favorite family place to shop because you get so much stuff there, you get so much convenient, until you get home or the Mrs gets home with a $700 receipt and you're like what happened Again? Is it the rich people in there, joe?

No, it's not. I mean, it's not that they're not there, but the bulk of us are in the same buying class, anywhere from upper economy to lower premium.

Absolutely. And Austin just pointed something out great, the hot dogs are a loss leader with us live in the Facebook session. Thank you for that, Austin. Sure, it's a loss leader. It helps with that client experience, the same picture we're trying to paint, Joe. I'm sorry I've completely hijacked this episode to talk about other businesses succeeding with the very same methodologies, though of not underestimating the power of the middle class in your market and the power of having options to serve them at an even greater level.

So that's our reasons, why we feel that six options is so helpful in so many different markets, because clearly other people are doing them. The main question comes down to is when not to do six options, and I feel like we can say it very, very simply you want, in every opportunity, to be face to face with your customer. When you're presenting six choices, now that means I'm not giving you guys a pass of saying, well, they couldn't make it, so therefore I'm sending them the email. No, no, no, I'm not giving you a hard pass, I'm saying they. Physically. It is impossible to make such a request such as okay. The first example was the landlord that was out of state. He's not traveling six hours downstate or out of new provinces in order to come get a quote for their outlet change. It's not going to happen. So therefore, if you gave that person six options, you would be overloading them and you would obviously expect the email it over. But there's other capacities where that happens to and it's where you're in a position to where you would never realistically meet the owner or the person who makes the decision. So let's take a space that we normally don't like to go into. Let's talk about commercial spaces. A lot of times the way that that's set up is like we would go to like different warehouses and there were different contracts that we had in the commercial space where we would never actually meet the person who would write the check. So imagine how this interaction happens. We're called in on a work order. We then arrive on site and we meet the property manager not the owner of said property, but the property manager or whoever the desk person is who lets us in and says I've gotten my work order to tell you the things that you now need to do on this project. So you've got a middleman introducing to us. Now we do have processes in place that allows us to escalate, bond with this individual and then shift to them, allowing us an opportunity to present to the person he does write the check. For sake of time, we're not going to go into those exercises here. But let's say that our efforts fail. We genuinely cannot, or it is unreasonable from a logistical standpoint, to get that property manager to let you see the next person in. They won't let you to see the board. They won't let you meet corporate. Well, if you gave them six choices, what is the obvious thing they're going to probably request for at that point, usually going to be either I want it emailed because there's too much to be taken over, and can you break it down? No one wants to do that for six choices and, additionally, you have to imagine that this is not an email over option. At the very minimum, it's okay. I'd love to help you with this situation. At the very least, I would like an opportunity to explain what the person is paying for. Is it wrong of me to at least make sure that, if they're right in the check, they have an understanding of what they're getting?

No.

Not wrong. It's not a wrong thing to do. But can I realistically expect to someone to give me an ear to six options and not expect it to be emailed over? It's not really reasonable. So, on the opportunities where and I'm going to make this very clear there's no gray area here where it is either physically impossible or completely unreasonable to request someone to come and see you and you are either forced to do a phone presentation or it is the only viable way of presenting information. I will accept three options to be presented, because in that format you can deliver it over the phone, you can narrow down the choices and you can also present the information as a permanent fix, a trade standard fix and an economy or temporary fix. So you can appeal to your three archetypes. You can still build value over the phone and you still have a control over it, because if they ask you to email it over, you still have the ability of saying which of these would you like emailed over? What do you like about these choices that you're asking for so far? So if I got to put a little blue bow around this, it would be if you're going to do this, you have your three choices, which you expected to do verbal packaging for and verbal descriptions. You plan on handling the process in a way where you're designing it and doing it over the phone. I am not authorizing you to do three options, so you can email it over to someone. I'm saying three options with a phone presentation, right, right.

It sounds absolutely. And the obvious question that follows with. I mean, it's the same with any amount of options? But these people also are the ones that often just want a price. Ah, true, and they try to compare you to someone else anyway.

And that's the point. So if we know that's what they want to do, does that actually benefit both us or them? Well, let's take a argument you want to do. Price comparison requires an apples to apples comparison. There has to be two similar producing individuals or companies for that price comparison to be legitimate. So do we believe that we're doing the same level of service as your typical commercial in and out contractor? No, so the only other way of making that sale is to have such an email that sells your services in advance. But if I were to send you a long worded email, it'd be no different than me sending a long worded Facebook post. People will just scroll to the bottom and see where the meat is.

My eyes are glazing over already.

Yeah, that's going to end up happening. I'm going to give you this long, long text, long form text. You're not going to read it, you're not going to see the value. You're going to be like what's he doing? $4,000. I got a quote for 600 bucks. Now he's out, but at least, if I can describe it and be like Clay. I know that you and I haven't had the opportunity to talk before, but let me compliment you on the front manager that you have. I think he was a great person so far and I've also learned about your situation and I can solve the specific problem that you and your team are having, which wasn't communicated to anyone else, but we learned it because we questioned your front guy, and then I'm presenting it as Clay. We can solve this in numerous ways and I just want to explain the range from permanency and quality that you're getting, so that you're in control of your budget, and if you have any questions, please stop me and I'll support you every avenue. I can Love it. I have a better chance of closing that, even at a higher price, than I would emailing a lower price.

Very cool, man, very cool. Let's wrap this one up with a couple of action items, joe, because we are running out of time. Brother, that's probably due to my rant in the beginning about Starbucks and other barely relevant companies. It's all good, dude, it's all good, but the benefit of being live right yeah man, yeah, the benefit of being live.

So, okay, some action assignments here. The basic action, if I may, is don't look for an opportunity to send options over, because I know people are looking at this episode by the title and saying, okay, great, so I'm going to figure out when I don't have to make six options and they're going to look forward to not having to do six options because it fits in these bubbles. That is the wrong way to take this lesson. You should always aim for six options because you have two premium, two major range and two economy options. Meaning not only do you have five opportunities to get a no and still aim with a yes, but you can guarantee you're appealing to every archetype with multiple choices per archetype. That is a proven method which I will die on that hill for. Instead, the basic action should be saying this is just another tool in my arsenal and I will still lead with the ability of trying to go for six. I think that's a solid base.

What do you think? I love it, man. That's really good. We got some good chats, some hearts, some thumbs up for that one. So what do we have for an all star? Can you think of another one, joe, or do you want me to try to come up with something? I got it, don't you worry. All right, I was going to say, create a Starbucks app and just get your customers to pay you ahead of time. But that might be a little technical, heavy for our listeners.

Yeah. So if we're going to go into an all star action, it would be saying don't assume that just because you're not in person, you don't have control over the call. So many times people assume that if I'm in person I can sell it, but if it's over the phone they're going to ask me to email it over. You still have 100% of control of the call until you send your price. The moment your price is in their hand, they now have control. So if you want to be able to say I just won't give you a price unless I have the ability of talking to the person who's writing the check, you have that right to do so and, believe it or not, that may be the action that gets you the meeting. So don't just assume that because you're planning on emailing something, that that's where the dollar dies. You can lead and push for that meeting or at least that phone call, or you can toss the appointment. That's also a good action to take, because I would rather you try and say if you're not going to do it the way I know will succeed, I'm not going to burn my apps, but if you want to do it this way, I know I can serve you at the highest level. How would you like me to?

proceed. Yeah, that's fair man. As always, guys, we're looking for clearer futures and less open cycles, less things to stress you out, overwhelm you and hold your mind at night when you ought to be sleeping and getting some rest. Please, electricpreneurs, I know that Austin Matthews is here just to hear me say goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. I love it, I was waiting for it Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Three goodbyes. Anyways, guys, we're here again, oh God, he says, to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level service. This episode has been no exception, to help you on your journey to that premium service. Thank you all for attending and we'll see you again tomorrow. Thanks, joe, wish you the absolute best. Y'all be well.