Epidode 18 - Be Right or Get Paid? - Dealing With "That" Client

@21:56 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Welcome to Electropreneur Secrets, the electric podcast.

I'm Clay Neumeier. This is my esteemed host, Joseph Lucani. As you know, we're here live, so every once in a while, there's going to be a speech impediment that we've got to deal with.

Just fine. Just fine. Today, we're talking about a hot topic, something that also is going to contribute to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing, and deliver premium level service.

What are we talking about today, Joseph?

@22:30 - Joseph Lucanie

Today, we're talking about the mental effects of what happens in your mind and in your demeanor when a customer tries to haggle you or tries to demean you.

@22:48 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Hmm. This is a challenge. We've been tested.

@22:49 - Joseph Lucanie

That we have.

@22:53 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Okay. If you guys have ever been tested with this, let us know. You can, of course, join us live in the Electropreneur group.

That's where this is happening right now. and also catch the replay there and comment just the same. Let us know if you've ever had a client that tested you, made you feel maybe threatened, endangered, something that you had to respond to.

Did it give you fight or flight? I think that's really what it comes down to, that feeling, tightened up in the chest.

Maybe your voice shook a little bit. Oh man, I gotta squeeze the stress ball a few extra times right now.

You got a story in mind for us, Joseph? Let's kick one off.

@23:29 - Joseph Lucanie

One of the things that come to mind was, and I'm gonna say a story that really hurt, and then I have another one later that actually was a really successful outcome, right?

@23:38 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

All right. 

@23:43 - Joseph Lucanie

So earlier in my career, naturally the thing I was moving most was generators. I knew how to sell them, I knew what I was doing, and that was that. And occasionally we would find some very, very affluent customers.

And you know the kind that you're talking about, where he shows off his three car garage and he's naming each style of exotic car that he has, and he's walking through the rooms.

think, oh, this was signed by that. And this is signed by that. Well, we went through the generator options and I gave him his choices and they were very significant.

They were some serious, serious options. Yeah. So I gave him the choice and what ended up happening was he agreed to do one of them.

He was like, you know what? I'm going to take my option too. And he's like, well, what do you need to do in order to move forward with this?

Our standard policies either financing full, which I am never going to finance because he's got rocks, but he said, all right, I'll give you 50% down.

Like you asked, he takes his checkbook out. He writes 17,500. I remember that number because it burned into my brain.

He wrote me a 50% deposit, which was 17,500. He hands it to me, but he holds onto it. If he hands me, so I have one end, he has the other, and he goes, Joe, I just want you to know the reason why I'm okay writing you this check.

It's because what I do for a living, I'm a neurosurgeon, but I only work on infants. You're an electrician.

You're never gonna see money like this, but I want you to know that that's okay, because you're just gonna be an electrician.

So here you go. And I literally sat there holding onto the check, and my first thought was, do I throat punch this guy?

Like, what happens? 

@25:19 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Wow. And I gotta say, actually, James just called that before you even said it. He just said doctors and lawyers are the worst, being demeaning, demeaning is a great word for it.

@25:23 - Joseph Lucanie

Yeah. So what ended up happening was I had my partner and I developed a phrase, and it was, would you rather be paid or would you rather be right?

Because what I could have done is been like, you know what? I don't need your work and throwing it back to him, right?

Yeah. But instead I was like, you know what? This guy is a miserable human being. And there's a reason why he's treating me this way.

There is something lacking in his life to where he has to feel like he's picking on. on a 23 year old electrician.

But you know what? I was a good enough salesperson and he still gave me the deposit for $17,500. So I said, that's up to your interpretation and I'm not gonna discount your opinion, but thank you for the opportunity to work with you.

And I took it and I cashed that first chance that I got.

@26:21 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Okay, how much pause was there before your response do you think?

@26:25 - Joseph Lucanie

Remember yesterday we were talking about nonverbal cues? Yeah. I bit my teeth so hard, I still remember thinking I was gonna crack them.

Because I knew I couldn't respond with what I was thinking. And I knew that if my fist started tightening up, that wasn't gonna be good.

So I had to be complete control of my body language. So I literally said nothing for about two seconds.

And it was just nothing but just sirens and fires and bad stuff going on in my head.

And I literally just sat there and I was like.

@26:55 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

The monkeys on the symbol sped up?

@26:59 - Joseph Lucanie

Oh yeah. The monkeys. The monkey was sharpening the edges of the symbol. Like let's go. 

@27:03 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

We got to kill this mother effort.

@27:06 - Joseph Lucanie

So I literally paused for two seconds. I ripped my teeth and I was like, you know, I was like, well, that's your entire, that's your opinion.

You're entitled to your opinion. And I appreciate the opportunity of working with you. Depositive. And you know what, every time that guy got a job going forward, you knew he had an additional increase on every one of his hours.

Every single one of them. And funny thing was, is remember I told you, I had been like a guy named Walter.

Yeah. His name was Walter too. It was a different Walter. 

@27:36 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Oh, you got a thing for Walters then. I got a thing for Walters. Oh man.

Okay. That's crazy. And James actually just said 15% asshole tax added. Yeah, definitely. I've put a couple of F-you tabs on some jobs myself in the past.

That one sounds really demeaning though, as we said. Did you still, was it enough do you think? Did the asshole tax help you?

@28:06 - Joseph Lucanie

The thing was, is it, I realized I didn't actually get closure until I got a little bit older. And the reason why was this, people don't do things for no reason, right?

I later found out that he was a miserable man. He had children that wanted nothing to do with him.

He had all the money in the world. His house was a castle. His wife was one of several in the past, hated him, hated him, his children hated him.

I never talked about having friends. And I realized, you know what? That's on him. And he gets to die with that money.

But I never have to be him. I just have to take his money. And I was okay with that. 

@28:52 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

So the reality actually sounds like someone who invested a decade and countless hours.

to be maybe respected in his field as a neurosurgeon, did you say?

@29:06 - Joseph Lucanie

He was a neurosurgeon that only worked with infants.

@29:10 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Yeah, so crazy specialized. Good for him, niches get riches. Extremely difficult niche to get into, I would imagine. Maybe 14 years of education, trial and error to get there.

@29:22 - Joseph Lucanie

He was a much older man. He was in his late 70s, still practicing.

@29:22 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

But in reality, how would you feel if you spent that much of your life just to learn your niche and then get stuck in that and have invested so much and lost sight of your balance so much that you were actually making more than him and working less than him, I would imagine.

@29:43 - Joseph Lucanie

At the end of the day, I don't think that he was comfortable knowing that I didn't believe I was less than him.

I think there was a part of him that needed to know that he was better than someone else. And it didn't matter who that someone else was.

And I just happened to be this young, impressionable kid that he had to pay.

@30:00 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Subservient.

@30:02 - Joseph Lucanie

But he was. 

@30:04 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

There you go. Guys, if you're live in the chat, if you're in the room right now, if you've had a story like that, let us know.

I think Joseph's got a couple more teed up we'll go through today.

@30:15 - Joseph Lucanie

Yeah. Oh yeah. 

@30:17 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Yeah, and Greg says unhappy old coot. I think that that's pretty accurate. Exactly, exactly. All right, let's tee up another one then. 

@30:22 - Joseph Lucanie

Okay. So then have you ever had customers that say that they have to haggle?

Like they're just like, no matter what, they've got to haggle.

This is the non-negotiable is what they're gonna do. 

@30:35 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

And in some cultures it's expected.

@30:40 - Joseph Lucanie

And you know what? It's not actually that culture. We're gonna talk about that culture as well. Cause that's the third story.

But this one was just a typical American family that wanted to come to me, middle-class, regular size home, nothing special going on here.

But once again, it was a generator. Go figure, right?

@31:01 - Joseph Lucanie

I ended up going into them and we had presented different choices and this was about like seven, eight o'clock at night.

I'm already there. It's dark. They've wanted this option. They're looking at my top option and they're like, you know what, Joe, I like it.

I like you, but we are not paying that price. We do not pay sticker full sticker. We do not pay MSRP.

So if you want our business, you're going to tell us what the real number is for this. And normally when you hear that, what do you think?

Like, how does that, how would that make you feel, Clay?

@31:27 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

It makes me feel like a stone that's not going to budge and like, you know, where, where is the budging point? What does this look like now?

I'm being put in check to reduce my prices and ultimately my profitability. It's not a good feeling.

@32:00 - Joseph Lucanie

We're not doing this. I don't care what you say, you could be a good salesperson but you're not getting us if you don't reduce your price.

So they said, what's your best number? I said, all right, all right, you got me. I turned it around, I looked at my presentation, I circled the number and I passed it back to them.

And they just looked at me and they're like, it's the same number. I was like, it's the same service.

I was like, what are you looking for me to discount? Do you not want the five years of service?

Do you not want the five years of warranty? Do you not want the winterization of electronics protection? Cause I got five other options that are lower than the price you're asking for.

If you want that option, that's what it costs. How would you like to proceed? And I'm like, I'm sorry.

I was like, I have five other choices. What would you like to do? And she's like, all right, we'll just have to do that top option.

And she did the top option.

@33:05 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Nice. Good. Safe. 

@33:06 - Joseph Lucanie

But the reason why it's so important to never, ever, ever discount something is because the moment you do, you will never have a customer who is more scrutinized on everything you're doing.

Because in the customer's mind, they think we have these numbers padded, right? Whether it's true or not. They think we have these padded numbers.

So when you told them, I need to do it for this number, and this is my bottom number, and then somehow you come in with a lower number, they're wondering what corners you're going to cut.

And that customer will be more unhappy and will be more Hawking you on every single opportunity than if you had just had them to pay full price.

Because when they pay full price, they can expect full service. When they get a discounted service, they get a discounted price.

Are any of us looking at cut corners on the side of the screen? service we're going to provide.

I know I wasn't.

@34:01 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

No.

@34:03 - Joseph Lucanie

So that's why you can't handle in those circumstances. 

@34:05 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Really good point.

And it reminds me of this wine study.

@34:12 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

I'm going to tie it into this because essentially put a hundred people in front of three different glasses of wine and they tell all a hundred people, listen, on the left, we've got the low grade, in the middle we've got the mid grade, on the right we've got the high grade.

We want you guys to taste each of the wines individually like a double blind test kind of thing, right?

And then write notes on and select your preferred wine. And everyone's thinking like, okay, they're trying to see if we can actually recognize flavor profiles in aged and more high quality wines.

So naturally all a hundred people select the high grade wine with notes on how the flavor profile was better and lasted and would pair better with certain things they liked.

@35:00 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

The challenge was that they're all the same wine.

@35:05 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

So after that was revealed, what does that tell us about people and what they really want?

@35:10 - Joseph Lucanie

Perceived value is everything.

@35:12 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Perceived value is everything. They chose the high-grade wine. And this is actually so fundamental to so many of the processes and scripts and everything that we teach.

And why it's so, so important that your price isn't out there when they're choosing their wine. It's not time yet.

We need to narrow it down to what kind of wine they prefer. Then we can talk price.

Would you agree with that? 

@35:42 - Joseph Lucanie

I agree completely. You know, at the end of the day, price is the least valuable thing when you're saying, am I solving your problem, am I making you happier from me being here?

Am I solving something that would cause you more frustration in the future? And then lastly, can you afford to be a wine maker?

Another reason is when we offer six choices, you can say, sure, which option would you like to discount? Which you want a top option to be less?

Okay, well, I have five options beneath that. Why don't you look at those? So instead of saying, no, I won't, it's always, I'm happy to help you with that.

Which of these are you looking at? So Clay, you're a hundred percent right.

@36:25 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Super valuable piece, right? Super, super important to know that and recognize that about people. At the end of the day, guys, let's be honest.

Cash is trash. Cash flow is king and that's true for everybody. Your business, your personal, your clients, your prospects, your friends, your family, your siblings, your parents, everyone.

Inflation means cash is depreciating. It's a mechanism for exchange and nothing more. already expired. The price of the pump went up today here.

I've got to give you a Canadian metric here. We're almost $2 a litre for regular gasoline. Let me help you with the conversion.

There's 4 litres per US gallon. I'm paying $8 a gallon for gasoline in a major central hub of Canada, 40 minutes from the US border, and we make our own oil and gas.

The point is inflation. Not a stitch and bitch, but this is real. Cash is trash. Talk about cartel kingpins.

Pablo Escobar's biggest challenge was rats were eating his cash. He couldn't actually dispose of cash fast enough. We're in an attention.

@37:56 - Joseph Lucanie

What a problem.

I have another story I want to share. that's okay, because these things- 

@37:59 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Let's squeeze it in.

@38:02 - Joseph Lucanie

Squeeze it in, okay. I've made it clear that I live near a ultra-orthodox Hasidic community. And I'm not gonna speak to any stereotypes because some are true, some are not.

But one of the stereotypes is that certain people don't want to pay or that they're cheap. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not.

But right before one of the high holidays, I was given a call to go out to repair a service.

And we realized the service was shut off because the outside, they never paid their electric bill. And when we actually went there to re-energize the circuit, we found it was all exposed cloth wiring on the overhead line.

And you can see the aluminum coming through it. It was a complete hazard. The panel itself was also, there was water in it.

It was corroded. It was not safe. So the utility company wouldn't turn it back on. So they had to call us because once the high holiday comes, they can't operate anything.

Their homes, most of their homes are. The automated so that they can abide by their cultural laws of, I'm not going to turn on a light switch.

I'm not going to cook. I'm not going to do anything, but he would have to have stayed many days in the house with no power and not be able to cook or feed himself or anything with big concern, pretty big concern, right?

@39:19 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Yeah.

@39:20 - Joseph Lucanie

Yeah. So I remember it was a lot of work and what ended up happening was it was going to be an emergency rate.

And I was like, listen, to change this, a significant amount of work. It was several thousand dollars to do.

And the first thing he did was he grabbed his beard and he told, and he was like, no. And he's yelling at the sky.

He's like, it's too much. It's too much. I can't do it. And we went back and forth with objection handling skills.

And every time he's like, I can't, I can't, I can't. He's like, I've got a cousin who lives in Brooklyn who said he could do this job for $600.

I'm like, okay, so why isn't he here? Well, he's in Brooklyn, it's the high holiday. He can't travel. So eventually we got to the point where I was like, listen, I can't do it for that price and do it today and not corners on the cut corners on the quality.

I wish you the best, but I'm clearly not the best fit. Got my van, I started driving away. I didn't get two blocks away before I see this man on foot, old man chasing me.

He's chasing me down the street and I'm driving like 20 miles an hour. He is sprinting. I finally pull over.

I'm like, did I forget a tool? He hangs on my window. I'm like, what can I do for you, sir?

He goes, I need you to come back. How much was it? I gave him the number. He pulls a ShopRite shopping bag out of his vest pocket and he pulls out stacks of hundreds and he starts counting them out and he gave me $300 more and he says, do it right.

@40:53 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Wow.

@40:55 - Joseph Lucanie

Yeah. And that job got done perfect that night. And he did it. He's like, oh. But the fact was is that we can't believe when people say no, when they say no, that is often them just saying, I don't want to, it doesn't mean I don't need to, it means I don't want to.

And that's a very big separation because people still need your services.

@41:21 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Definitely, definitely. In fact, I mean, going back to challenging really their mental model or their framework of an approach to money is likely flawed.

And by likely flawed, I mean very likely flawed, right? What's the percentage of people that don't even have a retirement fund at this point in America?

@41:46 - Joseph Lucanie

I wish I knew, but it's probably a disgustingly low number.

@41:50 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

It's high, it's high, right? You could walk up to almost anyone on the street and say, hey, sir, how much are you saving for retirement?

Or how much do you think you need for retirement? And they'll always say, one million. If they don't actually have this worked out, they say some lofty goal like a million, which really isn't anything anymore.

It's nothing. It's just a ceiling that they've built from their childhood or whatever when they perceived a million to be a lot.

If you could make a dollar a second, you'd have a million dollars in 11.6 days. Random useless fact, almost, except it gives you a huge perspective on what a million really is.

Anyways, okay, what's the action item? How do we get through this, Joseph? Help us. Show us the way.

@42:36 - Joseph Lucanie

All right. This is the way, right? So the thing that I want to communicate for the action item, the very first thing is to simply have the understanding of what I touched on earlier.

When people are trying to haggle with you, it means one of two things. It either means that they don't believe you believe in your price or they don't believe that you’re sold is on the price that you have. So the first thought is to say, are they haggling because they're disrespecting you?

Not all the time, but they are haggling you to test the waters. Because if you budged, if they're like, well, how much is this really?

And you're like, well, I mean like, you know, normally we do, they got you. That's it. They've got you, you're done.

So the first action assignment is to believe the number you need to charge. If you don't, if you're not fully on board with it, talk to your boss, talk to your supervisor and say, show me the numbers, add them up.

Why are we charging what we have to charge? Cause once you're sold, you're sold. 

@43:51 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Can I add something? Excuse my [inaudible] Fuck price books 

@44:02 - Joseph Lucanie

Go ahead. I will never use a price book. I have my reasons for pricing. I don't like price books.

A price book was literally the reason that made me lose complete and utter faith in one of the companies I was working in.

So no price books with me. But the all-star action goes a little bit beyond that because the first action was you have to understand it.

Right? It doesn't mean you're taking action on it. It just means that you understand it. The all-star action is you need to make a promise to yourself that one, I will always offer six options.

Why six options? Because if someone wants to haggle you and you only gave one number, someone's going to win and someone's going to lose.

They're going to tell you, I want it less. You're going to say, I can't give it to you less.

But if someone has six options and they tell you, I want it less, you can say, sure. I'm happy to do that for you.

We've got five other choices that are less than that. How would you like to proceed? That's all it is.

And then eventually they're going to be like, no, I want that one. Why do you want that one? I like the warranty, I like the service, I like the enhancement, I like that you're renovating it.

Okay, so how do you want to proceed?

@45:18 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Love that. I love the passion. You guys, you can tell Joseph's clearly very energetic, very passionate about this topic and having those options.

It's something that we discussed again yesterday, right after we ran a little clinic, a 40 minute class on building six options from scratch, blank piece of paper, how you can do it and implement that in your business without the need for price books, without the need for the new flat rate or profit rhino or insert other price books slash option companies that I can throw sand at.

You can do it simply. Don't let being a small contractor be in the way of this. Don't let being a big contractor and already having some momentum into another app.

get in the way of this. There is a simple solution. And that's why we keep saying, we're here to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level service.

You guys, thank you for joining us again. And we look forward to seeing you again tomorrow.

Joseph, any closing thoughts?

@46:15 - Joseph Lucanie

Other than, you know what guys, I just absolutely love being here and working with you.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to be able to serve. I'm really hoping that these lessons can help change this industry.

And Clay, I wouldn't want to do it any other than you.

@46:31 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Appreciate that. And James asked him, where is that? That class was for our paid clients, but we did a live yesterday in the group that began to talk about a lot of the different techniques and the foundations of it.

So we can go ahead and watch that repeat and replay and recite that stuff. And if you need more than that, feel free to DM us, reach out.

We'll happily show you the way. Cheers to your success. Bye for now.