Episode 9 - Best Electrician Hack: Following Up on Customers

@34:39 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Welcome back to Electropreneur Secrets. We're here to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing. and deliver consistent premium level service.

Joseph, today we're talking about why you should follow up and why it's so important. And you guys just missed the inside edge where we're live on our group talking for a few minutes on this already.

But now I've hit record. This can be on the podcast too. And we were just discussing- Twice is just as nice.

Yeah, yeah, do it twice, just as nice. We were just discussing how important this is and how there's so much being left in the wake.

And if you think about actually, we have a lot of statistics that support this. There's a lot of information.

We're not just making this up. There's a ton of data. And while data sucks, it's boring. Man, does it help to make decisions that are informed.

Mm-hmm. Oh my God. So can we talk a bit about the result that this one former client saw using your custom script, Joseph?

@35:52 - Joseph Lucanie

Is that okay? Yeah, I'd love to.

@35:54 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Okay, so he was going from the average, maybe what, zero, one call or something?

@36:00 - Joseph Lucanie

He was following up. He was doing anywhere from zero to two calls a month that he was actually closing up unsold jobs.

So a technician had gone out there and physically quoted a job and the customer had declined it. And now he's got a stack of papers on his desk of these are all the unsold calls, call them.

And going in blind, he was getting zero to two. And I can't blame him. The fact that he got two without a process is impressive, right?

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

Yeah, and I gotta say, like how many of us have that stack? Unsold, right? We're no different. There's a ton of people that express interest all the time but the timing's just not quite right.

Or something else distracted us, right? Because no one's busy, are they? No one out there is actually busy in their day-to-day life.

I think that's a really important piece to hit here. There's a huge advantage just from giving people just another drip.

And statistically they say actually between five and 12. touches is when people buy. So we're actually already in a bit of an anomaly.

I consider it. It's service electrical because quite often we'll try to make the sale in the first two to three touches.

It's also why I love CRM so much and the communications, all the extra little notifications. Hey, check out your hub.

Hey, we've got this book for this date. Hey, that date came. I'll be there in 20 minutes. Reminder of your appointment today.

So we're, we're touching on people multiple times to try to get them more and more comfortable with our service.

And I went on a bit of a tangent here, but just imagine, right? These people are busy. So you tell me with that said, do you have a big stack of unsold clients?

People that you really don't know what happened. All you know is you didn't get the job. And two, if you can agree that these people, maybe at least some of them, haven't even made a decision yet.

Especially if it's still within weeks. If you can agree with that, then this is gonna be valuable for you.

So he was going from maybe none to one sold. Yeah, per month. And then what happened following that?

@38:13 - Joseph Lucanie

So what ended up happening was we designed the process and we introduced our process to him of the ways that we can best do a follow-up.

And he consistently started improving and he actually showed 200% increase within the first month. And then within the course of under a year, he ended up, so he went from zero to four.

So, or one to four or two to four, either way he was showing massive improvement. But the thing is, is that the big win was that within a year, he had gone up to selling consistently 18 calls per month.

@38:49 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Wow.

@38:50 - Joseph Lucanie

So he went from zero and he was consistent. It wasn't like you just had a hot month and that was it.

Like he was consistently selling upwards of 18 per month. So he was showing in. an 1800% increase and these were jobs under a sitting man.

He just had a process and he dialed it in. What gets inspected gets managed, or gets managed gets measured.

@39:11 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

I love that. I love that. And now, as you say that I'm having a bit of a paradigm shift about all the comments I see on the Facebook wall of people saying you don't, you just leave it.

They don't want you to move on. That to me feels like a very personal thing. Like if they don't like me, fine.

@39:26 - Joseph Lucanie

But it's not really that most times, is it?

@39:29 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Oh my God, can I touch on that?

@39:31 - Joseph Lucanie

Please. The reason why people do that, and you really can't blame them at the end of the day, is we touched about this a little earlier, but a lot of technicians, we sell from the heart.

We're emotional people. We love what we do. We love who we do it for. And we believe that we're doing it the best and no one else can touch our quality.

So you show up and you put your heart on there on a platter and you serve it to them.

And you're like, this is me. And they say, no. And they say, you're too much. We don't like you.

And they go away. That's all. Massive ego blow. It really hurts a lot of people to take it personally.

So why would we want them, or why can we expect them to come back after licking their wounds in the van to be willing to call back this customer and get more abuse?

But if you have a process that can explain why your calling is in the best interest of the customer and not that it's in the best interest of you, the customer has motivation to continually listen to the conversation.

People will only take time out of their days if your conversation can help them either escape pain or run towards pleasure.

That's really it.

@40:37 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

I love that. And I love what you touched on with the personal piece, especially as this relates to growing your business.

This is why having a process in place and one that you've mastered personally so that you can teach someone else to take it and grow it for you is so important.

Because even if we got that all star player, even if we attracted them, which they're gonna be attracted by.

by a process and realistic expectations, by the way. Even if we got them, if we weren't dialed in in that process, if we didn't have that figured out we weren't able to lead them through it consistently likely they would fall into what we call professional autonomy, not quite knowing where all the pieces fit.

And they could be frustrated by that and begin to pull away. Next thing you know, they're going somewhere else.

So this process follow up, I mean don't just listen to what we say, watch what we do. I'm not going to pull up our screen and all our KPI but I'm telling you there is a most definitely an eight step follow-up process that we've got listed right now for our stuff.

And you should have something in place too. If you want to capture these 18 leads a month that this one electropreneur in this example did is consistently doing.

I got to ask one more question on that for our viewers, listeners now. Just trying to picture what 18 calls a month is worth.

What's your your average ticket?

@42:02 - Joseph Lucanie

That's actually a very important thing.

@42:04 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Good question. What's your lifetime customer value? Keep in mind, these are not one-time customers necessarily. We started to get to know our lifetime customer value on average.

It's average ticket plus a multiplier effect. Holy cow, this is powerful stuff. And it's sitting there in a stack likely, or on your CRM.

@42:28 - Joseph Lucanie

It's in the wind. Breaks my heart, man. It really does. Because in addition to that, if we can just really dig in more into it, you guys already freaking paid for these leads.

You not only paid for the lead, you paid your technician to go out there and physically try to close it.

And you probably paid for any sort of design or follow up if you had to do another presentation afterwards.

So theoretically, you paid for three touches of connection. And you're not going to try and follow up on it for free?

@43:00 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

And that cost per acquisition is not light these days.

@43:03 - Joseph Lucanie

It's not. I mean, everyone's complaining about leads.

@43:06 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

So why are you throwing away that money? You know, exactly. And a lot of people would say, well, maybe 50, 60, 70 bucks a lead.

Maybe we're thinking more shallow and we're just looking at what we're paying for Google LSA per lead.

@43:17 - Joseph Lucanie

But you've said a number before Joseph in your business, you guys took a much deeper approach and I think you arrived at hundreds of dollars per lead.

Yeah. It was 200 to $500 per lead was the eventual metric that you would track. Because it's not just the clicked link, right?

Like, okay, I had to build the website. You had to pay someone to do it. You had to track it.

You had to monitor it. The office had to be responsible for it. Someone had to take this job on, which means someone was being paid to do it.

And when you factor in all those hours and all those infrastructural costs, you look at it and say, wow, my home advisor cost me what it's like, it only costs you 50 bucks, but you had to pay.

your time to look at the messages and you have to pay your office to call them and you have to pay the office to track them, pay the technician to go to them, it adds up real fast.

@44:12 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

I agree. It's crazy. It's crazy. And who wouldn't miss that? I mean, really, most of us are just trying to keep this thing on the rails, right?

We've got enough hats that we're wearing. That's why Joseph and I are here for you guys five days a week to help you with this.

These go up to the podcast, guys. You can get that link on the main page in the about section as well.

If you're listening, you can also join us on the Facebook group, our community of electricpreneurs. And we're here five days a week, like I said, to help you with this stuff and nothing, I mean, nothing grinds my gears.

I don't want to say worse, but more than seeing information that's put out in a generalist fashion because generalizations kill clarity.

I've seen the same thing with the door. and we came and we did an episode on how to make 30K from a single customer with a door hanger campaign.

It really happened. Now we're here with this followup, how to get 18 customers a month back from a simple followup.

How long would this process take to run Joseph?

@45:18 - Joseph Lucanie

Realistically, if you took five minutes in this engagement with a customer, you're taking a while. Like if you think about it, if you wanted to say in the best to worst case scenario, if you had between five to 15 minutes per call, you've got a talker.

You've got someone who's really talking to you. Can you spare 15 minutes per customer to get a job?

@45:40 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

And it's a process literally. So this thing's dialed into a script.

@45:44 - Joseph Lucanie

It wouldn't need to be you who does it.

@45:46 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Give it to your CSR. It's the perfect tool for them to follow up. And then you're truly, truly embracing an entire journey for your customers when they come in, or prospects at this point from the front.

door right to the review, repeat, referral, or if none of the above yet, that follow-up process to try to lock them in again, and maybe just move them that extra little bit.

Just get that little bit of clarity and talk through it one more time that might get you back to the sales call and to another average ticket and to another lifetime customer value.

@46:26 - Joseph Lucanie

Can I speak to some magic here? Go ahead. So, the thing that some people don't recognize is that, you actually touched on it, and it's one of the reasons why I love working with you, the customer's experience.

That's really what you have to consider. But there's also a bit of psychology that comes into this. If the customer tells you no, or they've said, we're thinking about it, we'll get back to you, something that communicates not now, right?

You can say, okay, is it safe to say that this is just a not now, or is it a never project?

The goal is, is that if you can even have a tentative appointment, a placeholder appointment, something on the calendar for, let's say a week to two weeks from now, the customer is proven to be less likely to even consider getting estimates and getting other quotes.

Because as long as you can position yourself as someone who's able to solve their problem and you're on the calendar to solve that problem, the dissonance has gone away or it's drastically reduced in the customer's mind.

So their pain has reduced, which means their desire to need to spend time taking off work and calling other competitors or giving up their weekends or being willing to mine for online quotes goes down.

So by the time you do happen to come back, a lot of times they'll be like, yeah, well, we didn't get an estimate, but we liked what you said.

So we're just going to go with you. And then you're like, oh, well, if I didn't book that placeholder appointment, what would have happened?

@47:58 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Yeah. What are they going to tell about it?

@48:00 - Joseph Lucanie

No one. I can't tell anyone about this. But if they have a fantastic experience, Ah, then we'll tell everyone.

@48:08 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

So in our service loop DM little drawing that we use to illustrate how we see business and how we see the buyer's journey, we recognize right away that the second or third step of every buyer's journey is communication.

And what that means is that every single customer refers. It's up to us to decide how they're going to refer.

They're going to say something bad. They're going to say nothing at all. Get quiet when they're asked, or are they actually going to pass us on and say, wow, service loop electrical.

These guys rocked my world. Like even when I didn't make a decision, they followed up, gave me more value and helped me through and finish the deal.

Now it's done. That's not pushy for most people. It's still a great experience. In fact, it's better because we touched again, built more rapport, built more trust and made the sale and got their wish.

It's filled. essentially.

@49:01 - Joseph Lucanie

You know, you also touched on something else as well that I love. You said you don't have to be pushy.

And that's the thing that I think so many people are worried about. So if you're listening to us right now and you're like, I don't like scripting because it's going to make me sound pushy.

They already told me, no, can I, can I give a little bit of value drip about this script and kind of give some ideas of why it's not going to be pushing?

@49:23 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Oh yeah. We're going to give this away anyway.

@49:25 - Joseph Lucanie

Oh, I can't wait. So for anyone who's listening to it, there are certain things that you lead with. And the thing is, is that this script, as well as any script that you're doing outbound has to be in the customer's best interest to want to give you their time.

Because if you think about it, you don't know what they're doing right now. It's two o'clock for you. It's noon for you, whatever time it is for you, you yourself don't know what they're doing.

They could be working, they could be in the bathroom, who cares? But the thing is, is that they're going to answer.

When they answer, you want to say is Hi, Clay, this is Joe, the customer service manager here at Serviceable.

How are you doing today? I'm just following up to make sure you got everything you paid for on your most visit, recent visit from John.

Do you have a couple of minutes just to make sure you got everything you paid for?

@50:12 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

What if I said no?

@50:14 - Joseph Lucanie

If you said no, you don't have a couple of minutes, that's fine. Well, when would be a better time a day for me to reach out to you?

@50:20 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Yeah. And I'm either going to come up with a time or be resistant again. That's okay. But if he says yes, let's go back to the yes now.

@50:30 - Joseph Lucanie

Sure. If he says, well, that's fine. I would say, well, thank you so much for your time. Always come from a place of gratitude.

If you don't mind me asking, what do you think about the level of service that Clay provided to you?

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

It was really good. I'm just not really sure I know what I want yet.

@50:46 - Joseph Lucanie

Well, that's okay. And believe it or not, I consider that fantastic because that's the reason why I'm giving you a call.

And if you don't mind, what did you think about the level of service that Clay gave you? I know you said you weren't really sure, but did you want to experience the Clay divide?

@51:00 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Yes. This was good, but I just couldn't get clear on it. I wasn't sure if it was right at this time.

@51:06 - Joseph Lucanie

Okay, well, firstly, would you mind if I let Clay know the nice things you said about him in the service?

@51:10 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Of course.

@51:12 - Joseph Lucanie

Okay, awesome. Well, I'd love to give you a little more clarity. And the thing is I noticed, I'm looking here at the notes and it looks like the reason why Clay visited your home was because you didn't have power to your master bedroom.

@51:22 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Is that correct? Yeah, that's right.

@51:25 - Joseph Lucanie

Okay, well, I really see in the visit that Clay had a concern with how the ceiling fan was currently wired in the master bedroom.

Now, the reason why he had offered doing a renovation to you was because we had recognized that the home was still on an original outdated wiring system.

Now, if you don't mind me asking, what was the reason you chose not to have that addressed?

@51:47 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

At the time, we just have an extension cord run and we're making it work for now, but it just became a bit of a timing and a price thing, honestly.

@51:56 - Joseph Lucanie

And that makes complete sense. And I wouldn't blame you for wanting to do things involving. timing and price. Those are two major concerns.

The thing is, is that we really do feel like this would actually help enhance the safety and the reliability of the home and the family.

So just so we know how to better communicate this in future what would have motivated you to get it taken care of?

@52:17 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

I think maybe if it was more what I expected as a price I thought maybe it would just be something like flipping a breaker that I didn't understand.

@52:27 - Joseph Lucanie

Hmm. Well, I was going to say, I know when we came out we provided a range of choices from premium to economy but what if we did this?

Would you be open to having one of our quality control specialists come out? He'll reevaluate the project as well as the pricing and see what we can do to accommodate that for you?

@52:42 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Yeah, that sounds fair.

@52:44 - Joseph Lucanie

Okay. So that's perfect. So let's just do this. Let's do a quick review. So when on the calendar would be the best date for you?

When would be the best time that I could come out? Are there certain days of the week where time to do our best for you and your family?

@52:56 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Yeah, Friday, Friday afternoon, if you could I know that's near the weekend, but.

@53:00 - Joseph Lucanie

Friday afternoons are best for us. Well, you're the reason for my service, not interruption to it. So I can't blame you.

If you want to take Friday afternoon, I'd be happy to provide that service for you. So what we'll do is we'll have you on the calendar on Friday in the afternoon where our certified electrician is going to come out and he's going to address this and help brighten your day.

We're just going to call the day before to confirm the appointment so you know you're getting great service. And we'll also send you a call or text when we know we're on our way.

Do you have any questions at all on this point?

@53:25 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

No, thanks for your time.

@53:26 - Joseph Lucanie

Looking forward to it. Not a problem. Well, Clay, on behalf of the entire team here at Service Electrical, just thank you for the opportunity to try and help you with this.

I really look forward to helping you brighten your day. Have an amazing day, Clay.

@53:38 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Thanks, man. So in doing that, guys, we just ran the whole play. Joseph knows this thing front to back.

He helped design it, of course, but it only took a few minutes, even with some resistance that I presented.

@53:51 - Joseph Lucanie

Three, four minutes tops, right?

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

Yeah. The other thing I think that's really important to point out is the no is not a rejection. It's still a de...

data point, we're learning, as you said earlier, I believe, we're learning and collecting data about what's working for us and what isn't.

@54:10 - Joseph Lucanie

Correct, because it's either going to be two directions that go here and that's why the process works so well.

It's either do they have time or do they not have time? Yes or no. If you have time, thank you.

If you don't have time, when can I come? If they say that they like the service, great. Let me thank you for saying those nice things.

If they don't like the service, that's also great, because then I get the opportunity to learn of what we did wrong and I have the opportunity to correct it to a customer that I truly do care about.

And that thing can consistently present itself through the script.

@54:44 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Totally. Okay, guys, we're running low on time here. I want to get right to the actions. As always, we want to give you something actionable.

Why? Because we know that if you go and take action and turn this into big wins, you're going to turn around and tell us about it.

And that's what. feeds this whole need right here. We want to help you guys succeed. So sharing that, having you win is a win for us.

So please do. And action item one I'd like to suggest is to take what you heard here today, just take that knowledge and just recognize that it was a simple customer service outreach and a follow-up to each call and start doing that for yourself.

Start doing that for the pile that you have just from this week. We just start. You don't have to go too far back, but we just have to start.

I can't remember, I get a quote here, but you don't have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great.

So if you don't like the way we did it, do it your way. That's fine. But take that customer service centric approach, find out what went well, what didn't go great, and find out if they've purchased yet because you're going to have gold to mine in that group.

All Star action. Let's start this off by saying you can get this script from us guys. If you typed All Star in the chat on our live Facebook post right now, or during the replay, we'll send you this unsold follow-up script for both email call and voicemail.

We've got two different scripts to cover all three situations that will result in an increase in sales, hopefully at your average ticket price.

So taking action on that would be a massive win for you guys. I do feel that James says All Star.

Thank you very much, sir. Did you have anything to add to that, Joseph?

@56:37 - Joseph Lucanie

I would say I want to add to the All Star action. Yeah. So it's great that they're going to request it and I'm glad that they're doing all that, but I'd say even taking it further is we all know, no matter how efficient you are, there are calls that have been unsold.

None of us are at a hundred percent conversion. And if you are, you're going to get a big hold of it.

100% conversion. And if you are you're probably lying. So the thought is saying, you know what, any job that you don't sell, simply you write it down on your post call self-diagnostic form and simply write it as unsold.

Because if you're tracking those forms anyway, every single month when you do your project review, you will also be able to look at and say, if you're on sold calls, let me look at them.

And then you can compare how the whole call went and you can start seeing themes of why you lost it as well as how you can guess if you get your foot back in the door.

That is the all-star action for this.

@57:35 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

I love that. Great action. Okay, anything else, Joseph?

@57:40 - Joseph Lucanie

No, I feel like we definitely hit this. I feel like I can talk about this all day though.

@57:45 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

So you're gonna have to put a muzzle on me. All right, here we go. Hard stop then. Cause this was a longer one.

We're at about 25 minutes, 20 minutes-ish. Guys, thank you for joining us. Electropreneur Secrets. We're here every day, five days a week, rather.

help you succeed, helping you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver consistent premium level service. I'm Clay, this is Joseph and we can't wait to see you again tomorrow.

@58:12 - Joseph Lucanie

Take care guys.

@58:13 - Clay Neumeyer (serviceloopelectrical.com)

Cheers.