Ep 191 - Different Pitches Need Different Swings

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of Electricpreneur Secrets, the Electricians podcast For me and my homie, Joseph Lucani. Happy birthday, joe. We're going to get into that in a second Show up for you guys, five days a week, even on our birthdays, to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium-level electrical service. Brother, how are you doing today?

I'm doing really good and I appreciate you thinking of me on my birthday. It's 33, 33 rotations on this earth, pretty cool and surprised that I made it this long, but I'm grateful to be here with you guys. I can't think of a better way of spending my birthday than trying to influence and support as many lectures as we can.

That's great, man, that's really great. I myself can appreciate that you're here on this day, your birthday as I like to show up on mine too and keep working. It's just another day of the week. Unless it lands on a weekend, then I take it off. But typically, man, we just keep showing up, we just keep helping. That's one of the things that we enjoy doing in this little endurance race, but it's also an example of what needs to be done out there. That consistent show-up rate that really creates massive wins is going to tie directly into what we're talking about today on the show. So thank you for showing up, man. It's truly my pleasure.

I think that showing up also lines up with our 75e challenge, because I've been showing up on that every day since we've started and I'm telling you the consistency has really been helpful.

Awesome, love that. What are you doing for your birthday, joe?

Well, it's an interesting question. Because we have an early session tomorrow morning, as always, and because we're doing the 75e challenge, I'm in bed at 9.45 at the latest, so not going to be too much partying going on. More than likely, I'm going to try and take a little bit of an earlier day, pick up my beautiful girls, order some delicious Indian food, cuddle with my wife later, have an early night Love that. As for the weekend, though, I haven't quite planned that out, but I know I'm going to try and do something with my friends.

All right, man, that's awesome. If I can just drop a compliment for you right here, live on the podcast, and then we'll get started.

Sure, thank you, what do you got?

I just wanted to say how thankful I am that we get to be on this mission together and that I get joined by you, the sales bot the literal, I believe at least. What I believe, though, is you are the best service electrician sales coach on this face of the earth.

That's humbling. That is very, very humbling to hear and thank you so much for keeping me in that high regard in your mind.

No sweat, man, no sweat. And the reason I believe that, for one of them anyways, is everywhere we look, in every corner of this industry. And the very reason we got started because the HVAC and the plumbing and the big three coaches and anyone that's up there with a generalized process teaching that to electricians, was then sending them back out in the field with a lot of question marks, some big mysteries, and you yourself wondered can this really be it? There's got to be more for us.

I agree. I mean, any process that I was taught came from the lens of someone who either taught HVAC or taught plumbing, and they didn't quite translate over and, as a result, I remember being on generator calls the moment I got back from training and the process just did not line up. Things just did not line up and you end up striking out until you're like, okay, I have to say things this way, I have to approach it this way, I've got to go to the panel, I've got to address these commitments. So what I'm grateful to have done is just compiled all the knowledge and all the trainings I've gained over the past decade and just put the filter on it for electricians, because that's what I needed in order to run the play. And now others don't have to take seven years to design their own process. They can just take ours.

It's amazing what you've done, man. I just want to honor you with that this day your birthday again. But also in more depth than that, a big piece of this puzzle that we've seen is it's not just that you created a single process like many other industries, like many other electricians are running. You've actually got detailed four different processes that all relate to a different. As for the metaphor in the title today, different pitches need different swings a baseball metaphor. But honestly, if you swing it all types of pitches like a curveball or a changeup like a fastball what happens?

I mean you're either going to swing and miss, or you're going to foul it out, or you're going to pop flight and someone's going to catch easily.

It's a strike right. It's not helping you. And it wouldn't help baseball players and it wouldn't help hockey teams to not study the other team and what they're doing and adapt their play. And it wouldn't help MMA and martial arts to not study the opponent and know what to expect so that they can adapt their process and run the solid play. And if you didn't do that, you'd never have the level of champions that we have today. And so how could service electrical be any different when we know that a demand call, where there's something wrong, versus an opportunity call, where you might have heard before hey, I'm going to get a few quotes here, just so you know, I'm going to get a few estimates before we decide how could we ever run the same play between those calls?

The only way you could run the same play is if you don't take in consideration the emotional situation that customers in someone who's trying to get a quote for something. It's not an emergency. It's not usually an immediate emergency. There's nothing there that says I have to do this today. So, as a result, their emotions are in a different place. They're able to view things differently Compared to someone who's in a demand call. They have no power A tree came down and took out their power lines, or the GFI that's controlling their coffee pot at 5 30 in the morning, which I'm sure other parents can raise their hand and be like you need that. So you treat them differently to get to the same conclusion, which is the customer saying yes, I want to invest in this with you because I feel that you understand me better than others do.

Really interesting, and that alone actually represents decay in a company across multiple positions, not just the tech at the doorstep. Correct, you got a lot of different situations. If your CSR is unable to recognize the different calls, different needs or whoever's answering the phone God forbid, it's you still and we're not differentiating that Then you might end up or find yourself in a place where, a you don't have trip charges for any types of calls which would be dangerous, or, b you've got the same trip charge diagnostic call out fee, whatever you want to call it for every type of call.

And that alone is going to keep people away. Because, when you think about it, what's the main thing you're trying to get accomplished? When you call someone, obviously you want them to get on the calendar, but when you're calling with something wrong, you want them to have a situation where they say, yeah, they're hearing me All right. Yeah, they get it. Okay, they understand. This is the kind of person I want to work with. I want to work with people that when I call and I say there's something wrong, their first thought is not okay, well, I could be there next week. It's oh, my God, I'm sorry you're going through that. Is everyone okay? Well, I don't want you ever to have to experience that again. That's why we made working with us so easy, and this is how we can get you on the calendar. Empathy moves mountains, yet it's so missing in this industry 100%.

And again, speaking to one of those similar problems is like well then, people get to a place where well, I'm so busy we actually charge for opportunity call-outs too. If you want us to give you an estimate. It's not free. You got to pay 189 bucks.

I mean, that's one way of qualifying people in only a way of do you have $109? There have been people that I've gone to that called me for. Actually, if I can be specific, there was an opportunity call that I went to once where someone said I have two outlets that need to be changed. I thought it was a demand call, but it really was like I want two outlets changed. When I got there, found out that he wanted to get four Tesla chargers installed, needed a 300 amp service and ended up going through a full system redevice. If I had charged to go out for that call, it's very likely he would have gone with someone else, but the fact that we were able to show up recognize. Okay, I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to get something new. I'm not going to charge you for that and then walk into a massive opportunity.

Totally. I love that example. It's easy to see how these are all levers and really practicing in these different ways, these different plays, can allow us to have and create a lot of opportunities, advantages for the company, I mean. Hence, back to the experience and back to what I said earlier you being able to produce 1.3 million consistently to me it's not no offense. The amazing part isn't that you were able to do 1.3 million in a van, which I get the shock that some people experience when you hear that, but we've heard of salespeople doing 2 to 3 million in an electrical home service. You don't deny that it's a big consistency part. That is actually quite remarkable to me, because we all have high months and we all have low months, and when we're on our highs we like to spend like we're on the high, we like to feel like the high will never go away. And even you know timely week we've done on like slow season, back in September when everyone was still on a high. But now we start to see some people falling out of that high and realizing, oh wow, things have slowed down. But again, following this theme that we've always had, if we run the consistent play, you can fill those gaps, your process will serve you and I just to tie this all together with the theme of this week what's getting in the way for different sizes of companies? At different points we touched on the pricing and having that what and the why figured out ahead of the how. We touched on how to begin calls yesterday and really going to the panel first and why that's so important to differentiate you, to serve safety and to serve you, setting the schedule and now, kind of full circle, right back to the front door, as it were, on a value piece that we've given away to many, describing how it really, even from there and just having different processes and understanding the different needs of these can serve you at a higher level. Joe, let me ask you this circle for it, is that why, like I know, this is kind of a loaded question, maybe rhetorical, but is that why you were able to hit it so consistently? Did having different processes for each of the different types of calls really feed into this?

It helps tremendously and I can explain why. Okay, so the reason why we had so many processes was, I believe, and I was often taught, that the small things that you do matter more than the big things. Like many small mistakes add up larger than one big mistake, and all of us, like all sales professionals in the background, we know not to make the big mistakes. Don't shit on your competition. Always make sure you're giving options, show integrity. Those are the big things. The small things are what we designed in our pre-arrival process. The small things are the things that the CSR in the office says, and the small things are checking and looking at the house and pronouncing the name properly. So when you show up to the door, you're already a 10. And when you show up as a 10 and you have a consistent process to help you keep there, even if things go down, you've gone from a 10 to an 8, which is still drastically better than the competitor who showed up as a 6. So it's a consistent process to keep you above the line. Now, as far as all the individual processes go, I personally believe that you need to be prepared almost like a Swiss army knife. It could be a maintenance call that you go to the next call could be a demand call. The next call can be an opportunity call If you only have one process to run. You're trying to fit all these people and all their emotional states into this small, compact box. But what you find is that by trying to fit people into a box, you remove the personality, remove the empathy, remove the deep emotional connection you would have and built, and that emotional connection being someone who's liked, trusted and respected that's really what's going to move the mountains. It's not the sales lines, it's not the objection handling better people become better salespeople and Our process is meant to make better people and that's why I feel like it's so effective.

Yeah, and all the training that I've experienced and working with you through that and helping the people on the inside achieve these massive goals, I've never, not once, seen you not relate a why to a word in the process.

The specific reason for that, please? So, as we mentioned, or at least as I'm sure I've touched on in the past, communication was not a strong point of mine. I Did not know how to talk to people, I did not know how to properly articulate myself, so each word was meticulously put together specifically because I didn't want to say more words than I had to, because have you ever met someone who just talks and talks and talks and talks? Even if they're saying something green, you're not involved. And you're not involved now, you're good. Everything you say tell us in the room here. No, no, it's alright, but like when you're always talking and a relationship is one-sided, the value shifts. You become more of a pest than you become a help. So I wanted to reduce the talking time that I had, while making the times I did talk be impactful. So, as a result, each word, each part of the process was like I need to communicate this so that at the end of the call, I can handle this. If I don't have that, I'm just gonna. I'm good, it's gonna stick to my process and that's gonna help me funnel it.

Nice, I like that. You know I've got a bit of a deep question. I don't think I've ever asked you about this, but in the development of this, how did you Keep your thoughts organized in a way that you could recognize the next change, the next difference that you needed to make Failure? We were developing this process.

Failure is the best, the best teacher. So, like when I first started off like I'd say, 2013, trying to get it all together, I only did 90,000 sales for the first year, mm-hmm. And the reason why was I was trying to be liked by everyone instead of being able to serve everyone, and the first thing that that happened was I made a lot of really good friends. Some of my first customers are still my friends, but they didn't mean that they led to lasting business relationships. Those failures I was able to look at because we were broke. As a joke, I only had to come from somewhere, which means you don't just keep repeating the same thing that got you the bad result. So I would look at it and say, okay, after a year, this is what we've seen, this is what I've seen happen. What would I change? What outcome do I want? Once I know the outcome, which was I don't want people to ask it to be emailed over. I don't want to be left in slow season. I don't want to get. I'll think about it and leave it, like all those objections. I tried to reverse engineer and say, when I was getting these objections, what would I want to say to combat it? So instead of coming up later, I was like what can I put in the process at the beginning that would help me get that answer? So that may gave me the objection I could have something to give back. Brilliant, does that make sense?

It does Awesome. What would you say, now that we're deep diving, if someone's watching this right now, like James, who's with us? That happy birthday too, by the way.

Thank you, james, I appreciate you brother.

If James or anyone else watching this either live in the Facebook group with us right now or afterwards is feeling like, well, what's the sample size before an adjustment? Like trying to get more granular with how to bring this out into their own process. You know, maybe they don't want hours, they don't want to buy anyone, they just want to make their own and go through the seven to 10 year process that you've been on to get to where we're at today. They're not interested in cutting the time off. They're really interested in how do I articulate my offer that sells process and when do I change it. Is there sort of a sample size rule that you use there, joe?

That's a hard question to ask, because what you're realistically asking is if they didn't have a process and they were making their own process? how would they know their sample size? I wouldn't have an answer if they're running their own process. If they ran our process, I can give you a more definitive, because after every single call we run, we run something afterwards called a post call fact. The post call fact reviews everything in the process as well as the individual nuances that could happen in this call. What are the names, the pet names? What was their motivating factors? What was it? How did you peer non-threatening All those individual things, as well as the call type that you ran? After a month you know whether the money's in the bank or it's not. You just do it Either I got paid this month or we're really hurting this month, or moving it sideways. If that's the case, you would have a pile of post call facts. You could say this is went right. On the calls I sold. This is what happened with the calls I didn't sell. What are the consistencies between the two of them? What did I do right on the calls that wanted to buy, was it only demand calls? Was it only opportunities? Was it only maintenance? Was it only at certain price points? And at the ons you didn't sell, say, okay, well, I know what worked. What about these calls didn't help? Now, it doesn't mean that you're gutting your process every month, but at least having the data, you can run it. You can say, okay, every pool job I've had this month I've lost, why? Okay, well, everyone said that I was $3,000 too much. Okay, I can't lower my price because I need this. I either stop doing pools or I have to say what can I do to add value to equate to that $3,000 gap. So knowing the numbers, knowing the facts, will help you, set you free.

You know what I love about what you're saying. There is and this is the science of that KPI and having the numbers out and being able to create data sets, information sets, because that knowledge, once organized, can become actionable power. So as soon as you mentioned it like that, now I'm feeling like what came to my mind. I'm imagining it's not just you at the table anymore. You can have other people collectively helping you imagine the improvements or changes of a process based on the actual facts, like you said. Well, we didn't sell many pools this month. We had six pool opportunities. None of them sold and they all faced this objection Exactly oh, wow, what would we work on then? That type of call and that objection? So I love how you said that. It really takes a lot out of this. I want to add something to this because it's relevant to the title, and then we're going to wrap this up and throw an action item or two on it and a little bow on it. Joe, this has been so valuable I know there's so much value in this conversation so we can keep digging on even tomorrow into really the details of how someone could get this perfected in their business. We mentioned this metaphor of, and maybe even the similarly introduced in the word like but of the athletic components of mastery and how we would review the tape. I just really wanted to reinforce this nugget that you guys can do this to in your business. In fact, I've got it on my calendar even this week for our marketing and our sales to review sales calls, to review recordings, to listen to the words that people used. It's too easy for us to be in first person shoes and to be in that situation and disregard little subtle hints like tonality and body language and little words and nuances that were in between that are actually the super power. That's where the vulnerabilities lie and that's where your best marketing and your best sales and objection handles are actually asleep. They're hibernating in that. Go ahead, joe.

I love where you're at right now, but I have a very specific phrase that could tell you such a small word could mean such a big after effect, please. And that's when someone says, well, I guess I'll just take this one. That I guess means that this person is not sold, they feel backed into a corner or they're not overly committed. That person has a substantially larger chance of being having buyers remorse and then canceling because something came up and all you have to do is simply listen and they say, well, I guess I'll take that one, that's a good choice, I'll do that one. Well, hey, hold on for a second. I don't want you doing anything you're not comfortable with. You said I guess, is this only something you guess you want to do, because I don't want to push you to do anything you don't want? No, no, I do want to do it. Well, why would you use that word then? I wasn't thinking about OK, let's dig into it a little more, so at least hearing it allows you to bring the words out.

Incredible value, man, Incredible. We have trouble keeping these things short. We just talked to you about process sales electrical forever and ever, Joe, Thank you and happy birthday, brother. Can I take the base action?

By all means.

You got an all star in mind.

Well, I'll go for something sure.

OK, I'm going to take the base then let's see if it lines up. If you currently don't differentiate between your calls, I really believe if you're not seeing these pitches as different and you were a hitter at the plate right now, that's what your batting coach would be telling you. Recognize the delivery difference, recognize when they're coming in. Is this something that we can recognize, right? So the demand call, as we mentioned earlier, and the opportunity call would be first and foremost. My recommendation for you here today is to just take note. Is this there's something wrong and I've got extra leverage to get this done as soon as possible. Is this an opportunity where I'm likely to see other estimates that I'm competing with and even recording then when you go to demands, and where those options and everything turns into opportunities? If you can start to just see that and take notice, then you can start to make changes, adapt a process that honors each of those different types of clients and client needs, and I think that would be a huge step to probably whatever Joe's gonna tell you next yes, so the first thing that I wanna address is that remember when we said that better people equal better salespeople.

If you're not emotionally or mentally okay when you come into this call, you will always influence the customer subconsciously because you wanna go in. You say I'm just gonna go in and make a friend. Well, that's great. Good for you on that trying to attempt. But the biggest problem is that if you don't keep yourself at the level that you'd want your customer to be at, they have nothing to mirror, and if they see you as an authority figure, most people try to mirror that. So the all-star action that I'd have is prior to even stepping into the door. Part of our pre-arrival process is mentally making sure that you're okay and that you're gonna be receptive to anything they're gonna say, without any judgment, simply going in saying I'm going to run this play, I'm gonna do so for the right reasons and whatever they're gonna tell me, I'm gonna hear. I'm going to actively try to hear the things that they're saying. If you can go into a conversation with the intent to listen, you will always come out with a better relationship than someone with the intent to talk.

Massive, massive stuff. Guys, this has been episode 191 of Electric Pernur's Secrets, the Electricians podcast, where we show up five days a week to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium-level electrical service. If you're here with us, if you're enjoying this, leave us a review at wherever you found us first. I can't blame you if you wanted to come back tomorrow and talk with us again about how to improve your sales and your service. Get it all right. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Can we see you there?