Ep 198 - How Quote Anxiety Is Destroying Your Future

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to another episode and another week on Electric Pinner Secrets, the electricians podcast, where me and my partner, joseph the sales bot, luke Cainey, go live five days a week to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. Why would we want to do that, joe?

I mean when it comes down to it, I can tell you my why. Why we want to help electricians so bad is because when we started off at least I know when I did there was only HVAC and plumbing coaches to learn from. I feel like having to spend seven, eight years deciphering and decoding and translating isn't an effective strategy for people. If we can cut out all the fog and be like we have something specifically tailored to electricians to help the master sales simplify pricing and actually crush it as premium service providers, would it be wrong of us to do so?

Yeah, I don't think so Be pretty nice, right yeah?

pretty, nice Be pretty nice to do that.

I mean, where there's a gap, we should fill it. It only seems right to help some people with this. So that's what we've been doing and so far it's been working to a tune of well. We're about 35,000 downloads. Now. I don't want to sit here and brag. I'm going to say this modestly, just because it's actually about you guys. It's about you being heroes and us just offering a little bit of guidance for you on your way. We are well over $3 million in reported client wins this year. Now too, joe, which, when we started this, we thought you know what, let's just do a podcast, let's do a day. And we did it, we went live, we went in this group, we did it, we made it work. Okay, let's find this getting on the podcast channels. You know what? Let's do 90 days and see if it's worthwhile. And this entire 11 and a half months, people have been pouring their hearts out, as we do every day, just with tons of grace and tons of wins. And so, hey, I say we keep going. What do you say? Full steam ahead, captain. Full steam ahead Into 2024 and beyond.

I love that you know. 2023 has definitely been my favorite year of all time, but you know what? 2024 has no reason not to be just as awesome.

All right, man, awesome, awesome. Today we've got a pretty heavy topic. In fact, a bit of a trend for the week is quote anxiety topic. For some not so much a problem anymore, but for many still something difficult to deal with. So maybe we'll do a little description here. If you've ever gone to put an estimate in for a project, or even in your service, maybe it's just you were trying to raise your rate and you weren't quite sure if you had enough value in it. Whatever that case may be, and you get there and you arrive at this number and you start to go oh fuck, who would pay this? What if the competitors are lower? What if I miss something? Maybe I'm not high enough? Have you ever had this situation happen to you, joe? Oh, my God, yes.

And I can actually speak to it in, I think, a way that would make a lot of people understand exactly the place and space that it happens. So one it's when you're writing a quote and you wonder if you're too high. But there's also those times when you wonder if you're too low, and I've had those moments as well, where you go in and you don't know what you're facing, because the first thing that comes in is you're in this moment, you're getting ready to give them a price, and then you've got this fear of was I too much, was I too little? I don't know. And because you're not sure of whether you're too high or too little, you don't know if you need to close this job or not. So by not knowing whether you're supposed to close it, not knowing if it's profitable, not knowing if it's not, thank you, you end up in this position where you feel screwed and, as a result, you're not selling at the capacity that you could, because your confidence is non-par with your value.

Deep in, deep in. There's a few things that tie into this, like we did in Objection Handles Week and I'm sure we're going to get into this and full again this week because it's directly relative but that before, during and after value being set up to deliver that client experience. We know there's contractors out there. We know there's gurus in your field electrical contractors who are charging three to 10 times more than you. They're out there. The question is then how and are they suffering from quote anxiety? Every time? You know their service change comes up at $10,000 plus dollars each. You're still at five to six or in some cases, 2,500 to 3,500. We've heard right.

That's the unfortunate truth, because no matter where you are at on that price scale, it's odds are that you think you're the most expensive person. I remember I was doing service changeouts for $1650. And I remember thinking, man, this is a decent deal, but I probably can't charge much more than that. Then it was 2,500. Then it was 3,500. Then it was 4,500. Then it was 6,500. And these things happen and they change. But I guarantee there's someone who's at 10,000 who's still thinking that's where they are, because I remember thinking at every price increase I was the most expensive. But it wasn't the truth. So can we break down why this happens and the things that we can overcome? As far as the scenarios? Absolutely, let's hit it All right. So what quote anxiety is isn't necessarily that it's just an anxiety reaction to a situation. It's that it often stems from a lack of clarity. When you don't know your price, you often don't know where you stand on the value scale, so it's often a source of an inward default. I don't know whether I'm priced the right way, so therefore I don't know if what I'm doing is overcharging. It's directly connected to one or the other. If you knew that your price was accurate and you knew that you have figured it out and you had gotten everything you could to get that number to as tight as you could. And then you followed our pricing method where you knew the material was included, you knew the time was accurate and realistic, you knew that you budgeted for certain occasions. Then, when you're ready to give this number, there's nothing really to have anxiety over, because you're like I've figured this number from each way I possibly could. I've seen it and attacked it from every angle. If I could have lowered the number I would have, and I don't think this number needs to be raised because I've already got it at a proper margin. So, instead of seeking confidence, you're seeking clarity, and I feel like that clarity is where a lot of people end up getting their main pain come from. What do you?

think Definitely, man. I agree 100%, in fact, I'll give another angle why this happens. It's something we've seen with our own clients on their journey to triple their prices, ultimately, and still sell work. A lot of times when we put that kind of undo I want to be careful with my words here but that undo emphasis on a single job's outcome. It also is a direct reflection on our marketing and our schedule and what we've got coming up. No one job, especially in a service department, deserves that much emphasis or that much reliance that missing this one would be a doom fate for you and your business. That's simply just too risky of a schedule to maintain. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, every single road that you're walking is the length of a bike tire. At one point or another, you're going to trip. You got to give yourself more breathing room than that.

So it's kind of a flipped mindset, joe, but it's Monday. I mean, why not work on the mindset a little bit here too, when you realize the importance really is on finding the people that aren't your customers. That's where we actually have some ground to gain here, because working with people who aren't your customers is where bad reviews come from, it's where buyer's remorse comes from. So I want to add more emphasis just on a having that schedule filled enough to constantly be qualifying for your target customer. Important right and B, not so much emphasis on the outcome as a binary yes or no, but providing a process that speaks volumes to giving those primary customers a choice of six options. Essentially that little roadmap. This hey, here's all the ways that we could work together. And if you truly did that, then this quote, anxiety starts to fade. And if you understand scales of economy as well and your price for your lowest options to be a sustainable and successful business, then what happens is you don't have to worry about the higher price, you only ever worry about your low price options. And that before, during or after value articulation. Did I just speak French? Was that too technical? Do you think? Do we need to simplify that at all?

I think that makes a lot of sense, but I can actually simplify it a little bit further, but I feel like you did a really good job with it as well. So the main source of anxiety for a lot of people comes from wanting to hit home runs. They sit down and they say to themselves well, I made this big package, I need to try to sell that package. And when you put that stress on yourself, coupled with not knowing your price, coupled with not knowing where you stand with the competition, coupled with all the other factors we've already spoken to, that's a recipe for anxiety. If nothing else, indigestion you're going to feel. You're going to feel as a modulator. If you're Italian, anxiety or indigestion I like that, yeah Right. So if you're going to go further with this, you recognize, all right. With this being said, what is the main obstacle that we have. The obstacle is that any option that they take needs to be one that you're acceptable, with them moving. If they're a premium buyer, if they're a mid-range buyer, if they're an economy buyer, you don't care what they've purchased, only that you've designed a range of choices that each one of them you feel would solve a problem at a certain level, and then being able to step back and say how would you like to proceed. You were in complete control of this. I'm simply the waiter who brought you the menu. That's all I'm going to do. You can handle it. Tell me what you want to proceed with, and then would the waiter ever say that's a bad choice? No, that's a great choice, encouraging your clients to choose whatever they want to pick. So I'd rather be a consistent singles hitter than the home run hitter who strikes out pretty often.

Absolutely and so to speak directly to this title, knowing what we've said now and kind of summarize and bring it back. The clarity that we're seeking that you mentioned is the clarity of your pricing and your process. If you truly have that clarity and you're still showing up to the table and feeling compelled to reduce your price, to discount, to step off of your clear path, to do something else that you feel is this vacuum to add value, then your future is fading away, because what you're not doing is practicing running the play right. What you're not doing is gaining experience in pitching your services at that higher price, and what you're not doing, then, is building the muscle, the memory and the confidence to execute an even higher level, which, as we know, as you go down this path, there's going to be higher and higher levels of this execution. That's how it's destroying your future. You're not running the play, and so you're not developing the muscle memory, and so it's just discount after discount, after second guess, after second guess, after profitless year after profitless year. That's going to add up, joe. Go ahead, brother, jump in.

There's actually something that happens even before that, which I agree. Everything you said, everything says 100% correct Before that. The thing that had to have happened for you to even get to this place is you have some lack of confidence that you're worth what you're charging. And I feel like a lot of us have that anxiety, because I remember when I first started out and we were charging the 165, we wouldn't actually price it. How long we thought it would take us to do the job. There was another electrician that had trained me years prior that I had worked with another company, and we would look and say, well, he's a good electrician, how long do you think it would take him to do the job? And then we would price based on what we thought another competent electrician would do it at, because at the time we didn't feel competent. In our own knowledge. We're like well, I mean, we're just new to this, of course. Yeah, I've been doing it for X years. But you know what? Maybe that's not the customer's fault that we're inexperienced, maybe we should charge what a competent electrician which competent quote unquote would charge. This is the guy that wouldn't put boxes underneath his light fixtures. We thought that he was confident, right, mm? Hmm, so if you don't believe in your own ability, then you won't believe in your price, and if you don't believe in your price, then you're not going to be able to charge it consistently. That's where you'll find that things will up and drop. Have you ever noticed that certain jobs, same jobs, same kind of home, same kind of situation they cost more for different people? I guarantee, when you put those quotes side by side, yeah, there's some variance, of course. But also look at where you were at mentally in your relationship with this customer, and if you had anxiety, you needed to drop something 100%, man.

I mean, there's so much that ties into this. Joe, I think we can make a whole week of this for real. Because what about you're training your customers? Like, once you let a customer in at that rate, it's hard to go back on them and go oh no, I was just doing you a favor last time. The next time we work together, I've got to charge you my real rate. Oh shit, that old dog won't hunt, right? What about your staff? We're training them too, right? Even if you're still working alone, at some point you've got to train someone to be confident in this value. If you yourself don't do that right now, isn't that going to be a problem? So for me, rather than fear the no today which I get that's easy to do. It's easy to say Well, today's the real threat, not the future. I'd rather get the no today and know that, yes or no, I'm able to build a future by design. I would rather get those no's and just end it quick. Devil's advocate here right. End it quick, meaning like, literally okay, this business isn't going to work, I can't sell at this level. That's the level I need to sell at. Here's the future I'm painting. I can't do that. So either I'm going to get help or I'm going to stop this madness. I would way rather that and eat crow than to go five, three, five, seven, 10 years down the road of just being barely in the black red, maybe two out of three years, and then black for some, and it's all dependent on the months and if we get paid on time and gosh this madness around cashflow and everything that already exists, around projects, I mean we just can't afford to discount, we can't afford to second guess their pricing. You can't afford this quote anxiety. It's crippling you. It's crippling your hopes of having a sustainable future.

There's something else that goes into it as well and, once again, I love what you're saying here, but I was actually I was taught something that helped break my perspective on it and it was okay. I was at a company years prior and there was a generator generator. I was at a company generator job that I had sold and it was a pretty substantial size job. We were doing propane, we were doing the maintenance we're doing. They bought a decent size package and I remember when I was going through with them, the customer after the job was done was calling and complaining because she felt that there was something that wasn't included. She thought that we were fueling the propane ongoing way and that for some reason, that we would be responsible for all the propane for this particular unit forever.

That's a stretch, joe, I'm not gonna lie.

It was a pretty heavy stretch. It was like this isn't, this isn't realistic, it's not. And I remember going to my boss at the time being like listen, I have the contract here. It says this does not say anything that they're currently saying it does. And I know I would have never said we're doing their propane in perpetuity, like there's no way that's going to happen. But they're really, really upset. Is there anything we can do? And he looked at me and he's like yeah, sure, what's your commission right now? I'm like what? He's like yeah, what's your commission? He gave me. I wrote down the number, told him the percent. He was like okay, this is what we can help them with. How much do you think you would you be willing to help them with? I'm like none, I'm not gonna. He's like oh well, I guess we can't do anything. The point I'm trying to come to, other than they were monsters, was the thought of saying you know what, if you were going to offer a discount on a job and you're going to say I'm willing to lower my price for whatever reason, don't think that you're taking it from a company with a large pile. Instead, look through it and say if I were going to personally take this money out of my paycheck, would I still be willing to give them the discount? And every single time after that I always said no, I'm not willing to give you discount, because if there's a discount, it's going to come out of my pay. I can't, possibly. I can't do this job for free and then lose money in doing it. I can't do it. So when you have this quoting, that you're worried that you're overcharging and you want to discount something, realize that you're discounting from yourself first. At the end of the line, our profits are always. When you're new, your profits are usually small, and there's no shame in that and you're going to take those little profits away so you can get a job that's not going to help you. Why would you do that?

Yeah, I agree, man, wholeheartedly. I want to spin this and give some positive energy to finish off and wrap up some action items. What do you think, joe? I'm down All right. First and foremost, you're worth it. If you're listening to this still, or you're catching the replay on any podcast, channel A, let me say you're worth it. B now that I've said that and you feel better, please leave us a review. They help. It's nice to tell others how good the podcast is for them and they're good. Energy and positive buildup. You're worth it. You're worth the price. If you did the math and that's the future you want, you're worth it. It might require some work on a process. It might require, like our offer, training where we're able to help you build all those pieces up and understand that value, so that there's no guessing. It's just proven value systems. But you're worth it. You can do that. It's not rocket science. We would never ask you to do something we haven't done. We would never ask you to do something you could not do. It's easy because you can do it. You're worth it. You've got to believe in yourself. I feel like that's an action item too. What do you say, joe?

I'm willing to take that one.

Okay. Do you have an all star in mind?

Yes, so the second action then is I know you need to believe in yourself in order to make this effective, Like that should be the baseline, and I agree that's for the basic action. But to take it even further is do you also believe that your company is worth what you're doing to the fact that you would hire them to do it? That's the real question that comes down to whether you feel like you're gonna have a compelling offer or not. If you can look at your own company and say what they're charging is worth what we're actually doing, then you know you've got a great value exchange. If you feel well, I wouldn't be cause and other than the fact that you yourself are an electrician Say, if you were not an electrician, Would I still hire me? If the answer is yes, great, great value exchange. If the answer is no, that's actually a great opportunity, Because at that point, rather than lowering your price to meet the value that you currently think you have, instead say what value needs to be added to make it worth what I need to charge? As long as you can keep the perspective of how can I improve and how can I enhance this offer, you'll often find the answers. People don't miss options when they look under every rock and every stone. They miss it when they say I'm not willing to look because the answer is probably not there.

Absolutely, man. If you're not confident in your prices, you should know by now. We've got a price exercise that will get you right down to the nitty-gritty of every single thing that you estimate. It sounds important. It is important because when you're at the door, as Joe said, where's that money coming from? If we're lowering the price, where's it coming from? Guys, you ought to know that, Because this isn't something that we can just arbitrarily say, well, I need this, Sure, I'll make no profit on this. That's a bad plan. We got to fix this issue. I believe you guys can do it. This has been another episode, episode 198 of Electroponers Secrets. Just about 400 action items coming Flying at you guys here, you can go all the way back and listen to them. Try to keep up with us. We're going to go through more of this quote anxiety this week to keep helping you guys make the most of your business and your future. I cannot wait to see you again tomorrow, again to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. Thanks, Joe.

Truly a pleasure, talk to you all soon.