199 - Selling Gold to Family

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to another fantastic episode of Electric Pinner Secrets, the Electricians podcast, where me and my homie Joseph the salesbot, luke Canny, go live with you five days a week to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium-level electrical service. Joseph the salesbot, what is your specialty, my friend?

My specialty is downloading all my sales knowledge that I have over the years into every willing and listening brain that's willing to pay attention to what we're saying. My goal is I'm going to give it all away, not going to hold back anything. Anyone who asks good questions get a 100% honest answer from me.

I love that man. Do you know what my specialty is?

I can tell you my personal belief in what your specialty is.

Yeah, sure, I'd like to hear that. Yeah, build me up for a moment so I get glowing for this episode. No, pressure.

It's less of a build-up and more of an honest appraisal. Where you and I differ also allows us to run parallel. You are absolutely brilliant when it comes to business strategy, when it comes to taking the company and saying I know where we're going because I know where we are and you can either reverse engineer it from where they want to be or you can also plan the future based on where they are currently. I love that. You have that ability of almost being like the scientist with a microscope. Thank you, I appreciate that. Where my parallel strength comes in is I help with the sales knowledge. I help build the reservoir of funds that people need in order to execute the plan that you have.

You know what? I'm going to add something else on my tank, if that's okay. And your tank? Violence, violence. Joseph is also I'll start with you, joseph's also the grata dude, brian Peasy, with us. Easy peasy electric. Hello, hello, good to see you.

I'm.

Brian, so close to the end of the year, thanks for joining Joe's the grata dude. Joe gives grace and honors the attending people in our classes like no one I've ever met in my life. I've never met another teacher who's so good at keeping track of who's been engaged with and who hasn't, and making sure to have that fair engagement but also tying in your personal relationships. It blows my mind. Every time we attend a class, guys, I have to congratulate Joe. I'm on that so for myself. There's also a personal performance endeavor here, and it's not always pleasant. That's the irony of the pleasant peasant. Yes, I hold the door open and thank you for walking through. Yes, I'm very Canadian and I try to always be nice and uplifting. But sometimes being uplifting means breaking down some bad habits. First, like earlier, I said to myself gosh, I was stupid in this case.

And Joe said I literally was like don't you ever say that about yourself? Because, at the end of the day, your brain doesn't know the difference and if you put in bad inputs, you get bad outputs. And plus, you're an incredibly intelligent individual. Stupid should never be in your repertoire.

It's real man, so we also work on that stuff. We help people get out of their own ways. Speaking of being in your own ways, the topic for this week was really about this quote anxiety. That's what we started yesterday, and today we're going to continue it with selling gold to family. We kind of tricked you with that when I'm sure you were thinking, oh, maybe they're not talking about quote anxiety, but does any quote give you more anxiety than the one you're providing to your own mother? Oh my God, yes. Or father or cousin or brother or friend or best friend or colonist.

If you're Italian, it could be anyone who has a blood relation to with you, because you know they're going to be knocking on your door when they need a favor. Okay, but how about? What did you say? I was speaking, I was like me familia per favor aiutare me, which is like my family, please, I beg you, help me. You could just imagine someone coming in and being like yes, that's what they're knocking for. They're looking for the discount card.

Little bit of inspiration behind this one. I'm going to be honest. Guy that goes by the name of Dorian. Just last weekend one of our clients made a $28,000 silver sale not gold silver sale to a family member who says he ran the play. Did the two call close, offered six options and they happily chose his mid range, mid tier silver option at $28,000,. Joe, what do you make of that?

I have nothing but the absolute praise for Dorian in this situation, because there's two things that happened here that I think cannot be understated enough. One is that for him to be able to present options, it shows that he won, believes in his product right, because if someone didn't believe that they could offer something better, they would never have offered something better. So the fact that he believes it enough that he'd offer it to his own family means that he has that much more staying power when he's in front of a customer, because you could be like literally, this is the exact same quote I'd give to my mother. This is something I truly believe in, and I know for a fact that if we were any less than what we needed to be, it'd be a disservice to you, because how can we not give you the warranties, how can we not give you the maintenance, how can we not give you the ongoing services?

I love what you just said. By the way, I hope I'm not interrupting, but this is the exact same quote I would give to my mother. That's got some staying power. He really doesn't. You can't really hear that and I mean I guess you could hear it and think this guy's lying to me. You could, but who says that?

But the thing is is that the second thing is that not only does it show that he believes in the process so much that he'd do with his own family, but it also shows that he believes in what he's trying to offer them for the right reason, Like the goal isn't to create options to sell. The goal is to create options so you can get the control and give it to the customer. The customer now had complete range of choice and they willingly and consciously chose one of his better options. When you do this the right way, you don't have to sell, and he was able to remove being salesy by simply following the play and letting the play produce the result.

Huge man Huge. So right off the bat. First I'm going to pull an assumption out of this You're okay with what he did here? Oh, 100%. Selling to your friends and family at full rates the right thing to do, in your opinion.

I 100% agree yeah.

Now I want to engage our listeners, our followers, people watching us live right now. Do you sell to your friends and family at full rate? If you're with us on the Facebook chat, please let us know. Do you give a discount or do you sell at full rate?

So can I intercept the questions that are going to come in and the statements that are going to come in advance? Because I can kind of predict what's going to happen. It's that people are going to say, well when the church calls, or well in temple, well in mosque calls. It's like there's always something that we got to go to. Of course they're going to need it or no. This is my mother, this is my father. I could not. I would not. Okay, do you want to work with your friends and family? Do you personally believe that you are the best fit to serve them and that there's going to be no one other than you that will care more about making sure your mother's electoral system is taken care, to make sure that your best friend's grandmother is taken care of? There's a goal that you need to have, and if you're always undercharging or not charging, you're actually providing them a disservice, because what ends up happening is when you actually go to do this work with this person, it's always done from the I'm doing you a favor. My favors get old real quick, but if you had the assumption of grandma I'm doing this for you and I know they are cheaper people you could 100% go and give this business to someone else. One thing I can promise you, grandma, is that there will be no one who cares more about the safety of this home and of this family more than I do, and because of that, you have a lifetime crash to guarantee. Because of that, I'm going to be coming every year and maintaining it. Because of it, I'm going to be providing the whole home inspections. And you keep making your reason the truth, because it is, if you think about it, sorry, good.

No, no, I didn't mean to interrupt, but if you think about it, the advantage is still gonna be in their favor, because who's gonna see you more? Who's gonna talk to you more? You're still gonna end up checking in on them more than your average client. They still have a direct line of communication with you. Specifically, the owner of this company was providing this great service, mm-hmm, and tying that all in and supporting your clause here is like. What Dorian did on the weekend was actually incredible. I know we've actually unpacked this on a podcast, so in many ways, following the guidance that we've already laid out, he did the right thing, which is believing himself so fully that even that value even applies to my greatest friends and family. I just can't speak highly enough about this. It's incredible man, incredible, so not feeling bad. We've got a couple of comments coming back in. Otis says almost never discounts. I would love to hear when. When do you discount? I'd love to hear that Brian says 20%, 20% more than my full rate. So a little joke there, charging extra for friends or family and I get that for some people. You actually I've heard of people doing that before. What are your thoughts on that? Raising your rate for family?

I don't believe in that now. Granted, he may not have been fully serious. He might have been it. Granted, it also might be that the family is a you know, pia, like we don't. We don't know. Not everyone has the best relationship with their family, right, yeah, but the logic is I would never raise or lower my rate for anyone and Because of that, I'm putting all of our clients on equal playing field and saying I promise, for this rate, I will treat you like absolute royalty. I will handle every single aspect of this problem. You will never be a burden to me. You can call as much as you want. You can have me come out as much as you want. You will not find someone who will serve at a higher level than me. And in order to guarantee that commitment, this is what we need to charge for, both you and all of our customers like you. If that's not what you're looking for and you feel like I'm not the best fit or I'm not worth the value You're asking for, there will be no shame given, there'll be no hard feelings. I won't side-eye you at Thanksgiving, but I promise you I'm asking what I feel is worth it, above and beyond.

Yeah, I love that Going back and zooming out just a little bit, that there's something worth saying here about just knowing your value and Running the play. And if that play you're running doesn't establish a greater value for you to be confident in so that you can ask the price, going back to the numbers here, the price that you've determined to be your sustainable growth and profitable rate, Then what's the point of doing any work at all? I think we mentioned this the other day in the essence of like, if I can't claim that, if I can't build a sustainable business on this offer that needs to be in the exchange, this amount, this price then why slow play and go death by a thousand cuts? Because still today I get on calls with people. Every day there's calls going through here where people are saying, well, that rate won't work here, I can't charge that much to these clients. Yet we're owed all this money and yet we might not even be profitable this year. It's so awkward to be stuck in that place between a realization of I could have a business or I could just fear one, but what you won't have is the sustainable operation, the type of business owner that makes this long term, if you think about that, really think about what makes this premium brand, this premium service and last for a decade, maybe two, maybe three. That type of business owner doesn't act out of fear. They can't. They act out of knowledge and confidence. Is there any other way, Joe?

I mean. There's other ways of saying it, but it all leaves the same thing, like put your faith in front of your fear, lead with intention, lead with honor. Those are all the things that you could say, but the goal is relatively the same, in that I know I cannot survive my business, I cannot survive a season, I can't survive a week, I can't survive a day, if what I'm doing is not moving the needle forward. If every single day the needle goes closer to the red or even stays neutral, you're just one car accident away from being tanked, whereas on the other side of the coin, if you look at it and say every day, even a little bit green, a little bit green, a little bit green, you'd be better off than the person who's shaking in their boots saying I can't possibly charge this. So my question to all of you guys listening is if you're worried about what you're charging, do you think the people who are collecting your bills are also worried about asking? Because I don't think they are. You know, collection, the iceman cometh. They're going to knock on your door. So why not have that same, similar approach of saying this is what I need to charge, because my bills don't go down, my bills go up. So why can't I work so that, when I do great service, I can get rewarded for it in a way that's just sustainable, even if it's not heaps of riches? Sustainability shouldn't that be at least the bare minimum?

Yeah, yeah, it really is that big s word sustainability. At least this way, joe, if we can get enough people to commit to their Sustainable pricing, if we can get enough people to understand and commit to their offer ST y o, as we say then we can create more of these successes like Dorian just had, where you have a $28,000 sale on a Saturday morning With a family member. Even you know, at that point you're dangerous in every situation, and I don't mean dangerous like dangerous to anyone's health or dangerous to anyone's bank account. I mean dangerous as in your ability to stand up and run. The play is just, literally it's, it's above yourself. Your confidence protrudes right, and so these sales just happen. And I would rather err on the side of caution and know that, hey, economies of scale are going to apply and sometimes I'm gonna make a big sale that's absolutely gonna be more profitable than other jobs. But I'd rather that than, like you said, being on the balance and hoping for luck and good sales to keep us From all collapse, from having to shut the doors.

You know you mentioned something that I feel a lot of us who are just starting out have this Inbreak in vision, and that is some people who have quote anxiety, and I could speak to it myself Is that you start the job and you quote it assuming everything goes perfect, like you don't account for any kind of fluctuation. You assume this panel job should take me eight, but if I go really well I could get it done in six and I could probably get the material and reuse some of it. So I'm gonna cut it real tight. And then you find out that you've given yourself a grueling pace. That's not sustainable and just taking the job costs you money. Hmm, and that's the dangerous part of this quote anxiety simply just saying I Need to do this job and, when I'm done with the job, not be holding negative money, if that's such a horrible concept for people to understand.

No, no. And I think the problem becomes really is we're not accountants, mm-hmm, most of us did not get business school training attached to our apprenticeship, did you, joe? No, maybe it was during your master's license, where they inserted a bookkeeping and accounting course.

Really realistically? No. When we did our master's license it was like some of the questions are you and I even joked about it like they were telling me what kind of wiring is required to Assemble a crane if it ever became discommissioned? That was one of the code questions, but not one of how do I properly allocate my funds so when tax time comes, I can do so without having to gut my savings to pay to the IRS?

And well, that's humorous. It's also really not necessary for that ticket, but no one's drawn the line on what is necessary, and that's ultimately why we created this service. It's why we created this podcast to give you some help, some idea of what is necessary and how to promote yourself as a sustainable premium service provider. Joe, would it be wrong of us to want to do that for these folks?

Not a chance man, it's honestly not. Even that is not wrong. It is a true and honorable calling to try to help uplift others. The best thing that someone can do is put the helping hand down to someone who is deeper in the pit than they are.

Absolutely. And since you said that, if you're listening to this right now, be sure not to hoard this information. There's no competition out there, it's all creation. Competition itself is a scarcity mindset that is only a vacuum away from your goals. So in creation, in helping others, you yourself will be lifted up. So if you know someone who needs to hear this episode or any other episode you've heard recently, do share it with them on your favorite podcast sites or on Facebook and the Eletribunner Secrets Group, where you can engage with us. Live Either way, I don't care, but if you know someone who needs it, do share and do leave us a review wherever you heard us. We actually had someone reach out on the weekend who had great luck with our methods as well. Did you know that?

By all means late on me. There was one thing I wanted to say prior to that, which was there's no, there's only competition at the bottom and there's only collaboration at the top. I like that. I wanted to just add that in because it was literally on point what you're saying. But please continue.

I was going to pull it up and do the exact wind share man, but honestly I don't have it up and I don't know if I'm going to be able to find it live without consuming us, so I'll have to leave it. But you know what Tomorrow's episode remind me and I'll share a great story of one of our friends and listeners, bailey, who cashed. I think I want to say I should not going to say tomorrow I'll unveil it, but there was a big win from our audience proving once again. The feedback was like wow, this stuff really works, guys. Premium service works. I provided these options. I did what you said you give too much away. And here's the result and I cannot wait to share that with you guys again tomorrow. Joe, let's craft a couple of action items. I got a big, great day to take to the vet here immediately after this.

So that was all star. I mean, I could take either one.

Do you have a preference? You know what I did basic yesterday so go ahead and start it off. I'll finish this up.

All right. So the basic action was remember you had said, like none of us are accountants, we may not have had the background and everything like that. The basic action is more of a visual that I want you guys to do like a mental visual. Imagine back in the day when we used to be told that we didn't have accounting software. We had the envelope policy, meaning that you had an envelope for your grocers, you had an envelope for all these things. That's where your money was allocated in budget. Right, you got that visual. We got a bunch of envelopes full of money. Now imagine the envelope that you have that you're going to draw from is each job that you do, your bills don't change. Your bills are the same. Everyone understands that so far. Yeah, would it make logical sense to charge less than what your bills are? No, it doesn't Like it, just it does not apply. So the question that I found, or the situation that I found that's most common, is, when people under quote things, it's either that it's not their company or it's that they're afraid that they're not going to get the job. One of usually one of the others, like I don't want to lose this, I don't want to lose this customer or they don't really understand the business. It's someone else's operation. The basic action I have for you is every time you think to yourself could I do it in this time? I want you to imagine that you're willing to take out of your own envelope to pay the difference. Would any one of us take that risk, knowing that we'd be personally liable for the difference?

I wouldn't, no way, I wouldn't either right.

So that's my initial action is to say, before you think about doing it on the quick or doing it on the cheap, instead say to yourself if I had to pay this difference and we were underquoted, would I be comfortable taking that risk, or should I charge what I think it's actually going to take to do this job? And if I don't get it at a profitable rate, then I shouldn't have had it in the first place, because I do have to pay for it.

Nice touch, man. Nice touch really. I've got a great one here. It goes against what our common theme is Usually. We're telling you to focus on the positive. Get your mindset right. I want you to think of the pains of the negative. On this one, we know what we're supposed to do. We know what we're trying to do. You're trying to build this sustainable premium service electrical business. For whatever reason, you might be in a place where something's in the way, so I'm actually going to ask you to go above and beyond here and make a short list of your three to five biggest things that are in the way of you and your sustainable business right now. You can call this a piss-off list, because I haven't sworn it all yet this episode. Call it the piss-off list. Make the list and I want to challenge you to actually jump on Facebook or on our website on the contact form, and send us your list. Send us your list of that top three to five things that are burning your ass right now in your business that you know. If you got those out of the way, you could be the sustainable provider. You could be like Dorian, making 28k sales to anyone who comes your way, including family. Send us that list and I will personally give you a quick 20 to 30 minute call and a strategy on how to solve those problems. You can book that by sending the list. We've never done this before. It's probably going to be overwhelming. It might take a couple weeks booking out to get that appointment on the calendar, guys, but it's our offer to you. So that's the All Star Action. This has been episode 199 of Electric Pernursecrets, the Electricians podcast, where we just keep showing up to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. I owe at least 50% of that to the sales bot here. Thank you, joe, it's really a pleasure, brother.

I could not have done this, nor would I ever want to do it without you.

We'll see you guys tomorrow. Take care guys.