Ep 201 - Undersold and Regretting It

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to another fantastic episode of Electricpreneurs Secrets, the Electricians podcast, where me and my partner, esteemed co-host Joseph the Salesbot Lucani, go live with you guys five days a week to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium-level electrical service. This week we've had a bit of a trending topic around quote anxiety, and we've got some more of that today, as we actually are going to take a bit of something that was in our class this morning that just happened to fall on this quote anxiety week and discuss a situation that really is happening with one of our new clients. Thank you, sir, for understanding. Don't worry, we're not going to say your name or anything, but this is so valuable for so many people Absolutely Austin's with us, thanks for joining us, austin that we need to talk through this and make sure that all of our listeners have a good understanding of this situation, what's happening and how to defeat it. What do you say, joe, and how are you feeling today, brother?

I'm feeling great Now. Granted, I'm going to give some insight into what's going on behind the screens. Here is in wonderful New York right now. We're starting to get colder and colder and colder. Next week's going to be like. Woke up this morning was 20 degrees. Obviously for those of you who are listening up north, obviously not a big deal, but I've got two space heaters blowing on me right now and your boy is cold, so I am looking forward to bringing the heat in this episode so it warms not only our spirits but our bodies.

Awesome man, awesome you guys. We are experimenting live. I got to tell you there's something that's never happened before on one of these shows. As you know, we're live in the Facebook Electricpreneurs podcast community group where you can engage with us, just like Austin is. He says the title got me, but something that has never happened before is happening right now. Right above our video feed, joe, it says there's a little trophy icon and when I click on it it says top star senders send stars. So if you're listening, you might actually receive something right now. I have no idea what's going to happen. Click it Full send. Let me know you guys, let me know if you got some stars for attending. I'm not sure what it means or what's going to happen. So, anyways, distractions. The Facebook world is distracting us. Let's jump right into this man Undersold and regretting it.

Yeah, that's a situation a lot of people end up in, and it's never a fun one, and you want to know why, clay? Yeah, man, one of the biggest things is that we have this unique quote anxiety where we feel that, whether we believe it or not, we feel that we need this job. Somehow, we're not better off telling this job to go away. We need this job and, as a result, we're willing to compromise some of our own values to get it, and too many of us find themselves in that position, and the thing that we're going to be talking about today speaks specifically as to what happens when you get the job that you never should have accepted.

Sounds important. I know I've gotten some jobs that I later regretted. Undercutting them is just adding insult to injury here. Right, where you go ahead and you do negotiation with people, maybe you discount, maybe they made a really good compelling case why they should pay less, but at the end of the day, there's a process built that we're going to explain in this episode to help you guys understand exactly how to avoid this trap, how to get through it and maintain your integrity, maintain your positive relationship and still get a sale. Sounds pretty important, right? I completely agree. So let's set up this case. Let's say you go to a job and let's say you're not offering options necessarily yet in your electrical contracting business. We all know what we're about in this podcast or maybe you don't if it's your first time listening, but suffice it to say we'll get to the options here in a little bit, but you come in with a price that you already went back and forth a couple of times, just like when you write an exam, joe, you ever get to the bottom and think, ah, did I have the right answer on that question? Maybe I'll change it from an A to a C.

Yeah, how many times have you been in the class Like I was always the guy who finished the test early. And then I'm looking around and I'm seeing everyone else like scrubbing it away. I'm like, did I miss something here? Is there something? I'm gonna go back and just make sure that I did it right, because I'm not smarter than all these people. It couldn't possibly be that.

Me too, man Actually there's a whole story about that, but staying out of the weeds on the story right now, we've all been there, we've all fudged a number. Plus, this goes the other way sometimes too. I've heard many contractors maybe you yourself have done this, joe. I'm curious to hear your opinion where you come to a price but in recognition and reflection of how difficult that person was already, you attach an FU tag to it. Oh yeah, what do I mean by that?

So that's called PIA tax. Now what the PIA tax is is whether you believe in it or not. Is me or any other provider saying you know what? I don't really believe that I want this job. Bad enough to work with your BS, but I do feel like I can likely get the job. But I would not work with you at full rate. I need to work with you beyond full rate, otherwise I want no part of this. And I can tell you specifically. Can I tell you a specific time that actually happened in my career.

Hit it, man, let's hear your story.

I had a situation once where I had gotten a generator job sold, sold. In my mind it was a $17,000 job. I believe was the deposit that he was going to be putting down for this. And he's sitting across the day from me. He was a doctor, he specialized in only infant neurosurgery, like one of the high specialty kind of guys, and I'm sitting down and we had gotten to this conclusion. He agrees to move forward. We had gone through negotiation and he's writing me the check for $17,000. And he hands it to me and while he doesn't let go of it, so he hands it to me and I'm holding onto it and he's holding onto it and he goes. Just so you know, joe, I'm okay writing this check because I know that I'll have money like this. He's like you're just an electrician, so you may not see money like this, but I want you to know that I'll always have it. And I had this moment where I looked at him and I was like this was what, this was not. When I was how I am currently, my first thought was in my throat punching this individual.

Yeah, sick burn right. Yeah, you know a lot dickhead.

So the thought was okay, I will not disrespect you. I'm going to say thank you for the opportunity and you know your title to feel how you want to feel, but regardless, it's not going to compromise how I'll serve you. But every single thing he asked for after that I kept in my mind and said you bragged about how much money you had, you bragged about your Ferraris, you bragged about the size of your house and you put me down because of my profession. And that, yeah, that your butt.

This guy paid a tax. And Juliet's on your side, by the way. She's with us and she says WTF, people suck. Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out what WTF means, juliet. Help me break that. I'm just kidding. You don't have to put that in the chat. You might get banned from our chat if you actually wrote that swear word. Now I've got a 14 year old. I know tons of acronyms, but I do have to search new ones daily to keep up with the comments on her post. Okay, we got Juliet laughing today. So mission accomplished, accomplished. Check the box, all right. So back to our scenario. You end up arriving at a presentation or you send it over, which you know again. We talked about this yesterday on episode 200. But let's say, you present in person and they call, look you in the eye and say I can't believe this, you've got to come and lower or we've got to go with someone else and for whatever reason, you're feeling the gravity of this and you haven't worked on this objection before. And so what you next? The next thing you do is you lower your price to get this job and meet them halfway. Let's say have you ever heard of this scenario, joe?

Unfortunately, yes, and you know what I was going to say. It's a situation that none of us are proud to admit. I can say that I haven't done that, but I have said that others in my former company had done that, and it's not a fun place to be in. And the thing that really stands out is that if you it shows that you don't know your own price, because if you truly knew your price and you said you know what, I factored this number based on a rate that was calculated because we went through every single burden, every profit, every kind of growth expense that could go into this business, this was the number I had to charge to stay at that line. The only money I can give away now, at this point, is I'm giving away my future to you. I am giving away the ability for me to pivot and serve you at a higher level so that I can get this job, which more than likely is in pursuit of a scarcity mindset.

I was just going to say, I was about to call a hard time out and say can we just address why we discount, why that's happening? I mean any discount, even from a standpoint of marketing. To say I know what I'll do to fill the calendar is I'll reduce my price of my value exchange. I mean that in itself isn't really a faithful mindset, is it?

It's a death trap and I can say that this has happened. I remember there was one period of time where, when we were first first start now we took a job in doing a ladies pool and it was the biggest nightmare in the world because we ended up taking this job that we undersold and while we were doing it, because the job took longer than expected, we were turning away high paying work because we had given the time commitment to do this undersold job. So you're often robbing. When I say you're robbing your future, it's because you don't know what opportunity is coming tomorrow. You don't know what the phone's going to ring for in 15 minutes. So you saying I need to take this job right now, even if it means I don't make any money on it, is strictly a scarcity mindset 100%.

Men, I'm going to take us back to this scenario because there's something really important coming that we haven't fully integrated in this week, that I need our listeners to take away. We need this Okay, so presenting a single option and negotiated on price and then recognizing, realizing through your efforts, that the clients actually now applying pressure because they want more out of that bottom dollar and so they're bringing up little complaints, or trying to, as you would say, gold plate the scope, which means when we're adding things that weren't intended within our agreement. But anytime we've gone back and forth on price at all, that can become a blurred line, especially if we're talking about a single option. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, and I mean I honestly I just want to jump in on the option discussion, but I know it takes away from it.

No, no, no, you can't man. This is it. This is time I'm teeing you up.

Perfect. So the situation is is that when you give one number, it's up to unless your contract is rock solid and you're like this is exactly, to letter, the law what you're getting no more, no less than that, which very few of us have the business training of doing. It's up to assumption of what you're doing. You can't include everything, and the client often finds if they have that certain disposition, they'll find the gap. This is where actually being a premium service provider is your greatest shield as well as your greatest strength. Because let's say, you say a good argument, you designed six options. Now the customer had taken your bottom one, how you presented it. But what if you had said in your higher options I'll do all the painting, I'll do all the utility coordination, I'll do all the inspections, I'll do all the gas coordination, I'll do all the maintenance, I'll do all the landscaping. Now it's up to them to decline it. And if they decline it, they then can't say that it was assumed that it was included in what you were already doing, Because you could say I'd love to do that for you. In fact, that's why I suggest it in the first place, If you'd like me to take that on for you. All we have to do is just upgrade you to this option. I would like to proceed.

Yeah, I love that. And as we're presenting this, we're always starting at the top, so we're explaining and correlating all the value that's in our top and so long as in that top, like the best we could offer is truly encompassing everything, so they don't have to lift a finger except to write a check your words. Yeah, then your inclusions are very much becoming your exclusions. Exactly, it pays a roadmap. I love this. Keep going, brother. Keep going, my pleasure.

So the benefit is is that you've created this scenario to where, if you want an additional safety measure, some people I've heard and this is actually very successful is that when you have your option sheet, you can have the customer initial next of the option They've chosen. That way it's also a secondary agreement as well. It's you being able to say I have an invoice, but I'm also making sure you've acknowledged that this is something that you've seen and that you can't now tell me you didn't see this or that this was broken because you physically have initialed this. So it's a secondary protection For that customer. The only reason we don't make that standard, it's because then some people assume that they want to keep your options post sale. And if you're leaving your options post sale, there's nothing stopping them from saying you know what, I'm gonna take this and I'm gonna shop it out. Even though I gave you to deposit, I get, I have all your knowledge right here.

I can give it away and the reality of that is, anyone else would be stupid not to match that offer because you've built a nice premium offer and it's likely have more than they've ever made. So they'll just do. They'll fall back on what we say in the pricing exercise. I'll just do a little bit more for a little bit less Mm-hmm, and they'll have the cheat sheet that you made. All your hard work, effort and training goes into that.

Absolutely, please, yeah the one thing that I want to specify is that I can tell you for a fact that that is the most dangerous thing that someone can do is trying to do that job. Because, let's say, you take me at my at my peak the best version of myself that I was when we were at 389 Hour and we were really delivering great service and let's say, that version of me has a quote that he leaves behind to the customer. But year one, joe, who doesn't have the business experience and was charging 165, now takes that job. I couldn't assure you that I would not have delivered it in the means or in the level that was promised in that invoice, because it would have been incapable. I was not the person who could have done it because I hadn't set up the systems and procedures in order to accommodate it. So even if you leave your estimate and someone else tries to copy it, they are shooting themselves in the leg, not in the foot. They will shoot themselves in the leg and often bleed out from it. That is where they try to hit the hello hanging fruit that they think is so easy to get, but fail in the execution delivery of it.

Yeah, it's a really good way to look at it. There's something else I want to bring to light. As we like, let's zoom out 30,000 feet, as I love to say, and so many others are saying it now too, which is always interesting At the 30,000 foot view remember, I'm a project background guy. When you sign up for a million dollar project let's say arbitrary number your price tends to fit on a single page with just a few lines, but then you could have anywhere from, let's say, 10 to 38 pages of all the principles of that engagement, the things that are included, the assumptions, the exclusions, and then all the fine print that your lawyer must have in there to make sure that your ass is covered. Let's take that same experience and go to a residential situation, though. Have you ever guys, maybe you're doing this now have you ever gone to a client, ended up presenting a line number two, but then they have three pages of written contract to read through, explaining all the ways that you're not liable for this installation? It's not. It feels awful, and it's one of the reasons why we never had In-depth legal protections written into the contract other than the essentials.

Because you know, occasionally we'll see this. People will send me options and be like hey, joe, I'm not working with you now, but I'd love you to see my options. Can you tell me about it? And I look at it and it's trade jargon. And after the trade jargon it's two pages of we shall, we shall not, we may, we may not, and the entire way through. I'm looking at it like I was thinking about it. I'm looking at it like I was kind of sold on your price and your solutions on the options. But I am automatically rejecting Working with you at this point because now I feel like I need to take the time to review this with someone who understands it further. I don't like all these lines. I don't like this small print. I don't really understand when I'm reading and if I don't understand, I'm not gonna buy from you. So you, in the attempt of trying to protect yourself, create this reason because the customer is gonna say why do you need this much to change my ceiling fan? Something feels wrong here. Should I be getting more estimates?

Definitely, man, and you nailed it. And here's the ironic part that I've seen at times the same people that might say I'm not providing six options, that's a ton of work. I don't need to do that. Three options are fine, one options fine. Will go and add three pages of inclusion, assumptions, exclusions, liabilities. It's like that takes work to. Why not? Wouldn't it be preferable to just present Whole list of inclusions or exclusions and present it like any choices of fine choice and whatever level they come in at? You've got over and above, or under and below explanation of what is included and what is not. You get clear on that right then and there. Now, the justification to me is what people say. Well, without all those you know the contract piece of this I could be liable for this project. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's back up a second. We're talking about a residential service call. The largest ticket in our program so far has been about sixty four thousand dollars for a heritage home rewire. Get pretty big right there. Enough, we got to protect our assets. But what about then? I'm taking a fifty percent deposit. Your expenses are covered, the cost of good sold are now covered, providing your pricing is right with growth profit and the simple service rate built in, your expenses are covered before you even put it on the schedule. What are the chances it's going to be worth taking someone to small claims court and pursuing them for the average ticket not the greatest we've seen a program, but the average ticket of, let's even say, the five to ten thousand dollar jobs Like? Is that worth your time if you've already been paid for the cost piece of it?

You know, the funny thing you mentioned it or you bring up there is that I can specifically remember clients that have burned us To where I'm like. You know what this now this many thousands, is owned, this many thousands is owned, but I can tell you it's under ten people Very likely. I probably couldn't even name five, and even then the jobs that I'm talking about are petty. One was a trailer. One was a trailer circuit that was done for thirty two hundred dollars. One was a data line run on labor day for four hundred dollars. Those are the kind of calls we're talking about where you're like man, it hurts my emotion, but it doesn't really hurt my wallet, totally.

There's shitty people out there and that sucks and it burns you and you just want to burn them back, don't you, unfortunately? But taking that project mentality into a residential space is just counterproductive. It puts you in a scarcity mindset and ultimately limits your potential and quite literally limits your conversions. I would bet that anyone with a three page contract following their little service options is losing sales because of it Not warranted. What else can we say about this topic, joe? I think we pretty well nailed it down and we're at about twenty one minutes. You want to crank out a couple of action items.

Yeah, I was gonna say I definitely think we can continue on into tomorrow because I know any additional topics we cover. It's gonna push it into a longer time frame, so I'd very much like to take a. I think I can take the all star action on this one. If you don't have one, off top of mine, all star okay, so I'm. You want to take basic? I got both. I can fire off with you. Tell me 21.

No, you know what? I think the latest expression we've had on this show is probably the easiest thing we could do. Guys, if you're out there running residential service calls like your commercial or residential larger projects, your multifamily stuff or industrial, if you're doing a blend, or even taking mentorship, advice or templates from bigger construction project minded electricians and using that in the residential game, let's just rethink that for a moment. Rewind this back to last ten minutes and really contemplate is this serving me? What is my conversion rate right? Because I would bet again. I'm gonna bet and I'm gonna ask you to remove all of that crap. Take your exclusions in your assumptions and build another option up and use it that way instead, instead of thinking, hey, all they want is my bottom dollar, all they want is the lowest I could possibly provide, how about we open up our mindset and think let's put in their hands and just identify what we could do and, instead of again running pages of liability and blame shift, put it in taller options and see what happens. Is that a good basic? Maybe that was.

No, I like that I like that a lot. All right, okay, I'll start brother, let's go. So the all star action is more of a mindset adjustment, because when you go into a situation and you choose to under bid it, it's you saying that I need to be busy more than I need to be profitable. And I want you all to really just sit with that thought and say is that a real scenario? That if you weren't in a negative mindset or a scarcity mindset, that you would ever accept advice being told to you that you know, clay, what you're lacking right now is you're just not busy. You clearly don't have enough things going on and even if you don't make a dime from it, you need to continue being busy, because that's what business is about. It seems so ass backwards, doesn't it? It is so instead, I would tell you that you're actually almost at a neutral point at all times, but you're not in a negative point. If you did nothing, you would lose long term. But the problem is is that you think that it's winning? What I want you to do instead is to go through and say, if I take this job, how does this job allow me to serve my community? How does this job allow me to serve my family and the families of my employees and serve my customer. If I undersell this job very likely and you realize it's undersold, you try to do it faster, you try to do it cheaper, you try to do it and now you try to stay longer. You know what? I only had three days assigned for this as a five day job. I know what I have to do. I have to stay, instead of a 10 hour day, I'll stay three 14 hour days and then I'll come on a Saturday and I won't have to move anything. The problem there is that you end up in the situation where is this client being served? Are they seeing white glove premium service with you rushing in and out like an animal Every time they ask for a warranty or a change order and you approach them with a sigh or a grunt or your hands get thrown up. Are they getting white glove premium service? But if you charged full rate, you would find that it's now an honor to serve Because they've willingly paid. Exactly what you asked for and you know in that rate is growth. You know it's profit, you know there's longevity to it. So stick to your offer. It shouldn't be an all star action, but stick to your offer.

STUIO baby man. I love that, gosh. We could go deep on this topic. Joe, I think it's got to bleed into tomorrow, because what I'm thinking right away is like how you do one thing is how you do everything right. We've all heard this, and so if I'm willing to make a concession here on this job, what's going to happen? The next time I'm in this position, I'm going to make another concession, and the next time I'm going to make another concession, eventually something's got to give, and right now it's giving us time, so we're going to leave it right there. You're going to have to come back for episode 202, to go through that a little bit deeper, and some tomorrow, friday, for another episode of Electric Pinner Secrets. We're going to show up again the fifth day this week to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. Thank you, facebook, for joining us. We'll see you guys tomorrow.

Y'all take care.