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Million Dollar Electrician - Sale to Scale For Home Service Pros
Rewiring Our Mission: (Electricpreneur Secrets)
Helping Electricians Achieve the $1M Service Van so they can experience ultimate control over their futures.
Join Clay Neumeyer & Joseph Lucanie for a new electrifying episode & High-amperage action item each week to spark up your service van sales to $50K, $70K, $100K, $150K months, and beyond!
Million Dollar Electrician - Sale to Scale For Home Service Pros
Ep 16 - Why We Dont Recommend Recommending Solutions to Your Customers
Unlock the secret to boosting your sales with strategic communication and impeccable timing. Imagine effortlessly increasing your sales by aligning your offerings with client priorities. We'll guide you through the art of handling customer requests by addressing primary concerns first and then thoughtfully integrating additional solutions. In this episode, we'll challenge the common instinct to highlight every safety concern right away and instead explore how a more patient, customer-focused approach can transform your sales process into an informative experience that truly resonates with clients.
Discover the power of perfect timing in sales interactions and learn how the ethical presentation of information can enhance trust and credibility. With a compelling success story from a Canadian client, we'll showcase how maintaining a consistent process and timing your communication can navigate even the toughest objections. By understanding the critical role of timing and maintaining control during sales discussions, you'll be equipped to educate clients in a way that not only safeguards your authority but also builds lasting relationships. Join us as we reveal the strategies that position you as a trusted advisor, empowering you to close more deals with confidence and integrity.
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the Million Dollar Electrician podcast, where we help home service pros like you supercharge your business and spark up those sales.
Speaker 2:I'm Joseph Lucani and, together with my co-host, Clay Neumeier, we're here to share the secrets that have helped electricians sell over a million dollars from a single service van.
Speaker 1:Now it's time for sales, it's time for scale, it's time to become a million dollar electrician. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Million Dollar Electrician man. I am pumped, joe. How are you doing today, my brother?
Speaker 2:man, I am feeling it today, but I gotta admit it's one of those things where we started the podcast and the first thing I expected to hear was hello, hello, hello and I miss that every now and then right yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, let's record an intro too. That helps a bit. Uh, today we got a super special show. Actually, this one's a lot of fun and it comes right after a couple of big interviews. We had David Naples sharing some of his experiences, his org and his influence with you guys, and then Guillermo Castello last week. Those were both just dynamite episodes. If you haven't listened to those, please go back. If you want some good insights, though, today on improving your sales, we've got just what the doctor ordered why we don't recommend recommending solutions to your clients and how this will actually help you make more sales. Today, if you get this right, I know some people probably read this or hearing this right now and they're thinking what the hell are you guys talking about? Joe, help me out. Help us understand. What is this subject. Why is it important? Why wouldn't we make a recommendation? We're the experts.
Speaker 2:The best way that I think I can communicate this is to put it into context, so can you go through a role play of a scenario with me?
Speaker 1:I think that'd be the best way. Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2:Okay, you've called me to your home because you want a single ceiling fan installed. Let's make this even more fun. You've got it, where you literally have a fan in the ceiling, you have the box right underneath it. It's got the hampton bay. It's the old great home depot brand and you've even went out of your way to get me a new box on top of it.
Speaker 2:How thoughtful for you. If we're even going to further, you bought the switch, so we already know like this seems like a great type of customer, right, yeah, but all of us are electricians. We go to the call and we recognize that the customer. You have a federal Pacific panel. What is the instinct of every electrician in that situation?
Speaker 1:Well, to let me know of the unsafe condition in the electrical panel. Correct.
Speaker 2:But how we articulate it and when we bring it up is gonna be the difference between this call going positive or negative. Okay, so you're this customer. Still, you call me for this fan. Now I go through my observations. Imagine the first thing that I described to you is us addressing the panel, right? How does that feel from the customer perspective?
Speaker 1:Well, my sales walls are up. I mean, they already were when I called you. I didn't want to be sold, I likely just wanted more information. I wanted to know what this call was going to cost. That's why I bought the fan in the box in the first place was cost control, and you know what. Can I really be blamed for having that mentality about it, at least as a starting framework for controlling the budget in this installation?
Speaker 2:Exactly. So we have that in place. Now, what would happen if I made it a non-negotiable and that every single option has now that panel included? How much control do you feel over this outcome?
Speaker 1:Yeah, not much, man. That would be a problem for us.
Speaker 2:Right, but now we're in a rock and a hard place because we can't avoid doing this federal Pacific. We have to at least address it in some capacity. We all agree it's unsafe, but how we bring it up and when is now going to change. So now, here's the second way that I would recommend that we do it.
Speaker 2:Okay, now we started off where I created the observations and I'm slowly giving you this information of well, here's what you called me for. This is specifically what you wanted, and here's how. What I found is directly connected to what you called me for, and I'm gonna offer you solutions, but they're focused on addressing and supporting the main thing you called for. So I'm gonna tell you the first thing in that option, the first thing you're going to hear out of my mouth is how we're upgrading and addressing the fan. And then, as we've gone down that list, then I'm saying because we've done this and this and this, we're also now going to address the electrical infrastructure. So when you're using this fan, we know that it's going to safely operate and you're not going to have to worry about this being a concern in the future. Now, how does the justification to be bringing it up feel?
Speaker 1:Well, better, I have a way out for one. You could always just choose a lower option.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:But I'm still being educated on the other elements of my system, what may or may not be safe. So how do you can I ask a question Go for it? How do you differentiate and stay away from what we're saying here? What's the difference to you, then, between a proposed solution, let's say, and recommending that solution?
Speaker 2:The timing and timing is going to be everything. Here's why the timing and timing is going to be everything. And here's why, when people, often as electricians we as a trade, we've often been told and have learned that we need to feel smart, and what that means is we try to showcase our electrical knowledge to the customer in advance. We often make suggestions. So let's say, now I'm the same call, right, I've made it down to your panel to do the inspection, because I'm not going to touch that fan without looking at the panel. But now I'm talking at the panel saying, oh Clay, well, don't you know? This is actually.
Speaker 2:This has been outlawed since the 70s and 80s, like these have been completely recalled. What are your thoughts on actually us addressing this for you while we're here today? Now, the problem is is we've all agreed that something should be done to it, but because I've made a suggestion that you should do it now, I'm completely bottlenecked, Because either you say, yes, I would like to hear about it, and that's great, but the far more likely answer is no, I don't want to address it at this time, I just want you to focus on the fan. And now, as electricians, we're now stuck into either honoring the customer's wishes and leaving them with an unsafe system, or pushing past and saying I know you didn't ask for this, I know you didn't want for this, but I'm still going to tell it to you anyway, because I think I know better than you do.
Speaker 1:Important point.
Speaker 2:Where is that going to end us?
Speaker 1:Not good.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. Here's how we're going to tie it all together. Now, what is the difference? I mentioned the difference was timing. If we can always ensure that we save our education until the call is ready to be presented, you are actually not only increasing the timing, but you're actually increasing the ability for the customer to retain and absorb the information. It's okay if I dive into that a little bit. I don't want to monologue on this one.
Speaker 1:No, no, it's good man. I also see this from another angle. Now You're actually maintaining sales control by doing that and withholding that for the right time.
Speaker 2:Correct. Now it can even go even further. Like, let's say, sake of argument, you have a spouse, right, and I meet with one individual. I meet with you and I'm going to go into this, and you've made it clear that your partner is involved and obviously you want to make sure that they can be involved in whatever they're going to hear. But I see a Federal Pacific and now I start making suggestions on all the things that you should probably do, that you should probably do Now.
Speaker 2:You may be having an electrical background or a mechanical background, or you don't believe that this is as big a concern. So I tell you and you say no, but now half the people who are living in this home are now unaware of a major safety concern. And if there is a concern, who is that other person going to blame? Are they going to blame you? You know this is on Clay clay. Yeah, he just didn't educate me, you. You told him. He just didn't communicate. They're not going to say that, right? So it's also protecting the other person from an ethical standpoint. Do we not believe they at least have the right to have equal access to this information?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we all do so. If we're in a situation to now, we're going to properly educate, we're going to position it to. Everything we're educating on is directly tied to what you originally called me for. We're explaining how it's relevant to what you've called me for and then we're positioning it to. Once I've given you this situation, I can immediately provide you a solution. Now question for you why would it be so important that if I'm giving you the description of what's wrong, I have to immediately give you the solution?
Speaker 1:You don't like what's the word I'm looking for. There'd be a recency bias, essentially, and if you separate those two, I'm going to be stuck on trying to imagine what those solutions or the costs may be the moment that I learn about them essentially.
Speaker 2:Yep, I'm going to speak directly to every electrician listening to this, because I guarantee I'm going to say a few words and everyone's going to start to shiver right. So if you've been on the call and you've made the suggestion to the customer and you're like we found knob and tube in the walls, we found aluminum wiring, we found the fuse, but whatever the thing was that, we're like, yeah, and then you've done it before, you've priced it, and now the customer says, wow, that's serious, we should get that addressed. What's the cost of that? What do we got to do?
Speaker 2:And you're stuck saying I don't know. Now, if you don't know a price, what does that imply? Do you mean that you do this frequently? If you did it frequently, wouldn't you at least have a range?
Speaker 1:Right, you're losing authority in that position.
Speaker 2:You're losing authority and credibility because it's either you don't know the information, and that affects your competence, or you're withholding that information intentionally and that conflicts with ethics. So, regardless, just by you saying anything, you are putting yourself in a losing situation and the margin success is so narrow the customer has to do everything, literally perfect, to avoid falling into a pit.
Speaker 1:Important stuff. You guys are hearing it right from the horse's mouth here Joe the sales bot, luke Canney, letting you have it. There's a couple of wins, and you reminded me of one. I wanted to share the wins of the week, but I want you guys to stick around because we've got a tool to help you with this actually not making these recommendations, but rather helping your clients buy and this is a very important tool. So we want to get that to you. But you mentioned really about partners in the one example you mentioned there.
Speaker 1:And one of our Canadian clients their teammates Dan just had a big win today. Actually, this just came in with a 15K plus. There was some change on the end of that one.
Speaker 2:He was proud of the change. He was proud of the change.
Speaker 1:Joe, it sounded like a situation where Dan would have prior just emailed it over. He faced a partner objection on this opportunity call. The husband was not intent on buying, but he positioned this for a two call and a close. I'm going to call it instead of a two call, close, and that really is exemplifying this sticking with it, staying consistent in the process and much of what we're talking about today. Because you know what I can vouch for this as a homeowner, I would certainly not have someone to my house for a second call if they were pushing any recommendations of any sort on me at all. Do you have anything to say to that one, joe?
Speaker 2:I mean, it's all going to be based off of the person you know. Like first off with Dan, like I am immensely proud of him, he's an amazing student to start with, but the one of the things that I felt was really impactful in this particular sale was that this particular person wasn't actually trying to buy. Like that was the really. Like you could tell it was an arm's length. Like I'm going to get the information. I'm going to go over this with my wife, like this is what's happening, but by being able to ethically position himself in a way to now it's like, no, you're right, my wife should hear this information. No, she should hear it from you. That makes sense, going from just an email and then following up and not coming up with anything to doing. I'm very, very proud of him for that.
Speaker 1:Really impressed and that is a single platinum came in today. He may still reach what Fernando reported. I think last week Fernando hit a double platinum week, which very seldom does this happen. Few people have this award. Fernando certainly earned that with 11.5K and an 11K platinum sale Back to back. That week focused heavily on solutions you were mentioning. Do you want to shed some light on Fernando's double platinum week here?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the reason why he was able to do that so well and other than once again being a great student really applying himself is one of the benefits of our program is we do something called an options class. It's actually a design specialist class we host multiple times a week and the benefit of them is that you can come in and literally say, like I don't know how to design this call. It could be anything and you would literally have the option of building six options with me. So we physically engineered two jobs together, articulated exactly how they're going to sound and built the full spread of six options a piece. But because we had not only built them together, articulated them and designed them, he had been so familiar with them that when he actually presented it it was his third or fourth time actually practicing doing it. So he was so on point and he said that he really came out so much smoother and he gives a lot of the credit to being able to articulate it in class and build them together.
Speaker 1:Super pumped for Fernando, and you know I get that you help in a big way and we're always trying to help teach people to fish. And I just wanted to give extra props to Fernando, because it's never about us or what we talk about in class. It means nothing if that person doesn't take a step out and go and run the play and hold true to that process and the trajectory that we planned for. So congratulations, fernando, on a double platinum week. You earned it, brother. And just a quick shout out to four members who hit their first 100k plus months in service work. Last month we had Nick, mike, alex and Adam both each rather not both, but each doing varying amounts and reaching that six-figure mark in a month. And that's so important because I believe for one, joe, if you can do that in a month, then you are definitely a million-dollar electrician. It's just working on the consistency efforts from there and making it happen all year round.
Speaker 1:And, like many of our electricians that tend to perfect this sales process or get very close in their first year or two, it really comes down to being this equation of just did we get enough leads to run the play, enough to really make it happen? And so we've seen this several times and those that happen to have adequate leads at all times, like Dan Totten. We've seen him blow up and I can't wait to do a second year interview with him, coming up in January. First year't wait we're we're doing a deep dive with Joe here. Joe is going to be tickled pink One of the next episodes that are coming. We're going to release an interview for you guys on generators and we've got another generator specialist joining us. That's absolutely crushing it in Louisiana and I can't wait to introduce on the show. And Joe, um, you guys are going to be nerding out. I'm going to be the one looking for places to talk, I'm sure, but I'm so excited for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm pumped man. It's one of those things. It goes without saying I'm a generator junkie. What can I say?
Speaker 1:Yeah, anything to provide you guys value each week. We talked about this yesterday in a team meeting. We have a simple question we ask ourselves before we decide to record a podcast for you guys, and that is does this help electricians elevate their service game today? Does it help them provide a better level of service for their customers? And if it does, then we want to bring it to you. That said, let's finish this episode up. I promised a tool. You, that said, let's finish this episode up. I promised a tool.
Speaker 1:Joe, I want to ask you you mentioned the four what's. This is something we have given away before. Guys, I'm going to give you the code word here. All you've got to do is reach out to claynewmeyer on Instagram, claynewmeyer or josephlucani on Facebook, or join us in our Facebook group, the Million Dollar Electrician group. Any of those places will do. Even if you're following or watching on YouTube, you can comment there for what's and myself personally, or someone on our team, is going to send you this value piece over. But just in light, joe, would you go over this one more time how important this is for not recommending any solutions, but just providing a set of solutions for someone to be able to choose at the appropriate level for them and their budget today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so just to make sure you're asking. You're asking how the observation section applies to that. Yes, sir, okay, perfect, I just want to make sure of that. So the main benefit of the observations is that I've learned it's better to be able to speak to the problem, and if you've adequately spoken to the problem, the solution will naturally want to sell itself as a result. The customer has their intention. They've got their reasoning to want to purchase from you. So if you have the choice, learn to speak to that. Well, the reason why it's so important for this particular topic is because we all agree that we need to educate them on these hazards that they've run into. But if we don't do it the right way, our good and noble intention of trying to make them safer actually becomes communicated, as this person is trying to push something on me, and I shouldn't trust them, rather than this person is trying to protect me, and I should trust them.
Speaker 1:Love that, love that and the four what's as described are available in this value piece. Just send us that code word for what's. We'll send it over to you. Joe, let me ask you one last question, just to pressure test your, your philosophy here, in the way that you do sales. What if someone asks you literally asks you for your recommendation? What would you do then?
Speaker 2:Well, it would depend on when in the call it was, but I'm going to assume that it's usually that we're at the panel or at the fault location, right? The thing is, when a customer asks you, what do you think we should do, if you're in still the diagnosis step, that communicates their intent, but also communicates that they really don't have a solution in mind. Intent, but also communicates that they really don't have a solution in mind. So because of that, they're trying to probe for you. Any answer you give them there doesn't actually move the sale forward. So instead, what I'd want to do is I'd want to question and see what they currently know.
Speaker 2:So be like, well, I'd love to make a suggestion, but as of right now, I'm still in the evaluation process and I never want to give you information before it's really time. So I'm happy to help. Is it OK if we circle back to this once I've really evaluated the system as a whole and then even further you want to put the spice, because I never want to risk seeming like I'm pushing something you don't need or absolutely want. Is it OK if I just ensure that it's really something you need before I make a suggestion?
Speaker 1:I love that. I'm always a fan of addressing the elephant in the room. They don't want to feel sales pressure. Please, guys, do not miss this opportunity to sell more by pushing less. Make less recommendations. Speak well to the pain points using our For what's exercise in your observation section. Speak well to the pain points using our four what's exercise and your observation section. Lay out a set of complete solutions, from the finest you could offer to the most affordable solution you could possibly provide, and let them choose. It will be in your benefit and, ironically, by having less pressure, I think you'll see your sales rise up. Agreed, thank you, guys, for joining us. Can't wait to see you again next week. Thank you, joe. Be blessed and have an amazing day. Take care. And that's a wrap for today's episode of the Million Dollar Electrician Podcast.
Speaker 2:We hope you're buzzing with new ideas that charged up to take your business to the next level.
Speaker 1:So don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share the show with fellow electricians Together. We'll keep the current flowing.
