Ep 313 - How to Market Your Services After a Natural Disaster

0:02 Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to yet another episode of Electricpreneur Secrets. I am your host, clay Neumeier, with me, as always, my esteemed co-host, joseph Lucani, and we are the Electricpreneurs just a couple of master electricians with business addictions, here and ready to serve, serve, who Serve you. If you're an entrepreneur looking to master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service, welcome to your freemium program, your freemium daily coach call Investment. For these calls very simple Sit back, lend us some of your time, your ears, your attention. We promise to give you some actions If you promise to take action on those things.

0:45 Joe, how the hell are you today, brother? I gotta admit I'm feeling pretty damn good because the energy that you just put into this podcast I'm even sitting there like man. We're gonna have something good to talk about. That sounds awesome, all right. So I'm feeling great, the weather is great, I could have a little. I'm having some one-on-one time with my daughter after this, so like I'm feeling like it's going to be a good day. It's going to be a good day. I appreciate the energy shout out. We're always trying to bring our best, but let's be honest for a minute. We were having a deep conversation. Can I just get sensitive for a moment? Is that okay? Yeah, I mean you're going to call it out, go for it. I mean Electropreneur Secrets, but I want to spill our secrets too. It's not always bright and rosy in our world either.

1:27 Guys, we're also running businesses here. You're running businesses, we're running businesses, and that's hard. So here's my honest truth. Monday night I'm laying in bed. It's like 10 pm. I look over at Mariel and I'm like just kind of a cold stare. She goes what's wrong? I look over at Mariel and I'm like just kind of a cold stare. She goes what's wrong? I said I think I single-handedly ruined our company and the reason I said that was not logical. It was just a hard day. You ever have those hard days, joe. Yeah, and the thing is is that I feel like people like you and I were able to have this kinship that we do in this chemistry because we hold ourselves so close to the fire.

2:09 I was always taught if it's to be, it's up to me, and if it's not, then it's I'm dropping the fucking ball, like I'm somehow doing this. So I dude, I get it. It is so close to my heart that when something gets dropped, I look and see where I can put my finger back on myself. I'm addicted, as you know, to growth. I love we love providing value. I mean, that's the culture, right Heart on the sleeve. Everyone here knows that. Anyone who's a frequent flyer with us really watching, paying attention, listening to us, joining us in our teams as clients, whatever level you're at you recognize that this culture is based on a couple of guys who actually really care.

2:49 One of the things I care most about, though, is just continually pushing to provide the best service possible to the people in our network, and sometimes that means really pushing us out of our comfort zone, and sometimes that comfort zone that that uncomfortable, that uncomfortable edge, as we call it, where all this growth happens is so fucking painful. For a few minutes, it actually hurts. I literally saw a post today um melissa elmore. I'm giving you a shout out where literally it was how did it go? I heard you like challenges, so I gave you challenges on your challenges so you can grow while you grow.

3:30 And really the thought was sometimes, yeah, challenges make you grow, but sometimes those really hard challenges will allow you to grow so much faster because you've really put your feet into the furnace. I can appreciate that. You know what else I can appreciate, though I want to call something to attention before we get right into the subject. If that's all right, guys, what we have coming is marketing your services after a natural disaster. That's something that we've seen periodically over the years. Right, there seems to be a disaster or two in different areas. There's recently five, six tornadoes that touched down. We know that's a bit of chaos and we know it can be a disaster too. In different areas, there's recently five, six tornadoes that touched down. We know that's a bit of chaos and we know it can be a sensitive time to even. You know, sometimes we feel shame around even wanting to put our services out there.

4:13 So that is coming, but I want to address the rubber band concept for a minute, okay so important. Remember when you were down here, we were driving down the road and it was late at night, and actually this is going to turn into something funny for a moment, because we're like why does it smell like shit for so long we're driving down the road and we come to learn that we were following a combine that was pulling a trailer, a tractor trailer full of hogwash. Manure yeah, just gross, but anyways. Gosh. Manure yeah, just gross, but anyways. We were having this chat about the rubber band concept. So, joe, you remember this, but I'll ask you guys watching you know how you seem to succeed.

4:54 You reach the next level. Maybe you've had your million dollar years and everyone around you is kind of going oh yeah, well, that was easy for you, wasn't it? Well, that just happened overnight for you, but you know that grind was longer than overnight. You know that there were nights where you laid up awake and went gosh, I just ruined everything. Gosh, I can't do this. Gosh, this is so hard. Gosh, how am I going to get through tomorrow? Gosh, how am I going to get through this week, this month? We all know that. Feeling as entrepreneurs right, yeah, 100% month. We all know that feeling as entrepreneurs right, yeah, 100 man, and it's a crazy, crazy feeling. Well, this rubber band concept may be important. If you're following this and you're getting it with me and you're in this, then I really want to point this out.

5:36 You remember the law of conservation of energy in physics right, energy is neither created nor destroyed, nor destroyed it's only transferred. This is so important right now because what what you guys may feel like is a loss today, a step backwards, remember you still put energy into that, you still took action, you still did an activity to realize that result, no matter how micro and no matter how off-putting it was to your momentum. It may feel like you're working away from your goals, but what's actually happening is you remember those toys where you'd like spin a rubber band up and then you release it and it would fly, go, yeah. Or like the elastic guns you pull the rubber band back and you're setting that elastic gun and then you flip the trigger and all of a sudden, all that energy is released in a forward direction.

6:26 That's what's happening to you right now. Nathan, thanks for the comment. That's what's happening to you right now. Alex martin mandy, if you're still with us, that's happening to you and, more importantly, it's happening for you. So, no matter what you're facing today, no matter what you say to yourself tonight, remember that tomorrow's going to come. There are greener pastures, the sun's on the horizon, it's going to come back up and this rubber band, momentum is going to compile and all these mistakes, all these hindrances, disturbances, obstacles are all going to get out of the way for you soon and you're going to launch. Go ahead, joe.

7:09 You know, I wanted to say something earlier and literally I just I didn't want to interrupt because you had such an awesome flow with it. But when you're like, does anyone ever look at you in this way and say it was easy for you? Think about when we have our classes. I get this a lot where people are like, oh well, joe, I'm just not as good at this as you are. And the thing is is they don't see where I came from. Like I am a very autistic individual who did not know how to talk to people and did not know social rules and regulations and norms, and I was bombing every sales call I went to and was going to go broke, and I did this because I didn't want to kill myself. Like that's how dark this was, and it was like going from there to here.

7:51 Yes, it's good to say, well, joe, you're just good at this now. But it's why, like, why are we so good at this? And I think that that sometimes gets lost in that translation because people assume that you're competent and that it just came compared to you literally were in the grutter and you crawled through your fingernails, scraping against the concrete to get out. Rubber band, brother. It's all adding up. It feels backwards, but it's just the pull of that band ready to snap back. That said, man, it was a huge topic. It's been a huge burden on my mind. We talked a bunch about it earlier. I couldn't go through today's live podcast without at least addressing that.

8:33 I'm so glad that we're the sensitive bunch and you're willing to jump in there with me. Always you ready for more exciting stuff? Yeah, sounds solid. Okay, as we mentioned, some tornadoes recently touched down. Weather patterns seem to be getting crazier, not more subtle, not more consistent, not more safe. We're gonna continue to see floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes all these disasters and, as we know, especially around COVID times. We're frontline workers, so it's important for us to be able to communicate that we can help and not feel bad about that at that time I know that's not representing everyone but also to be effective in communicating how we can help after a natural disaster.

9:24 And I feel like the wheels are probably turning for you on generators, joe. Would I be right in saying that? on generators, joe, would I be right in saying that? Yeah, no, it's like. Literally, unfortunately, people feel like following a storm is almost unethical in a way. But actually you really have to understand the concept of sales is something you're doing for someone, not doing it to anyone. So if you recognize that there's a community that has a specific need that you can solve and that you feel that you can solve better than your competition, you're actually being unethical by making them go to someone else. I would rather have someone say like imagine if I had a house fire and I was able to have someone come by, a home restoration company that was like hey, I saw on the news that you had a situation and I want to let you know that we actually can handle this entirely.

10:10 Yeah, if someone was like oh, you're capitalizing on my emergency. No, I'm going to be like thank you, come on in. I hate my insurance company. Can you? work with them for me, yeah, all right, let's go. So I'd love to get into that. For sure. And then there's also pieces that tie into it, like was there medical equipment involved? Like what were the specific situations needs and what are the needs on your behalf then to provide those services so that people don't have to experience that pain again? But one of the things that you've provided some great light on before, john, I'm hoping that we can really focus in on this is how can we then ethically re reintegrate that pain, I guess, guess, into our sales process, into our marketing, to then leverage that and be able to talk about it in a way that homeowners maybe want to buy those services.

11:01 So the closest example I can come up to was for those of us that survived Hurricane Sandy as electricians. The reason why I bring that up is our area was absolutely demolished and people were out of power for upwards of six weeks, right, six days. They were just out, yeah, and naturally we had that entire period of time. It was shooting a fish in a barrel. People would call it, as you would right they have no power, they have, they will have no power. But the thing and reason I bring it up is because, even though they went through that major life event, within a few weeks and even one to two months after the storm and after power came back on, the interest drastically dropped.

11:47 So what we were finding was necessary wasn't scaring people but is understanding why they wanted it in the first place. What are they hoping to prevent? So actually going and taking an opposite stance and saying, well, listen, I never want to feel like I'm offering you something you don't really need. Why do you even feel like you need a generator? I figured you guys don't really lose power that much around here, like, at least statistically. Well, yeah, statistically I haven't, but we just had we weren't here, okay, great. So let me help you with that. So the point of this is going into it and saying I know that I can help people, but I need to be able to connect with those who need the help and in order to know that, I need to know who's in the one sort of danger. So following the storm is really, really effective.

12:28 That's really powerful man, incredibly powerful. What you just said. I sense that little bit of a pull there. This is not a time to come across salesy at all. We know call volume goes up. We know there's a lot of people affected. We know it's unexpected. We know people find insurance to be a pain. We know that there's solutions in the gaps. But coming across sales at this time is a really dangerous move. We don't want to do that. Yeah, I fully agree, man. It's never a good look either. Someone could swipe a card for $18,000 because they need it, but the buyer's remorse they're going to carry if they felt that they were pushed into doing something or that they purchased something that was beyond what they needed at that point, or that somehow your intentions weren't fully there.

13:16 That's going to hurt your reputation long-term, because when their neighbor goes, oh, who did you install it from? Oh no, don't go to SLE, man, listen, I did. They're not bad, but this is what happened. I don't want that. I want them to be like you need to go to Joe. Trust me, this guy will take care of you. You know what, and I know that ironically, we marketed the marketing of this, but I'm feeling a bit of a different shift here that I think is really important to address, and I remember this from last summer too. One of the conversations we ended up having was really around well, who do we serve first in these high demand moments? And being that we actually are talking about club memberships in our interaction post today and giving that back out, could you help us speak to and understand a bit of that tie-in and how you would respond after a storm?

14:05 If you're in that area and you know you've got 10, 20, even 50 club members who may be a priority for you, what would you do in that case, joe so? granted, it depends on the kind of prep time that we have, because if you're like knife switch go, you're kind of in a short situation. But in the perfect world, this is what I'd want to do. If I know there's a storm coming or I know a storm hit, the first thing I would do is I would make an outbound campaign to every one of my first-class members. Hey, I did want to check in and let you know. We heard that there was a storm in your area or familiar with what's going on. I know that you're a first-class customer. I just want to make sure that everyone's okay in the house Everything going good, all right, awesome, I'm glad to hear that.

14:47 Just know, if you need to reach us. You still have priority service, even in these situations. So I would make sure that if they needed something, I'm there. And what that could look like is hey, their generator has been running for four days. Hey, is it okay? Yeah, no problem, I'll come by and do a service for you. So first step is contact all your first class members. The second is to protect your call volume schedule and I would implement to my team and my CSR team and say okay, we're now implementing the rule of first class, meaning that what's going to happen is we're only going to take on club members on this point. So the way the call would go is I'm happy to support you. Thank you for giving us a call. We can 100% help.

15:28 Just so you're aware, because of the storm, our service is in extremely high demand right now and, as a result, we are currently only servicing our club members. Are you currently a club member? Not a problem. Would you like to become one? Not a problem. What we can do is we can add you to a standby list for when we have availability, or I'd be happy to move you to the front of the line and allow you to go into the situation. Just let me know how you'd like to proceed. You read my mind with that. That's exactly where I was going to take us, so I appreciate you bringing that up. Do you feel bad for the people that you can't serve there, like, what do you do with those people? So have you ever heard the concept of the um the sea star on the beach?

16:11 Have you heard the story of that? Only from you, man, but I love this and, since you told me, I've heard it from others actually. Okay. So the situation is is that there was a man walking on a beach in the morning when the high tide came in and he washed. And all these sea stars are washed on the beach and this guy's just picking up, just throw them one at a time, one at a time, one at a time and someone comes behind him and says dude, what are you doing? There's a whole ocean of them, you can't help all of them. He looks down, smiles, picks up one and goes I helped that one. So I always adopted that mentality when it came to protecting our customers. You paid to be first class, with the understanding that in these emergencies you will be priority.

16:52 You've paid me for that and I will honor that agreement. But the second thing is is I didn't tell you no, I wouldn't help you. I simply gave you a condition in which I would and I'm doing that gauge, not forever Right, as soon as we have availability again. If there was no calls on the board, I would take you on, yeah, but we know that there's going to be 100,000 calls coming in. Everyone's going to have no power. Everyone's going to need service right now. So we're going to shut the floodgates, yeah, and, as a result, we're going to protect our time so that we're not risking doing 10 calls and serving no one. Since you bring that up, I want to bring up another. I think what's a valid link to that is going to 10 calls and serving them half-ass.

17:39 Oh my God. Which is also an incredible danger at these times where we go from. Hey, that was the play. We used to offer six options. We used to do it that way, but now we're just doing what's being asked of us, because all these services are down, for example. What do you? think on that and what's the correct way to proceed there? So when you have someone, just so I understand the situation if you're saying that someone's coming in and there's multiple service you can provide. But I misunderstand the situation, yeah but we're coming off like we feel the pull. In these times, when there's so much demand, we tend to go back to the path of least. Resistance is really what I'm trying to address, and so, instead of offering six, options, as we had committed to all of a sudden, we've got shortcuts and it's like, oh, we're just gonna do this thing for you and that's helping, because it's fast.

18:27 And that's not the right way of doing it, because the thing is is that I was always taught you cannot half-ass two things. You need to whole-ass one thing If I take you on as a customer, you're getting the SLE experience. This is what's going to happen, because the moment you don't get that experience, my price point is no longer justified. So now imagine I take on more calls to create more revenue but create a negative image of my brand in an emergency. And now the community, when the emergency is gone, is like I remember Joe. Yeah, now I remember you, man. I remember $400 an hour for a light switch yeah, I remember that. You know it's like not going to work.

19:07 I want to create a brand reputation of service, of integrity, of ethics, and sometimes that means opening and closing the gates so that those you can serve are served at the highest level. Yeah, I love that. I'm really glad you brought that in there, and that's exactly what I was thinking. The other thing that I would tie in there is we don't want to short the process, especially that sales, that service process. But what we can do is anchor. So you could still offer the options, you could still take care of that customer at the highest level, but you could anchor what's urgent now and schedule out what isn't, and still have taken care of all of that person's needs and have a future with that person.

19:56 Does that make sense to you, joe? It does. Because the thing is is that you know what, even with the options themselves, you can be in an emergency, like, let's say, I got a call because the GFI tripped on your sub pump during Hurricane Irene and your basement flooded. Sure, you know what. I can go in and check your main system. Recognize you don't have the electronics protection. Recognize you don't have a generator. Recognize all these things and you may not take it. You may just take, change the GFI point and get my basement pumped out. But I know that this customer is going to remember those additional things and every additional touch point. I can say hey, remember when we talked about that. I just want to touch on it again because the reason why we wanted it for you was this.

20:39 Well, the reason we felt this would benefit you was this. So, even though you may not take it on the first shot, as long as you create the options, they have the ability for you to follow up with in the future. Hey, I know this was a situation you said wasn't right now, but you said you would consider it in the spring. I just wanted to make sure this didn't fall through the cracks you got forgotten about. Yeah, definitely. In summary, here's what I think we're trying to say. We all know the laws of supply and demand and we've all seen the Facebook posts and we've heard it over and over it's ebb and flow. It's ebb and flow and when it's in flow state, we just got to seize the opportunity and do all that we can and get frantic with it.

21:22 No time for anything. You don't have to do that and you'll find, if you're patient enough to just guard your value and stick to your process and continue to serve at the highest level, that actually a slow it down and more consistent pace and serve who you can throw the starfish in the water one at a time Well, in the long term, actually serve you better and lead you to a more consistent, more productive year overall. And that is exactly what you did, joe, for a few years, and it's exactly what we teach now. That makes sense as a summary. I'm sitting here, I'm nodding along with it. I'm like God damn Clay's got some fire today.

22:03 Like literally what's in my head. I'm like sometimes you still impress me, man, I love it. Awesome. Well, you know what? I think we opened up a can of worms here. I know we got a few people watching us. I think Tiffany, corey, jerry's with us. Guys, if you want to see a continuation of this storm topic and getting more into the marketing, getting more into how to leverage it, you go ahead and leave a comment below, and with enough traffic there, of course, that's. If you're live with us in the Facebook group, you guys, if you're listening to this on the podcast, you can leave your comments right there. But with enough traffic, we can always hit this one again next week and I can't wait to do that. But for today, we're going to run out of time. So I know that we provided an immense amount of value here.

22:47 Joe, what would you say for a couple of action items if you had to choose on this topic today? Not a problem, I'm happy to take this. I would say the very basic is eliminating the fear. Actually no, sorry Forgive me, I have them reversed, that's okay. The very basic is being willing to implement the rules. The reason why I say that at the very most basic level is because you have to be able to make a decision one way or the other, that you are either doing something or not doing something. If you're saying I'm taking every call during a storm, then you've got to own that. If you're saying you're going to protect your schedule, you've got to do that, because otherwise you're telling your team one thing and when they do it and they're overloaded and you're getting mad at them.

23:30 That's just going to cause more problems. So pick a lane and stay in that lane with the basic action. You got a huge vote for me on that one. I think that was actually not something I had in mind, but absolutely crucial to this. For sure, I agree, thank you. The second thing is what I started leading to originally was eliminate the fear. The reason being is, in this particular situation, the reason why a lot of people don't want to make offers to those kinds of customers or don't want to say no, we can't come to them, is because they believe that if they serve everyone, they're serving at the highest level. That is your fear talking. That is a scarcity mindset. You do not need to serve everyone.

24:13 You need to serve the ones that can make sure that they want that service. If they can put a hand up and say I want premium white glove service, then you show up and you deliver that service. But don't be afraid to show up to a call that may not be the right fit for you and, as a result, you'd say no then. So when they're not a fit now, you can say no again. You don't have to say yes to every single call out of fear of being rejected. Powerful stuff, Gosh. If you guys need more help like this, I would start by just replaying this episode. It's been massive. There's some superpowers in that. I want to thank you, Joe. I want to thank you guys for listening.

24:53 This has been another effort to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. We'll be back for another live episode on Electricpreneur Secrets next week and we'd see you soon.