May 7, 2025

S2 EP37 Low Sales are the symptom, NOT the problem.

Are your electrical sales stuck? Don’t blame your leads, blame the leaks.
In this episode, we break down why low sales are just a symptom… and how to fix the real problem.

We rip the mask off the “sales problem” myth and reveal what’s really holding back your income. From missed calls, weak follow-ups, and skipped options, to pricing sabotage and office misalignment, this episode lays out exactly where money leaks and how to stop it.

WIN OF THE WEEK:
Billy, a brand-new business owner, just smashed a $30K sales week—his biggest ever. He got out of the van, empowered his team, hired office help, and used the exact process we talk about to eliminate bottlenecks. Oh, and he helped a woman in recovery get a home in the same week. That’s impact!

Whether you're still in the van or scaling your team, this episode will reset how you see your bottlenecks, your processes, and your power to fix them.

00:00 Intro - Sales are the symptom
01:20 Low conversions vs low leads
03:10 The “Email it Over” Death Sentence
05:00 Danger of skipping options
06:50 Office & CSR process misalignment
07:30 Post-job follow-up & R³ strategy
09:35 Billy’s $30K week & impact story
12:30 Top conversion tips from a sales expert
15:00 Offer more, sell more
16:15 Wrap-up: The real sales fix
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00:00 - Welcome to Million Dollar Electrician

01:22 - Sales as a Symptom, Not the Problem

04:12 - Customer Service Gaps and Missed Opportunities

07:04 - System-Wide Bottlenecks Affecting Revenue

09:32 - Win of the Week: 30K Sales Record

12:07 - Key Conversion Strategies and Closing Thoughts

WEBVTT

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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.

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I'm Joseph Lucanie and, together with my co-host, Clay Neumeyer, we're here to share the secrets that have helped electricians sell over a million dollars from a single service van.

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Now it's time for sales, it's time for scale, it's time to become a million dollar electrician.

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Hello, team Electric, and welcome back to yet another episode of the Million Dollar Electrician podcast, where we're going sale to scale for home service pros.

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Joseph, how are you doing today, brother?

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I'm doing good man.

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I love that you started with Team Electric because, like honestly, the first thing I was thinking was, hey, super sparkies, it's like what can we do.

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It's like what can we do to really give a little alliteration to our team, right?

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How can we serve you?

00:00:55.706 --> 00:01:09.975
We've got another great podcast to do so, following up last about, well, how we should serve you, how we should not make assumptions about the service to others and instead find out how others prefer to be served and serve them in that way.

00:01:09.975 --> 00:01:12.185
That seems to be the quickest to cash.

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And on this episode, we wanted to tag up on something we started last week, which was discussing how sales, or the lack thereof, are not the problem.

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They're the symptom of a problem, a bottleneck, and we've got a great, big win of the week I can't wait to share today.

00:01:29.367 --> 00:01:37.340
But let's dive right into this symptom versus the actual problem, what that means, and then I guess how to find the actual problem.

00:01:37.340 --> 00:01:39.326
Then, joe, what are your thoughts on this?

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Right off the bat, when you hear that sales, sales are low man, they're a big problem for me.

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So the first thing that comes to mind is there's.

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I feel like there's two directions to take, because it's someone who has a lot of leads and low conversion needs to work on their sales.

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Someone who has high conversions and low leads needs to work in their leads.

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But if I had to guess when someone's saying that their sales are low, my first question would be like okay, well, what are you currently doing?

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What can you show me?

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What process are you following?

00:02:12.905 --> 00:02:14.689
And let's see what we can do to troubleshoot.

00:02:15.340 --> 00:02:16.603
Yeah, that's a good start, man.

00:02:16.603 --> 00:02:17.305
I love that.

00:02:17.305 --> 00:02:18.086
I love that.

00:02:18.086 --> 00:02:24.747
So, tying in conversions right off the bat, something we can and should be measuring so that you guys know what's happening out there.

00:02:24.747 --> 00:02:29.497
But you know what this really roots back to a lot of things, doesn't it?

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This month, we've been giving away our pricing course to low sales.

00:02:34.068 --> 00:02:37.400
Could they be a result of of incorrect pricing?

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Could they be a result of, like you said, not enough leads?

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Could they be a result of lead mismanagement, like?

00:02:47.360 --> 00:02:50.109
the arborist problem we discussed last week right.

00:02:50.469 --> 00:03:10.489
You're right, and you know it's crazy, because it almost feels like a level of insanity where someone could pay for the lead, pay the technician to go out to the call, pay for their time that they're there, pay for them to actually now design a presentation and do all these things, email it over, not in person.

00:03:10.489 --> 00:03:13.140
Email it over and then just wait.

00:03:13.140 --> 00:03:22.986
They were so focused about doing all these things but now not actually getting the money is a thing that people aren't focused on and I feel like you're.

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It's like almost like playing golf, where you got on the tee and you have everything wound up and you go right for the swing and you pull right at that last second.

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That's really what it feels like.

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You're so close to a drive and you end up slipping, it's super hard.

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you know, we've seen more contractors invest in more leads the shiny object, the new stuff and absolutely torch the leads beneath them already in the forms of unanswered calls, non-callbacks if that's a phrase right Call booking rate being atrocious 40, 50% industry average, which means, of course, when a lead calls, are you able to book them?

00:04:02.074 --> 00:04:11.752
If a lead calls and has immediately a demand to hear a price over the phone, do you have the articulation to be able to turn that around and still get them on the calendar?

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Is that something you're doing?

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How are you still answering the phone yourself?

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Hence why you're missing calls and missing opportunities to get them on the calendar.

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How about the unsold follow-ups, joe?

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Yeah that's a huge gap for so many people, because, once again, if you follow that same line let's say that the person did actually give a presentation or in the customer say, hey, we'll get back to you, and then they just let it sit for a week, two weeks, and they're like hey, you know what?

00:04:38.552 --> 00:04:51.165
We got to follow up with that person, hey, I'll send them a text, I'll send them an email, and then I'll send them two weeks later, send them another email, when they could have just picked up the phone and called 48 hours later, instead of making it wait for two weeks.

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And then you know what, by the time they actually call, oh, we went with someone else.

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The crazy thing is they'll say I went with someone cheaper, but we have no idea they could have gone with someone who would have charged more, just so they don't have to deal with you.

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That's a burn.

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That hurts, right, that hurts Service process.

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We begin to allude to Sales process.

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Do you present options?

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How many options on average?

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Do you make assumptions, as per the last episode, about what this customer in front of you would like to receive for options versus what you should just follow consistently introduces what you should just follow consistently.

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And I've even heard that in our group this week, where someone said something similar.

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They wanted to say well, I don't serve all my customers with options because some of my customers don't want options.

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That's such a dangerous statement Red flag right.

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Is there an assumption in there, yes or no?

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It is.

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And the crazy thing is on top of it is that there's no way to find out.

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So just by doing that thing, you've created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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I don't think he wants options, so I won't provide him options.

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With him not being provided options, he now needs something to compare it to.

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Now that he has something to compare it to you charging a premium price for the same thing he can get from someone else?

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He doesn't go with you.

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And now you're at that same loop, saying I knew he was cheap, I knew he didn't want to do it, when all it is is he could have just gone with someone who served him on a different level.

00:06:16.848 --> 00:06:19.990
Maybe the offer did something better than the worst, better than the minimum, you know.

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And to keep going and basically bring this to a dozen little micro things that are interrelated.

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Once the sales and service process are there, is your office process, your CSR process, congruent with it?

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Does it set your techs up for success, or is that non-existent?

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Each and every one of these things adds up.

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Now, if we also included post-job stuff, what about happy calls?

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What about following up?

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What about asking for reviews?

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Happy calls what about following up?

00:06:51.362 --> 00:06:52.002
What about asking for reviews?

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Do you see how all these things, joe, could each contain a sale or two within them.

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It's amazing.

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And, honestly, I've seen some really fun situations happen where I'll be like, hey, you know, you're a smart person, you've been around.

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Do you know anyone that would be looking for an electrician that serves at this kind of level?

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People are like, oh yeah, actually my brother's looking for a generator, can I get a deal with him?

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And there we go, I got a free lead right off the top.

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Hey, could you help me with something?

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A lot of our customers find that they find us online and I'd love more great people like yourself.

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You think you can help me by doing that?

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Yeah, sure, and now that five-star review leads to someone else calling, and then some R cubed man the three Rs.

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What if every customer you had left a review, gave a referral and repeated and this stuff?

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Guys, this is exactly what we teach and I'm sure you can see now, even though this may be overwhelming from this perspective.

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You can see now why sales are the symptom, not the root problem, in plumber language.

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You've got leaking pipes and the only way to fix them is one leak at a time.

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But it is truly why people come and they tend to join us in our program and get help with this, because we have.

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Do I have to stay with a plumber reference that I already started?

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Go for it In my mind.

00:08:02.461 --> 00:08:04.769
I'm like I got to keep going with this, but I don't want to.

00:08:04.920 --> 00:08:07.641
This isn't the plumbing podcast, it's the electrical podcast.

00:08:07.641 --> 00:08:11.408
But we got to fix each of these leaks one by one, by one.

00:08:11.408 --> 00:08:13.632
As they say, joe, how do you eat an elephant?

00:08:13.632 --> 00:08:21.620
One bite at a time, one bite at a time.

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So it's just an exercise of solving bottlenecks and one of the best things a group, a community, can do for you is help pull you back and give you fresh perspective so that we can engage you with the serious questions, just like we discussed two weeks ago on the podcast about troubleshooting difficult scenarios in your business, so that you can ask the hard thinking time questions and actually prioritize which leak to solve first.

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Dare I say if your pricing is out of date, if you haven't checked up on it a while, if you're somewhere between 100 to 150 an hour or any hourly rate that you're presenting to a customer that shows a breakdown of labor and material, please start with pricing, please move to flat rate pricing and please take advantage, as we're in the final moments, of your availability to get our price course by just commenting, sending us an email, sending in a contact form on our website or following anywhere you are.

00:09:17.302 --> 00:09:20.375
Send us that comment of price course and we'll send that to you.

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That's only available till the end of April, so you'll want to jump on that.

00:09:24.250 --> 00:09:26.879
That was a lot to unpack, joe.

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What do you say?

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We get into the win of the week?

00:09:29.024 --> 00:09:30.226
Yeah, I absolutely love it.

00:09:30.226 --> 00:09:31.529
So which particular one you have in mind?

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this one's from billy.

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Billy actually won win of the week within the program, which means he earned a free one-to-one call with our gold coach, jacob, who we got to have a call here, a podcast with, to introduce you guys to jacob.

00:09:46.461 --> 00:09:56.913
But billy had some big stuff here and he wrote in all caps and little asterisks is big win, illuminating bottlenecks, just like we're talking about today.

00:09:56.913 --> 00:10:07.647
But last week or two weeks ago, whenever this was, he said look, we just hit a nearly 30K in sales week, which is our record by nearly 12K.

00:10:07.647 --> 00:10:12.554
The awesome thing is they just officially kicked off their business January 1st 2025.

00:10:13.059 --> 00:10:17.932
So this is another young guy like Nathan who's crushing it, new in the business.

00:10:17.932 --> 00:10:19.927
They hired two office staff.

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He got out of the van and let his guys practice running the play, diving more into education and leverage, using the technology, crms and AI available to them.

00:10:29.942 --> 00:10:35.903
They're up to 28 reviews on Google already, 24 reviews on Facebook and I don't know why.

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This was the last thing, and I'm just reading in the order.

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But this is what touched us, joe.

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He found a way to help a lady get a single wide mobile home for free from a friend looking to gift it after they got sober and looking to help someone else do the same.

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He was able to connect two people and have a lady receive a home for her to be able to go and get clean, get sober and have a better life like his friends and like himself, which is an incredible, incredible story.

00:11:05.316 --> 00:11:05.717
What do you say?

00:11:05.758 --> 00:11:26.275
we have him on the podcast, joe, I mean, I think that goes without saying and, honestly, to have someone so altruistic is really amazing because the impact that you leave creates waves beyond your own life and that positive, good deed that he did for this person will continue providing good rewards years and years and years to come.

00:11:26.275 --> 00:11:27.500
So it's just amazing.

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I'm glad that he was able to set that up and really provide that blessing for someone.

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Really powerful, really powerful stuff.

00:11:32.836 --> 00:11:40.859
So thank you, billy, and we're gonna send him an invite to come and share his story with you guys as well, and how they've been growing so aggressively.

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Sales are not the problem, they're the symptom.

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They're the result, not the thing that drives it.

00:11:48.880 --> 00:11:53.495
So we went very wide, joe, and I'd like to narrow back in.

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You mentioned conversions.

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What are some things that you see within a sales process if you can help us out with it quick, or some things that you see within a sales process that really help drive those conversion rates up, those average tickets up?

00:12:07.370 --> 00:12:12.421
And what do you look for as a sales consultant, an expert, when you're working with someone one-to-one?

00:12:13.509 --> 00:12:21.322
So if I had obviously there's so many different points, but if I had to say the key most important things is, these two things are going to go hand in hand.

00:12:21.322 --> 00:12:32.514
Are you asking questions that are part of the technical diagnosis, but are you also diagnosing how the customer's emotionally responding to this problem?

00:12:32.514 --> 00:12:36.744
You're looking to serve the person, not just the thing.

00:12:36.744 --> 00:12:51.458
So if I was looking at a process that was completely new to me, I would say where are the moments in this process that were breaking the walls and learning about why they want to do this thing, why they're doing it now and who's affected?

00:12:51.458 --> 00:13:05.982
If we don't do this that's the first step Then it would be taking that information and are you presenting it in a range of choices, in person to people for the right presentation with the right people at the right time?

00:13:06.410 --> 00:13:17.381
If you're doing those things I know you're now in a physical presentation to control the situation If you've gotten the emotional and now you're in person, are you offering options?

00:13:17.381 --> 00:13:38.697
And that reason why I say offering options is even if you didn't have a single line to pitch other than well, just take a look and tell me how you'd like to proceed and just pass it across the table At least you offering options has six different ways they could say yes instead of a yes or no, which is a 50-50.

00:13:38.697 --> 00:13:48.100
So if you could do those three things, I would say that'd be the fastest to cash conversion of enhancing your sales process.

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Really important stuff.

00:13:49.563 --> 00:14:02.219
As I always say when I'm on the calls with electricians, if we offer more on average, they will buy more on average, and almost everyone I've ever been on a call with has been able to complete that sentence before I finish it.

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Make sure you guys get into.

00:14:03.955 --> 00:14:06.000
The options are huge piece.

00:14:06.000 --> 00:14:07.794
Those are awesome insights from you.

00:14:07.794 --> 00:14:09.200
Joe, we went wide.

00:14:09.200 --> 00:14:14.743
You got to see all these little microcosms that could be blocking your revenue for the month.

00:14:14.743 --> 00:14:16.153
Did you want to say something else there?

00:14:16.554 --> 00:14:24.182
Yeah, I actually want to leave them with one other thing, because there's something on top of what you just said that I think gives another depth.

00:14:24.182 --> 00:14:26.477
If I could just touch on it for another minute, let's hit it.

00:14:26.477 --> 00:14:37.804
So the thing is is you're saying, if we offer more, people will buy more, and some people may hear that as they'll buy bigger things.

00:14:37.804 --> 00:14:38.768
But I want to change the perspective.

00:14:38.768 --> 00:14:43.118
They'll buy not only bigger items, but you'll have more frequent sales.

00:14:43.599 --> 00:14:49.552
The reason being is in my personal life, I have heard from clients when I ask, why have you chosen the option you've chosen?

00:14:49.552 --> 00:14:57.634
They've said because no one else offered this and you're the only person offering it and I want that thing.

00:14:57.634 --> 00:15:17.360
So options not only helps you convert at a higher level, but it will also allow you to make sales to people that normally would not have bought, because if you had only offered the thing you're used to offering, you would have been the same as everyone else, but because you did something different, you had the level of differentiation that someone said.

00:15:17.360 --> 00:15:18.871
This is who I want to work with.

00:15:19.714 --> 00:15:21.157
That just reminded me so much.

00:15:21.157 --> 00:15:25.333
It's such an impactful point, but I'm reminded of just please, don't email it over.

00:15:25.333 --> 00:15:29.884
Please don't let others copy your great options, all that effort you put into it.

00:15:29.884 --> 00:15:31.654
That's a big piece of this.

00:15:31.654 --> 00:15:36.716
Please get more closure, and it makes me feel like I want a tagline to finish episodes with.

00:15:36.716 --> 00:15:41.317
Would it be silly to just every time if we just said don't email it over, goodbye.

00:15:43.714 --> 00:15:45.921
Yeah, pretty much the email is where options go to die.

00:15:46.529 --> 00:15:47.297
Yeah, email is where options go to die.

00:15:47.297 --> 00:15:48.850
Yeah, Email is where options go to die.

00:15:48.850 --> 00:15:53.118
And here's your friendly reminder, guys, to leave us a review where you heard us first.

00:15:53.118 --> 00:15:55.437
And email is where options go to die.

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We'll see you guys again next week.

00:15:57.355 --> 00:15:58.438
Thanks for joining.

00:15:58.438 --> 00:16:07.263
We've got more great episodes coming throughout May, throughout June, July and the rest of 2025 to help you guys launch your service electrical business.

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Let's do it together.

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See you soon.

00:16:09.029 --> 00:16:09.753
Be blessed, my friends.

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Can't wait to see you soon.

00:16:10.596 --> 00:16:16.081
And that's a wrap for today's episode of the Million Dollar Electrician Podcast.

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We hope you're buzzing with new ideas that charge up to take your business to the next level.

00:16:20.730 --> 00:16:25.313
So don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share the show with fellow electricians Together.

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We'll keep the current flowing.