Ep 27 - Forget One-Time Sales—Here’s How to Build a Goldmine of Loyal Clients

Captivating solid client relationships can unlock a wealth of opportunities for electricians looking to grow their sales. This episode explores the value of repeat customers, strategies to enhance customer engagement, and the importance of viewing each customer interaction as a chance to build lasting loyalty.

• The focus on repeat customers as a key to improving sales 
• Low-hanging fruit strategies for maximizing client interactions 
• Shared success stories highlighting the value of customer loyalty 
• Transformations from one-time jobs to significant contracts 
• Practical tips for consistent follow-ups and communication 
• Value propositions that enhance service offerings 
• Common obstacles like skepticism addressed thoughtfully 
• Encouragement for electricians to embrace long-term relationships 

"Put your faith in front of your fear."

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Chapters

• 0:00 Repeat Customer Value in Home Service
• 9:03 Maximizing Customer Value and Repeat Sales
• 17:49 Believe in Yourself and Take Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

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: 0:13

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: 0:20

Now it's time for sales, it's time for scale, it's time to become a million dollar electrician. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back guys. I'm very excited for today, just like I am every day that we get to do a podcast show, and today, though, is no exception. We're going to go deep on something we don't talk about enough, and it's the low hanging fruit and the value of repeat customers. And even with this win of the week, today, we actually have one where the customer and this happens sometimes the customer actually has multiple properties, or sometimes it's their commercial and a residential customer, and those are some of my favorites. Man, Can you remember serving some people like this?

Speaker 2: 1:07

Yeah, no, I can specifically think of top of mind where one person was very, very insistent they wanted to buy the best for their commercial because he owned an entire warehouse but was like I want to spend nothing on my personal. So, yeah, you'll find people with different priorities and we can talk about how we can get through it.

Speaker 1: 1:29

Awesome. So so, guys, this episode's right for you. If you want to learn how to captivate more of your existing clientele, if you're just starting to listen to us, if you're just starting to take and make deeper relationships with each customer, then, even going back, we'll talk about some low-hanging fruit in this one for you to be able to go back and get back in bed for lack of a better term with your customers, which is a great place to start in premium service. In fact, I'm a huge fan of actually starting with an apology. To go back to old customers, and so many people ask us this Well, if I change my price and I change my approach, what about the old customers who love working with me hourly? What about the ones I committed to $120 an hour six years ago and nothing's changed? And they love that? And, joe, what's your answer to that when someone asks you that question?

Speaker 2: 2:21

So we're looking at it from the wrong angle, because did you just raise your price arbitrarily and are providing absolutely nothing different in the service you're doing? Because if it was I'm doing A and nothing has, I didn't even capitalize A it's the same lowercase A and you just charged more for it then that would be a disservice. But that's not why we're doing it. We got into the residential game to serve at a higher level and create the differentiation. So if you're doing it for that reason, the apology is actually Clay.

Speaker 2: 2:56

I've had something amazing that's come up and I wanted to let you know about it. What we're going to be doing is we've actually completely enhanced the way that we're serving you and your family and I just can't wait to tell you about it and then literally going into, we're going to make sure that we are going to offer the best pricing in advance. That never runs like a running clock you can guarantee. You know where you're getting involved in it. We've been hired an office staff and we're available more often so we can don't how you don't have to get my voicemail anymore. We've got the ability and you just keep adding the things, but with enthusiasm.

Speaker 2: 3:28

And then when you're talking to the customer, this is at the front door and what are they going to say? No, I don't want any of that. If they do and they're truly like yeah, I don't want to be served, I don't want you to be reliable, I you to be reliable, I don't want a guaranteed price, I don't want a warranty, then really you're not dealing with a homeowner, you're dealing with a contractor, so you're in the wrong place anyway.

Speaker 1: 3:51

And here's the deeper thought I think that erodes this for us, before we even go and present those great value items, is we get stuck thinking, oh yeah, and all that just costs you an extra $150 an hour. But you would never say that In fact, we don't want you to bill hourly. We want you to do some breakouts using a simple service rate, as you probably found in our price tool. Sure, but only to come up with your flat rates. And that's why you can offer comprehensive solutions where you never have to change on your price and they don't even feel a pinch, because what they see, for once, is the value of choosing you, for that service Takes us full circle to why, in the win of the week, alex says hey, I presented two proposals at once for a repeat customer today and he put that all in capital letters for a reason.

Speaker 1: 4:42

He's proud of this person, this relationship, he says. He says one was for their main home, where we already completed an 8.7K gold package, and one was for their cabin. The recreational home Walked away with two bronze sails. Combined total today $21,000, joe, okay. So let's pause for a sec because we just covered a bunch Presented two proposals at once for a repeat customer already worth a gold package of 8.7K. So this customer just took Alex up to about just under $30,000 with a 21K double choice home and cabin. That's almost 30K in the same year of service. If you're a betting man, would you say that this customer actually spends more in the coming years too?

Speaker 2: 5:37

I can tell you from experience that, yes, that's 100% a fact. But you'd also be amazed how much they are willing to spend for that level of service that is completely unavailable anywhere other than you incredible man, really incredible.

Speaker 1: 5:55

And what gives you that idea that they're going to spend more? I mean, you say that like someone who's experienced this a bunch. Yeah there's.

Speaker 2: 6:01

There's a couple of scenarios, but realistically there's one that really really comes to mind and we can even get into either one, depending on the situation. But the one that originally started off with is that we had a customer who bought a generator. Well, he bought the generator himself. He he calls us out there. He wants us to hack it in. He's telling us this is how I want it done, this is how you're going to do it, here's how all the other ports are going to be. And we pretty much told him no, here's how we're going to do it. And if you like that, wonderful. If you don't, it's all a tool. And he bought a $21,000 package from us Great, wonderful. Calls us back the following couple of weeks. Turns out he doesn't like propane heat. So we got all the propane heat out of his house and we put in heaters everywhere Okay. Calls back later and says I don't like the lights in my house. I want to have new lights. We're putting in 12 recess lights per room.

Speaker 2: 6:50

A year goes by a year and this person is over $200,000 invested with our company In one year. And this person is over $200,000 invested with our company In one year. His total lifetime value got over $300,000. And the thing is is that this person and I mean no insult at all was not a man of massive means. He worked in the sanitation company. I have no judgments whatsoever of that particular endeavor or profession, but you weren't expecting this person to show up. There was no Lamborghini in the driveway, it was a tiny little cottage. So the point is always assume that everyone's a millionaire, because if you did, then it'd be like why wouldn't they want to buy my best? Worst comes to worst, they're a cheap millionaire and they'll buy the bottom, but wouldn't they at least want to know what the better choices are? I mean, if they've got it, why wouldn't they want to know? And that shift changed everything in how we started presenting solutions and how we decided what we were pricing and what we were charging for things.

Speaker 1: 7:50

And that's a great share. And what stuck out for me is I was already thinking this started out as a tire kicker.

Speaker 1: 7:57

That's what most would call that. Call and if we went on your local Facebook group where you're in the Wild West and people just say anything and tell you how they're treating their leads that they've generated, you see a lot of people tell you that that is a waste of time. Call the person bought the equipment. They just want you to hook it up. It's a nightmare. We don't even take that they're. They're down the road of someone else and just the same. Joe, you could have turned that into nothing. You could have been the person that did that little job and ended up with nothing else. What do you think contributed, like what were the main factors, to that growing relationship?

Speaker 2: 8:35

we offered him things that he couldn't get elsewhere, and it wasn't that we had like an exclusive product line. It's that this individual had come to in his life not be served by anyone. He was an entirely self-sufficient man, takes care of his mother, takes care of his family, doesn't have a lot going on in his life, but he was a man that took care of himself and needed to do the things he wanted to do. No one had ever offered him help in anything in his life. But instead, when he said I'm going to buy the generator, I'm going to buy the parts, he was doing that because that's what he thought he had to do.

Speaker 2: 9:11

What we did instead was say we're going to offer you a five-year generator agreement, so I'm going to just take care of this every year, multiple times a year, you don't worry about it. I'm going to offer you a lifetime guarantee. We're going to offer you the first-class service. We're going to do the winterization and the electronics protection. We're going to do the home evaluation. We're going to do the pad. We're going to do it. You can tell everything was in it. And he remember asking. He was like well, what do I got to do? You got to pay for it. That's literally it, man. You don't have to do a damn thing.

Speaker 2: 9:38

Write the check you just have to write the check. And he was like I can do that, so okay. So how would you like to proceed? Here you go. And it was the most amazing moment because he didn't realize that he didn't have to do everything himself. For the first time, and you saw it click. And he never did anything less than the top three options because he always wanted to be served. So isn't it amazing how it goes from like? This guy finds you on the Generac dealer website, buys the thing, sizes it himself, tells you what he wants, tells you how to run it, has the PVC pipe, and then turns over and wants the best.

Speaker 1: 10:21

It's wonderful and that's exactly what you want. It's so counterintuitive for people, listeners, viewers, wherever you're at in your journey, it's counterintuitive. You could either remember a time or you can reflect on a current time where you're thinking this. I can't spend more time with my customers. It's already hard enough. I don't have time to give. I'm already booked out and emailing the quotes over and I'm already charging as high as this market will bear All these little internal red flags that we give ourselves, and it's all just excuses from what we do truly know to be true. Good people that help, good people get what they deserve. You put your finger up, joe, go ahead and jump in.

Speaker 2: 11:12

The reason why I want, I didn't want to break your flow but, I want to directly combat the person who's saying I can't spend more time because I was that guy. Like I, a hundred percent get it, logistical concerns, mapping things out, I'm your guy with that. But the same customer that I was just mentioning also holds the record for the longest presentation I've ever had to give, which was over eight hours consecutive in present dating, but it turned into over 30,000 in the sale. So the question I have is this you, the electrician, can go do a nine to 10 hour job or eight to nine hour job, right? Would you, at the end of the day, have generated that much income in that period of time? Would you have, at full service rate, no discounts have generated that amount in that time on a normal business day? If the answer is yes and you're just constantly churning it away like a machine, then you know what. Then you don't have to spend more time with your customers.

Speaker 2: 12:11

But for the rest of us humans, we recognize that we want to serve others like we'd want to be served ourselves. And what are the odds that anyone is going to go the distance with this individual and have that much depth and talk to him? To that extent? The kind of person that does is the one he's going to go with, because he feels like we're someone he can like trust and respect. So the question I have for all of you skeptics out there in the background is if you're not willing to give more time, should you also be charging less for less time? Doesn't make sense to me. Why not just offer the value and just be willing to stick to your price? If they don't want it, that's totally fine, but it won't be because you didn't serve them enough.

Speaker 1: 12:55

And that reminds me of two things, and I'll say just briefly Dorian's podcast again. Not long ago he talked about turning that $500 landscape lighting fix into a $24,000 platinum sale and what that came down to. That wasn't his first offer, but when the lady called back asking more questions, he realized the connection he had built and he went and sat on her couch with her for two and a half hours and custom designed even taller options for her to choose from, and she chose the best.

Speaker 1: 13:27

There's no way he would have got that level of what like 36, x or whatever it was. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 13:34

It was a ridiculous amount 526,000.

Speaker 1: 13:37

Like it's ridiculous, yeah, from being impatient or putting up a paywall, there's no way. I'm also reminded of one of our other wins of the week. That's happened a couple of times with Mike, one of our guys who at first was serving I think he said he was he was hitting 12 sales calls a day. Oh, and he was doing, though, 1.3 million a year when he came to us, so already close to your sales record. However, when we told him that, actually, mike, we want you to slow down and run about four calls a day, and we even want you to go back to some of these calls for free a second time just to help lock in those estimates with our two-call close, he couldn't believe it. But what happened next was he had his record month of $168,000 that he had never hit before, from half or less calls. That's saying something, isn't it, joe?

Speaker 2: 14:31

I mean double your money in half the work. I mean, who's not taking that deal? And on top of that? So let's just give one last aspect to it Double your money in half the time and wow your customer more than they've ever been wowed before, to the extent that they're writing you five-star reviews, and wow your customer more than they've ever been wowed before, to the extent that they're writing new five-star reviews and telling their friends. That's an ultimate three-part win. So where do you lose in this situation?

Speaker 1: 14:59

100%. I love this. Guys, we're going to have to cut this short here pretty quick, but I don't want to go without giving you something I promised, and that's a little bit more help to get more repeat customers. And this actually comes from a practice that we do in our marketing classes every week where people are asking about where their next marketing effort should be, and so I'm going to give you guys a very quick flash pass on this one, and that is to say you've really got three options in your marketing anyway you're going to do something new, you're going to optimize something that's already there, or you're going to scale something that's working for you already. Here's how we can apply that to things that attract repeat customers and are free to you.

Speaker 1: 15:42

Low-hanging fruit. Are we truly getting 60 to 80% of our reviews from calls ran? If not, let's optimize that, let's focus, let's make sure we're asking and let's make sure that your CRM is sending follow-ups, and you can even have a multiple drip on reviews and even offer something on, say, the third or fourth touch to try to get them across the line. Okay, incentivize with a gift card or a percent off, 5%, 10%, whatever you think you can handle to get those reviews? Second is do your customers know? Have you shifted your service model to something like we discussed and you haven't even told everyone you ever served Not one email but send multiple.

Speaker 1: 16:25

If you have SMS text campaigns in your company, then do those too. Plan a three to six email drip that discusses all the great ways that you're serving now that you weren't before, and how they could enlist your services again. Those are just two very simple ways, but you could go above and beyond. Add happy calls to your arsenal, but you could go above and beyond. Add happy calls to your arsenal. If you don't have a CSR yet, please get one right away and have them.

Speaker 1: 16:52

Start following up not just the unsold work but the sold and executed work too, and make sure that your five-star efforts result in that five-star review, either publicly or at least to you. And, by the way, this will help you interrupt any problems that they experienced and correct those so that you can get the five-star review. If you take these level of actions and start to put in a little more effort with everyone, as Joe said today, and make sure that you're offering those six options and make sure that you're following up when you have time, then what you're going to find is a ton more work from the great people who already know, like and trust you. That's for all the time we have today, so I hope that's helpful, joe. Anything to add brother?

Speaker 2: 17:35

Other than I'm just so grateful for the opportunity to help our fellow electricians. And once again I want to say put your faith in front of your fear. I know a lot of times you're worried I'm not going to have time. I know a lot of times you're worried I'm not going to have time, I'm not going to have the energy, they're not going to want it. The thing is, you got to try, because if you don't try, what's the worst that's going to happen? You're just going to end up in the same place that you are. But at least you can look back at it and say I did everything in my power and what's the odds? That no one takes the bite. So believe in yourself, be willing to fall and just put your effort out there.

Speaker 1: 18:09

I love that Good stuff. Joe, 2025 is your year guys, let's go get it. I'll be well. And that's a wrap for today's episode of the Million Dollar Electrician Podcast.

Speaker 2: 18:21

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

Speaker 1: 18:25

So don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share the show with fellow electricians Together. We'll keep the current.