$850K in Residential Electrical Sold & Installed in Valparaiso, IN: How Electrician Kevin Braun Shares His Service Call Process

Welcome to The Successful Contractor powered by CertainPath, a show for residential contractors about residential contractors. We chronicle business journeys, share insights, and celebrate successes in this wonderful industry. I'm your host, Bob Houchin. For more information on how CertainPath can put your contracting company on a certain path to success, visit our website, www.mycertainpath.com. I hope you enjoy today's show and take away another or two. Kevin, thank you so much for being on the show today. I greatly appreciate it. For those that haven't met you at a training or an expo, can you share with everyone your name, your company name, and where you guys are located?

Yeah, I'm Kevin Braun from Amson-Wolfe Electric, Valparaiso, Indiana.

Very good.

It's up in northwest Indiana.

Yeah. And we're talking for a great reason. You're an electrician there and you had— you've had a killer last couple of years. This is a time to brag a little bit. What'd you do last year in sales? And you installed it as well, right? Yeah.

Let's stipulate around $850,000, I think. Man, the year before that, a little bit, probably $750,000.

That's a lot of revenue in a small market. That's incredible.

So yeah, it's more of a smaller rural type area.

So when I saw those numbers and found out you were installing the work yourself, not just selling for approval, it's like, we got to see what this guy's doing because he's making the magic happen. So I love learning people's stories. We'll get into your sales process in a minute, service call process, but I love, you know, learning people's backgrounds. So how did you get into this industry? Maybe let's start, what'd you do after high school? Did you go to college for a little bit?

So back in the late '90s, I was, well, I graduated '99, you know, after that in '99 in the summer, then I worked, For a construction company. And while I was working for a construction company, it was actually Kirk's uncle. Oh, so it was him. Yeah, so he was wiring up houses and stuff like that. And then he just asked me if I wanted to do electrical and give him a hand. So it was wintertime, while we were slow, I was helping him wire up houses. And then kind of the rest is history. I just kind of went and did that.

Yeah.

Yeah, then I left for a little bit and then came back and That's right.

I forgot that you did. So what did you do then in between?

So I worked for the state of Indiana.

Okay.

Yeah. So I was like a maintenance person for the state. And then I kind of worked my way up through supervision doing all that. Yeah.

So why the change to come back to electric?

Because being a state employee, I already had my pension. Being a state employee, you don't make a lot of money. You know, so it was more chasing money and then chasing a dream of doing what I love.

Okay, so you're like, I really enjoy electrical, I need to go back into it.

Yeah.

So did you reach out to Kirk and Brent?

I ran into him at Menards.

Is that right?

Yeah, just ran into him, was talking, and said, hey, can you hire me?

You brought it up to them?

Yeah.

Oh, and they're like, well, yeah, we got work.

Yeah, yeah, I kind of left for, uh, I was young, you know, getting married, insurance reason, you know, I need health insurance. You got I was gonna have a family. I was gonna get married. So yeah, yeah, that's why I decided to go. They were a small company. I think I was the only one working with them at the time. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

So what was the onboarding like now? I mean, it had been a while since you'd run service calls, right?

Oh yeah.

So how did you get reacquainted with the service process and kind of make it your own?

Well, so when I came back, I mean, I rode with Kurt, you know, a little bit just to kind of get reacquainted. And I did that for a little bit, like a month or two, couple months. And then they came down to Expo for Fall Expo and they just let me go in the van and run it. And I just kind of stayed in a van.

You stayed in a van and been doing it?

Yeah.

That's great.

Okay. Steadily increased.

What kind of training do you guys do today? Because you got a lot of BRT you do.

Yeah, we do weekly training. So every Wednesday, I mean, Do like a little name-banging and then we do stuff here and there. We help each other out and constantly training each other. Yeah. It's kind of— yeah.

How do you guys decide on the topics or the content?

Usually it kind of comes down mostly if something like happens throughout the year or something like that, then we kind of, hey, we need to refresh them. So then we just kind of make it a training topic for that week or Sometimes they'd pick out a train topic, just train on it. So it's kind of nice. Yeah. Who's directing most of the training?

You do any part of it? Kurt Duell.

Chris has been doing it. Chris Beduol. Yeah. Very good.

Very good. So it's just what's going on currently. Like, let's talk about it. I'm sure you guys are talking throughout the day to helping each other out.

Yeah. All the time. Yeah. We're always calling each other to talk. So yes, it's a good team there. A lot of good folks over there on it. Yeah. That's great. There's what, like, I think 4 of us now? That's fantastic.

Let's talk about what you do on a day-to-day basis. So let's say you get dispatched to a call. How much do you know about the call going into it? What do you do to get prepared for it?

What's your process? I kind of go on to ServiceFind and I listen, you know, like listen to the call that the call taker took and try to kind of mentally prepare. You can kind of tell what the person Their tone is, yeah, what they kind of want and don't want. You're trying to get into that, yeah, going into it and then read the jobs, get all the job notes on there, yeah, kind of read that. Then you just kind of mentally prepare yourself going there. You go to the door, knock on the door, and there you go. But there you go.

Do you do any certain music or anything motivational stuff?

I didn't always do any music.

You just like—

I listen to AM radio.

Okay.

Yeah, listen to a lot of sports.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're locked in that, that's your way, kind of a little release in between calls.

Yeah.

Okay, very cool. All right, so you knock on the door like you said, you know, you turn a little bit, they open the door, they, you know, they greet you. How do you start building a, you know, a relationship? Because that's so important for that trust, right?

I kind of like just like look around, like glance in the house. And I like, well, when they open the door, you kind of glance around quick. Sure. And then while you introduce yourself and all that, and then Usually they invite you in and you walk in and they just kind of look around while you're talking, just small talk, you know, and you kind of catch pictures or, you know, like what sports teams do they like or do they have a fancy car in the driveway that they're really proud of or like some women, they like their plants and showers and yeah, you just make a little small talk.

Open, you know, have some questions that, you know, get them to kind of, you know, Relax, relax, lighten up, open up. Sure, sure. Now, when do you pivot to what, you know, the reason for the call is? You just say, okay, you know, Mrs. Jones, you know, tell me about what's going on, or, you know, what do you like?

I just kind of like what you said. What do you got? What kind of issues you having? What do you got going on? What do you got for me to work on today? And I may easily take you to there, and then it Oh, okay. Yeah, you need this ceiling fan replaced. Where's your breaker panel at? And I'll take a look at that real quick before—

before you go, you know, you go to the ceiling fan, the breaker panel. Do you talk about yourself or the company at all, or you kind of wait for that later on, like as you show options to kind of add that credibility?

Personally, I do. I'm Kevin from Ansible Electric, probably an electrician of the day. Okay. And then the whole credibility thing, I kind of do that after They show me the panel and then where I'm at. Then I kind of ask them, you know, hey, is there anything else going on in your house? Any contractors been in here working? You know, stuff like that, kind of making small talk, ask them questions. I'm trying to get down to the mentally to the root of their problem.

Sure.

For sure. Getting into any price. Oh yeah. Anything like that. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

All right. So ceiling fan call, a good example because, you know, Like, go to the breaker. Do you ever get any pushback?

Why do you need to go to the breaker panel?

Like, you know, how do you hear that happens all the time?

So I just kind of say, hey, so I need to turn power up. You know, we should turn power off to that circuit anytime we work on it because you never want. You don't want anyone to get in the shock or get hurt, right? Right. Anything like that. Okay. Now, do you prefer them to go with you, or you just kind of let it roll and see what they? I I kind of prefer them to go with me. Yeah. So yeah, that way then if there's anything you see along the way, you can say, hey, how about that? This? Because, you know, you don't want to come to them with all these problems and then, hey, whoa, right, I didn't want you to do any of that. Right, right, right.

Okay.

And kind of make it, you know, let it be their idea a little bit.

So let's say in this case you go to the panel and it's like, It's bad.

It's old.

It's maybe original to a really old house. How do you— what do you kind of say to them?

Usually if it's an old panel and they open it up, I go, oh, not on purpose. It's just like a natural reaction, though. But yeah, more or less, you know, it's— I don't even mean to do it. It's just you just like, oh, right.

Yeah.

What?

That's an old one. Yeah.

So what do you say then to the homeowner about— because, you know, it's like, you know, they probably have all these electronics now and it's all plugged into this. undersized panel. So, you know, again, you don't want to start hard selling them on a panel when you got their call for a ceiling fan. So how do you handle that situation?

Well, I always tell them, you know, yeah, you really, you know, you want to take care of your ceiling fan, you want that ceiling fan, but you got to take care of the heartbeat of your electrical system. That's your panels. I mean, without that, you're not going to have all this.

Right, right. So we go, Miss Jones, have you thought about You know, updating this.

This panel's 30 years old. You know, you know, you really need to start thinking about maybe saving some money aside and get this panel replaced. I don't say you need to replace it. Yeah, I just kind of let it the option be with them. Okay. That way then they're not feeling enticed to do something.

Right.

Do you get any in the safety?

I mean, with something that old either.

Yeah, I write it in there. You know, ice panel.

Okay.

So, all right.

So, you know, you go there, you turn the breaker off. You know, obviously the inspection is a big part. I'm sure you do it. Is it on paper?

Do you like to do it on an iPad? I kind of do my inspection all kind of, kind of do the job that they want me to do really first.

Okay, good. That's what I wanted to get to.

So real quick, let's do that one ceiling fan and you get—

we give them options on the ceiling fan, by the way, or you just put price it.

I'll try to adjust. Yeah, options. So you get the ceiling fan option, and then I'll give them like an option for like ceiling fan and a dimmer. Okay. Light fans, speed control, fan bulb or something, something simple. Maybe it's a surge protector. Yeah. And then while they're working, because you're going to get them to sign off on that job, right? And then while I'm there working and I'm doing my safety notes— very good— then I present them with the options of, hey, these are all the safety issues that we need to get addressed in your house in this order. Yeah, you know, okay. And then I let them kind of decide and tackle if they want to do any more than just feeling bad.

Okay, so on that inspection, is it like, uh, it's a paper one we get?

Is on—

where's yours online?

Ours all on an iPad. On the iPad.

Okay, very good.

Yeah. All right, so we do have paper ones too. We can do it with some.

Sure.

Some older people like paper versus tablet, but you normally use a tablet? Normally. Okay, very good.

So then you're just documenting everything you see.

Do you—

will you As you see things, let's see, you see, you know, there's a GFCI that should be there, there's not there. We go, Mr. Doolins, can you take a look at this or do you kind of just prefer to do an overview of the whole house at one time?

Oh, I just— I bring it up to him. And, you know, by code you're supposed to have a GFCI here or, hey, I notice while doing, you know, I can test this out while we're here walking through. Yeah. No. Test the GFI. Oh wait, it's not tripping. They say, "Why is it not tripping?" Doesn't make sense. That outlets always work, right? Then you have to explain why it's you know the insides and the workings of the GFI, and then usually oh yeah, can you change that for me today? Right. Yeah, I can take care of that for you.

Sure. Sure.

You have any other ones around your house that you want done or need, or are they all about the same age? Something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, let's back up a little bit on that. You know, we went down the path of the ceiling fan, but how about like something where it's— you need that diagnostic, like you got a dead outlet and they call, oh, I just don't— can't you just change out this outlet real quick? Is it a real quick fix? I mean, you guys sell the diagnostics.

Yeah, we sell the diagnostics. So yeah, you go in there, you say, you may have, you know, a bad outlet. It could be a bad breaker. It could be a bad connection anywhere in your house in that circuit. So Yeah, really, we need to do the diagnostic to ensure that the safety of that circuit's good and it's not just that one outlet. Do you—

I mean, how do you explain if people don't know, you know, most people electrical at all? I mean, do you just kind of say, hey, they're all interconnected? Because some people struggle with it. How do you explain that?

Yeah, so you have to explain. I mean, you have the book too, and that's actually in the book. You can kind of flip to the page. Sometimes you can show them a circuit, right? And Usually people are like, oh, just do what you do. I don't understand all that lingo. Yeah, yeah. But then you try to explain to them, and most of the time, you know, they somewhat get it right.

Well, yeah, but it helps that credibility for sure. Yeah. Uh, do you ever get pushback on this diagnostic fee? I'm like, didn't I pay a service fee a few, you know, to have you come out? Is there ever confusion with that?

Or— yeah, we even get it sometimes. Yeah, not totally that much. I'm getting some people push back, but usually when you push back, you know, and I tell them kind of, you know, this covers me like for this whole— if I'm here for 24 hours figuring this out, yeah, you're covered for this. If I'm here for 4 hours, you're covered for it.

Okay.

You know? Yeah. Yeah.

That's what I want to be getting.

But if you're doing the diagnostic and you do it properly, you're going to spend A good couple hours in the house. Sure, sure. I mean, going through everything.

So, so that's how you— so I was going to— when you explain that, how you explain the benefits, like, hey, I'm here to— it could take forever, right?

So that's, that's, you know, but, but you don't have to pay for forever, you know. It's—

but it's to your advantage. I'm going to diagnose it because you can't fix anything if you don't know what's wrong, right?

And they get it, and they get the warranty too, you know. Hey, if that circuit fails again, that's on me because I was troubleshooting that circuit. So yeah.

All right. So do you guys do a lot of rewires that come from the aisle?

We don't get a lot of rewiring stuff there. We get a few. Most people do it room by room. They'll have us come in and they'll, hey, let's do $5,000 to rewire this room. Then next year I'll be coming, you can do this room. But yeah, every once in a while you get a whole house rewire, but usually they're the smaller 1,000, 1,500 square foot houses. Yeah, older, older wiring, older wiring, older home.

Yeah. So how do you, how do you build that out though? Options, you know, maybe talk— is it the whole house is the top option? Like you said, house by house or room by room rather is the middle one? Or how do you kind of build those out?

Well, usually I build it out, you know, whole house rewire, you know, because it comes with the panel. Comes with everything. Yeah. So you build that out for them. You got the standard safety savings rate, you mean? And then I kind of just show them that and then see what they'd say. And then they're like, oh, hey, you know, I realize— well, then, you know, we got financing too. So kind of give them the financing option. Okay. And then if they still don't want to do it, it's like, you know, I really can't Or to do that, but, you know, maybe we can do something a little less on that. Well, why don't we at least do room X and Y? Yeah, these are the most higher priority of getting this done, or get the panel done first and then we'll come here and we'll do this room or that room. And he looks and says, we have 0% for 18 months. Okay, up to $5,000 max. Yeah, a lot of people will take that same You know, same as cash. No, sure.

Yeah, I was going to ask you about finding what sells. Is that the big one?

Yeah, that's a real big one that we use a lot.

Do you have one that like stretches out payments super long that people like?

There is one on there. Yeah, very few people really use it. Okay. So a lot of people bought by us are kind of afraid to like finance anything, right? Correct. What, like 0%?

Well, that's all right. Yeah, that's it. I like though how you, you don't really give them the I don't want to say you don't give options, but you tell them, hey, this is really what's best for you, and then let them push back.

Okay, we can do— look, I don't see, you know, like, hey, let's find out what's best to work for you. Yeah, absolutely. The pressure with all these, uh, you give some options, but you don't want to overbear them with a lot of options. What if you overbear somebody? Their mind's gonna melt into this— they're stumbling into this black hole.

Yeah. 100%. I mean, I feel like with electrical there's all sorts of— there's different things like, you know, there's surge protection, smoke detector. I mean, there's all the lighting.

100%. Yeah.

Do you sell a lot of lighting?

A lot of lighting in the kitchen. In the kitchen. Now, is it additional living areas?

Is it— is that the reason for the call? Are you like to—

usually we— usually we upsell it. We get a lot of calls for WaveFroids. Waiting for lights, but usually it's an upsell. Okay.

So how do you, how do you pitch that to a homeowner?

It's usually the women in the house.

Yeah.

And usually they're like, hey, you know, it's really dark in the kitchen. Yeah. Like, you know, we could do this or retrofit some can lights that they have and it always improves their lighting. Okay. Or we can, if they just got 2 lights, one in the center of the kitchen, one in the dining room, Yeah, we can put LED wafer lights in there and light it up for you. Put a dimmer on there, you can dim it down a little bit.

Okay. So you'll just build out— now, will you build a separate set of options or how do you, how do you present that?

It's a separate set of options for one. Okay.

And that's to say, as you go— so what did that case yield as to the whole project, maybe one room, or how do you figure out how to do, you know, build different options for something like that?

It's just different case by case. Yeah. I mean, you just got to kind of go into each house and each person's different. Each demographic where we live is different because you got— we're in a weird area. We're up by Chicago. So you got Lake County, you got Porter County, then you got LaPorte County, which are all kind of like a lot of people from Chicago that work in Chicago live in that area.

Uh-huh.

Then you get to the 3 counties south of us, which is total Democrat. It's different.

Yeah.

And there, we don't price— we don't price them different. Yeah. But people down there are priced lower than what we are.

Sure.

Up in the 3 counties north. So we got to make it more of a challenge. Sure.

Yeah.

And yeah, so it's a little different. So every house is a little bit different. When you go in there, you got to price it out kind of and kind of know your customer and how you're going to fit Choose what you're going to do, right? You can go in every house and you could try to sell them a new house if you want to, right?

Especially older homes, right? That I haven't touched.

Yeah, we got a lot of center valve pole, um, 1800. Oh wow. Yeah, and we sell knob and tube wiring, some of them.

Wow.

Yeah, so that building the options on that is because you really don't know how much knob and tube is in a house until Really, you kind of either pull everything apart or you disconnect the circuits. Yeah. And see what goes on.

Right.

And then you get to follow it around. You go from one side of the house all the way to the other with one circuit. Man. So it can get pretty crazy.

Sure.

Some of them are short though. Short. And some of them, you got half of them are already rewired.

Okay.

Half of them are not. Okay.

Interesting.

Half the circuits are Oh yeah.

So it's always a surprise house by house.

Yeah. Something new every day.

That's right. That's right. I mean, we've mentioned surge. How about you sell a lot of surge protection?

A lot of surge protection. Okay.

How do you find it?

I just like going in there and I like to go in there, do the job. Like I said, go in there, focus on the job that Tad fits in. And then while you're there, you can kind of upsell them on the surge protection. Take them down to the panel and explain it to them.

Yeah. So what are you going to protect them?

Yeah, I want to protect all their electronics and their air conditioner. And you want to protect your dishwasher, microwave, stoves if you have an electric stove. Yeah. Yeah.

Because I think always the pushback is, oh, I have those, you know, those extension cords all plugged in there.

It'll work. I've seen them catch fire and burn into the floor.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, they start melting?

Yeah.

Yeah, we had somebody take a surge at their house one time and the utility company said, oh, that's not our problem that our transformer blew and put it— I don't remember what it was. I think it was like 180 volts or something on one of the legs of the circuit. It was something crazy. And then It burned out every GSCI in the house, and it melted her— her, like, uh, she had an old DVD player.

Yeah.

And it just, like, was on fire. Oh, and it took the actual server strip and, like, melted it into her floor.

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That is nuts.

Yeah.

Wow.

So did you take pictures of that? Do you show people stuff like that?

Like, I had, I had pictures of it.

Yeah.

Yeah. That one was a while ago. A couple of years ago.

Yeah. I was going to say, do you, do you use any other visual? You said the book. I mean, you take pictures of other jobs?

I do show people like the lighting and all that. I try not to show people anything of like stuff, right? Or something like that. You don't want to scare them, right? But yeah, it's kind of nice though, showing pictures of stuff you've created, changing the way people's kitchens look just by a couple of lights, right? Right. That's just really cool. Sure, for sure.

How about smoke detectors? That's a big safety item. I know a lot of people don't like to sell them, but they are— I mean, it's a big safety. What do you sell? I do.

I focus more on that like in the wintertime. Okay. I mean, I kind of focus on all of them. Sure, you tend to put more of a focus on certain things like smoke alarms in the wintertime when it's slow because we're going around doing our SSP inspection.

Right.

People that every 10 years you got to replace those. So yeah, tend to try to talk them into, you need to be safe and sure protect your family and Especially, like, again, older people love safety. Sure. They're high on keeping their house airtight. Yeah. And they want to be safe. We don't have to worry. Correct.

They can't run out like they used to.

No, they can't run out like they used to.

So yeah, because I, you know, that was again something when I was new to the industry, I had no idea that those things expire, you know. So when you see the yellow ones, What do you— what, like, do you just— do you just— is that pretty much how you break it down?

Well, yeah. So I tell them the expires. Do you mind if I just pop it out and take a look, see when these were put in? And yeah, and the data spec kind of tells you, hey, these are 20 years old. And they're like, oh, we haven't had any problems with them. Yes, because they won't go off the explosive or they'll chirp at you every— they'll start beeping and chirping at you all of a sudden. Yeah.

Well, I just keep changing the batteries.

And well, this one I took down because it wouldn't stop chirping. I threw it in the garbage. So, and so it— Like, come on.

Yeah, you're right.

Right.

So what for options on smoke? What are a couple of options? How do you sell those?

Well, depending on what system they have in their house, if they have hardwires in their house, just put them back to the hardwire smoke alarm. I mean, you don't want to I try to steer away from the battery ones where people have to change 9-volt batteries. You want to get ones with the sealed batteries in them now.

Yeah.

We were doing wireless interconnecting ones for a long time.

Yeah.

But we kind of geared a little bit away from that a little bit. They were having that issue with the small kitty smoke alarm. Oh, we kind of geared away from it. Yeah.

Yeah. But if you just have the old school, not interconnected ones, you'll set the hardwired ones, you'll sell that as an option.

Yeah.

Okay, very good. So that's top one. And like, we can replace all the basic ones with the old school stick on the wall.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Get something back in their house for them. Right, right, right. But I mean, you can put a wire system in. It's just going to cost, you know, it's going to cost some more. Yeah, we'll put that option in there. So you have to run the wires and hook all that up for them. Yeah.

You mentioned the safety savings plan. I'm glad you did because I always forget to bring it up. When do you start talking about it in the call? You mentioned it early on when you first get there at all, kind of plant the seed about Or do you just kind of wait towards the end? Or on the, on your club membership?

On our club membership, I mean, I believe they talked about it at the call originally.

Right, right.

And then when we're out there, we just bring it up again. Say, hey, send it in the book. And yeah, so you do it more when you're trying to, when you're trying to close out the guy, but it's like talk about the benefits of being a club member.

Yeah. What benefits do you try to push?

Well, you lose the dispatch fee for coming out. You get the lifetime warranty on all our parts that we install, like our GFCIs and something like that. So I kind of tend to push all the warranties, guarantees. Sure, sure.

Now, when you're, you know, the way we've been talking, you've been building out a lot of options. You know, let's say on this original call, Is it do you just close one at a time, or do you bundle it all together at some point?

At some point, yeah. I just bundle it all. Like if they're really wanting to do a lot of get a lot of stuff done, like remodel their house. Yeah, I'll just put it all in one big option for them. We'll go over it, and then we'll take hey, this will be this is a want. So we're gonna move this over into the want. I'll create a separate category for them, and then they have their wants and. The needs. Okay. So you break down that without breaking. Yeah, break down wants and needs for him. And a lot of people really respect and like that.

Now, as you're you know, because you were giving people options along the way throughout this, you know, sometimes people are like, oh yeah, we need to definitely do that, right? And other times, you can tell body language like, ah, the small. I'm not really that worried about it, Kevin. Will you still build? We so when you show those final options, will you put it in there regardless?

Put it in there regardless.

Okay. So it doesn't matter how they feel.

Anything that's life, health, and safety. I mean, I kind of live my life like that. Like, calls to safety, we're here to protect you and take care of you and your family. Yeah.

Now, even if, let's say, that's great, but the lighting thing, let's say maybe like, you know, I know what you're saying about the lighting, but you know, they look warm on it. Will you still build that out?

Build it out. Okay. That's a, that's a 1. Now you need, right? So you put it in the 1 category, warm. Okay.

So even if they were kind of iffy, you're going to, hey, at least this is the way it is. And they can tell you the price.

Most people are going to say, hey, can you just give me a price on an email? Email it to me, right? Yeah, I can do that for you. Okay. I mean, I'll give them a price on everything, whatever they want while I'm there. I'll give them a price for it, email it to them. But at least we're going to get this job done for you today over here. Right, right.

Okay, for sure. Now, I think earlier on we talked, you'll talk at this point, we bring up the company and your warranties, you know, as a subtle close. You talk about that at that point.

Yeah. Although Yeah, you give your build out your options, give them the whole rundown and the scoop of, you know, what we're going to be doing today. Here are your options. Which one would you like to do? Yeah. Is there anything else that you would like to do or incorporate in this before we finish? Or if you decide something after we go ahead and sign up here and we're going to do this work, You decide to do something else, just let me know. We can always add it in there. Right. And then I just kind of— then you just build the value and, you know, keep going with it. Yeah. Let them know their warranties and guarantees, and then you show them the price. Okay.

How much different are your warranties and guarantees than a lot of others?

I think they're around our area. Yeah. Oh, everybody's just like 1 year around there. Yeah. So their SSP membership, that's like Yeah. Nobody offers that around by us. Yeah.

So that helps sell a lot of stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. Really nice. Yeah, for sure. And then I'll get the discount on top of it, which helps out.

Yeah. At that point also, are you presenting it at a finance price on all these, you know, the ones and these, the options you broke it down?

I usually just tell them about financing. Okay. And unless they kind of say, hey, I really would like to do finance, or hey, What are the options for financing? I don't really go with the financing unless they really are interested.

Okay.

I don't really push it or I don't say, oh, it's only $200.

Yeah. You know what I mean?

A month.

Yeah.

Most people like go by us or either A, they're going to pay for it, or B, they're going to be really inclined to want to do financing. Okay. That's just what I found out.

Okay.

Over the years doing it, you can kind of read people. I got really good at reading people and their body language and just subtle cues of, you know, what they want, don't want. You can just— you get good at reading people. Yeah.

Is that, you know, early on— I'm glad you brought that up— when you were first let in the door and you start making the small talk, how much are you reading body language?

Yeah, I read when I pull up in their driveway, I read everything.

Yeah, yeah.

Pulling into the— from pulling into the neighborhood to pulling into the driveway, you can see what type— how do they take care of their yard? Is it well-groomed? Is it— are their bushes overgrown? I mean, you can kind of tell the type of person somebody is based on how they kind of take care of everything. Sure, somebody real tidy and keeps a real nice clean vehicle, it's constantly washed and waxed, you know, I mean, and then you step in the house and their house is like spotless. Yeah. Well, you better treat their stuff with care.

Right, right.

We treat everybody's stuff with care.

Yeah, but you really care about it.

That's in the deep today.

Are there certain types of homeowners you're like, oh boy, I'm in for a long— this is going to be a long call? Certain personality types? Or you do pretty well with them? I mean, you've got good numbers, so pretty much do pretty well with everybody.

Yeah. I would say you get the like real like dominant personalities, and you know once somebody is like gets going and like like you know what I mean? Sure. It's that kind of like kind of wants to shut me down. They would. Yeah. It's hard to break through that barrier. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Have you figured a way to do it, or are you just like okay?

You know. All right.

I understand, Mr. Jones.

Yeah.

Just gotta calm him down. Hey, we're here to take care of this problem for you. Right. You know, that's just— that was the toughest part. Yeah, for sure.

Some objections, obviously. You know, if you're like, there's a lot of work here, like you said, you could— a lot of older homes, you could own the whole laundry list of things. How do you handle people going, boy, that kind of— that costs a lot. I'd expect that today. So how do you kind of handle that? I mean, I just—

so kind of how I do it is more or less I don't really get a lot of objections to things.

Really?

No. Yeah.

And it's because if you tailor your options to the person.

Yeah.

And you kind of, and you do, like I said, got the needs, the things you need to do that are safety and all that. 99% of people are going to go with it. You're always going to have that 1% of people you will never make happy. That's hard to Make happy, and yeah, it's going to do the work that they initially wanted anyway, and right, move on. But majority of them, you got needs at once, and then you take care of the safety and the needs, and the wants you come back to and do later. Because if you do 100%, 110% on all this, they're going to call you back to do that.

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I want to clarify needs and wants. So is it basically 2 options? Are there levels of options between needs and within needs and within wants?

Well, that's actually 3 options. So you get needs, And you got needs with safety savings, all with— and then you got safety savings, you got surge protection, and then you got the wants. And okay, so I'd break it down into a lot of, I guess, my own personal category.

No, but that's interesting. It works.

Yeah. Okay. It works. Yeah. How about, you know, again, someone's like, well, it's a lot of money, even just the needs.

I might need another bit. Do you get a lot of that still or pretty much not?

I do. Yeah. But then I'm like, hey, I can get this done for you right here, right now. We can get this knocked out.

Yeah.

Get it out of the way. You don't have to worry about the hassle of people trying to return your calls or getting a contractor out here. And I mean, if they still fight you, you're always going to have the 1%. Yeah.

They're going to fight you.

Right. Tooth and nail. Then at a point, you know, you just kind of got to submit. Hey, give me a call. There's my card. Here's all my information. You got any questions, you can call me. Right, right. Just make sure, you know, everything's apples for apples.

Yeah, yeah.

Because somebody might be giving you a cheaper product or going something the cheap route, or, you know, you just never know.

Sure. Now, will you call those people back in a day or two, or you wait to hear from them?

So I usually wait about a week.

Okay.

I give people about a week and then I call them back.

Okay.

Our office, well, they don't call them back too much. I'll Give them a call and talk inside of the relationship.

Sure, sure. If after that point, I mean, how many times you call someone before or text before, like, okay, we need to just let the office know that maybe one day we'll reach back out? I mean, what's that time?

I usually just, I give them about a month and then after that, then I just have the office, you know, reach out to them. Hey, so-and-so, we did this. Can you give them a call and see if they still want to get that done or Right.

Put it on file. Maybe we'll call back in 6 months.

Right, right, right.

Sure.

But, you know, after a while, you don't want to beg them too much because then they're like, oh, hey, what's going on? What's going on? How do they keep bugging me?

Right, right. Let's say, let's say you sell a pretty good-sized job. It's, you know, last call of the day. Yeah, it was a later call to begin with. Will you, will you stay late and finish it?

My wife knows. I don't get home till 9 o'clock every night. Okay. So if I get home at 6, 6. Yeah. I told all the apprentices that work with me, don't expect to be home till 9.

Okay.

Just have that expectation going in every day. If you're home at 5, you're home at 5. Right, right. I'll say I've stayed till midnight in people's houses.

So you won't like to start a job and then come back the next day?

A lot of times we get them done, but sometimes we do that. It depends on the job.

Okay.

It all varies. Right.

But at least you will get something going because you don't want cancellations. You don't want a hell of a job at the last minute.

I hate people when they cancel. It drives me nuts. Right. Because you get all the stuff together, like got all these parts gathered up for this big job and they're like, oh, we decided to go with somebody else. Then what, 2 weeks later?

Okay.

So I try to get it done as fast as I can. Right.

Or at least get something started.

That way you don't get those people. Get something started in it. Yeah, you always want to, whether it's doing something in the breaker box, something simple at night, you know, if it's, say we're there, present your options because you start 4 o'clock, right, that job. And by the time you go through everything and what they want and go through the options, it's 6 o'clock. Now you got $10,000 worth of work to do. I'm sure I'm going to do that at that sheet. That's not going to happen. So you might throw that surge protector on the panel and just get it, change out the shared neutral. Circuit, you know, put those pull breakers on shared neutral circuits and move on for the day. And then at least they're tied in, you know, a little bit, right, with you a little bit. Yeah, because we can't cancel it. Yeah, we're going to work on—

yeah, we collect a deposit on that.

Yeah, usually we do 20%. Okay. Down the rest on completions.

I love it.

Good.

All right. Just kind of wrapping up, what advice do you have for like new electricians to the service model? You know, maybe look at a young Kevin. What do you wish you would have known back then that you know now?

When I came back and I started, it takes about 1 year. You cannot get frustrated. Don't get mad at yourself for not doing anything. It's going to take you a year before you really get your feet wet, get to doing the— be able to do it the right way.

Yeah. Takes time.

Okay. Very nice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why do you think customers decide to invest a lot of money with you versus go, you know, I just want you to change the fan and get out, or I want to call somebody else. So why do they trust you so much?

I don't know. Yep.

I just want— they've been questioning. Yeah, you got a trustworthy face.

My wife tells me it's my blue eyes.

That's what she said.

It worked for her.

That's what she said.

Blue eyes. That's why we're married. I love it.

That's great.

That's great. Okay.

Last question. What motivates you? You said you'll stay till 9 o'clock to get the job done right. Where does that motivation come from? What drives you?

I would say I always compete, being a competitor. Yeah, right. So I always wanted to beat my dad. So I know what my dad makes a year. I knew what he made growing up. You know, he's told me that. So just beating him.

Yeah, that's great.

So that was always my drive. Seeing him, he worked late. So kind of being like him.

Yeah.

And then just being a competitor. Just competition. That's great. Everything's competition.

That's right.

Maybe I'll be better at you at radio someday.

Oh, you already are, probably.

Awesome.

Well, Kevin, thank you so much for your time. This was a lot of fun.

I appreciate it. Yeah.

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