How John Senn, an Electrician from WireOne Electric in DesMoines, IA, Sold & Installed $1.26 Million in Residential Electrical Work in 2020

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The most important thing is you got to build value on every call. So On a trouble call, it's a little bit more difficult because the customer's probably a higher stress, higher anxiety situation. They want to take you right to the problem and they want to know pricing right away. It's your job to be able to still try to get on some sort of a level.

And we try to look at it from our company standpoint anyway.

We want to try to spend 20 minutes with the customer before presenting pricing. So the biggest thing is, and that's not always possible. Especially you get the Type A customer and things like that. So sometimes you got to go purpose over procedure, but the biggest thing is building value inside of what you are offering them.

Welcome to The Successful Contractor, powered by Success Group International, 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. Welcome back to The Successful Contractor. 50 episodes. It's hard to believe that we've hit so many. If you're joining us on podcast, thank you so much for listening and thank you for listening all the previous shows that have been available. If you're here joining us on YouTube, very glad to have you on this new medium. We're excited about the reach that it provides us. So thank you for joining us. I'm also very, very excited to bring to you an interview with John Sen. an electrician for Wire One Electric in Des Moines, Iowa. Now, this interview with John kicks off what I'm calling our Crown Champion Series, and I have several more great interviews lined up with successful technicians, electricians, plumbers, salespeople in both HVAC and hopefully roofing here soon too. In the SGI world, we call a Crown Champion, at least in the electrical industry, is an electrician who sells and installs over $500,000 worth of electrical work or services. In John's case, he did a little bit more than that. John sold and installed $1.26 million. Highly, highly impressive, especially in Middle America. So in this interview you're about to watch, we're gonna learn John's background, we're gonna learn how he talks to customers, how he builds value, How he builds their trust, how he takes very good care of them. And we're going to learn about the Wire One team and just how sensational they are. So very excited to bring you this interview. I think you're going to find it highly enjoyable. John's a neat guy, high-energy guy, and I'm sure you will take away a nugget or two.

John, thank you so much for being on the show today. Could you please share with everyone your name, where you're working at, and where you guys are located?

Absolutely. Pleasure to meet you as well, Bob. I am John Sen from Des Moines, Iowa. I work at Wire One. Been there for a little bit over 2 years, and we're out of Des Moines, Iowa.

So very good. Very good. We are talking for a very good reason.

You were in San Antonio at our, our expo.

Tonight's the gala. You're getting honored because you just had an awesome year last year. Kind of share with everyone roughly what you— if you can remember the number, what kind of revenue you did last year.

Big numbers, big revenue. I believe we were about $1.23 million last year.

Just you?

Just me.

And installed, sold and installed?

Absolutely.

That's, that's awesome. That's, that's huge. Super excited. Going to, going to, you know, learn your magic a little bit. Walk— have you walk me through a service call in a minute. But before we dig into that, I always love hearing people's stories and how they ended up where they ended up. So kind of share with everyone, how did you get into the electrical industry in the first place?

Well, electrical industry actually started following my dad in his footsteps in commercial printing. And I was talking to my head pressman one evening and he's like, hey, Johnny, he's like, why are you— you need to go be an electrician. And honestly, it came from him. I went and applied and within a couple of months I was an electrician.

There you go.

It was as simple as that.

Right. And then so you took a couple of years to get licensed and everything. And were you always a service electrician or did you work in new construction or anything like that before?

Started in new construction, did about 3, 4 years in new construction. The last 12 has been in the service industry.

Was that, was that a difficult transition? I mean, you're pretty personable, so it couldn't have been too bad talking to homeowners from working just on a house or something like that.

It was a little bit different, really. The attics, the crawl spaces were the hardest thing to adapt to, not the customers.

Yeah, yeah, that's the, that's the, that's the not glorious part of the job, right?

Exactly.

So how long, you said you've been at Wire One for?

A little over 2 years.

2 years. And you had come from a similar SGI kind of background. So you knew the, the service system and, you know, kind of the process of how a service call runs.

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah. 4 years total in SGI.

Very good. Very good. What is— what do you guys do for training these days, or how do you guys keep on top of your game? Because I know you're obviously talented at what you do, but, you know, even great athletes still train and stuff. So how do you guys stay on top of your game?

Well, we've, we have weekly training meetings every Monday and Thursday. We've got a service manager full-time in the office. We always go through, do a little bit of, a little bit of role-playing, keeping up on the videos that SGI produces, things like that. You know, otherwise, realistically, the best practice is every service call, every new service call, it's a new time to practice.

That's true.

That's true.

Yeah, lots of practice. And I'd be amiss if I didn't say Wire One had collectively a great year. You got some really good electricians over there. How many Crown Champions did you think you rattled off?

I believe it's 5.

5.

5.

And your service manager also almost— did he hit Crown Champ?

I think he hit $500,000.

Absolutely.

And that's while working like part-time in the office.

Part-time in and out.

Yes.

Now, are you guys all big personalities like you, or is everyone a little different?

I think we're all pretty big. Some bigger than others.

So Jake's got his hands full. Jake's got his hands full.

Absolutely.

He started this.

That's right. That's right.

That's really funny. Now, do you get, you know, do you get dispatched any certain types of calls? Are there certain, like, calls or your sweet spot? They're like, we're always going to send John on these types, or is it just pretty much as they come?

I can't pretend to know exactly what they do on the front end, but I know that we label them Sales Tech 1, Sales Tech 2. So I think the idea is on the front end of things, they're always going to try to get their best guy in the best place.

So Exactly how they do all that inside of the office, I'm not 100% sure. Sure.

I just trust the system.

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. That's great. You seem very upbeat all the time. But, you know, what do you do when you go into a call? Is there anything you do to get yourself amped up and excited to talk to someone? Because not everyone's having a great day, right? We all have days where we wake up and just tired or whatever. So how do you, how do you get yourself in the right mental frame of mind to talk to people?

Absolutely.

I listen to a lot of motivational speakers.

You do?

Eric Thomas is one of my favorites. Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, so, so he's always got upbeat, chipper. He even has some little song motivational quotes.

Yeah.

I'll listen to some, some good music too.

Yeah.

But basically it's always mental end zone preparation. That's what I try to do, like to reset for every service call.

That's great. That's great. Now, as you're, as you're going to a call, do you do any background on, on the home or the customer as you're driving over there or just before you get there to kind of understand maybe what they've had serviced before or, you know, anything like that, or you just kind of go in and see what's what when you get there?

You know, everything's situational. Sometimes I'll do a little bit extra research. Our office girls, they're really good about, you know, doing the research on the front end of things, you know, figuring out if the customer is the homeowner, you know, how long they've been in the home, that sort of thing. They'll try to give us as much information as possible. A lot of times what we should do is pull over and take a couple minutes before we get onto the site and look in the history, you know, to see if I've been there, if one of our other guys have been there.

Sure.

To say that we always do that.

Yeah, you get busy.

I understand.

Very good. So, all right, so you pull up to someone's house. I'm sure you get out, you know, the truck right away and, you know, you don't look like you're lingering around and you knock and they open the door, you step aside and And someone lets you in their house. So what do you do in those first, you know, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes to first kind of get them to calm down? You know, sometimes people call you, they're not always in the best of moods, right? So how do you kind of start that relationship early on in the service call?

The biggest thing is starting with a big smile. Smile goes a long ways. Compliments go a long ways. You know, you try to get on an individualized level with every customer. That's the biggest thing that I try to do during discovery, which is roughly the 20 to 30-minute discovery window, you know, we're going over the customer's needs, the reason why they had us out, what their issues are, and we're just trying to build a relationship with them.

Okay. Do you— is there anything, you know, small talk obviously is a great way to kind of start the conversation. Is there any things you bring up or little, you know, cues, weather, or you look around the house and try and find interests that we do that kind of stuff?

Yep. A lot of times, I mean, I try to be aware of my surroundings.

I think that's definitely a key point. So if they've got a stone out in the front that says they're a Vikings fan, you know, I'll make fun of them a little bit.

Right.

You know, but, but yeah, like if you can tell they're Hawkeyes fan or Iowa State fan, whatever they are, you know, that the things that are in the people's homes, that's what's important to them. So, and that tells you a little bit about the customer before you even really know them.

Sure. Do you ever try and diagnose maybe the piece, the people's personality types and reflect that? Or like, will you talk to someone who, you know, the busy business person who took off, you know, and is on the calls and really doesn't have a lot of time to talk to you? How did you approach them the same way as maybe a real quiet housewife who's kind of, you know, shy and stuff like that? How do you, how do you handle those different personalities?

You've got to kind of fly by the seat of your pants, for lack of better terms. Okay. Yeah. You individualize every— no 2 people are the same. No 2 service calls are the same. You want to try to run the procedure similarly to, you know, on every call. But at the end of the day, getting a single housewife to talk over a busy businessman, that the businessman that's on a phone call, he doesn't have the time to— he doesn't want to talk about football and everything else. So you just— every situation is a little bit different.

Yeah.

Individualize it to each person.

Sure, sure. I know you talk about your credibility, which, because we talked before we got on camera, When do you talk, you know, share your credibility statement, as we always call it, with SGI? Do you do that upfront or does that kind of happen sometimes depending upon how the call's flowing as you're walking to the problem? If they take you right away, how do you, how do you deliver that?

On a trouble call where they're actually having issues, customers worried, maybe they smelled smoke, something burnt up. Yeah, I do the credibility statement a lot sooner in the call because I want them to know that they got the right guy. in their house, and then I'm going to be able to take care of the problem for them. Want them to, you know, a lot of, a lot of times it can be high stress, high anxiety for the customer. They're not an electrician, they have no idea what's going on. So I usually start that earlier on a trouble call. On a, you know, new installation, as far as like finishing the basement, things like that, usually I'll get to know the customer a little bit first, and then I'll introduce the credibility statement.

Right, right, right. What are some things that you say in your credibility statement? Just to give people an example that maybe a young electrician who's still kind of learning the service side?

Absolutely.

You know, I definitely incorporate years of experience and years inside of the service industry and let them know that, hey, you know, I've been stumped before, but I've never not been able to figure things out. So rest assured, you got the right guy here today and I'm going to be able to take care of the problem for you.

That's great.

That's great. Now, you talk about discovery and asking questions to kind of figure out what's going on. Are there certain questions you always ask no matter what the call is to kind of maybe get the homeowner to think about You know, maybe there's other things I need fixed at my house I didn't think about.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I always ask them how long they've been in the home, if they know the age of their home, if they've ever had other electricians in the home since they've been there. Those are 3 big key factors that at least start opening up conversation.

Okay. Very good. When do you talk to them about the idea of a whole house inspection? And what do you guys call it, a safety inspection? What do you guys use?

Keep It Safe inspection.

Okay.

There you go. So when do you talk, you know what? You know, I called you out for this problem, you know, and so obviously I just think you're going to go to the problem and fix it as a homeowner. So when do you kind of introduce this idea of a safety inspection?

Once again, there's going to be 2 different times. If we're on a trouble call, we— our procedure is that we're not going to offer the Keep It Safe right away. We're not going to do that upfront. We're going to definitely offer it to every customer, but not until we're into a signed circuit diagnose. That's when we'll go through on a trouble call and be able to tell them, hey, we're going to do the Keep It Safe inspection. Are there any areas of the home you want us to stay out of while we're doing that? So trouble call, it's going to be after we're into a signed circuit diagnose. On any other call, a new install call, kitchen lighting, basement finish, things like that, we're going to offer that pretty much right away.

Okay.

So usually, usually we get the customer kind of goes through, we the issue or the reason why we're out. We try to get down to the panel, and that's when we start really getting more on a personal level, asking the customer questions. And that's typically when I present it to them.

Do people always walk with— do you always ask them to walk with you during your inspection?

I prefer it.

Yeah.

Not everybody does, though. Sure, sure. COVID things have been a little bit different.

Oh, yeah. That's true. Very true.

Very true. Absolutely.

So, I mean, a lot of, I guess, what you do is just educating people about what's going on and in their electrical system, right?

That's the way I look at it. Yep.

I, I, you know, they can look at it like, hey, this guy's trying to sell me something, right? Hey, this guy's actually trying to educate me. And I definitely try to lean heavy on the education.

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Welcome back to the show.

You're listening to my interview with Jon Sen, a highly successful electrician with Wire One Electric in Des Moines, Iowa. Jon sold and installed $1.26 million— sold and installed $1.26 million in Des Moines, Iowa last year. So far in this interview, We've got a lot of good stuff already. I think even the best stuff is here to come. Jon's going to get into how he explains to homeowners why he has to look at the electrical panel. He talks about how he sells surge protection, smoke detectors, how he communicates their warranties, handles objections, and all sorts of other really good stuff. Let's jump back into my interview, and I'm sure you'll take away another nugget or two.

So you say, like, I called you for a bad outlet or whatever, and ultimately you take me to the panel.

I don't even know what this panel thing does.

So how do you explain to people why you need to take a look at the panel, what it is, what role it plays in the home's electrical system? Maybe kind of walk me through that.

I always tell customers that the electrical panel is the heartbeat of the electrical system. This is where I need to be able to go to disconnect power to be able to safely fix the issues that we have going on within the system. So customers always understand taking you to the panel. It just makes sense. And that gives us a chance to be able to actually bond with the customer a little bit more and talk to them as they're leading us to the panel.

And you guys just, whatever, the conversation just flows, whatever they take it.

Exactly.

You got it.

Do you talk a lot of surge protection with people? How do you explain, you know, again, I got those power strips, isn't that enough? Like, how do you explain to people what the value of surge protection is?

Well, I definitely let them know now that it's written into code. It was a little bit more difficult before it was actually written into the code, but now that it's code required, you know, I kind of do a little bit of a credibility statement with them on that. But the biggest thing is I let them know that there's equipment that cannot physically be plugged into a surge strip— furnaces, air conditioners. You're not going to pull your fridge out and put a surge strip on your fridge. So it protects all those appliances and your home's electrical system, and it's backed with a warranty, and we're going to back it with our warranty as well. So really, it's all about protection.

Okay, so you'll start talking, you know, while you're doing the inspection, you'll start talking about stuff like this?

Absolutely.

Okay, good. You know, one thing, I've been doing this a long time now, but I didn't realize when I first got into it, smoke detectors expire, and I don't think most homeowners They don't.

So, what do you talk—

I mean, how do you explain to people, you know, what the value of changing— I guess it's just as easy as explaining that they do expire, right? Or how do you talk to people about smoke detectors and they need to be replaced?

Absolutely. That definitely comes up during our Keep Us Safe inspection. We're checking the dates on the smoke detectors. A lot of the times you can tell by the case and the yellowing on the smoke detector itself too. So, even if a customer declines a Keep Us Safe inspection, inspection, they don't want us coming through the home for whatever various reasons, that doesn't mean that we don't do the safety inspection. That doesn't mean that you decide to not be aware of your surroundings at that point.

Right.

So when I'm talking to the customer, even if say they have said, hey, no, I don't want you coming through the house, hey, Mr. Customer, I noticed that your smoke detectors are an old case, guarantee that they're expired, and you can rattle off some different dates and things like that. And then you roll into the credibility statement on letting them know that every major manufacturer recommends a 10-year replacement window. Hey, great news, we've got smoke carbon monoxide built into them now. We've got 10-year lithium batteries. So I've got all these different packages that we can put together and give you different options.

Okay, and you always say we can give you different options. What are other some critical things that come up in your safety inspection that, that you feel like you always take time to point out to people? Are there other typical things?

CSST bonding, deficient wiring is going to be a big thing too. You know, you can tell when it's homeowner installed or MacGyver special.

Sure.

Take a real close peek at the service equipment, you know, making sure that's running and everything's safe is super important. So really smoke detectors, gas line bonding service equipment, deficient wiring, things like that are going to be the main cues.

Very good. We talked again off camera a little bit about the difficulty of selling diagnostics. You know, this idea, wait, I'm paying you to come out with a dispatch fee and now there's this diagnostic fee. How do you explain to homeowners what the value is of that or what you're doing?

The most important thing is you've got to build value on every call. On a trouble call, it's a little bit more difficult because the customer's probably in a higher stress, higher anxiety situation. They want to take you right to the problem and they want to know pricing right away.

Right.

It's your job to be able to still try to get on some sort of a level, and we try to look at it from our company standpoint anyway. We want to try to spend 20 minutes with the customer before presenting pricing. So the biggest thing is— and that's not always possible. Especially if you get the Type A customer and things like that. So sometimes you got to go purpose over procedure, but the biggest thing is building value inside of what you are offering them. Reassurance that you're the right guy for the job, that's definitely a big thing that comes into play on circuit diagnose calls.

What are some of the value items you hit on? Like with Wire One, I'm sure you guys offer different guarantees or warranties that are maybe better than your competitors. Can you kind of talk about the different value benefits you always point out with homeowners?

Absolutely.

We, uh, 5-year warranty as long as you follow our recommended repair options. So we're going to come in, we're going to do the circuit diagnose, and if everything's good and it's just one smoking gun, we're going to include that repair inside of the circuit diagnose. Otherwise, if we have other recommendations such as a circuit restoration with re-devicing and rewiring connections, as long as the homeowner follows those recommended repair options, then we're going to cover everything for a 5-year period.

Okay, very good. All right, so you, you know, you've seen the problem, you've done an inspection, it's time to build some options. I guess always 3 options for the homeowner?

3 to 5.

3 to 5, okay. And what, you know, do you— how do you, you know, do you try and— I guess the question I'm trying to ask is, are there ever limits to how much you'll put in each option? Right, like you don't want to overwhelm a homeowner, or do you just always put in there what you see?

Slap it on there.

Okay, so all of a sudden, you know, I had you come out, I thought it was going to be a simple repair, and I'm looking at 3 to 5 options, and they're pretty sizable in cost. How do you explain to people everything that you found in your inspection, why this is something that's really beneficial to them to have these safety items repaired?

Well, ideally, that's when it's great that the customer, if they can Join you on the safety inspection so that way they're seeing it as you're seeing it, and you kind of explain it one task at a time. But either way, when it— if it— say the homeowner doesn't join you on the safety inspection and you're just presenting with these big options, I usually go over the Keep It Safe stuff first prior to presenting. And I just try to go through one line item at a time and try to educate the customer, as, you know, kind of a show-and-tell. their chance to ask me any additional questions. I want to make sure that they understand what I'm telling them to. And then that's prior to rolling into pricing.

Very good. And your prices are always— you have a finance price first, or do you roll into financing if they, they kind of, you know, are a little shocked?

So inside of our estimation software, it kind of cues them up to let them know that financing is available. Through my presentations I usually go through the presentations on all the different options, and then I roll into the financing at the tail end. That's that's my typical procedure. Yeah.

Sometimes there's purpose over procedure, and you know you're getting into an expensive repair.

The homeowner's joining you, and sometimes I'll just interject it, you know, through normal conversation, like hey, just let you know we've got some awesome finance options available.

Yeah.

You know, especially if you can tell that this is. Right, right.

And you mentioned to me, again, off camera, that you have a certain financing that you like to always offer. What was that?

I definitely push Synchrony financing the hardest. I'm probably the only guy at our shop that does Synchrony full-fledged. 18-month interest-free financing, it doesn't get any better than that. I believe in it and customers know that I believe in it. It shows that I believe in it. I've used it myself, so definitely confidence sells there.

Sure, sure.

Alright, so you present the options and then, you know, you let the person decide. What do you do if someone's like, boy, that's just a lot of money, I don't know? How do you handle people that are just afraid to move forward? Because it is a lot of money.

Absolutely. Sometimes on big tickets, they're not always going to close right away. You know, a lot of times they've got to ask the husband, the wife, be able to figure things out. You know, pulling in other family members. Maybe they want an additional quote just to be able to compare pricing. You definitely have the best chance to close the job there on site, so that's what we try to do. You know, if the customer says, hey, you know, I need to talk to my wife, like, oh, that's awesome, I've got a few extra minutes, you know, do we want to maybe give them a call?

Right.

You know, so you definitely want to try to steer towards closing the call on site. But they're not all going to close on site.

Sure, sure.

How do you handle the, I want to get a second bid, or have you ever had where people showed you another bid from somebody else?

Absolutely, absolutely.

So as far as, we're not going to, we'll price match an apples-to-apples estimate. That doesn't happen very often because most people don't do exactly what we do. We do things to set ourselves aside from other customers or other electrical contractors, and we know the value that we bring to the table.

Right, right.

Very good, very good.

Okay, so I choose my option and you get to work.

What is—

what's your process for once the call kind of wraps up? Do you walk people through what you did, or how do you kind of, you know, gracefully kind of leave the house with the person feeling happy about what happened today?

Absolutely. Whenever, you know, so say we come through and we do smoke detectors, we're going to do a walkthrough. Show them that we've replaced all their equipment, we've cleaned up after ourselves, and you always want to ask the customer, is there anything else I can do for you? Are you satisfied with the service you've received today? Also, that kind of leads into, have I earned a 5-star review from you?

I was going to ask you about that.

Absolutely.

Okay, so that's that point.

Are there any other little things you'll do for, you know, to kind of as a wow experience?

You try and— I've heard tightening doorknobs.

You try to look for those little Yeah, if there's something we can do to easily help a customer and, you know, make their experience a little bit better, make them remember us, we'll absolutely do that. This spring I've actually— I was throwing customers Girl Scout cookies.

Is that right?

Yeah, they definitely like that.

So you walk in with a box of cookies, man, I'm gonna buy from you right away.

You got it, you got it.

Have you drive to St.

Louis and do some work for me?

That's funny. All right, so So, John, why do you think people ultimately buy from you and from Wire One?

I think that we're definitely branded well, we do what we say we're going to do, we're there when we say we're going to be there, we have an excellent warranty, and people buy from people they like ultimately. So that's where it's so important to be able to get on a personalized level with each and every customer.

Right, and like we talked again off camera, but you know, Jake really sets you guys up for success too, right? He said with the marketing, he's got it honed in, and you definitely get right in front of the right customers too, right?

He knows what he's doing. He puts us in the right play. We trust the system, trust the process, and he trusts us to execute.

That's awesome.

You guys have a great team. Just last question for you. If you had advice, or maybe you give this because you normally get the young electricians with you, what advice do you give them about how to be successful in the service industry?

You know, really being dedicated to your job and executing with the customers. You know, the service industry is tough. It's a tough industry. We've got on-call times, we've got late nights, we never know exactly when we're gonna get off work. So I just tell them, like, it's a lot of dedication, but there's also a lot of reward to be had.

Right, right. Very good. Well, John, thank you so much for your time, especially when you could be having— probably get a couple more hours of sleep or go have some fun in San Antonio. So we appreciate you taking it with us.

Been a pleasure, Bob.

I appreciate it.

Alright, thank you, sir.

That's John Sen, an electrician and a Crown Champion with Wire One Electric in Des Moines, Iowa, on how he sold and installed $1.26 million in 2015. Thanks for watching. If you feel like you have a great story to share that would also help other contractors, please email me at bhouchin@yoursgi.com. Also, if you enjoyed today's show, please like, please subscribe. We'll have lots of other future interviews with crown champions, with successful residential contractors, with other movers and shakers in the contracting world. You've been watching The Successful Contractor powered by Success Group International.

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