How an electrical contractor can get a lifetime of FREE customers …

Transcript

Auto-generated from the audio (3,082 words). Names, numbers and the odd Aussie-ism may be off — check the audio before quoting.

Hey guys, James Rest here from Marketing Secrets for Electricians and today we're looking at how an electrical contractor can get a lifetime of free customers. Wouldn't that be awesome? How do we compete against the big guys who own the market share or the guys that charge peanuts for an electrical job? On top of that, we want to employ the best electricians so we can get off the tools and have plenty of time for other areas of life. That's the question.

Join me and follow along as we search for the answers. My name is James Rest and welcome to Marketing Secrets for Electricians. Hey guys, so I'm excited today because I've decided to start an interview series with other electrical contractors to try and find out the success or what they're using to have success in their marketing so we can take what they're doing and implement it in our own businesses to help your own company grow and improve your own marketing. Now I'm going to include not just electrical contractors but other service-based businesses, so plumbers, roofers, any other type of service-based business that could potentially, we can learn something from and bring it back and this can help expand our point of view and hopefully improve our marketing skills. Now that being said, if you have got something to say or share, we think other electrical contractors would benefit, you can reach out at MarketingSecretsForElectricians.com/contact and you fill out the form there you can ask a question or you can fill out the form to be interviewed or you can even go there and just say you can click the button and you can talk into it and tell me the question or what you'd like to share so if you don't want to be interviewed you just want to share something you can also just tell me what that is and I can post it on the show so if you'd like to do that let me know and now we'll continue with what this podcast is actually about and go from there.

So have you ever found yourself sitting there waiting for that phone to ring for that next job for you to give you something to do for the day because let's face it, there's nothing in the schedule. I would bet that it's a dream of any business to have that phone just non-stop ringing with customers who want to use your service or purchase something from you. This would be amazing. However, this would then create a new series of problems. For example, I have this one case, this one job where it was a stinking hot day and I had to go install some downloads for a customer in their wonderfully old house.

I don't know how many of you have been in the roof space of old houses but it's terrible crawling around there. Not the ideal job and especially if you get some older guys that are more senior they're like nah I don't want to do that type of stuff. So anyway, up in the roof space, crawling around dusty, sweat pouring off me which then makes that insulation stick to your skin making it itchy as hell. Yeah, it's not something I look forward to now. For this one particular download I was trying to install it was in the corner of this tiny roof space and as I was trying to remove it, maneuver my way around the phone started to ring.

So naturally, you know, you stumble which bloody pocket is it in and it was an unknown number. So great. That's exciting. It's basically in my mind someone calling to ask about some work or a new job. As I missed the phone, as I took too long to answer the thing, I decided I would go crawl out of the roof space down the manhole through back to my van where I could chill, have a water break and call that number back as it turns out.

It was a customer who wanted a PowerPoint GPO socket outlet. The name kind of depends where you are and what time what year you were electrician. But anyway, they wanted PowerPoint installed next to the TV point that the antenna guy put in for them. So this was no worries. I put it pulled out my diary and booked them in.

Today was well, depending on how you look on it, I'm looking at it as I was lucky. But having only one job booked for the day could also be considered unlucky. But anyway, so I only had this one job scheduled in for the day. And the problem was that the phone every time I seem to go up in the roof space for more than a couple of minutes, the phone would ring with someone asking a question about a job or whatever, which is great. However, it seems it's slowed down the job.

So instead of taking a few hours, it took me the whole day. And why do I mention this? Because you kind of want to have that issue as well. You want that phone to ring. You want the phone ring because that's like the lifeblood of your business.

If there's no new jobs, new customers, new leads coming into your business, well, it's going to die. And then you would have to go back to working under that crappy boss or for someone else. And that's the alleyway. And maybe for some people, that's what you want to do. But for me personally, I prefer the freedom to kind of do your own thing.

So hopefully that's what you're after. And I'll continue along here. So now how the question I want to talk about, the thing I want to talk about here is how did this customer, the one, the job, so for this job that I was on, how did this customer come to call me? And ask me for the electrical work versus all the other electricians that are out there. There's thousands.

There's lots. If you look up, you Google your suburb and electrician, you'll see Google has it. Heaps populating there just on the first page. But yeah, there's so many. So how does that happen?

Well, let me take you back. Let's go back in time a bit where cause and effect were putting motion. Now, I don't know about you guys, but I like to provide free quotes. Why? Because it puts it gives me the opportunity to introduce myself and put me in front of the other people that you like to charge 50, 100 bucks just to come out and tell a customer how long it's going to be.

That being said, I only like to do it within a radius of the area I want to work. If it's too far, then yes. circumstances, if they want me, then they would have to pay. So in this case, a year ago, basically before this download job I was doing, I happened to bump into another contractor and I was doing a free quote. So we had a short chat about how the day was, how businesses, things like this.

And at the end of the day, we exchanged business cards before moving on to the next job. Now, this contractor could have been a competitor or an ally. So what do I mean by that? Well, in this case, this guy was an antenna installer. So an antenna guy and being an electrician, I could just as easily install antenna points.

And at this point, I kind of have been if a customer asked me, hey, can you install that antenna point? Sure. I didn't have the correct tools to install. An antenna, as such, like I just basically went to the electrical wholesalers, born antenna, put it up. And that's if I needed to do them and just pointed it in the same direction as the other ones in that kind of neighborhood.

So there wasn't there wasn't a great need for me to have the extra expense to install antenna points. So now, I had this guy's business card and the question was, well, was I going to continue doing this myself? Taking the money like so the short term game and maybe long term, not so much. But the other option was and this is how we could like team up is if I decided to send him work. So instead of me doing the antenna or the antenna point or any kind of TV related stuff that was not like 240 volts in Australia, but 110 in America, wherever you are.

So I basically decided, OK, I'm going to give this guy a shot and send him some work. And essentially he started he actually sent me work the next day. He gave me a call and said, hey, can you come out and help this customer? So it got the ball rolling. And from there.

I was like, wow, this is like amazing. The moment where I was like, I need to connect with more businesses that have the same type of customers that I need. So as an electrician, who else has is currently serving my my business like my sorry, my type of customers. So the main ones that come to mind is like antenna guys, test and tag. I hate test and tag.

Most boring job doing the same thing repetitive. It's probably good business base, but I don't need to do that. Then you got like plumbers. So out of the electrical field, you've got plumbers, you got builders, you got home inspectors, you got pest control, even really all these other service based businesses that already have a customer base there. They're essentially you can reach out and build a relationship.

I like to call this kind of building your electrical tribe. So you reach out and you go, hey, make a connection and you share information, you share customer details, you refer customers to each other. And this is so powerful because it's like these customers are so instead of just calling you up like from the yellow pages or Google or whatever and going, hey, how much is this thing? I'm running away. They've already built trust with the person who's referring you.

So for in this case, the antenna guy, that customer has built trust in the antenna guy, they've most likely done a job for them and they're going, I trust this guy. Maybe you know someone else that he's trustworthy. And so the chances of that customer then once has been referred to me, that customer calling me and going, hey, come and do the job. They're much more likely to take me up versus calling another random on the phone and going through that experience. So it's kind of like every the other thing is it's like every customer that this antenna guy comes in contact with is a potential customer for me.

So if they did say 10 a week, that's an extra 10 customers or that's like those customers. I may not even they may not even find me if it weren't for this antenna guy. So they're like, hey, you know, I need an electrician then say two of them. So that's for every antenna guy say I've had five antenna guys and an extra and they sent to everyone sent to a week to each antenna guy referred to customers to me a week. That's 10 customers per week that I'm not charging for and are more likely to use me for their electrical services.

And back to the download job I was actually doing, this customer had been referred to me from the antenna guy. So this is how it all kind of loops in together. I hope that makes sense. And what I would kind of give you here is kind of an action step, simple thing you can try. So first, the first thing come up with a list of say five contractor categories that might need an electrician to help complete the job or do something.

So it's kind of a natural fit. For example, if you're installing a pool or the pool, whoever installs a pool and the pump, they need a PowerPoint near that pump. So I've had a few of them where, you know, you have to dig a trench and run it from the mains or whatever. So it's finding the guys that you want to work with and the work. So it's five contractors that have the work that you're after.

So if you don't want to install PowerPoints, then a pool guy or you don't want to be digging trenches, a pool guy may not be the best. One or so retic guys. So the guys who put the reticulation in, they they're the retic controller at the switchboards and they need a PowerPoint in and have had a lot of those jobs. So maybe you want to do that type of work instead. It all depends on what you're after.

So anyway, come up with five categories and write them out. And once you've done that, the next step is to search. So this is easy enough. Use Google, go on the Internet and search these businesses. It's at in your local area.

And then so you've got so you've got five. So just to recap, you've got five electrical, sorry, five contractors, five service based contractors. It doesn't be service any in that have leads that that have potential customers that can you can service. Then the second one is you search for them, write down their contacts. So, you know, you do a bit of research on that.

On that electrical service. So if it's an antenna guy, you research, OK, is it a sole contractor? Do they have a website? I would do enough research and you get their contact details, but kind of filter out if, you know, if they're going to be a match for you and say you've got an antenna guy, you may want to get, say, five antenna guys. So that will give you five services with five of each.

So that's twenty five altogether with enough information. Now, this is going to take some time and this is maybe why some people don't do it because you need to set if you're too busy working, you will never get around to do this. So you need to set aside some time, say an hour per week to work at least on your business if you want to grow it and change the way you're getting leads. And and this can save you a lot of money because you're not paying for these leads necessarily. So it depends how you set it up as well.

So then the third is reach out, connect with them. And that's it. You see if they are interested in doing this type of building this type of relationship and you're building your electrical tribe. So you're building your network, your connections, and you're making your business stronger. And if you do this as an ongoing thing, you won't need to pay per clicks and such.

This could be a main pillar of marketing for you. So it's an outreach program where you're building your network and connection. And this is much stronger than doing for like these job services ads or putting ads in the paper or stuff like this. So I encourage you to take time because a lot of people will hear this and they won't take action. So I encourage you stop what you're doing.

Go however you schedule your time in block an hour out next week or the week after whenever it is you have time. It doesn't matter. Just make time to do it and commit to doing it and taking these three steps and just getting to a routine. This is your marketing routine. And this can help build your business, as I've mentioned.

Now, if you get stuck or have any questions, please feel free to reach out in our Facebook group, for example, Marketing Secrets for Electricians or go to marketingsecretsforelectricians.com and you can click on the button. You can go to the contact page or you can ask live. And that what that will do is prompt. You have to sign in. It's a free thing to sign up to.

And you can ask the question and that'll record your voice and I'll get that and I can respond or I can put it on the show for other people to hear probably because they most likely would have the same question to be open to that. Please feel free. I've also taken the time to kind of create or I want to add a little. I was like, what could I do to add a little bit more value for you? So I've created a spreadsheet which has a list of about five and I'm sorry, not five.

So a thousand services which you could use to help or brainstorm and you can use to help brainstorm and connect. So you can just run through jog your memory. That's a service. That's the type of work I want to do. And yeah, there's a thousand of them.

So there's heaps. Plus from there, I've also included the top five that I've used and that I've connected with that I found personally worked for me for generating free leads on a consistent basis. Now you can get this if you go to marketingsecretsforelectricians.com/tribe and this is only an offer to you guys as a thank you for listening. Yeah, so I hope that helps. If you like the show, please comment, rate us an iTunes and let me know that helps me know that I'm going in the right direction and providing useful content for you guys.

So I look forward to connecting with you and talk soon. Thanks. Have a great week that you can use just from these services. So if you would like this, I've also added my top five that I've used to gain constant free leads for my electrical business. If you want to get this, please go to marketingsecretsforelectricians.com/tribe and I'll see you there.