How to make your electrical business STAND OUT from the crowd WITHOUT competing for the lowest price…

Transcript

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Hey, guys. James Douglas here. Today, we're looking at how to get your electrical business to stand out from the crowd without competing for the lowest price, which I think is a big issue in the electrical business. So, here's what I hear a lot. How do normal electricians like us, who are properly trained and licensed, who are not willing to cheat and take shortcuts, and wanting to own a successful electrical business?

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 Wrest and welcome to Marketing Secrets for Electricians.

So, guys, did you know that as soon as you enter the electrical marketplace as an electrician and you start selling the same thing, be it wiring a new home, maintenance work, installing a light switch or light or even commercial work, whatever the case, if someone else or any other electrician is able to offer the same service just because they're electrician, this then means you're in the competitive marketplace and you're selling your service as a commodity. So, a commodity is something that essentially the customer can go and get the same thing from 10 different people and usually you're going to get the same thing. So, if I can get a, for example, electrical wholesalers, if I can get a clips or product, say a light switch, if I can get that for $5 and another electrical wholesale offers it for me for two, well, I'm going to go over there because it's cheaper. Now, how this relates to us is the same thing as electricians, customers are going to shop around. They're wanting the best price.

Now, you can compete on price alone. So, you're racing to the bottom or you can compete on adding value. So, let's go through a few examples here. Pretend you're Bob and you're reading the morning paper and you're like, oh, there's an ad for electrician. I need electrician.

My smoke alarms have been playing up and I'm just going to read you the tool. So, essentially the first one is Jack's electrical services, hardwired smoke alarms installed by electricians, $140. Then the second one is James electrical contracting services and this is a hardwired smoke alarm installed by licensed electricians, $185. There's not much difference to the ad and for the customer, they're like, hmm, I can pay $140 or I can pay $185. Like anyone, if that's all they've got to compare off, they're going to go, well, it's the same thing.

It's an installed smoke alarm. I'll just go the cheaper one. That's just how commodities work. If you can get the same thing for less, then that's what I'm going to do. Now, in the case of this, it's a smoke alarm versus a smoke alarm.

However, it can be for any other service that you offer. It doesn't make any difference if they can get it elsewhere. As I said before, it's a commodity. For example, myself, I've had customers call up and go, hey, how much for a smoke alarm or what's your hourly rate or whatever it may be? And I'm like, okay, for this, for a light install, it's this, for smoke alarm is this.

And they're like, okay, thanks. And then they, you know, they're just ringing around to find that they found your ad in the paper or wherever you placed ads and they're like, huh, well, this electrician is the cheapest, so you don't hear from them again. Now, unless you want to be the cheapest electrician in town, well, I don't know about you, but running your own electrical business definitely has a different additional responsibilities. And it's a lot, there's a lot more challenges involved in just being the electrician where you go in, you do the job and then you go home and you don't worry about the rest. So in my mind, that means we need to charge accordingly or just go back on the tools and not worry about all the additional headache that comes with running your own electrical business.

So I'm personally not interested in working for nothing and there's no strategic advantage in being the second cheapest electrician in town either. This means we should not get into a price war with the other electricians by lowering our prices, but instead add more value. So let's look at the previous ad in the paper and what we're going to do is we're going to add more value to the second offer or the second service. So this is, this is done by turning your service. So a service is like one thing.

So smoke alarm installation is just the service of storing in that, installing that smoke alarm. However, an offer is a group of products, a product grouped together. Um, so it provides additional value for the customer. So when you create an offer, it increases the perceived value to your customers because they feel like they're getting more. So instead of getting just the smoke alarm installation, they're getting this, this, this, and this, and this.

And it's like, wow, okay. So I am getting more, even if I pay a little bit more, I'm still feel like it's worth it. There's a reason for the extra price. Um, it also makes you have a unique position in the marketplace. And which means if you're the only electrician that has this particular offer, that means I have to go through you to get that.

I can't go to the other electrician because guess what? They don't have that offer. Now this is, this can be really powerful and I hope, um, this helps this concept. And I'm going to run through an example. I could go in depth on how to set this up.

However, right now, I just want to explain the concept. So you understanding. And grasp it and hopefully implement this in your, in your business as soon as you can really. Um, now let's go back to this example, uh, for the second ad we're going to add in and make this an offer. So for, for example, we're going to have James electrical contracting, hard, wide smoke alarm installations by electricians, $185.

The question is, how could we add more value to make the customer, Bob, in this case, uh, he's reading the paper. He says that's $185. The other one's 140. Now, if I were to go, okay, for $185, you're going to get, let me just run through this. So you're going to get, so run through, this is the, this is the offer that I've come up with.

And then I'll break it down for you. So James letter contracting with every hard, wide smoke line installed by a licensed electrician. And by our license electricians, you're going to get these extras free of charge, uh, how to test and maintain your smoke alarm workbook value, $97 smoke. You're also going to get smoke alarm testing tool value, $25. You're also going to get the smoke alarm reminder system.

And you're also going to get earplugs and a carry case backup nine volt battery. And if you act now, so you purchased this month, you're going to get a free smoke alarm safety and I'm not afraid, sorry, you're going to get a free safety inspection. Total value of all these things I just mentioned. So there's about seven is $410. And you're going to get that for $185 or in this case, I would actually bump it up to $197 call one 800 blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, you know, a number is all go to electricians.com and or whatever your domain is.

Prompts them to go. Wow. For now, now you're competing against a single service smoke alarm installation or an offer that has a smoke alarm installation, but it also has like ease all these additional things. So if you looked at that, you're like, wow, okay, now you're not competing on the one thing. It's like, it's much more value.

So he's getting $400 worth for basically half price. Now, let's just run through what each of these, you know, how I can, how you can, how you can come up with these things to offer. So for example, I would suggest brainstorming some ideas. So what you do is like, okay, I'm going to install this smoke alarm. Now what problems or challenges is the customer going to face once I've installed the smoke alarm for them?

Do they know how to maintain it? Do they know that they need to test it? Do they know how to test it? You know, these types of things. So for example, what I gave here was they might not know how to look after the smoke alarm.

So we gave them a house who maintain your smoke alarm guide. This can be a PDF or you can print it out and you could even have all this stuff in a little box and have a picture of the box in the ad. So they say, wow, like I'm going to get all this stuff. It looks like more than the other person then. So the next one, another thing that I hear the customers complain about is I don't test it because it's up high and you know, I'm old or I just, I don't have a step letter in the house or I just, I forget it's, you know, whatever the reason is.

So what you can do is offer a smoke alarm testing tool. Now there's a company actually in the UK, which I've searched online and they make this plastic smoke alarm testing stick, which is kind of like a hand on and on a long stick, which is like a meter long. So you can like, it's just basically a broom with a plastic hand on top with a little pointer finger. And you can use that and it's like bright red and it stands out. So eight reminds you, but B you can just put, push it up and you don't have to get up high or off the ground.

So it's quite handy. And if you want to see what I'm talking about, go to the good point campaign.com and you can find out more about these. You can also get them branded, but you need to buy like 500 or so to get them branded with your logo. But you can also just get a couple and add them to the total offer that we're going with here. So also people forget to test their smoke alarms, which was my next point.

So because people don't know when to test, they forget to test. What you can do is put them on an automated system where it sends an email or a text message and reminds them, Hey, guess what? It's time to test. Have you done your test and they can like, you know, sign up to that or you put them onto it. If they buy this package automatically and, um, yeah, I can make sure that they're actually testing the smoke alarm.

So then another problem that I hear people complain about is, ah, the smoke alarm. I don't want to test it because then I hear this like noise and it hurts my ears and okay. So let's take care of that problem as well. I'm going to offer them or include them. I'm going to, Hey, you're going to get some earplugs and not just any earplugs.

These are reusable. They come in a little carry case. It's also branded with your thing. And you can even attach that, for example, to the testing pole that I'm also going to give you. So you have them available when you need them.

Um, so this is like adding value, like they're complaining about some things and you're like, okay, you're going to get this. You're going to get this. You're going to get, you're getting a lot more for what you're paying now. And the other thing around is that some people don't have a battery. So they've tested, ah, it's flat.

I'll do it tomorrow. I want to go out in the shop next week and guess what they forget. And then it's like six months later and a lot of fires nowadays, a lot of people have problems because they have a fire, but the smoke alarms don't work. And this is a problem if it doesn't work, it's useless. So to, in order to prevent that, we can go.

Okay. One thing is you can add a nine volt replacement battery in, in this offer. So again, you can have a little box and in this box, you can have all the things that we've mentioned and it just looks really, it can look really professional. And again, it's how much time you want to spend doing it. You may just want to do a simple one.

You may have lots of customers. You can offer this too. So now in the, uh, offer that I read, I had a fast action bonus, which is something like, Hey, take action now. If you take action now, you will get a free smoke alarm, I'm sorry, free safety inspection. So you know, your home is safe and all up to date with the electrical requirements.

And that's pretty much all the items I included in this offer. You, you can, you can kind of include as many or as little as you want. It's completely up to you. The main thing is it is you add value for the customer. Keep them in mind and you will making your stuff stand out.

And you're actually, you can increase the price if you want, because you're adding so much value, but you're also not doing it with things that are super expensive or like it's, for example, um, you know, the workbook, that could be a PDF that you email them. So you don't actually have to, once you've made it, it's not actually costing you additional resources. So it's like an extra value, but. It's for you, it's not additional work. Um, so I hope that makes sense.

Now, now what, what have we just done? We're, we're looked at the service. So I've been storing a smoke alarm for $140. And then we've also, we've now then looked at the creating that and turning that into a offer. And the offer is they're getting a hundred, sorry, $410 worth of value for $190.

$87 or 185, whatever price point you want. So they, they're looking at the wall. Okay. I've got this one here. That is $140.

That's a smoke alarm inspection, a smoke alarm installation, or I've got this other offer here. These, these two ads are bright next to each other. I've got this other, other ad here and it's like, I'm getting a smoke alarm installed, but I'm also getting like five, six additional things. And it's only an extra 60 bucks or a hundred bucks or whatever that price point is. That's like, it's, it's, it's an additional, if I act now, I'm going to get this free thing, which is like a free safety inspection, which is worth the total value of the package anyway.

And the total value is 410 and I'm only paying 197. So you, you, you putting all these things in place that lean more in your favor. So I hope this helps, um, or allows you to see the value of creating an offer. And for, for your service. So what I would like you to do is look at your business, your electoral business and say, okay, what is the, what is my most popular product?

What, what is the one thing that I want to focus on now where I can turn this one service into an offer. And if you want to have a chat, uh, you can join our Facebook group at marketing secrets for electricians, share with us, um, what you're doing, what offer, what service, what offer, and we can collaborate and make a awesome, awesome offer for your customers. And I look forward to seeing you there. Thanks for tuning in and listening guys. Now, if you want to join in on this conversation and see what we're doing as we develop sales funnels for electricians, head over to Facebook and go to marketing secrets for electricians.

Find us out. Thanks.