How to Master Selling Your Low Voltage Services with John Iapalucci. PART 1

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So we're going to start a two-part series on how to sell your low-voltage services .

Now , this is a little higher-end conversation than we normally do on the show , but I have been seeing a lot of questions lately about how do you price this , how do you find customers , and so I figured , while I was never a salesperson , I've always worked around salespeople , so you know me .

I'll reach out to one of my subject matter experts and this particular expert I've worked with for over the last 12 years , but yet this person has over 30 years of experience of selling to the low-voltage industry . So make sure you watch both episodes this week and next week . So welcome to the show , john Apollucci . How are you doing , my friend ?

You were a hustler and when you said you were retiring I was like I don't sound like the John that I know , John , I know he's go , go , go , go go . So for those who may not know you , can you tell us who you are , the company that you ran and just an overview of some selling for your success in selling the Lube Voltage ?

So I guess , kind of to summarize it up , we all start in a position and we just try to continually grow ourselves , learn more , take advantage of opportunities . Sometimes the hardest thing to do is recognize an opportunity when it stand in front of it .

So take opportunities , and I guess the one takeaway that I would have would be don't be afraid to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation . I think that's how we really learn the best , because we find out that things usually aren't what we think they are and we gain confidence and learn through , like I say , putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations .

And then in starting a company , I'd never had my own company and just kind of embraced it . You know , just try to Be intentional about it and and it works out . I think you know , if you , if you put effort into things , you will be successful . And I'll give you a quick story .

Met a guy before I started JPI and he was working for a distributor , their top salesman and Met with him and trying to get him to rep my products . He's I'm not interested in your products . But he took time to sit with me and he said I woke up one day I was the top salesman at this distributor up in Minneapolis and he goes .

I figured out if I work this hard for myself , I had to be successful . And he became one of the most successful reps In the country , a Mike pride . He became very successful and only because he had faith in his own abilities and in knowing his work ethic .

I can't talk for the , for the other footprint , but you know that that country , but my half of the country , you're one of the one of the most successful rep firms there . So so you can teach you horn a little bit , you can tell people that you know you're good .

And and we really lived it 24-7 , and I think that was probably what helped us be successful . You know , at five o'clock , you know it , we didn't put it down and and that was done . We , we , we really had our heart and soul into it and I think it , if you do that , it will . You will succeed if you , if you really put your best effort into it .

I've got two major tears of audience members in my , in my group , here In my audience , and one of them is a newer up , emerging professional , someone who's an excellent technician , excellent project manager , and they said you know , I want to hang my own shingle . So they're good , technically wise , but they're not so good sales wise , right .

So that's kind of that's how I want to gear this whole conversation . And one of the differentiating factors between good and great companies is Is sales right ? I mean , that's that's , that's one of the key components . If you can't get the work in the door , you can't show them how good you are , quality right . So you know what are some .

What do you think are the differences between the good companies who do sales right and the mediocre companies that don't do sales right ?

You also have to be able to Speak to customers and deal with situations when they happen . You have to be aware of costs . You have to be conscious Are you actually making money ? You know our jobs profitable ? I think maybe that's where some folks in the contract , the business , don't know how they have done on particular jobs .

I have a particular acquaintance of mine that Was building houses and he ran into some trouble and he was asked a question Well , how much did you make on that last house ? And he didn't know . So he didn't know if he was making money , losing money , making a lot of money .

So I would say that if a contractor wants to become his own business and it's Very doable because there's always opportunity for a good company that does something just just be conscious of the numbers for one thing , because without , without the profit , you don't really have a company , you could do the greatest work and everybody in the business love you .

But if you're doing projects and you're not making money , you're not gonna stay a viable company . So know the numbers , know what your sales are , know what you make on particular projects , probably to the penny .

Now you don't have to do that forever because you probably a contractor knows what his fixed costs are , but have a relative idea , at least at the beginning , how profitable your projects are . And I think one of the questions you sent me was how can they be better at bidding ? Well , you have to know . You have to have your own history .

You know what your costs are . Probably they're similar with a lot of things are similar , but your particular situation might have some advantages or disadvantages . So I guess overall , know the numbers for one thing , and then sales . You can't just sit behind a desk and wait for emails to show up or bid list .

Really , this is probably the biggest point I wanna make with all of this is you have a young guys had some experience . Project manager knows how to design or at least put together structure cabling systems . That says you know what , I can do this for myself .

Well , that's great , that's a good start , but he also has to get out from behind the desk or out from the truck and go visit some potential customers , build relationships . You know , there's many ways to skin this cat , but I think we think one is go introduce yourself to every electrical contractor in your area so they know that you do voice and data .

You know , and it's gonna . It might take 20 visits , it might take one visit , but it's a numbers game , you know . Go and introduce yourself . You know , introduce yourself to the distributors .

I love the fact that you said no , if you're making money or not , because there's a lot of companies out there that will do a bid and then they'll go out and do the work but they're not tracking their material budgets , not tracking your labor budgets , not tracking the other direct costs . In the end of the day they'd say , yeah , we did good .

Well , if you don't know , you made money , that always you say you can't drive a car by looking in a rear view mirror and that's what you're doing . If you're not tracking what you're doing , yeah , you gotta be looking forward ahead , right .

But when I was an estimator , I used to know cause I tracked all my stuff that I knew that in a competitive bid environment I won maybe 10 to 12% of the jobs that I actually priced Right . Sales is a very personal , like you said , get out to know people , right . How much do you think for somebody let's say somebody's making 100 sales calls ?

Of those 100 sales calls , how many of those do you think they're actually gonna get to meet with somebody ?

Some people you're just not gonna get through to on the phone or through an email , you have to physically walk into their office and usually those are probably the best people to work with because they're the ones that are busy . They don't have time for sales calls , they're trying to get stuff done .

So , yeah , I've had surprising situations and walked away with orders just by walking in and seeing if

somebody's there . So , yeah , so getting back to , you know , somebody trying to start a business , you know , get out there . You know , get in your car , drive around , spend days just introducing yourself to people .

You know , don't be afraid , just just , even if you've never done that before , if somebody says , well , I'm not a sales guy well then , all sales guys , we're all sales guys .

So the first thing , maybe the first rule , is if somebody wants to start their own business , they have to realize they are a sales guy , you know , in some form or not , because you , you know , the buck stops with you and there may be a situation where you have to go and kind of sell your company . You know , don't be afraid to talk to people .

emails , and sales is a it's a it's a it's a relationship . I remember when I used to work for a company once my boss , who the company I was an estimator for he was , he worked as one particular sales lead I mean he took . He would meet this guy once a month .

He said sometimes he take him to lunch , sometimes they take him on these little Johnson stuff like that . He did that for seven years before he got his first opportunity to bid something for this guy and the first thing we bid was a contract that we put 30 technicians on and they were there year round and they were there for multiple years .

So it paid off in the long run . But you know , if you don't put in the time , you don't put the face to face time you kind of rely on , like I said , text messages and phone calls and stuff like that , and there are some people like text messages and phone calls , but most people want to put a face to that it's . It's all about a relationship , right ?

So you said but you know , just go ahead and just go visit , visit . Plus , in sales there's this thing called vertical markets , right , vertical markets vertical markets for those who don't do sales .

What that means is like if I decide I want to pursue only doing work for law firms because I've got some kind of a niche with that , that would be a vertical market right . If I wanted to do only hospitals , that would be a vertical market right .

As a sales person or somebody you know starting a company , what are some good techniques they can look at to identify a good target market and then to follow that question up how would they go find clients in that target market ?

And then as you start to do projects , you might all sudden say you know what I got , I've been doing these three hospitals so I kind of get to know that environment .

So then what you do is maybe join some associations you know hospital associations , you know , get back to visit all the hospitals , say , hey , I do work at Duke , I do work at UNC , I do work at Rex , you know , you know , that gives folks some confidence that you kind of know the environment that you're in and that you understand their business . You know .

Really , I think one of the keys to it is make your customer feel like you're part of the team , not somebody that's selling them something . Yes , you know , be part of them . You're there . You're there to help them be successful . Yes , and if you help them be successful , then you will be successful .

I love that because , like I said , I kind of said I said it was a relational thing , but you hit the nail right on the head because if they quit looking at you as a salesperson , look at you as a member of the team , they're going to bring you in on communications earlier , they're going to bring you in on opportunities earlier , you know .

And what happens is and again , I'm not really a salesperson , but I've seen this happen at events and stuff where I would see , you know I'd be at like a big event , I'd be sitting at the big table at the banquet dinner , and you're sitting there with you know 15 other people you don't know who might be other contractors , might be end users , might be

manufacturers , and I've seen this more than once where somebody says , oh , yeah , I work for you know we'll pick on hospitals , right . Oh , I work for , you know , john Hopkins . Oh , I work for University of Maryland Hospital , and then boom , you know , and then they say , well , who's doing your cabling ?

I've seen that happen more than once at a big event and so that's going to help a lot . So once what's a good way for now ? You said you know , hey , just go visit people . You know there's good customers , there's bad customers , right ? How do you pick which ones that you want to go meet with ?

So if it's somebody you feel like has an immediate need and you can get some traction , then you might want to follow up with everybody you meet with for one thing Send them a note , send them an email , send them a letter and just say , hey , thanks for meeting with me , we're here , this is what we do . But pass that .

If you have a guy that you're , somebody that you've been trying to do business with and you've been there every month for three years , well you probably don't need to go there every month . So your time is valuable , so you probably have to figure how to maximize your time to the potential .

Now , like you said about the individual went there for seven years , eventually got business . It probably didn't make sense for them to go there every other week or every month , but maybe every few months . Touch base with them . One thing I always tried to do is I picked out 100 people and here's 100 people that can change my business or help my business .

I made sure that I contacted them at least on a regular basis , some every week , some every month , some every six months . You don't know , companies change . You call somebody and they go . You call somebody and you be calling them every three months , no business . All of a sudden you call and they go . Well , he's not here anymore . Here's this other guy .

He's taken over for him . Now what can I talk to him ? And all of a sudden you have a relationship with this guy because he knows somebody , he knows you , and all of a sudden you got an opportunity . So don't write anybody off , but learn how to adjust , how much time you should devote to it , but really make sure you are contacting people .

We'd have days when things were slow . Well , that was the day you make phone calls and you follow up on people and say , hey , I hadn't talked to you in a while . Don't be afraid to just contact people . It will surprise you .

We don't do any business there now , but there's a lot of potential there . So I want to at least let that person know who I am and if you tell you , if you work every business , I would say you will get some business from at least 60 to 70% of everybody if you put enough effort into it .

So don't write anybody off , say , hey , I've talked to that guy three times and there's no potential there .

The beautiful thing about that is , if you have a good , a nurtured relationship with that person who left , well , the company they're going to go to , they may bring you an opportunity to that new company , so you're getting potential extra people .

And it was one of the biggest deals she ever wrote because she had a relationship with the person and they knew who she was . And you know , you just don't make any assumption that there's no business anywhere . There's always business somewhere . It might not be now , it might be never , but it may be in six months , three months , tomorrow , you never know .

You know , I guess in sales you just have to keep going at it . You know , I don't want to say you throwing up mud on the wall , some sticks . I think that's too simplistic . I think you have to have a target when you talk to somebody .

You know my business partner , todd , his theory and it's a good theory is , whenever you have a meeting with somebody , whether it's the first or the hundredth time , always have some homework . And what he meant by that was have a reason to follow up with that person .

You know you eat rabbits , so you need pieces of business that allow you to keep daily business going and then you work the big pieces and that's when you get the big hit . So you need both . You can't just look for elephants . If you go hunting for elephants you're probably going to go hungry . You need rabbits along the way .

I hope you got enough information on that one to help begin your selling process , because , remember , it's a relationship , not anything else . The better the relationship , the better chance of you having selling Until next time . Knowledge is power .