Why the Best Electricians Are Often the Worst at Sales
Homer Lee Coffman has trained hundreds of electricians across the country. He travels, gets in the truck, runs the call himself, and shows the tech exactly what’s possible in their market with their customers.
His first observation: the more experienced the electrician, the harder the training is.
“Time in erodes awareness of.”
The longer you’ve been doing something, the more invisible it becomes. An experienced electrician has seen thousands of backstab receptacles, outdated panels, and fire hazards that weren’t fires. They’ve learned – incorrectly – that these things probably aren’t a big deal. The newer tech who hasn’t built that immunity yet sees the full picture and acts on it.
In Episode 11 of Surge Ahead, Homer breaks down the complete service call framework – from the first seven seconds at the door to the close – and explains why most electrical companies don’t need more leads. They need to do more with the ones they already have.
The Vampire Moment
Homer didn’t always want to be in sales. He was a good electrician who wanted nothing to do with the sales side of the job.
Then he saw something that changed his mind.
He was following a process he’d just been taught. He gave a customer options. The customer chose the $3,000 option when the $300 option would have solved the problem.
“I was literally blown away by it. Like, why? You just picked that, knowing this $300 option would have fixed your problem, and you still chose the $3,000 option.”
He calls it the vampire moment – your first taste of blood. It’s the moment a tech stops thinking of sales as something that happens to customers and starts understanding it as something that happens for them.
The reframe that made it click: not offering the full range of solutions is actually doing the customer a disservice. The electrician who fixes only what they were called for, without offering to address what they found, isn’t being honest – they’re just being cheap.
Born or Made?
Homer’s answer: both. Some people have natural gifts that make the ceiling higher. But anyone who’s coachable and open to seeing things differently can become a solid salesperson.
His proof: a tech he’s currently training in Oregon. “I don’t know if this guy’s gonna make it” – robotic, doesn’t have the natural ease. But he follows the process almost mechanically. He put up $12,000 yesterday.
And Homer has a plumber in his past who had, as he puts it, “the personality of a broom.” That guy was very successful – because he followed the process to a T.
The Two Non-Negotiables
Homer’s full system has eight steps. But if a tech is taking nothing else away, he wants them to leave with two things:
- Set an agenda at the front door. Tell the customer what you’re going to do before you do it. If you do something they weren’t expecting, you’ve already lost trust. A simple “here’s what I’m going to do today” eliminates the surprise and sets the frame.
- Present multiple options – in person, on the spot. No email estimates. Ever.
“You could have had it right there. And then you send an estimate.”
When you leave the house without presenting options, you’ve given the customer time to talk themselves out of it, find a competitor, or simply forget. The moment of peak interest is when you’re standing in front of them. That’s when the decision gets made.
Why Classroom Training Fails Blue-Collar Learners
Most of Homer’s industry peers train in classrooms for three days. He limits classroom time to two hours – an hour and a half if he can manage it.
“If you’ve ever been to one of those three-day seminars, about halfway through day two, you can see the room starting to go.”
Blue-collar workers didn’t go into the trades because they loved sitting still and absorbing information. Treating them like they did is why retention is low and behavior change rarely happens.
Homer’s format: 7-9 a.m. classroom each morning for five days. After that, his team gets in the truck and runs actual calls. The tech watches Homer – or one of his trainers – close a real customer in real time, in their market.
“I’ve never even been here. I don’t know the demographic. I don’t know the people. I don’t know anything – and it proves the process works.”
Every limited belief a tech has (“this won’t work here,” “my customers won’t go for that”) evaporates after watching it happen right in front of them.
Role Play Twice a Week
After the initial week, the work doesn’t stop. Homer’s recommendation: role play at least twice a week.
Techs hate role play. That’s the point. Growth happens at the edge of the comfort zone. The goal is to make it not scary – don’t hammer someone in front of the group for messing up four steps. Make it fun enough that people will try.
Homer has also moved to a 90-day follow-up model because a one-week ride-along, left alone, fades. The company needs someone designated as an accountability coach, present during the initial training, who can carry the work forward.
Handling “I Need to Think About It”
Homer doesn’t teach objection handling in the beginning. That’s intentional.
If you teach tactics before process, techs skip the process and go straight to the tactics – hammering people at the end of the call instead of building the trust that makes the close natural.
His framework: clear five boxes before you ever present price. The customer needs to be confident in the company, the tech, the solution, the timing, and the price range. If you’ve done that work throughout the call, most objections don’t come up.
When “I need to think about it” does appear after the customer said they wanted it done today:
“I totally understand. We did say earlier you wanted to take care of this today. If you don’t mind me asking – what changed?”
The ask isn’t confrontational. It’s curious. The tonality matters enormously here – the goal is to find out what’s actually behind the hesitation, because “I need to think about it” is almost always a mask for something more specific.
What Happens When It Clicks
Homer’s numbers, pulled from training hundreds of techs:
- Almost a double, almost overnight, as soon as techs start presenting options consistently
- Average tickets go from $300-500 to $600-1,000 in the first week
- Goal is $1,500 per opportunity – every door you knock on, not just the ones you close
The metric he uses: divide total revenue by total calls run. That’s the average opportunity – how much the tech makes every time they walk in a house, averaging in the zeros. That number is what marketing should be buying against.
“The average customer calls electricians every five to seven years. And the average call that closes after you leave is 17%. Should we do more while we’re there? Absolutely.”
You don’t need more leads if you’re leaving 83% of your revenue potential at every door.
Homer Lee Coffman is the founder of HIT (Highly Intuitive Technician Training). Find him on Instagram, Facebook, or at getyourhitt.com to book a strategy call.
Watch or listen to EP. 11 of Surge Ahead for the full conversation – including the drill holster story, the genuine rapport framework, and the mindset shift that sent one roofer’s sales through the roof overnight.
