If you ever go to visit Sean Samson, in the back of your head you might hear Johnny Cash singing his hit song, “I’ve Been Everywhere, Man.” Over his 30-year career, Samson has been everywhere, crisscrossing the globe countless times talking about service and maintenance in electrical contracting.

Drawing on his experience in consulting and selling electrical preventive maintenance agreements across multiple industry segments, he has been tireless at trying to “sell” electrical contractors on shifting some of their efforts away from competitively bid construction contracts toward what he calls the three pillars to higher valuation: multiyear EMP agreements, increased negotiated project work and predictable recurring revenue.

Sean Samson

Joey Samson

Today, the opportunity for ECs to help facility owners meet their obligations to comply with the 2026 edition of NFPA 70B makes all this even more relevant.

Recently we found a brand-new reason to look up Samson. Working with his son Joey, Samson is about to release EMAPlus, a software-as-a-service-based licensed software platform designed to support electrical contractors in selling, fulfilling and perpetuating service, maintenance and compliance. We thought he could provide us with some special insight into current industry trends.

Sean, we need not tell you, with the explosion of A.I., there has been a surge in development of new software in virtually every industry, including service-related businesses. With so many options available to ECs, how are you going to differentiate EMAPlus from the crowd?

Let’s start by looking at the big picture, to put everything in its present-day context. As I have been telling audiences in recent conferences, the electrical contracting industry is going through a metamorphosis pertaining to service and maintenance. And it’s doing that not just because of changes like what’s happened with NFPA 70B. 

The electrical contracting industry is going through that metamorphosis because contractors are finally paying attention to the business potential, that is, the profit potential in service and maintenance. 

EMAPlus is their new business partner, assisting contractors and service providers with a platform that covers the three pillars that we advocate. It’s all berthed in a full-­functioning CRM. The big difference-maker here is that the creators of this software have lived it for [more than] 30 years. 

Joey, that’s good news about electrical contractors’ growing interest in service and maintenance (and it’s especially good news for two guys who write articles about service and maintenance!). But translate it into practical terms for us: What does that shift in contractors’ attention mean to a company like yours?

Mainly, it means that electrical contractors who have set out to develop and grow their company’s service and maintenance business will immediately need the special tools that it requires for estimating, delivering and tracking service and maintenance. It also means that they must be able to accurately and completely manage the kind of record-keeping that staying on top of an ever-growing customer base requires.

In new construction, providing documentation for the benefit of the facility owner is a last requirement. In service and maintenance, preserving documentation for the benefit of the facility owner is an everlasting requirement. It’s a core advantage toward creating customers for life.

Sean, electrical contracting companies come in all shapes and sizes. About 90% of them have 20 or fewer employees. Many still schedule their service calls with a whiteboard. At what size should a company think about acquiring service and maintenance software? 

We can’t speak authoritatively about the myriad products that are on the market today. Our product, EMAPlus, just to cite one example, will work for a two-electrician or a 300-electrician shop. The most important message for contractors of any size is that they cannot develop and grow their service and maintenance business without software designed for it.

Joey, with your two companies, you have the unique opportunity to connect service-related training and service-supporting software. Whoever participates in your live training sessions can return to their companies with software to implement what they have learned from your sales instruction. 

Yes, that would be an optimum solution. The two components—training and software—can work together. But they can also work independently. 

Sean, we started out by referring to Johnny Cash’s song. So, we cannot conclude this conversation without pointing out that your website recalls that you once invented and marketed a cleverly designed guitar stand that allows performers on stage with more than one guitar to make a quick change of their instruments.

Hey, I’ve been everywhere, man.