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“Dealing with an Angry Customer” | Cracking the Code Clip

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“Dealing with an Angry Customer” | Cracking the Code Clip

If an unhappy customer is complaining to you, it means they’re still in the game — they still want to do business with you.

In a clip from the latest episode of Cracking the Code, Mark Matteson explains how to actively listen and connect with that unhappy customer — and keep their business in the process.

This clip is excerpted from this week’s episode of Cracking the Code. Visit EGIA.org/Show to watch the full show, before it goes in the members-only archive on April 30.

Ask the Experts | Trends Among Residential Customers

Question: What trends have you seen in relation to what residential customers care most about?

Mike Treas; The HVAC Sales Coach:

Interesting question, and I can answer it any way, because it doesn’t really have a lot of specifics, in my opinion. But one of the things I see customers care about always, is their family. Customers care about their family. Especially our main customer, who is female.

When you’re in front of a couple and they’re purchasing a furnace and air conditioning system, she’s our main customer. She’s the one, mostly, who influences the decision on whether or not to work with you. He’s going to say, “OK, we have to have a furnace and air conditioner,” but she’s the one that’s going to say who they work with and why. And it’s emotional, and because of all the things we talked about earlier, we’re going to get her to say, “You know what, nobody else is asking about those kinds of things.” So we’ve got to figure out a way to help her with that because, frankly, that is what she cares most about, is family.

Now the other thing that we see, in trends, that customers care about, is the internet. It’s amazing how many millennials — which are early-20s to mid-30s out there currently — it’s amazing how many of those folks are buying homes and we are now in front of them. They have grown up with a computer in front of them, and we had better deal with that.

So when we’re in front of them – and I’m like James, I do everything on paper. I love paper. I can put it in my customer’s hands, they can touch it, they can feel it, they can swivel around in their chair and talk about it. Whereas if it’s on my computer and I try to put it in front of them, they don’t even feel comfortable many times positioning it in front of themselves so that they can read it. That’s still a little funny about the computer.

However, it’s a trend, and something we have to start being aware of. And we have to put what we do on a computer – again, I’m still a paper guy, I’m going to keep being a paper guy – but I need to have my company presentation and information about the products that we have, information about a maintenance agreement, that also needs to be on the computer/tablet as a backup. So when I’m in front of those people who I know, that’s what they’re used to, I present it on computer as well.

So there are a couple of trends, but the one I can’t stress enough is family. Remember, she cares about her family, she’s our biggest decision maker, focus on it.

This is the weekly Ask the Experts free excerpt. To listen to all of this week’s calls, or to see the schedule and register for future calls, click here.

Ask the Experts | Revenue Goal for Comfort Advisors

Question: What is the expected revenue goal per year for a dedicated comfort advisor?

Weldon Long; New York Times bestselling author:

You know, I had to chuckle when I read that question, because I was just having this conversation with a client I was working with. The expectations have changed so much.

Back in 2007, 2008, 2009, I gave bonuses to our people for hitting $1 million in sales. That was kind of the brass ring, the Holy Grail – a million-dollar producer. And today that’s eclipsed by countless people, and the expectations have risen. In part because prices are higher obviously, and there’s more high-efficiency solutions and options, obviously those are more expensive.

But I would say that an expectation – and it’s hard to put an exact number for everyone; every market’s different, different situations. There are guys in California, I was just with a company a few weeks ago, where one guy eclipsed $5 million. I’d never seen that before, one person. And if I hadn’t seen it myself I probably wouldn’t have believed it. In fact I was just teaching an EGIA class last week and I brought this guy up and one guy said, “I don’t believe you.” I said, “You think I’m making this up?” He said, “There’s not enough hours in the day for a person to sell $5 million.” That’s how unbelievable it is, people actually have a hard time understanding.

So to say all of that, I would say that if you have somebody that’s producing $1.5 million to $2 million, you’ve got a really good person on your hands. If you’ve got anybody over $2 million, that’s – we had a $2 million guy at our company back in ’07-’08, so obviously that’s doable. I would set that $2 milllion as kind of a benchmark. You think of it that’s $40,000 a week, at an average ticket these days of probably $15,000 – that’s really just three systems a week, would be over $2 million a year. So $2 million is completely attainable, and you’ll have some that are eclipsing $3 million.

And Gary I’m not sure about your opinion on that, but definitely it depends on the individual markets. But what we used to think was a big thing at $1 million, these days is almost like “what happened, what went wrong?” Because there’s just so many people producing $2 million and over.

Gary Elekes; Founder, EPC Training:

Wally I couldn’t agree more. By the way the $5 million man – that is impressive. “What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve,” is the old cliché, right? From Napoleon Hill. So, it’s doable, it’s just a question of average tickets.

As we look at this, if the average ticket is, say, $8,000 — and each salesperson will vary on their average tickets based on how the company is positioning the pricing, the accessories, the warranties, the guarantees. So we have a guy that’s average ticketing $14,000 and we have a guy that’s average ticketing $8,000. It’s the same company with the same pricebook with the same philosophies and the same warranties and guarantees, but the talent level is different.

The $14,000 guy is better at creating trust, and he has a better charisma and a better likeability and he’s able to communicate. He just has the talent level that’s sort of the Michael Jordan vs. the average guy playing high school basketball. Doesn’t mean either one is good or bad, but you start looking at metrics like this and start thinking “What’s the average ticket?”

So if you took $8,000, that’s the low-end of the average ticket, and said he sold 200 jobs a year, that’s $1.6 million. That’s a pretty good benchmark for today’s numbers, if you just look at where the industry’s pricing is on equipment, where most contractors are creating the marketing presence in what you would consider the middle position. But if you’re selling a lot of high-efficiency and you superimpose that same $14,000 and you start selling 200 jobs, the math starts changing.

You’re always going to have a normal distribution curve inside of a business, where you have your peak performers, some average performers and you’re probably going to have some underperformers. So the secret is to not look at it as an average, but to look at it as a median. The median is statistics, and it’s the most common recurring number that occurs inside of a pattern.

So if we have five people selling, and our most common number is $2 million a year, but we have an average of $1.6 million a year, that just means that the underperformer is dragging everybody down, but you’ve got two people that are selling at a very high level. So you would look at your industry numbers, and look at your company numbers, and say not less than $1.6 million. But certainly greater than that is attainable.

Love to talk to you, Wally, when you get a chance about the $5 million man! Can’t wait.

This is the weekly Ask the Experts free excerpt. To listen to all of this week’s calls, or to see the schedule and register for future calls, click here.

Clip of the Week | How to Keep Those Great Hires

The “Perfect Service Call” starts long before the tech shows up at the front door.

In a clip from this week’s episode of Cracking the Code, Weldon Long taps data from the latest Snapshot Survey to explain how the initial phone call sets the tone for the customer experience.

This clip is excerpted from this week’s episode of Cracking the Code. Visit www.egia.org/show to watch the full show, free for all through April 22nd.

What Gets Measured Gets Done

Where performance is measured, performance improves. But how do you know what to measure? And how can you use that measurement to ensure your performance — salespeople, service techs, anyone — is where it should be?

Mark Matteson explains that and more in the latest episode of Contractor Coffee Club. Plus, how the simple method Mark calls the “Hour of Power” can transform your day-to-day life — personal and professional.

Snapshot Survey Results | Direct Mail Marketing Success by Month

In the March 2018 Snapshot Survey, we asked contractors all about Direct Mail Marketing. Here’s one survey question and its results from the summary report, which is now available in its entirety to EGIA members.

Question: When do you get the best response rate for your direct mail campaigns?

Coming as no real surprise, surveyed contractors picked the end of the shoulder seasons/beginning of busy seasons as the time they got their best direct mail response rates, with June (40% response rate) and November (37%) leading the way, followed by May (34%) and October (31%). Of course, that’s when contractors are gearing up for busy season, and when homeowners want to ensure their heating and AC are ready for ramped up use, so that’s probably the best time to remind prospective customers what you have to offer – via mail as well as other communication channels.

26% said they don’t know when their best response rates are, which speaks to a lack of measurement and tracking that should be avoided at all costs. If you’re going to spend money on marketing, have systems in place to measure whether you’re actually getting your money’s worth; it’s possible money is being spent on months or products that are generating no return, but without tracking there would be no way to know.

Login to access the full research report on the Perfect Service Call.

Additional direct mail marketing resources for EGIA members:

For exclusive discounts on direct mail marketing services, visit the Marketing Systems, Inc. page on the EGIA Contractor Marketplace.

For a deep dive into Direct Mail Marketing training resources, recommendations and educational materials, visit the Contracting Best Practices Library at the EGIA Member Dashboard.

EGIA Snapshot Survey - What months get the best response rate for direct mail marketing?

Ask the Experts | When to Debrief Service Tech Performance

Question: How often would you recommend debriefing performance with each of your service techs?

Drew Cameron; President, HVAC Sellutions & Energy Design Systems, Inc.:

This is a great question. The reason it’s a great question: It’s probably going to result in the surest answer I’ve ever given on one of these calls. I’m gonna defer to Gary probably on this, because he’s more the operations guy in this area. But when I work back in my company, and of course when I work on the utility and service experts and with my clients, real simple: We debrief after each call. Meaning the technician has to call in and debrief obviously with the call taker or the dispatcher on each call.

And then I’ll do one-on-one debriefing on their performance, not as a group – again, one on one – for weekly performance coaching, or as needed. So on a day to day basis obviously you’re seeing the numbers. So if the numbers aren’t where they need to be, don’t wait for a week, or the end of the month. Sit down with the individual one on one, at least on a weekly basis, or daily, as I say, if performance is lagging.

Then weekly, you’re going to do a team meeting where you’re going to cover, obviously, whatever topics you need to do there. You might get into some training there but, again, individual coaching shouldn’t come at the team meeting.

You’re coaching individually at least weekly, then I would say, as a newbie, as a new hire, I’m going to make sure they have a ride-along at least weekly, to start, after they get through the training period. So they have someone shadowing them, or they’re shadowing maybe the first few weeks. But when they’re a newbie for that first maybe month or so, I might give them a weekly ride-along, and then I’ll ween that back to monthly, and then I’ll ween that back to quarterly.

No one should be above coaching ride-alongs, I don’t care how long they’ve been with the company. You can’t coach from the locker room, you’ve got to get out there on the field of play and see what these guys are doing. With that, I’ll toss it over to Gary, and he can throw it to Weldon.

Gary Elekes; Founder, EPC Training:

Thanks, Drew. I 100% agree with everything you said. Only small matter I would throw in there is companies of different sizes, different scales. So a small company, which I would qualify as $1 million and under, just for the size point of view you probably don’t have the resources to do what a company that’s $5 to $10 million might do. So how we spend time with people might change just a hair.

So the process on the under $1 million, would be you need to communicate at least weekly with the guys. If you scale up as a business, I would recommend that you move to the daily training model. So we share all the information, the metrics, and do role play and training each day, so the debriefing process absolutely becomes a discussion point every day.

And Drew’s 100% right: You’re going to debrief after every single call, and if there’s an issue that crops up inside of performance for an individual service technician, the daily training can correspond to the debriefing that happens the previous day amongst the techs. That could be product integrity issues, customer service issues, pricing issues, anything.

So I think the only real issue is just to scale the business and how often you want to connect with people on the training side as it attaches to the debriefing. But every single call for sure.

This is the weekly Ask the Experts free excerpt. To listen to all of this week’s calls, or to see the schedule and register for future calls, click here.

Ask the Experts | Summer Promos for Company Launch?

Question: “I’m about to start my own HVAC company. My plan is to launch right before the summer with some kind of introduction type special. Any suggestions?”

Drew Cameron; President, HVAC Sellutions & Energy Design Systems, Inc.:

I think Weldon hit it earlier with his comments about home shows and other things there. I was asked this at another conference I was attending. What I said to them was: You know, I’m in a mindset now where … it’s like I always used to kind of conform. I guess growing up we all tend to fall on the line, we almost become automatons to some extent, and just kind of go along. We look at “What are the competitors doing?” and “What do the best practices group suggest?” And obviously our listeners are part of a group, right? So they’re looking to us and saying, “What do the experts suggest?”

And so I think what’s really neat about Weldon, myself and Gary and everyone else on the EGIA faculty, is we challenge our paradigms, our own paradigms and industry paradigms. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to challenge the paradigm and say, “Don’t be like everybody else.” Disrupt the market. Be the Uber, if you will, of the market. Be the iPhone that comes along and takes down Blackberry. What can you do that’s completely different, that’s going to knock the market on its ear?

You don’t need to be like everybody else, you don’t need to have a discount special, because you’re going into peak season. So I’ll say: differentiate.

What do you do that is going to stand out from the rest of the crowd that’ll add massive value and benefit and stand out from the crowd that’s offering a $29.99 special? You know, come out with a 44-point, $159 monster maintenance package that’s regularly a $199 value, where you basically do, not only what everybody else is doing on maintenance, but you’re also going to clean the indoor and outdoor coil. You’re going to polish the indoor and outdoor machines with a space age polymer, also known as wax. You’re going to clean the blower wheel, you’re going to go ahead and do pressure checks, and you’re going to maybe even test and clean the ducts up, if you do duct cleaning.

You get 20% off of service agreements. You get $50 off any repair found during the maintenance. You get loyalty credits and you’ll become part of the discounted service agreement membership, where you can get all of the benefits we’re talking about on a service agreement plan. You’ll renew their warranty for the whole summer, or just the hottest month of the summer. Something like that on the service side.

On the equipment side, again I don’t think you have to go into heavy discounting. But why don’t you include an added item – maybe an air cleaner, UV light, 10 years parts and labor with the system? Low APR,: 9.9 for 7, 6.9 for 10 years for mid-tier equipment — the 9.9 on 7 years would be for entry level equipment — and maybe 2.99% interest for 12 years on the better equipment, where you modify, clean, seal, insulate the ducts and test them to verify that what you installed delivers the BTUs. You’re not just going to put in a 3 ton system, you’re going to make sure it delivers a 3 ton system, because you’re going to perform combustion efficiency testing and air flow testing to make sure that you’re delivering the BTUs.

You’re just going to shock the industry and shatter expectations and deliver an extraordinary experience. That’s what I say you do. Why come out and be like everybody else and get lost in a sea of sameness? Just disrupt it and have a blue ocean opportunity.

That’s what Steve Jobs did with the iPhone 11 years ago. No one was looking for an iPhone. They either had a flip phone or a candy bar phone, a digital PDA, an MP3 player and a digital camera. And he said you know what, we’re going to marry them all together. People said “nobody wants this, nobody’s asking for this,” and he basically said if we build it, they will come. And he changed the world forever.

So I would say to the industry: Knock them on their butts, because this industry needs knocking on their butts. And Weldon, I know you feel exactly the same way.

This is the weekly Ask the Experts free excerpt. To listen to all of this week’s calls, or to see the schedule and register for future calls, click here.

Clip of the Week | It All Starts on the Phone

The “Perfect Service Call” starts long before the tech shows up at the front door.

In a clip from this week’s episode of Cracking the Code, Weldon Long taps data from the latest Snapshot Survey to explain how the initial phone call sets the tone for the customer experience.

This clip is excerpted from this week’s episode of Cracking the Code. Visit www.egia.org/show to watch the latest full show.

Mastering HVAC Sales with Weldon Long

In 5 years, New York Times bestselling author Weldon Long went from an ex-convict in a homeless shelter to building an Inc. 5000 HVAC company with over $20,000,000 in sales – and he did it by adopting the “Prosperity Mindset” and perfecting the sales process.

In the latest episode of Contractor Coffee Club, Weldon joins host Mark Matteson to offer some strategies, stips and stories that helped him build his company and his mindset.