Proper work starts with proper measurement. “If you don’t measure, you’re just guessing.”

NCI’s David Holt is back in a clip from this week’s episode of the Cracking the Code weekly show, talking about the importance of proper diagnosis — especially on standard maintenance calls — and how they can be a game-changer for you and your customer.

Watch the clip from this week’s episode of Cracking the Code below, and visit EGIA.org/Show to watch the full show, before it goes in the members-only archive on July 16th.

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

Question: Do you currently offer health benefits to your employees?

Access to healthcare coverage has become a bigger and bigger topic of conversation in America over the last few years, with most people still receiving insurance through their employer.

Largely, the companies we surveyed were in line with those numbers: 63% offer health benefits to their employees, against 37% that do not. While offering health insurance can be expensive, it’s also one of the benefits most expected among employees. As such, it can be a powerful tool in recruiting and retaining talented people – and in getting buy-in from those within the company.

Login to access the full research report on Employee Benefits.

For a deep dive into employee benefits, human resources and more, and to access training materials, recommendations and education pieces, visit the Contracting Best Practices Library at the EGIA Member Dashboard.

Question: The season is very busy right now, but I know this will drop off in September. When would you suggest I start marketing so I can make the phone ring September 1st?

Weldon Long; New York Times Bestselling Author

This is a great question, it’s one I’m sure that Drew and Gary both have a lot of insight on. Because it goes to one of the real differentiators of what makes a company successful, and that’s being a good marketing organization, and knowing how to get the phone to ring, and to generate service calls and sales opportunities, that kind of thing.

My standard rule was I always wanted to be working a quarter out. So in September, I want to be working on January, the first quarter marketing plan for next year. I think I heard Gary one time say, even further out than that, that he will sometimes plan out marketing for various times of the year.

So my September 1 marketing plan should have been done several months ago, just as kind of a conceptual overview type of thing. In terms of what to do, it kind of depends on the market. I can speak to Colorado. So about mid-way through August, air conditioning season starts to slow down. It’s still very hot in August; in fact it’s probably our hottest month. But people have the mindset in Colorado that if we make it to September, air conditioning season is over, and we don’t even need air conditioning beyond August. So even though people are in August, it’s very hot, they think that they can just hang on for a few more weeks.

So what we started doing is in the middle of August, we would start a really heavy push on various incentives to buy an air conditioner. So we’d run those through September, so sometimes we could actually continue to sell air conditioners through September, even though it’s starting to cool off. And we’d do this by offering end-of-season incentives, and various free air conditioning offers. So one of them was buy our highest efficiency heating system – so even though it’s August, it’s still hot, people in Colorado are always thinking about winter – so buy our highest efficiency heating system and we’ll give you an air conditioning system absolutely free. Now the air conditioning system was the condenser and the coil, and we said right there in the ad “pay only for installation and miscellaneous supplies.” So we would give them a real basic, minimum efficiency coil and condenser, and then maybe charge them $1500 or $2000 for installation on top of the full retail on the high-efficiency furnace. So this is back in those days, so even that was probably fifty-five hundred to six thousand, this is 10 or 12 years ago. And then we’re going to add a couple of thousand.

So it’s a lower margin deal, but we had to do something to keep activity going at the end of August and into September. Another one we’d offer was buy our highest-efficiency furnace with a heat pump and get air conditioning absolutely free. Well, it’s a heat pump, so we’d market that as free air conditioning. With the offer I was very, very transparent, I’d just tell people you buy this high-efficiency system, invest in heating, and get air conditioning.

So you just have to get creative depending on the time of the season. So when people stop thinking about air conditioning, that’s the time you’ve got to offer them some incentives, and start that early on. We’d always start that in the middle of August – even though it was very hot – we would start that messaging in August and go on through September. And then October 1st we’d turn our attention to starting tune-ups, and then whatever incentives we had for heating season, so that type of thing.

So I think a key thing is to think out a quarter ahead of time. Be thinking about, you know the typical patterns, yes, there will always be exceptions, but you know the patterns in your market. Be thinking about what incentives and what needs to be in place three or four months down the road.

So with that we’ll toss it over to Drew. Obviously a lot of experience on the marketing side, Gary as well, and I’m anxious to hear what they have to say and get their perspective.

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.

What is the “hybrid contractor”?

It’s the difference between a tradesman and a craftsman, and it’s as simple as a dedication to measurement. Measurement of the HVAC system. Measurement of the process.

David Holt of National Comfort Institute explains, on a clip from the Cracking the Code weekly show.

Watch the clip from this week’s episode of Cracking the Code below, and visit EGIA.org/Show to watch the full show, before it goes in the members-only archive on July 16th.

Question: We have our CSR’s take the after-hours phone home each week on a rotating schedule. How should we pay them for this service?

Gary Elekes; Founder, EPC Training:

That’s a great question. It doesn’t just apply to the CSR’s – we do on-call managers and rotate that responsibility. Sometimes, in a smaller company, you only have a certain amount of people, so they end up with the phone more. The larger companies obviously can spread the opportunity to have that responsibility.

So it depends a little bit on your philosophy for how important that is for you. Some companies really want someone to be 100% on call 24 hours. Other companies have a different philosophy – maybe they’re ok with that moving to an answering service and they really only have that until midnight or something.

We’ve always had a pay plan of $250 per week, but we expect a 24-hour service. So we expect someone to actually answer the text or answer the phone, or the contact form it comes to on the web. And that’s a different kind of responsibility than, maybe, turning it off and letting it roll to an answering service.

I’m agnostic in terms of picking the number, but I do believe you need to pay those folks for that responsibility you’re asking of them, they’re giving up family time. So, often in life we trade time for money. Because we do that, I think there has to be some kind of compensation there. Drew and Wally may have some different experiences.

But we’ve always assumed that the 24-hour experience is part of what a customer — that’s what we’re advertising and marketing, so we want the customer to actually get a live person. So we’re willing to pay a little bit extra money in order to have that person on call. Obviously the technicians have the same responsibility as well, so we give those guys some extra money as well.

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.

Isaac Heating and Air, out of Rochester, NY, has seen rapid growth and expansion over the last few decades, with plenty more underway. And that growth has been built on two pillars as much as anything else: company culture and extensive (and continuing) training.

In the latest episode of Contractor Coffee Club, Mark Matteson welcomes Eric Knaak, VP & general manager of Isaac, who explains the strategies, tactics and overarching philosophies that have helped build one of the Northeast’s most successful service companies – with more than 340 employees and nearly 30,000 service agreements.

Our continuing “story selling” brings us to a new, if a bit . . . simple-sounding topic: selling by using the “Duh!” question.

The “Duh!” question is a question so obvious, yet so important, that the homeowner can’t help but say yes. Especially since you’ve already told them the answer.

Confused? Weldon Long explains in a clip from the Cracking the Code weekly show.

Watch the clip from this week’s episode of Cracking the Code below, and visit EGIA.org/Show to watch the full show, before it goes in the members-only archive on July 16th.

Question: What’s the key to being effective in sales without feeling like a pushy salesperson?

Weldon Long; New York Times Bestselling Author & Founder, HVAC Sales Academy:

When I saw this question, this is one that’s near and dear to my heart. The first thing that jumps out to me is that we have to be very cautious when our salespeople are coming up to us and they’re saying, “Well this is pushy,” or this seems “too much this” or “too much that.” A lot of times that’s just an excuse for not really wanting to do the work to get good at the process.

Because the process we teach at EGIA is a process of high-service, not high-pressure. It’s a long-term strategy, it’s not about trying to go in in 15 or 20 minutes and trying to beat a customer into submission. It’s about following the process. And the process really consists of four primary segments.

• Number 1: We build a relationship.

• Number 2: We investigate the customer’s problems.

• Number 3: We solve their problems.

• Number 4: We ask for the order.

The key there is to earn the right, to earn the trust, to be able to ask for the order. And it takes time to invest in that relationship. You think a call is going to go anywhere from an hour and a half to, sometimes, two and a half, even three hours. We have to be mindful of schedules of homeowners and different things. But at the same time it’s critically important that we take the time to build a relationship and to earn that trust.

So the key is to focus on the high service, be willing to do what your competitors are not willing to do. And to focus on serving – on problem-solving, on finding the problems and solving the problems for our homeowners. And there’s nothing high-pressure about that. It’s a matter of extending ourselves emotionally, professionally, to do the things we have to do.

Gary Elekes; Founder, EPC Training:

Drew, I’ve got a couple of things I’ll add and then I’ll toss it over to you. As usual, Wally is on point and I agree with everything he said. Just a couple of things that we probably do with our salespeople to make sure they’re connected to the client and not really being perceived as pushy inside of the process.

Because what Wally said is absolutely right: you have to follow the technique and you have to understand that that’s important. There are value chain points that you have to hit. You can’t be skipping over that stuff and expect to be successful.

That being said, the very thing that makes a salesperson effective is that they’re typically goal-oriented, tell-assertive, they’ve got some communication skills. And that generally gets in the way of the process of being likeable.

Typically likeability and trust, as we define it, come from you being connected to the client and not necessarily “telling” the client. So the personalities that we see in sales that are effective are tell-assertive personalities. All three of us on this call are tell-assertive personalities. But what makes all three of us effective in life is that we understand that, and that when it’s time to be ask-assertive, and really be connected to the client and use your process to understand their social styles matter, is critical.

So I would suggest that each of the salespeople understand social styles. Who people are and what drives the way they emotionally think and how they behave. And that you realize that’s a training and that’s a skill and it can be developed. So you can take somebody who is tell-assertive, and who is part of that process that Wally described, and turn the social style training on and you roleplay and practice that, so that you’re asking questions and you’re connecting to the clients. And while you still have the answers and can be tell-assertive later, you realize that that’s a part of the process that’s later, and not at the beginning.

And that tends to make people feel very good about you, that you’re connected to their interests, not your interests. And that’s part of how you build likeability. They say “oh wow, that guy was great. All he did was find my solutions and get me to the place where I was very happy about the value chain.”

There’s also some modules on the site where we go through this discussion, and that applies to technicians as well as salespeople.

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.

Stories have great value — not just in entertainment, but in selling. Explaining points to your customer is good, but then supporting and proving those points by sharing stories is what takes your sales presentation to the next level.

Weldon Long explains the value of “story selling” in a clip from the Cracking the Code weekly show.

View the clip below, and visit EGIA.org/Show to watch the full show, before it goes in the members-only archive on July 9.

Question: Should I hit my salespeople’s commissions for financing dealer fees?

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

Absolutely no. It will be a deterrent to use a tool that can drive sales. In all of these calls where we talk about financing or payment options – credit cards, again, remember are also a form of a financing option – if we want someone to do something, we shouldn’t disincentivize them or put a deterrent to stop them from doing it. If you’re going to ding a salesperson’s commission and lower their pay, for something that actually requires a little more time and effort on their part to bring more sales to your business, it just doesn’t make sense to do so.

Now, I understand the question: The question is, “We have a dealer cost, how can I cover that dealer cost?” Don’t do what I came across last week, with one contractor in York, Pennsylvania, who quoted one of my software programmers on doing some work at his house: he literally typed into his quote, that if the customer was interested in financing to call, and the price would be higher to take advantage of financing.

You can’t do that, that is against the law. You can offer a cash discount if you like, but you can’t charge people, and tell people, it’s going to cost them more for financing. It makes no sense, I get it, I agree, it makes no sense whatsoever, but don’t go ahead and say that to people. You can offer a cash discount if you want to. I don’t recommend doing that – same price, cash or credit, it doesn’t matter, in fact most people who take advantage of doing business with us they don’t’ pay cash at all, and we like to promote the payment options. And you as a homeowner shouldn’t be penalized for wanting doing business with us if you need to go ahead and take advantage of payment options, it just kind of makes sense anyway.

So we don’t ding customers and we don’t ding our employees. That being said, the one thing we have to know about business is your people do not pay the company’s cost of doing business; your customers do. So you should cover the costs of financing in your overhead, spread it across the entire book of business, just like you do every other cost that you have. And the customer pays it. Whether they leverage the financing or not is irrelevant: everybody covers the cost of financing, just like they cover every other cost in your business.

So please, do not disincentivize your salespeople and ding them in their commission for financing. And that’s something, if you went and did that, from a legal standpoint, that needs to be disclosed in your compensation plan for your salespeople up front. You cannot arbitrarily ding people’s commissions for jobs going over, financing costs, things of that nature.

Gary I’ll throw it over to you if you have any thoughts on that.

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.