HVAC Full Blast

Hey, welcome to HVAC Full Blast. I'm Stephen Ross.

And I'm Mary Carter.

This is our first bonus episode. We're so we're kind of excited about it. So we did a a webinar live. We had q and a going in the comments, while we were talking.

And so we wanted to take that and kind of bring it to the podcast.

It's a little different than our normal format, and it's a bit more conversational with some guests that we brought in and out of the conversation. So just enjoy the episode. And if you have any feedback for us, we'd love to hear it at h v a c underscore full underscore blast at training technologies dot com.

And most importantly, we feel like there's some good ideas in there to blow it out between now and the end of the year. So take a listen and tell us what you think, and good luck making money.

It's the twenty five c tax credit. Twenty twenty five c for credit ends December thirty one twenty twenty five. Like, that's that's how you can remember it. There's no more mystery or the shrouding around it. It's the twenty five c tax credit. So that's what we're here to talk about. I'm Mary Carter, Steven.

I think most people are probably familiar with you at this point. I hope so.

Yeah. It's just been fun. So if if you don't know, Mary and I, we, we've been doing a podcast, so you're welcome to check out the podcast. We've done a few webinars like this, over the last year or two just in general. And, and so kind of combining podcast and webinars today.

I thought I would kick us off with just a little story and this is because I'm old now. And so when you get old, you tell stories. I mean, I, you know, at least my dad does. Here's here's my story for being old. I got into heating and air in two thousand seven end of two thousand seven, kinda beginning in two thousand eight.

And in two thousand eight, the economy crashed. So we had this big, you know, kinda great recession, as they called it, which was a lot of just driven by new home construction kinda ground to a halt. We had mortgage issues. Mortgage rates were really high, blah blah blah. The government came out with a tax credit, program to stimulate the economy, and part of that was a, a heating and air tax credit. It was fifteen hundred dollars residentially.

It didn't matter whether it's air conditioner, heat pump, gas furnace. If it met the efficiency rating, it was thirty percent of the total bill up to fifteen hundred dollars.

And so I was new to the industry. I was kinda had gotten in, been in for a few years. The other similarity is, we were changing refrigerants back then. So we were going from R22 to R410a.

And and so that was kind of, you know, going on in the background. The the new equipment was gonna be more expensive because of the refrigerant change. So you had maybe some contractor fears of of how that would affect purchases.

And so all of those ingredients, I mean, if I look to today, I would say, hey. We, you know, we had COVID. And so we had this economic drain. And so the government came out with a program to kinda stimulate the economy. We have a tax credit, and it's ending, and we're in the middle of a refrigerant change. And so there's there's a decent amount of similarities.

And so just to share kind of how two thousand ten went, it was my third year in heating and air.

Was really excited because I finally understood the difference between a heat pump and an air conditioner and was was trucking along selling.

And we did you know, the tax credit was there two thousand eight, two thousand nine, but two thousand ten was the end of the tax credit. So we had taken advantage of it. We had been talking about it with homeowners and promoting it.

And, and one of the things that maybe caught us a little off guard, we, we thought we had planned well, and I think we did plan. We were surprised at how many people waited to the absolute last minute to take advantage of it. And so as an individual producer, just I was an in home salesperson, RSP, I had the biggest month I've I'd ever had December of two thousand ten, and I thought I was gonna take the month off. My goal that year was to sell two million dollars, which was a decent amount of money back in two thousand ten.

I mean, if if, if you adjusted for inflation today, it was a pretty decent goal. I hit my goal by mid November. That was my annual goal. And I thought, you know, I'm just gonna coast to the finish line.

I'm pretty much done.

And wouldn't you know, I mean, just the calls that came in, I mean, it was unbelievable what we sold between about November fifteenth and and December thirty first.

So I think that's what made us think, hey. You know, here's what's gonna happen. The tax credit's ending. You've been talking about it probably with your homeowners, your customers.

If you're a territory manager, you've been talking about with your dealers. We've had some good success. Some dealers have jumped on board. They've offered it to homeowners.

We've seen some good success there. But I think I think we're gonna have a rush at the end. Mary, I'm just you know, my crystal ball, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I think we're gonna have a a rush at the end.

What do you think?

I love it. I mean, the history, usually dictates these things and, their predictability, and that's that's probably spot on and exactly why we are jumping on this topic topic right now here in August while we still have a little bit of agility to make some changes and also maybe educate some areas where we're not as strong on the twenty five c tax credit. I I think a lot of the conversations that we've had at this point have really been more around, you know, talk to your tax professional and kinda leave it high level.

Maybe now is the time to just, like, dig in a little bit deeper on that layer. We know what the parameters are gonna be and get some encouragement to, close those deals. So to help us do that, we have solicited the wonderful Mark Woodruff who is gonna help us maybe understand from a portfolio position where we have some strengths.

And there he is, Mark. Welcome.

Hello.

And, and we wanna understand from the equipment side, what do we have to leverage? And then from the selling side, how can we really, really perfect that message so that we're not just doing the broad brushstrokes of, and by the way, there's a credit, talk to your tax professional, and, you know, walk away.

Absolutely. Yeah. So at the beginning of the year, I think we had hit it pretty hard that we had a really big advantage when we went from our four ten to four fifty four b with our new fifteen SEER single stage. That is the lowest cost method, the lowest cost product to qualify for the tax credit. So do not forget about that. Let's take advantage of it while it's still there, like Steven was saying, right?

So I would say that's our number one option that we have for homeowners. Although I'll say at the same time, don't forget about the seventeen SEER MultiSpeed. Okay? Great product, fantastic efficiency, and even better performance and comfort than our old two stage unit that we used to have with our four ten. So I would say those are your two menu choice items right now for the back half of the year if you're looking at tax credits.

Hey. Can I put my dealer hat on for a second? So as you know, owned a heating and air company for the past seven years. So couple of questions. So when you say, hey, we got a fifteen SEER that meets it, we talk of both heat pump and air conditioner, Mark?

True. Yes. Absolutely.

Alright. And in terms of tonnages, like two to five tons, like the whole lineup?

Or what's Oh, you're gonna test me now.

I believe I believe it's on the single stage. I wanna say it was all the way up through four tons on either the AC or the heat pump and all the way through five tons on the other, but I don't remember the exact thing off the top of my mind right now.

Because I think and I've been on the receiving end of some sales calls from our competitors, and they'll come in and they'll say, hey, we've got a tax credit qualifying matchup. And what they mean is we have one matchup, it's in the two and a half ton size, you got to use a five ton coil with, you know, the biggest furnace on the market. And you're like, well, that that doesn't fit a two and a half ton load on a house, right? So I think that what we're saying is, hey, we've got plenty of matchups in the sweet spot in terms of their actual matchups, you might actually put in the home, right?

They're priced competitively. So this is the lowest entry point. We've got air conditioner matchups, we got heat pump matchups, we got a lineup. I mean, that's what we're saying.

Is that right?

One hundred percent.

Alright, so tell me about the seventeen SEER. So one of the things we talked about was dual fuel matchups.

And, you know, we've we've been offering dual fuel for the last few years to get the tax credit, but you had to have the heat pump, you had to have the right coil, you had to have the right furnace.

So what's different about the Multistage seventeen?

What's awesome about the seventeen SEER Multistage seventeen is that we actually have tax credit qualified combinations.

I'm pretty sure it was all the way out to five tons in coil only combinations, which is fantastic. Because, again, if it's all about trying to get your homeowner a low cost solution to qualify for the tax credit, leaving that old furnace in the house that they already have is obviously the best thing you can do for them.

So, I mean, I was looking at houses. I mean, I had a realtor this week. We're out looking at houses. And, of course, I'm a heating air guy, so I can't help it.

So I'm, like, you're trying to check it out and see what they got. But we had one house where you're looking at the furnace, bright, shiny new furnace, although single stage just basic, and it was a few years old. And but the air conditioner is ancient. So you're saying, hey, in that scenario, that homeowner or my case, I buy the house, I don't have to replace a perfectly good furnace, I can just go heat pump coil, I'm going to need the right thermostat, right?

Because now we've got, we got to be able to, and I need what an outdoor temperature sensor is that typically how we set that up?

Built into the equipment, right? So everything you need is already there.

No kidding. Alright, so as a contractor, man, I don't have to order extra parts. I get you have the outdoor temperature sensor built in, a thermostat that can handle two heat. How do you set the balance point on the dual fuel? Does it, it does all the thinking for you?

Dealer's choice, right? You can either let the system operate out of the box method, which is going to say, hey, if I can't meet the load with my heat pump mode, then I'm going to switch over to the gas furnace, or you can set a switch over temperature. Again, dealer's choice on on what they wanna do for the homeowner there.

You know, one of the changes this year, if you were a contractor selling to a homeowner, you just had to provide the receipt. We had to give them the the AHRI information to say, hey. This system qualified. What's the tweak this year?

There's a four digit something?

Yeah, whenever they submit for the actual tax credit, they file their taxes next year, they are going to have to have what's called a manufacturer's, oh what's the name of it? I can't remember, but a manufacturer's PIN number, basically. Like you said, it's a four digit number.

Ours is b eight t nine. I know Mary likes to say, what what was it?

Bravo eight tango nine for all my Filipino people.

There you go.

But yeah, so that's our number, and that is for all of our brands. Anything that we produce as a company, so Trane, American Standard, RunTrue, Ameristar, any of the products that we make, that's the four digit number that the homeowner is going to need to have when they file their claim on their taxes next year.

Is there anything else, Mark, we should hit on from a technical standpoint or should we jump into the business planning piece of this or?

I think from a product standpoint you hit the highlights again, guys the single stage fifteen SEER product line and our seventeen SEER multi speed, two great choices as we're going in the back half of the year. And Steve, Steven, I hope, exactly like you said, right, I hope what we see is, you know, dealers can use this as a way to, you know, promote some activity. Right? Hey. The tax credits are about to run out. This is your last chance, last call. Right?

I know. I'm sitting here pretty jealous because not too long ago before this tax credit existed, I had to replace an outdoor unit and had a perfectly good furnace, and the recommendation was just go with that outdoor. But, and I did, and I'm I'm still happy with that purchase, but I'm bitter that I didn't get an incentive. So don't be like me and, let your homeowners not know about that because, that's a that that would have been a a nice little a nice little extra.

Yeah. Just free money.

Yeah.

How how often do you get that?

Right?

Well, and speaking of free money, you know, there are other things that you can do to really load in the benefit of tax credits, rebates, other promotions, and then, of course, you know, my favorite, an affordable monthly payment plan. Put that all in in into a nice little bundle, and you you really make it irresistible for a homeowner to go with you, especially when you've sold, you know, first and foremost, your services.

The product then just becomes the extra bonus that, oh, by the way, they're also buying a top quality line system.

So I you know, maybe, Steven, when you were doing some of that aggressive selling there at the end, what were some of the other tools that you were using to put together that proposal to make it really compelling?

Yeah. You know, I had a business partner owning a heating and air company. I I was kind of the sales marketing side of the the fence. And then my business partner, Tim, was the the operations business planning side. And so Tim and I would sit down, and we would kinda run through a few different scenarios. And we did this almost quarterly to go, hey. What do we see coming up next quarter?

And, and so if you had something like this on the horizon, where you'd go, hey, we think there's maybe it's just summertime, we're gonna get really busy. Maybe it's like this scenario. There's a couple things Tim and I would talk about ahead of time. First of all, you know, what are we gonna do from an advertising standpoint? What's our advertising strategy? What's our pricing strategy?

And and kinda dissect it. So, Mary, if we were to just tackle that, let's talk about that that affordable monthly payment. How would you how would let's start there. Right?

What do you think the what do you think the monthly payments should be if you were to say, alright, let's think through somebody's gonna get a tax credit, they're gonna get that money back, let's say, in April, it's October, it's November. So should we be offering long term financing? Should we say, hey, twelve months, no interest, no payments? Should we what what do you think? How would you advertise that?

Well, the most effective advertising in that space really is to look on to the rate sheet and find those really low, usually zero percent APR interest payment plans. Though those are most attractive. That gets people whether they have great credit, good credit, that gets all the people through the door. Wow.

They're offering free financing. I wanna know more about that deal. One thing that's really interesting too is financing really mimics, especially in the HVAC industry, very much can mimic what's going on in the car industry. And if you're watching any local news, you'll notice that car ads rarely advertise zero percent right now.

So, a lot of programs have other no interest options. I know with the trained technologies programs, we have the zero percents. We've got a three point nine nine for sixty months. We now brand new have a two point nine nine for a hundred and twenty months.

So really anything in that low interest financing is is gonna be the most appealing and get people through the door. Unfortunately, what we see a lot of people lean into is no interest if paid in full within eighteen months. First of all, advertising that plan, no interest if paid in full within eighteen month is a mouthful. And, honestly, it doesn't read nice on any sort of advertisement or billboard or anything like that.

So if it were me, I would lean into that zero for sixty. I think that that is, that's a beautiful promotion. It gets the monthly payment down into right around that two hundred to three hundred dollar range. And honestly, even when you bundle the tax credit with that, what's gonna happen for most people is they're just gonna stick with that payment plan, and then the tax benefit, which will come to them later in twenty twenty six in that April timeframe, really just becomes a benefit.

We don't actually see a lot of people put that towards the purchase of their heating and air system.

They usually just put that towards whatever next fun thing that they've got going on. So, and which is fine. That's totally okay. It's it's really the homeowner's choice at that point, but you got them to that point, and then they think of you and that turns into a beautiful referral change. Right?

Yeah. I think it's helpful, you know, when we're training salespeople, and we're doing some consulting for contractors, we're saying, hey, there's two two types of people. I mean, if I just oversimplify two types of people that need financing, people that don't have money, and people that do have money, which is everybody. Right?

Which is everybody.

You wanna skew your offer. Right? The people that don't have money, what kind of buyer are they? Well, they're a monthly payment buyer.

So we need that monthly payment down as low as possible. So I'm and it doesn't mean they have to, you know, if we if we offered them a hundred twenty months, they don't have to pay for a hundred twenty months. If they, you know, they get the low payment for a while, they get a bonus, they can pay it off, something like that. Most people will pay that off way before the hundred twenty months part.

The people who have money, they've got it somewhere. Maybe they've got it in, you know, a CD, but that probably in the stock market, maybe it's in the retirement accounts, whatever. They would rather leave it there. They could get it if they needed it, but they would rather leave it there.

So where the people that don't have money are low payment buyers, the people with money are low interest buyers.

And, you know, if an interest rate today is six and a half, seven percent, almost anything less than that is acceptable. So even if you pick, like you said, the two point nine nine or four point nine nine, I can keep my dealer fee down low and still attract that type of buyer. I think, you know, so, you know, the other thing we would do is we would pick a product. And so this is where the conversation with my account manager would come in because I use ServiceTitan.

We could get a ton of data out of ServiceTitan, but we didn't track I mean, the data you get out is just the data that you're inputting. And one of the things that we didn't really track is product mix. So Mhmm. How many systems am I selling that are single stage or multistage or variable?

So that's where sitting down with my account manager, we would have a conversation. He might say, hey, Steven, you guys are killing it in the single stage.

You know, maybe just kind of fourteen SEER that you're using for bare minimum.

A lot of times for us, those were folks that just public housing or something something. I mean, you know, multifamily type housing situations.

Fifteen SEER, meaning, as Mark said, hey, those get tax credits. And then we did a decent job at selling some of the higher end, the variable systems, where we had a gap was kind of that middle tier. And so my business partner, Tim and I would say, well, heck, we're not selling those anyway right now. But why not take a financing offer, put it on there, make sure that we've built in the pricing to cover the dealer fee and all that stuff.

But why not put that in there and advertise it and use that as the guinea pig to go, hey. Does anybody get buy it? So that for us was so this in this case, I would say, man, if you haven't sold many of those seventeen SEER heat pumps, this might be the time to say, well, heck, you're not selling any anyway. Why don't you take a great Wells Fargo finance offer, put it on there and advertise it, and see what happens.

It allows you as the dealer to go, hey, is my advertising working? Is this a good product that people are gonna buy and so on?

Yeah. And then going a little further in that, what about advertising that making it the system that homeowners wanna go to and then looking at maybe a SPIFF plan. Right? How now can and and maybe I'm I'm just kinda shooting in the dark here, but did you have any experience with SPIFF plans? I mean, did you SPIFF guys? Yeah. So success, or is it just a waste of money and we just don't know where the where the dollars go?

Well, what are we trying to do as a business owner? What am I trying to do with the SPIFF? Well, I'm trying to make whatever that product line is top of mind for my selling techs or my sales guys. Right?

I'm trying to say, hey. This is we need to be looking at this. And so, you know, I think it I think it's a great tool to say, okay. What are we gonna do if there's a product line I, as a business owner, wanna drive?

And we're gonna talk about that today because I think you wanna be as a business owner, you wanna say, what am I gonna drive this fall? Not just, hey, let's see what people wanna buy.

What is what's gonna happen?

Let's drive it. Let's drive sales. So, you know, that's where we would say, okay, we're gonna pick a product, seventeen SEER multi speed unit. Let's go for it.

Right? We're going to say, alright, we gotta put a spiff on it. Let's do that. Let's put a finance offer.

We could build it all in there. I use price book plus. Lots of people use field edge or service type, whatever, but you build it all in, you bundle it up, and and then then you gotta advertise it. And so I think part of it, the advertising is two twofold.

Just I mean, I like to think of things in in buckets. So you've got your people that aren't your customers right now. And so we're gonna advertise that on Google a lot of times. We use SearchKings for Google.

So we're out there, pushing ads and whatnot trying to capture that. But this is also a product line that I think you wanna look at who are your existing customers that you would sell to. Right? Like, what kind of existing customers would would say, hey.

Let me go ahead and buy a unit. So there's some buckets there I think are worth talking about.

Yeah. I've agreed. So so where should I be looking for those existing customers? Who who within my book of business would be the right person to talk to about this kind of thing?

Well, I think existing customers are nice because for the most part, you've got their phone number, you got their email, and so on. So, you know, one category would be and this is where having good data in in your your FSM really helps out. Right? But just going back, let's say you go back three years and you pull every customer that's had a repair over three hundred bucks.

Right? That potentially, not everybody, but that potentially is a group of customers that, hey, their units already had a repair once. Maybe they've had a repair twice. And for whatever reason, they haven't replaced the system.

That's the kind of customer that needs to know, hey, you might be able to get another year or two out of this thing.

But if you do it now, it's gonna save you several thousand dollars. So I think that is probably first and foremost, it costs you nothing to advertise those folks. You can text them and email them right out of your, you know, your your customer service management software. Right?

So that's free. I think that is step number one. Sort those people, get them into a bucket. But again, put a promotion together.

Like, you know, we're gonna have our fall you're gonna have a manufacturer rebate this this fall. You probably got utility rebates.

If you wanna look all of that up, you know, put it put your own little, hey. We're throwing in two hundred fifty bucks too. And, again, I'm just building that into my price, but I've got dealer promo, manufacturer promo, utility company promo, federal government tax credits ending. And so you can you can put together a pretty good advertising campaign just based on that.

Yeah. I I I mean, I there it's just, I don't know what about conversations like this make me wanna go shopping that probably says more about me. Like, the the girl math within me is, like, I'm saving so much money. But that that's how that's what it feels like.

Yeah. I mean but literally, I mean, it's if you've got somebody I mean, we we would run this exercise with our service technicians a lot. We would say, hey. Let's say it's a twelve year old unit, and it's a two hundred and fifty dollar repair.

Not that you're gonna tell that customer they have to buy a new unit, but would you even bring it up? And and most of our technicians initially would go, no. I wouldn't bring it up. It's two hundred and fifty dollar repair.

You say, okay. Well, let's let's how much longer do you think a twelve year old unit, we're gonna do a two fifty repair. Could they get another year out of it, two years out of it, three years out of it? And most of the time I mean, we never know.

Right?

But if you look at the math and you say, okay. It's gonna cost them twelve grand to put a new unit in today or a two hundred fifty dollar repair. Well, if they spend the twelve grand and they get a tax credit, you know, let's say it's a two thousand dollar tax credit, you get the utility company rebate and so on. I mean, their net cost on that is maybe nine.

If you look at the person who spends the two hundred and fifty dollar repair and they wait a year or two, well, now it's not a twelve thousand dollar system. Now it's twelve eight. And then the year after that, it's thirteen two and so on. So that person, instead of spending a net cost of nine plus the two hundred fifty dollar repair, that person spent almost fourteen thousand dollars.

That's a five thousand dollar swing in two years. So what we would say to the service techs is just offer it. Right? Just, hey.

I know it's a two hundred fifty dollar repair, But you're probably gonna buy a new unit in the next couple years. If you buy it now instead, it's gonna save you three, four or five thousand dollars I mean, just between inflation, supply chain, loss of the tax credit, utility rebate savings. I mean, if the new unit saves you any money at all, it was worth it was worth switching.

It's worth the switch. Yeah. Definitely.

What about, okay. So I've got a group on my advertising. I put a plan together. I have leveled out all the different pieces that I'm gonna use to make the offer compelling.

What happens when I actually get a few homeowners to bite on this? And now all of a sudden, I went from this, you know, shoulder season kind of slump that a lot of contractors talk to us about.

Now all of a sudden, oh my gosh. I've gotta go put in all these tax qualifying systems. Now now what?

Yeah. Well, again, you know, if I had my business partner, Tim, sitting right here, he would say we gotta do labor planning. Right? So, I mean, if if this tax credit surge hits December fifteenth to December thirty first I mean, I was in Denver, Colorado.

Denver, Colorado, pretty cold. We're running full speed ahead in December, but I live in South Carolina now. So South Carolina, a lot of our guys are taking vacation either the week before, the week after Christmas. And so if you're not planning ahead to have a surge, maybe everybody puts in for their vacation time, and next thing you know, sixty percent of your workforce is gone.

So I think this is one where you would say, okay. Let's be strategic. Who's taking off for Thanksgiving? Who's taking off before Christmas?

Who's taking off for after Christmas?

And if at all possible, can any of you take off, let's say, the first week of January instead? And just thinking through because if I had everybody take off the week between Christmas and New Year's at once, man, we could lose so much money by just not having the capacity at that point. So I think we would look at that and go right now, end of August, now is when we need to start planning, you know, fall break, Christmas break, Thanksgiving, when's everybody taking their vacation time. So that would be a big one.

Yeah. It's it sometimes advice like this when we're giving it can feel like such a basic. Right? But it's one of those things that a simple conversation, a team huddle in August can really influence, you know, some good company culture come holiday time because nobody likes to feel like they're being told, oh, you can't you can't do this because you have to work. Like, that is a that's a gross feeling for anybody, any career, anywhere.

That's tough. Yeah.

Get ahead of it a little bit now. You know? And I but, again, don't do this without all of the good work that you've done in your advertising and in your sales planning.

But but getting ahead of that discussion now with the team to say, hey. We're doing this strategically because we wanna crush it at the end of the year, and we've got this huge incentive to help get us there. That that can be the difference between, you know, a a really good happy solid company, you know, high fiving then on December thirty first and some sour grapes, you know, sitting around the holidays.

I think there's one thing that goes hand in hand. We got maybe one or two more things. But one thing to talk about so we talked about advertising for a second. And I think that's important.

Right? The email blast, text messages, maybe even having your out your call center. If you've got any any CSRs in the office, make some outbound calls because we're gonna get slow at some point. Maybe you're still in the middle of summer rush.

But if you've got some time this fall where we slow down, make those outbound calls. And so I think if we talk about sales for one second, what would you say on an outbound call? And then and then the other category of conversation, let's say you're doing maintenance agreements and you're doing out there doing maintenance. What would you say in those two scenarios?

And I think, again, now's the time and we were holding this webinar right now strategically to say, we need to be planning for these things.

So, you know, with starting with that model, the service tech, Mary, let's pretend you're a homeowner, and I'm a service tech.

And here's the challenge is the units running fine. I'm just coming out for full maintenance. And so if I say to you, well, Mary, you know, you're gonna need to replace this thing.

What's your take on that as a homeowner?

If if that's all you said to me, I would probably look at you and go, yeah. Yeah. Probably. But we're good.

We're good. Yeah. At Sandler, we would say I mean, just we would call it in in terms of not wanting to be a sales pitch. Right?

We would say going negative. Right? In the sense that I wanna talk to you about replacing your system, but I'm gonna acknowledge the fact that it's running fine. I'm just here to do maintenance.

And so the going negative piece, I would say, hey, Mary, Everything's working great.

There is no need at all to buy a new system.

But I wanna mention it to you for two reasons. Right? And just coaching your service techs to say that, that takes a little bit of practice and just, hey, two things.

One is based on the age of the unit, you probably are gonna need to replace it at some point in the next few years.

Could make it another twelve months, could make it another thirty six months. I got no idea it's working right now.

But the other thing is there's a tax credit out there that ends this year. So if you had to replace your unit next year or the year after, you would really wish you had done it this year. So I wanna bring it up and just say, hey. No need to do it. No rush. Nothing's urgent.

But if you'd like to talk about what that looks like, now's probably time to have the conversation. And you may decide we're not gonna do it now. We're gonna do it next year or the year after. In which case, no worries at all.

But I just wanted to to bring it to your attention. Right? So I think that type of conversation, service technicians, a lot of times, are not used to that. Our maintenance technicians, if you work at a large company, you know, you've got got the guys that do the repairs, and then you got your maintenance guys.

And those are often your rookies.

And so those guys need the coaching. You wanna be in on those service technician meetings to go, hey, let's talk through how you might bring this up to a homeowner.

The other thing I think is really helpful is to, you know, again, I'm old, I'm old. So we used to just make a cheat sheet for the service techs and laminate it. These days, they got iPads. So just a single page PDF or something like that, where they can say to a homeowner, hey, You kinda fit this category.

Nothing's wrong. Nothing's broken. But you're probably in the next few years, you're gonna need to buy a new unit. Would you mind taking a look at this?

And if it's on the screen on the iPad or you got a laminated flyer or something like that, I think that just helps stimulate the conversation. So if you're sitting down with your account manager, pick your product line, bundle your pricing, put it together, get it in the hands of your maintenance techs. I mean, I think that's huge.

What I like about that approach the most is you are acknowledging that, hey. Your unit is fine, and it is working. Immediate relief in my mind because okay. I'm we're we're okay today.

But guess what? I don't know what I don't know. And, yes, I am a homeowner, but do I keep up with and I'm familiar with heating and air tax credits because of the work that I do, but most people aren't. Right?

Most of my friends and neighbors have no idea what goes on in my industry. I say R54B to them. They look at me like I, you know, have three heads. So most people just really aren't up and aware on exactly what those credits are, and let alone when they expire.

So just bringing that up and planting that seed, and if I know how the universe works, at least in my house, you say something like that, I'll probably still pass, and in four weeks, I'm calling you again. Now, if it's four weeks in October, and I still have a chance to squeeze in by the end of the year, good for me. But, you know, if it's more close to the end of the deadline of the tax credit, then I missed out. But at least you told me about it.

That's the other thing. I I hate the idea of people going into homes and saying, you know, it would be great for you to replace this unit. No. I'm good.

And then we never even mentioned the opportunity because guess what? When they call you then in January and February and say, oh, darn. You know, you just mixed out on that tax credit.

What tax credit? We never talked about a tax credit.

Yeah.

And and I think, you know, the the marketing adage is that people need to see or hear something somewhere between seven and ten times before it really sinks in. So part of it is you're thinking, okay, it's August. I've got an existing customer base. I got all my maintenance agreement customers.

I've got people that don't have maintenance agreements, but we did repairs for them. And so if I try to fit seven to ten touches in in the month of December, it's gonna feel rough. But to to start now, to send an email out now, to maybe send them a text message with a link to a landing page that talks about the tax credit ending, to have your maintenance tech bring it up in October when he's doing maintenance. I mean, If you can start planting those seeds now, you're creating the demand that you're gonna have at the end of the year.

And it's it's farming. We're gonna plant seeds. We're gonna go get that harvest in in at the end of in end of November, beginning December. So I think that's that's the mentality is let's plant those seeds now.

What about, little bit of business planning action, little bit of labor planning action? What about the product itself?

How if I maybe if I don't have the history of the twenty ten events, right, how do I know what I should be bringing in to anticipate this demand so that, you know, I'm not, holding my distributor hostage for more units?

Yeah. I mean, I think, again, we would sit down and we would look at a couple of things. I mean, what's your typical summertime demand? I mean, if if you picked your busiest week this summer, how busy were you? And if that week showed up at the end of December, could you handle it? I mean, that that essentially was part of it.

And and I think for a lot of us, I mean, if we knew let's say we had the crystal ball back in February, and we said, hey. Might be hard to get some units. Might be hard to get some refrigerant. What would we do in February?

Well, man, I would have gone and rented a storage unit and started stocking equipment. So I think to some extent, you you gotta have that same mentality and go, okay. We think there's a surge coming. So what do we want to do with that surge?

And this, you know, we in one of our upcoming podcast episodes coming out, we talked about how to haggle with your TM. I mean, I would sit down with my TM on the business planning side of this. And I would say, Hey, you got any co op money that nobody else is using? Because I want to use it to blow out the end of the year.

And my TM is gonna say, Well, why should I give it to you? And I'm gonna say, because I'm about to put a stocking order in. So if we could sit down and say, and this I'm wearing my dealer hat now. Right?

I'm like, alright, mister t m. I want some terms on my stock and order. What can you do for me? Can you throw in a little coop money, and and let's go get this thing together?

Then as a dealer, I go, okay. Well, what if I'm gonna stock? And I didn't have a massive warehouse, so I had to we had to plan around. If I'm gonna bring in fifty to a hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment for us, some guys have plenty of room for that.

For us, I mean, we need a week to figure out where it's gonna go. Right? So I mean, that that's the other piece to go. Okay.

From a logistics standpoint, when's the equipment gonna come in? Can we leverage, our buying power to say to my territory manager, hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna drive sales. I'm not gonna just sit around and see what what customers want. I'm gonna say, hey, we're gonna stock.

Let's just pick that seventeen SEER Multi Speed again. Let's stock these things. Let's get the coils we need. Let's get the air the outdoor units we need.

Maybe we need some furnaces. Let's put it on a stocking order. Let's try to get some terms so we can spread out our payments. Let's try to get a little co op money.

And and then we're gonna go after it just full bore. So So I got my labor in place. I got my advertising in place. I got my sales in place.

I got my business planning in place. Like, you could blow it out q four.

I I you can't really do one well without the other. You can do lots of things well, but all of these things really need to sing on the same sheet of music. And, we we see that so often. So, you know, please don't take what Steven and I say in business planning and advertising, and then don't give yourself a chance with the product.

Nothing sounds a little sillier than saying, hey, hey. I've got a great promotion for you. How does three weeks from today sound? Like, you wanna go firing on all cylinders with that one.

So so that's a really great point. I, like I said, I and maybe it's has more to do with my personal money scripts, but, talking about saving money makes me excited to spend money. So, I, I I love that we're talking about this now. I love that we're getting people excited about this.

Great question in the chat just dropped in on how you would spend the coop money that maybe you would haggle for. And I saw you mentioned direct mail, but, but but, yeah, maybe expand on that one a little bit.

Well, advertising folks are probably familiar with an organization called the Direct Marketing Association, DMA. And so, you know, we I get some stats from them. And, you know, do stats vary from market to market? Sure. But one of the stats that is overwhelmingly true is it costs five to ten times to go get a new customer, what it costs to keep your existing customer, take care of your existing customer. So the first thing I'm gonna do is say, hey, what's the cheapest group of people to market to are people who I already have their contact info.

Email's free, text messages are free. I'm gonna work those. I'm gonna have my my CSRs do outbound phone calls this fall when they're slow. But that direct mail piece, if I could line that up so that they get one at the end of September, one at the end of October, one right before Thanksgiving and one about December fifteenth.

If I plan that out right now, I could buy those postcards in bulk, I can get them printed in bulk, I can mail them pretty cheap.

That's just me going, I'm gonna go hit the highest ROI customers. I'm gonna hit them as hard as I can.

Easy.

Simple.

One last thing, and I'll throw this out there because this is just the sales side of me, and I can't help it.

You know, not every company has dedicated salespeople. A lot of companies have selling technicians. So this would be hard to do with a selling technician. But a dedicated sales guy, this should be in your wheelhouse. One of the things that I did when I was an RSP was I would go around and network. And I would I would work the Chamber of Commerce. I was in a lead shared group, like a BNI, lots of those types of things.

And in two thousand ten, one of the things that really fueled my big boom at the end was a group of CPAs that I had gotten to know. And so what they would do is they would allow me to do kind of a lunch and learn. And so I would say and this this is the time if you wanna get in front of CPAs, this is the time of the year to do it. Don't wait till the end of the year.

And, obviously, they couldn't get to you in q one or q two anyway. They're slammed. So right now, this is the time of the year to go get in front of CPAs. You buy everybody a fifteen dollar lunch.

You know, you you bring it in. You got some sweet tea. You got some lemonade or whatever you do. And so the lunch and learn is just, hey, guys, tax credits ending.

They know that.

You say, hey. Here's some scenarios. I like to use real life customers. Here's mister Jones.

His unit was fifteen years old. We could have repaired it. The repair would have been fifteen hundred bucks. It would have lasted for a few more years.

When he bought it, projecting out a year or two at seven or eight percent rising costs, like, it would've cost him way more. If he does it right now, mister Jones gets a two thousand dollar tax credit, and saves the repair. And let's say it knocks five to ten bucks a month off his utility bill. I mean, it doesn't have to be massive savings.

If it saves mister Jones any money at all, now it's like saved a hundred and twenty dollars this year, saved a hundred and twenty dollars next year. Right? And so, you know, just here's some things that are going on in our industry that you as a CPA should know about. So this is the time of year if you are a business owner, maybe you've had some conversations with your CPA where you go, Hey, I'm gonna need some new vans.

Should I buy them now? And it doesn't have to be business owners. Wealthy people do tax planning with their CPAs way before the end of the year. How much should I give away in charitable giving?

Well, December is a massive month for charitable giving. If you've ever been on the board of a a charity or nonprofit or done any fundraising for that kind of thing, December's the month. It all hits then.

Why? Because people are getting to the end of the year, and they're like, hey. What am I doing on taxes? How much are you gonna pay?

How much should I give away? So go do a lunch and learn. Call your CPA. Say I'm coming into your office.

I'm bringing lunch for everybody. It's gonna take fifteen minutes. We're gonna talk heating and air. And one of my favorite things is when the CPA start asking me questions about how the tax credit works.

And I'm like, look, guys. You're not allowed to fix air conditioners. I'm not allowed to give tax advice. I'll tell you about the air conditioning side.

Y'all figure that out. And usually, if you get three or four of them in a room, if one of them has a question, the other three can answer it. So I didn't have to ever answer a tax question. I'm like, I don't know.

I'm the heating and air guy. And so it it was super easy. It feels intimidating to go talk to some CPAs about tax stuff. It's not because I only have to be an expert in heating and air.

I don't have to be an expert in tax. That's what they're doing. But it plants those seeds. And I sold I sold four or five systems that ended up being over thirty thousand dollars that year because we redid ductwork, we redid everything.

But they came out of a tax planning conversation that a CPA had with their client to say, might wanna go ahead and do it this year. And so then I get out there, and I'm like, well, you probably gonna wanna do the duct work. I mean, that's just as old. And so when you look at that, three or four different sales.

Alright. Four sales. So what? Well, four sales at thirty grand a pop for me as an individual sales guy, that was a big deal.

And that was two thousand ten. You know, again, adjust for inflation. Those were big jobs for us. So, man, I think if you're if you got salespeople, I would my sales guys that reported to me, I would say you're doing a a lunch and learn every two weeks for the rest of the year.

So go find your CPAs, go knock on some doors, go cold call, like, call your Chamber of Commerce, go, hey. Is there a CPA on the board of directors? I'm a member of the Chamber of Commerce. I wanna go meet with my board member.

Whatever leverage you've got, I would get in front of them and go, hey. Just FYI. Here's what's ending this year. Because even just one or two referrals from those guys are they're gonna be big ticket sales.

Yeah. I hit them with the, the old Arnold Palmer method. Right? A little little lemonade, a little tea. That might be the official drink of HVAC full blast. I'm just saying.

Yeah. I'm all for it. I'm all for it.

Oh, man. That's great. Well, there's been a lot of great information.

Very appreciative of Joe for manning the chat for us. That's always so helpful. And if you haven't had a chance to work with Joe, he has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to really like the nitty gritty of what's going on in this space.

Mark Woodruff, always a delight to talk to you if you're still out there in the megasphere, but great knowledge on the systems. And again, some of those resources that Stacy had shown earlier, can tell you a lot more about the product specifically. But our customer facing websites also have some fantastic tools that will tell you right off the bat, which systems qualify and for what amounts they qualify for as well. So, definitely encourage you to visit our customer facing websites, which we can absolutely share when we send out this information to you. But other than that, I mean, I think we've covered a lot of ground here. We've got, like, some different kind of lead gen ideas, what I can do with some advertising, what I can do to plan out labor, what should I do to bring an inventory.

I I feel like there's a lot of action items, that anyone could pull from right away, but is there anything else that if we close this webinar right now, you would feel like, oh, I wish I had said that.

And I went ahead and made a little form. I'm not traveling this week, but the rest of the fall, I'm doing sales training events. And so this week's a good week to catch me. I made a little form.

I dropped it in chat. If somebody's got a question, if they wanna talk through I don't have all the answers. I'm not a TM. I can't help you like this thing.

But, like, if you just wanna brainstorm, I would say, you know, drop Wow.

Came prepared with a form. I feel like all I can share is my email. Yes.

Woah. Showing me up big time. No. But no. That's great. And please use Steven. He's an amazing resource, really creative.

Now is not the time to be downtrodden. Now is the time to really be creative and think about how you're gonna go flex this opportunity and capture it all before the end of the year.

I think that's all the time that we have today. We've done an filled this hour pretty quickly, it felt. But if you guys have any questions, we'll put out some contact information. And we really just thank you all so much for your time today. Really do appreciate it.

Sounds good. Thanks, guys.