#155: How to get rich in HVAC // Victor Rancour's $65M Story // Next Level Pros Podcast

In today's episode, we're sitting down with Victor Rancor, an absolute force in the trades and HVAC world, who scaled from scratch to multi-million dollars in just a few years.

He breaks down the exact moves that he makes when acquiring new businesses and the systems he installs to drive top-tier profitability.

If you want to learn how to dominate your market and build a real machine, this one's for you.

Super excited to have Victor.

Welcome to the show, man.

Good to have you.

You know, I'm excited to be on, Chris.

I'm actually more excited to be here, man.

It's kind of cool.

Obviously, I've been talking to Trent back and forth and kind of watching you guys from afar.

And dude, if you guys haven't been out here, you've got to get a chance to come out and check out their building.

It's phenomenal, beautiful place, very accommodating.

So I'm excited to be here.

I'm excited to be on the podcast and hopefully excited to share some knowledge and help some people.

Very cool.

Well, for those that don't know who you are, so Victor's got a background in the HVAC space.

He's now doing playing the acquisition game all across the U.S., doing an incredible job in that.

But tell us, share us briefly your story.

I know you built a pretty big organization between 2018 and 2023.

Yeah.

So, I mean, you know, like I talked about earlier, I really kind of started back in, you know, living in Ohio 12 years ago doing oil changes.

And I was talking to Trent and Chris and telling him like, you know,

12 years ago, I was living in Cleveland, Ohio, and I was working at a place called Loopstop.

And I was a guy down in the oil pit changing oil, right?

And I was making like $6.75 an hour.

Never in a freaking, my entire world would I think I'd be where I'm at now.

So like, you know, for the people that are out there that are struggling right now, you have a whole chance of turning it around.

But I moved back to California a couple years later.

And I answered a Craig's list that I had to become an HVAC technician for a company called Service Champions out of Southern California.

It's ran by a great guy, Leland Smith, who I consider a good mentor of mine.

And I had no idea what HVAC stood for.

I went to the interview.

I'm telling you, it was an interview.

There's 100 people there, right?

In this room.

I had no idea.

I'm like, what does HVAC stand for?

I'm like, I have no idea.

Nobody knew.

I was one of the only guys that showed up in a suit.

I really needed a job.

I mean, I was, I had a five-month-old baby.

We're living in a room in a house.

Like, just like, there's a party house.

Like, I had to get my kid out of there.

And I saw this opportunity.

First thing they did is they kicked out everybody didn't have a suit on.

And I'm like, well, I'm glad I wore a suit today.

Right.

And they said, and they said, hey, can you guys get to fill this paperwork out?

If you asked for a pen, you got kicked out.

I happened to bring a pen that day.

So I ended up getting, you know, weeded, weeded down from 100 people.

And they put me through this whole rigorous process.

But very quickly, I found out how much they pay you in home services.

And I was like, dude, like they're going to pay me this much money to do this.

Like, I called my girl.

I literally, I always tell people this, like, it's a true story.

I said, you're never going to have to work another day.

She's like, dude, keep in mind, I'm driving a 9200 Accord.

I got the window doesn't work.

It was on the way to the interview.

It was raining.

So it was like sprinkling through my window.

Okay.

The car wasn't even mine.

I couldn't even afford to buy that day.

So this is on the way there.

And I'm telling her this.

And she's like, dude, whatever.

Dude, like pound sand, right?

But anyway, so I fell in love with it.

And she's never had to work another day in her life.

And, you know, even if we're not together, I still take care of her because that's I believe that you should do as a man anyway.

It's like, you got to take care of your people.

But long story short, moved, became, fell in love with being a technician.

And then I fell in love with the sales side.

And I always believe you got to learn the trade before you can really sell the trade.

I believe that, but you know, obviously there's different ways to go about things.

But

became a selling tech, became the number one, then I became the number one salesman in the country.

And then in

the end of 2017, this guy comes to me and he's like, hey, I want to talk to you.

And I was like, is this guy?

Sorry about the language.

Who is this guy, right?

He said, I go to breakfast with this guy and he's like, hey, I heard all these things about you.

I heard you're like, you're one of the best guys, blah, blah, blah.

He's like, I want to, I want you to come work for me.

I was like, I mean, I don't even know you.

So, he takes me to his office and I tell this story only because it's kind of funny.

Takes me to his office, shows me around, and I go to leave.

And he's like, Well, let me know when you're ready.

I was like, Well, you never made me an offer, right?

So, he's like, Okay, well, how about this?

He's like, Go tell your family, pack your bags.

I'm going to fly you to Hawaii.

So, he puts me up first class, flies me to Hawaii.

We're in the North Shore, Kawaii.

He puts me in a presidential suite, gives me his Range Rover.

Man.

And this is a, you know, he's running another HVAC company, a competitor.

And I remember my wife saying, So, why does an old fat man want to invite you to Hawaii?

Seems a little creepy.

A little creepy, right?

But anyway, so yeah, he ends up inviting me out there and, you know, spend a week with him and his family.

And he hires me.

And that's when I got to really understand that there's a whole other side of business, right?

So I went from just being sales, like Leland was very focused on departmentalizing every part of your business.

If you're a salesman, you're a salesman.

You're a tech, you're a tech.

If you're an installer, you're an installer.

Vice versa.

He didn't want you to learn any other parts because he didn't want you to know everything because then you can know too much.

And anyways, I went there and I was the service manager, sales manager, general manager, and the sales guy.

Like I was working from 6 a.m.

till 11 o'clock, sometimes one in the morning.

This is in Hawaii.

No, this, he moved me back.

He had his company in California.

He lived in Hawaii.

He wanted someone to run his company in California.

Got it.

Got it.

So he gave me a bunch of money.

I go back there and find out really quickly that I'm pretty much his indentured servant at this point.

But I was making a lot of money.

You got a free first class ticket.

Yeah.

So that was cool.

That was the first time I've been to Hawaii.

I never, you know, you know, coming from where I came from, like, I didn't come from,

got to go to Hawaii.

Like, that was freaking awesome.

But, uh, but he gave me an opportunity to really learn the inside of the business.

And I was there for about nine months.

And I realized, like, hey, I can do this.

Right.

Well, everybody thinks you can do it until you go have your entrepreneurial seizure and all of a sudden you're out on your own and you've got to figure out everything.

What is it?

You know, how do I start an LLC?

How do I come up with a name?

How do I get my licensing?

How do I do my financials?

And all that stuff.

So that was in August 2018.

But, you know, I've leaned back on sales.

So we took it from five, you know, zero to five million our first year, then to 12.

Then every year we kept growing until 2023.

We exited that.

That's that's phenomenal.

you know

i think one thing that i just love about your story was i mean you really came from nothing i mean making six bucks an hour a lot of guys are are handed a lot of opportunity along the way you clearly went and created it for yourself and just hustled your way and did it the old blue collar way dude yeah and i'll tell you back you know back in the 675 hour day like i was i thought i was never going to be much of anything right like i was points in my life where i wanted to take my own life and all these things where i was like dude i thought i was just going to be a loser forever so you know that's why i talk i talk to a lot of people and i try to tell them like dude like like, no matter where you are, if you decide to do something and you go put all your all into it, you can have an opportunity, right?

Like, and that's what I love about the trades.

You don't have to go to college, you don't have to do anything.

You get one opportunity, put your foot in the door, all of a sudden, you go and you bust your butt.

Like, maybe you're an installer.

Yeah.

Learn the trade, get your foot in the door.

Like, and that's what's really hard about the generation now.

It's like a lot of these guys, they don't want to, they don't have to go through the grind work to get where you need to go.

They want to just be all of a sudden, they want to, they want to come in and be a sales guy and make 500 grand a year, right?

It's like the reality is there's steps to everything.

Yeah, if you can't put the steps in, you don't, you don't deserve the outcome.

You know,

how old are you now?

36, almost 37.

Awesome.

You know, the irony of the whole thing is like back in the day when I was in high school or whatnot, like those that were going into the trades were very looked down upon.

Right.

And it has literally become the world that is rammed by the trades.

And the future of basically our economy is either AI robots or in the blue collar space.

And it's one of the last things that it will be remained standing, you know, here in 10, 15, 20 years.

I just did did a workshop for this guy.

He's like, he's got like a big doctor position in Texas and he bought an HVAC plumbing and electric shop.

And I was like, dude, like, why, why?

And he said, because my job is going to become obsolete and I need, I need the protection of the trades.

And that was like, I never heard it like that way.

And that's a reality.

And that's why private equity is coming into the space and all these things.

And we can, we can talk a little bit about that.

But like, it's just, they know where it's going, right?

It doesn't matter what, what, what you're positioning.

You know, dentist is going to be replaced.

All these things.

it's really that's a dentist going to be replaced, yeah.

I saw a tooth removed, I don't know.

You wait till that's robots, you think you come over and it's all going to be replaced.

I mean, either by robots or somebody controlling a robot that just works from home, you know, and so yeah, I like the small talk of a dentist, though.

You know, like you like the bedside manner, you like the bedside manner when someone's in your mouth, you like the small talk,

just dentists, just dentists, all right, all right.

So, Victor, I mean, clearly you mastered sales and marketing, and that was like one of the big aspects.

And, you know, so you got really, you did really well in digital marketing.

What are you seeing today in 2025 as far as what's working in the marketing space?

I mean, obviously, like we were just talking about, you know, private equity has come in and a private equity knows how to do one thing and that's spend money.

Right.

And so when you guys look at, you know, we were just talking like in 2017, 2018, you know, Facebook ads, you're getting 15 or 10, $5, $10, $15 leads.

Now those leads have gone more expensive.

They're not as targeted, They're not as good.

Obviously, you go to Google and Google is just, you know, they're just eating cash, right?

You put money in a PPC.

You'll never compete with the big guy, right?

You're not going to compete with the 800-pound gorilla in your market.

Same thing, all these different verticals you go into, they just keep throwing money at it.

Right.

And I talk to like a lot of my clients and I say, look, we got to get back to hand-to-hand combat because private equity ain't going to go out and be in your community.

Private equity is not going to do these things that are like more of a long-term investment.

Right.

And how do we get back out in front of that?

So like some of my companies, like we've really leaned heavily on direct mail.

We do some some like direct response radio, like I, you know, like some really old, like we all ran out a radio station for an hour every Saturday and Sunday.

We do really, really well with that, where we're talking to the demographic that we want to work with.

You know, the Paramount Plus, all these streaming services like we were just talking about, you could actually hyper target people.

Like I can find out, you know, Jewish people and, you know, just

so give us some, give us some more, like, give us some more in depth.

Like what, what kind of, what type of cost of acquisition are we looking at with direct mail right now in 2025?

So obviously there's two different types, right?

There's, there's postcards, which I've never seen much success, right?

You find a postcard, you take it, toss it in the trash.

Like so with my clients, I teach them to do these.

We do like letter style and it's like full-blown letter in there.

It's an envelope.

It's got their name on it, stamps on it.

We're getting

looks handwritten.

And we're getting the leads for about $180 a lead.

And we lead in with, so like most companies are waiting for an air conditioner to break or whatever it is.

We lean in on service, right?

Like, hey, let's get it taken care of for service beforehand.

So we're going in.

I always say we're going the front door, leave it out the back door, right?

Like they're inviting us in for service.

I think they need to tune up.

We've, we obviously, we have a process.

We find all the, we diagnose all the things that are really going on because most people,

I always say like people look at, you know, a technician like almost like cancer in their house is their body, right?

And when you get cancer in your body, what do you want?

You want them out, right?

So like they want you out as quickly as possible.

So we have to find a way where they're not already in a bad position when you get there, right?

When you're coming in for a broken system, they've already Googled everything.

They've already went, you go in there for a tune-up.

Most of the time, they think, you know, they're, they're, I always say their, their, their engine's blown, but they're doing it for an oil change.

Right.

And they know there's a problem.

They don't know what it is.

They want to spend $49 or $100 to get in the door and just to diagnose and figure out what's going on.

They hope and pray that it's nothing big.

So we get to go in there, we get to educate them, go through a process.

And by the time we're done, if you create a good sales process, we're leaving with $25,000, $30,000 tickets.

So what percentage of your news or your system switch outs are coming from an upsell versus like a

free estimate or a service call versus like, my system's busted.

I need this completely replaced?

What percentage?

It is over 80-20.

Wow.

Over 80-20.

So 80% are upsold.

Yeah.

So, like, we're getting to them before, before our competitors ever get there.

Our customers, our competitors are waiting for the unit to break down.

Well, we already sold the units before they even got there.

And that's what we found in the markets that we're going to is like, we're, these other guys are getting starved out.

And like, every market that we go into, we're growing exponentially.

And these other guys are starving because they're just waiting for the broken ones.

They're not broken anymore.

So what percentage of the mark, what, what are you spending on marketing?

So

I'm a firm believer that it's between five to 7%.

If you're over 7%, your operations are messed up, your sales process is messed up.

Okay.

So like if someone's like, you got to spend 15%, no, you're spending 15% because you're not capturing a lead properly.

You're not answering the phone properly.

You're not getting there and converting it, running a proper process.

So my companies, if we're over 7%, I know that my KPI is off.

I got to go figure out what's going on.

So a lot of people say, you have to spend more.

I've been there.

I spent a bunch of money, but I wasn't calling every lead back, following up, doing rehash.

And obviously we have software now that we have top of funnel software that we use with RP1, follow-up, rehash, all that stuff.

That's an interesting piece.

So

what is your rehash strategy?

So tech goes in, runs the full call, doesn't get the close, presents the options.

What happens after that?

So we actually built, me and my partner built the software about a year and a half ago.

We built it for my business.

This is RP1.

It's RP1.

And then we started selling it to contractors.

But so we're integrated with all the different CRMs in the home service space.

And as soon as they leave, most people make a buying decision within 72 hours, statistically, okay?

You got a 72-hour window to get it done.

So when they leave, we're hitting them with a follow-up right away with a text message.

Hey, thank you so much for having our technician in the house, asking how everything's going, more like a customer service side, like just follow-up, happy call type of deal.

And then from there, it starts continuously over the next 72 hours is going to turn more into sale, sale, sale.

And then by the end, we're offering them a discount.

By this, by this third day, you're going to get a discount offer.

I was just going to say, what are your thoughts on training technicians to only get a decision, whether it's a yes or a no, and not

walking out with a maybe or a follow-up?

i try very hard so you know my background sales if most of the time i've had like so i always joke i'm like yeah at a 90 sign rate you know 20 might have canceled afterwards because i don't like to leave until they sign right but like i think that's a different approach nowadays i think the the clientele have learned a lot about that and and you can try it right and you better have you better reinstall it right away if you're going to hard sell somebody right uh we found that you know we can we can lean in we do get a lot more follow-up than i ever used to even though we're expensive as long as you guys can create a great sales process where they trust you, like you, and all that stuff.

But obviously, I ideally want closers.

We want you to sell while you're there.

You should be able to do that, but you're not going to get all those.

Right.

But for sure.

What are you going to ask?

Yeah.

So the CSR,

the happy call.

So after they don't get the deal, the happy call is just about customer service or is the CSR also asking why didn't they move forward with us?

So they lead in with customer service.

Hey, this is Victor with, you know, fiscal heating and air.

It looks like my senior technician was out there.

I'm just calling to see how everything went.

Right.

Let's, let's talk to him as a friend first, get him introduced, you know, open up and say, Perfect.

Hey, it looks like, you know, I looked at some of the pictures.

It looks like this thing's in pretty rough shape.

Looks like you left you some options.

Is there a reason why you didn't move forward with it?

Right.

Yeah.

And then from there, we were leading in.

So, hey, just so you know, I know it sounds like a lot of money.

We do have some no-money-down options because you never know if they're offering financing or not.

So, we always want to offer financing on it.

And then, obviously, from there, they're like, Well, if they don't show any interest, well, hey, look, I'm working directly with the owner inside the office.

You know, is it the price or whatever it is?

I can go right to them right now.

So, like, our revenue recovery person is trying right away.

And sorry, is the revenue recovery person somebody separate from the CSR?

Or is it?

That's all they focus on.

Okay, so this is a revenue recovery person in your actual overhead of your company.

That's all they do.

Yeah, very interesting.

Yeah.

Okay.

So they're obviously commission-based for the most part.

They get a small hourly just to follow up, get reviews, stuff like that.

And then most of it's commission-based.

Can you share the, do they get the commission from the technician?

It comes out of the, yeah, whatever the commission, the commission, the technician left, he was supposed to get 10% or whatever if he doesn't sell it.

And they take, say, they take four or five whatever it is they come down to what his so he'll still get paid but you don't want your internal and your external fighting each other sure you know followed by this like hey you you got to close if you don't close there you have 72 hours that's it that's a cool model so uh so i i think we're quite a bit aligned as far as like pricing our product tell us about your your uh theories and and models on pricing so I I prefer, like for me, I'm going to price everything at 65% gross margin because guess what?

If you start high, there's an old saying, right?

Quote them high, look them in the eye, drop your pants and watch them buy.

So you start high.

If you start, if you don't start, if you start at 50 and you and you go down, you're going to end up at 40, right?

And that's not, they're not, that's not sustainable.

If I start at 65 and I go down 10%, I'm still at 55%.

I'm still got squiggle room, right?

But most of the time, we're just going to hold that 65% margin.

Not everybody's asking for discounts or even a little bit of discount, but if you start, if you start low, you only have, you have nowhere to really go, right?

And is the, I know we're getting into the details, but I think it's important for the viewership.

If they go from a 65% gross profit margin down to 55%, is it the company that takes the hit or does the commission of the technician also decrease?

So this is

how I do it is a sliding scale, right?

But I have what's called built-in drops.

So say if they sell that job and they give no discounts, they'll actually get, so every 5% they save for me, I'll give them 1%.

So if they don't discount at all, perfect.

You get those first two discounts, it's going to hit you 1% on the first one, second, then you're only going to get 10% if you stay at there.

Anything below that, then it's going to start dropping incomedally.

So if you go below 10% discount, now we're going to start dropping multiple percentages.

So the first ones are built in.

And some of my high-end packages, I'll have four built-in.

So you can get, if you go, you sell it at the discounted, the four, the 20% off, you still get 10.

But if you hold that, you'll get 14.

So what it does is it incentivizes them.

And you show them the check and say, look, dude, you're losing an extra 4% by discounting every day.

10 to 14% commission is a dramatic difference, right?

Totally.

But if I can hold that 20%, I'll give them four.

Right.

And that's how I look at it.

So we built it in in as a as we structure it to where that's as a sliding scale but they get down to where it's they can sell a twenty thousand dollar job but the margins aren't right they're making 250 bucks just for going out there and then we had we talked about three different people that go out into the market you have your your sales guys then you have your installers and then you have that middle area the sales techs you are in favor of having a very strong sales force like chris going out there capitalizing on all the deals and then just having an install crew come and complete the work you don't want the same guys that are selling it as installing it because at the end of the day it's really hard.

I can, you know, I can go get installers, right?

At the end of the day, a lot of people don't like communicating, like the technical side of it.

That's what they want to do.

Now, getting a shark, amazing sales guy is very difficult.

And as much as anybody wants to heat on the sales guy, nothing happens without a sale.

That's right.

Right.

So like you're not, you can't go create me overnight.

Like you can't, if you want me, I'm becoming your business, you're not going to get five of me.

Right.

Right.

So if I'm, if I'm tied up doing the sale and doing the install, then I can't go sell more jobs.

So I want my sales guy focused on killing the next target, killing the next target.

And that's how we aim on it.

And then obviously install crews are are right.

They're right behind it.

You know, my top guys that are the hard, the guys that are hard sellers, like we don't, we're not installing three days from now.

I have one, one guy in my sales team in Arizona.

I have a, I have a demo crew that follows behind him.

He goes to the job, they're down the corner waiting for him to sell.

And they're going to go demo that job and we're going to start it right away.

Because I know that when he sells,

he's pushing on these people to sell, right?

So you have to get that job in as quickly as possible.

I think it was you that was telling me a funny story with the alarm systems.

Oh, yeah, man.

I'm a, I'm a big same-day install guy.

Right.

Like, so like, I would not leave a home.

So I, I, I come from a background of door-to-door sales, and I would not leave a home until there was a hole being punched in the wall.

Like, like, that, that was literally my criteria.

Like, as soon as the technician punches a hole through the wall with his drill, I'm out.

Right.

But until then, dude, I'm, I'm building rapport.

We're talking about baseball, football.

Like, we're doing whatever.

I learned, yeah, I'm the same way.

And that's where I learned from Leland, right?

Like, we, we would wait around until the installers got there, or whatever the next, the next guy was, or the demo crew, or whatever.

But it's like, yeah, you want to make sure you get that job spiked no matter what.

And sometimes, like, I was a technician, so I'd sell it and demo it my damn self.

I'd be out there and be like, hey, the crew's going to come pick it up right now.

I'm going to start cutting the unit out.

So I would, but sometimes I would leave and I would make videos in our sales chat.

I'm like, hey, I got another one.

I got a fan spinning in the back of my truck.

Have the customer help me lift it up into it.

Yeah.

So when you go and pick up a two to five million dollar shop right now, what are typically like the top three things that guys are missing uh is it is it the fact that like sales techs are everything i mean what what are some of the major changes that you make right away into a business like that first thing we got to do is sell i i don't care if your sales team doesn't know how to sell yet we're going to teach them right like we got to go in and they they can say they don't like to sell perfect i need some warranty guys the guys can go i call them the cleanup crew i'll take one or two of you guys the rest you got two guys that can take that spot to most of any company i have everything else has to be sales if you don't want to sell you're going to be out so the first thing i do is i recruit right if i'm going to go in you got to find a high-level salesperson, whether it's a sales manager that can bring a team with him or it's a high-level technician.

I always say, if you want to start winning, you got to get one.

Get one from that big company, that company that you hate, you talk crap about.

All they do is sell.

Get one of those guys.

You treat him good.

He'll bring the rest of them.

So like this is what we did in Arizona.

The same thing we're doing in Alabama right now.

We actually built our office right next to the biggest company in the market.

They've seen us growing.

Now, this last week, we're like, we want to launch plumbing.

We have like six of their plumbers coming over overnight because we say, well, let's go.

Let's take it.

Right.

So you have to recruit the sales guy.

And a lot of times the other thing is you got to find the people that are good at things you suck at, right?

If you're a business owner, you suck at sales, bring someone in that can sell because you're going to get in the way.

Right.

And if you're, if you're good at finance or whatever, whatever that position you suck at, you got to fill it, right?

So figure that stuff out.

And then obviously, how do you get leads?

I mean, you have to, if you can't get customers, you're not going to retract.

Me and Chris ain't working for you if you can't give me a customer to sell to.

And obviously we can go out and try to find our customers or whatever it is, but you want the big dogs, you got to have them, right?

So first thing we do is we got to hire the sales streaming team.

I'm a big process person.

Like I have a step-by-step process.

We teach it.

We teach it in markets.

And pretty much every state in the entire country has learned.

And even in Australia, we have some clients over there.

They follow our process and they crush it.

Now, if you don't hold these guys accountable, right, then your business is going to fall apart.

Like I run my business, like my sales teams ran like a McDonald's, right?

It's the same thing over and over and over again.

And I can tell through my KPIs when my guys are skipping steps and what steps are skipping based on what they're not selling, what they are selling.

I say, hey, look, let's talk about this.

Let's talk about your process.

my favorite part and you probably had this chris right is like someone comes in and they're like i tried everything and you're like did you try this well i didn't do that

i'm like dude come on brother like we know what i know what you're missing and my even my manager able to identify what we are the kpis what they're missing in the process but we train often so some of these small companies they maybe train once a month twice a month terrible we're in four to five days a week for an hour a day and and i believe that if you're going to bring your your team in your sales team do not bring them in to beat them up on numbers bring them in to teach them something that day yes My guys can come.

We look over the numbers.

The numbers ain't going to be changed overnight.

But we can do is every, I found that like whatever subject you focus on that day, they magically sell.

If you guys, if you bring a financing guy in today, they're going to all of a sudden sell everything on financing.

So are you doing sales training four to five days a week or is it just general training?

Are you focused straight on

sales?

So you personally are still involved in these trainings?

No, no, I have a team that does it.

But like, obviously, if I go out to a business, I'm going to be running the meetings, right?

Like, I get the team pumped up.

Like, that's what I do.

I get people excited, right?

But we do i have guys that do that for me that run the sales team whether it's virtual or in person but we're meeting four to five days a week i don't care if it's 100 degrees sorry about the language i don't care if it's 100 degrees outside we still train yeah because that's when you lose the most money because that's when you start skipping processes and most opportunities yeah a drunken monkey can sell in the summertime right but if a smart guy like me i'm going to get my average ticket doubled because now they're they got sweat beads coming down their face i want to maximize the ticket i'm not there to sell basic i'm there to sell the best right right so that's i think that's what kind of separates us from everybody else they're like in the summertime they're just telling basic.

I always tell people, like my technicians, like, would you put a basic air conditioner in your house?

They all say no.

I said, why are you selling one then?

Right.

I would never sell something I wouldn't put in my house.

That's not the right thing to do.

So like, we don't sell basic and we do everything is top-down pricing.

Most companies lead from this, from the bottom and they go up.

We start from the top, just like if

you went to the Ford dealership today, right?

You want to buy a base model, maybe a Lariat or whatever the Ford, I don't know what the base model Ford truck is, right?

They're going to show you the Raptor first.

I'll be showing you the Raptor.

I'm like, hey, have you had a chance to try a Raptor?

Put them in the Raptor.

Once they leave the Raptor,

they're going to leave with a limited, right?

Or they're going to leave

either Raptor or a limited.

They're not going to go down to a freaking rolling their windows down with their hand.

And that's how we teach it.

So it's top-down sales process.

And then that's the first thing we go.

And we give these guys sales presentation books and all the tools they need in the house.

And that's what separates us right away.

You know, it's interesting.

There's a terminology called anchoring.

It's in negotiation, right?

And negotiation and sales are very similar as far as aligned and similar principles or whatnot.

But like nothing was more powerful to me than when I, so I took a negotiation course at Harvard and

we were taught this principle.

Like, you know, we've always, as sales dogs and business owners, we've, we've done a lot of things, but like understanding exactly why it works, the psychology behind it, everything like that.

And we, so we did this mock negotiation.

And it was essentially where there was a buyer and seller of land and we were both given different parts of the story.

And then we had to come together and negotiate.

That's cool.

And so it was like, it was a real negotiation.

And basically,

you know, the range that this land sold, so it was a land deal that you're doing.

And the range that this land deal sold for, it was anywhere from 32 million to 65 million and everything in between.

The crazy thing was, is everybody after they finished the negotiation went and when they turned it, they had to turn in their numbers and give a report

of like what it, what they ended at, everybody felt like they got a good deal.

There wasn't one person that didn't feel like they got a good deal.

And it was for the same exact negotiation.

And like this, this, the power of anchoring that you're talking about, like when you anchor with that Ford Raptor, right?

Like when you end up with a Laria, you're like, you're feeling good or whatever else.

I got this good deal on this, what, whatever else.

And like, that's ultimately the power of anchoring is so, so, so powerful.

And if you don't anchor, like the guys that negotiated, the sellers that were in the 32 to 38 million, it's because the sellers did not anchor.

It's because they came in, they allowed the buyer to anchor and determine essentially where the anchor was.

And then wherever you anchor, you end up close to what it is.

And so in a negotiation, in a sale process or whatnot, wherever you put the anchor, you're going to end up real close to there.

And so if you're coming in with a $25,000 system, chances are you're going to be...

in the ballpark of 25,000 bucks at the end instead of coming in with a $10,000 product.

Well,

I I had this sales rep out of Utah and I was working in with him.

He asked me to work with him one-on-one and I rarely do that, right?

He was, he's just a client of mine.

So I said, he's like, I can't, they're having this competition and I cannot sell this 26-year, the highest end unit.

And I said, well, cool, can you walk me through your sales process, right?

We go through the sales process and he does, he's doing top-down pricing, but the top two, he says, these two are kind of like overkill for your house.

Like if you can afford it, they're great.

Downplay.

This is the one that most of my customers go with.

And I said, well, which one are they buying?

He's like, well, the middle one.

I said, how about you change this?

How about you say, hey, look, start with the best one and talk about how amazing it is, how it's the one you have in your house, and how you wouldn't live in the house without one of these units.

And just talk about all the bells and whistles.

And then he started talking about the things you had to lose by going to the next one.

And then let's see what happens, right?

So we went through the whole process again.

He did a really good job.

Calls me back.

He said, I sold six of them this week.

And he got this big old bonus.

And he's like, dude, I'm making more money than I've ever made before.

I said, look at this.

You just had to change the way you're talking about it.

Why would I buy something when you say it's overkill and I don't need it?

Right.

And so that just really changes everything.

So I mean, obviously, the psychology behind it

is massive.

Yeah.

And the recency of sales training, what you said is really important.

It's like a lot of owners or managers will say, well, we trained on that last week.

Six months ago.

Six months ago.

It's like, okay, so Dr.

Amber, who's a frequent guest for us,

she increased her average ticket selling orthotics.

And she does it because she's...

talking about orthotics all the time.

And there was a positive correlation between when they do the sales training on orthotics and when the doctors are offering orthotics.

Yeah.

So if you if you train in the morning, they do it in the afternoon.

That's that's the same thing.

Every meeting we have, we have, we actually have it planned out a month in advance.

We know what we're going to train on that day, unless there's a major issue that's happening where we're not selling something we need to sell, then we'll change it up and pivot, right?

But like the same thing, yeah.

And it's financing is one of them, right?

If you're not leading with financing, and especially in 2025, I mean,

the price of everything is so expensive.

The average consumer has less than $5,000 in their savings account.

You're going to expect them to spend 25, 30,000.

Without financing, it's impossible, right?

So most, almost probably over 90% of our jobs.

I don't know the exact statistics, but it's at least over 90% are financed.

And you can't just go in and you have to lead with financing, right?

And one thing that we got really good with is step financing.

So our highest end product had the longest term and lowest payment, right?

And then as you get buyer, you're going to get the lower, the lower term, the five-year term at the higher interest rate.

So the payments are going to be kind of close to the same.

Sure.

So if you're, it's only like a $10 difference between the top and the bottom, which one are you going to go with?

That's what you're talking about, the delta.

So it's a step.

Yeah.

So it's, you know,

$10 you're getting.

This one's 15 years.

this one's five years.

But at the end of the day, when they look at it, they look at payment, right?

So, when you go in, you're not buying a Ford Raptor for $150,000, you're buying it for you know thirteen hundred dollars a month or whatever that payment is, right?

You're not going to talk that way.

But the problem is, I found a lot of reps that will go in, they'll give a price, and after they give the price to customers, him and Han, they're like, Whoa, we have financing.

I said, You got to leave with it because now you're telling the person they're broke because they can't afford it.

You want to financing out broke me, you know, in 20 like in 2025, it blows my mind when I talk to a business owner and they're like, Oh, yeah, 20, 25% of our deals are financed.

I'm like, dude, what are you doing?

Right.

Like, if you're not in the high 90s of percentage of finance deals, you are missing the mark.

Like, I mean, this is the I'd like to buy that business, anybody interested.

I mean, dude, but so many of these companies, it's the easiest way to move the, the, move the needle in sales.

Yeah.

Offer zero-down financing, payment plans.

I mean, dude, the American consumer, like we are the largest consumers in the world, right?

Our savings rate is negative 2%.

you know, like we have to provide that type of finance.

I mean, there, I mean, you can actually finance Uber Eats now or DoorMash.

You can finance a fragrant burrito, right?

So people are used to it.

That's the way you just talk about financing is the way that we talk about financing, too.

When it's not front-loaded,

it becomes the, it's like you have the objection, this is too much money.

And then the bad sales guy will go like.

Is it because you're poor?

Like because you can't afford it.

We have something we could do versus if it's front-loaded, which is, hey, Victor, 99% of everybody finances, even if you have the cash, this is going to be the best option for you.

Then when the objection comes, they've already had 60 to 90 minutes to process the financing.

Yeah.

So, you know, a lot of times I'll ask, obviously, I always tell them you can use our money.

Now, not you can actually use our money instead of yours.

And the one thing that I'm really good at and we do with my sales staff is we don't ever talk about buy company financing.

Hey, right now it's an, I can't even believe it, but the manufacturers offering these crazy rebates and incentives or even offering some no money down options right now.

Normally it's cash check or credit card.

Obviously, it depends on if you qualify for, but almost every customer I'm talking to is using this.

They don't ever offer it.

You can get something where you don't have to make a payment on it for 12 months.

And after that, it goes into a super low payment, like under $200 a month.

I've seen people get this for.

Would you be interested in that type of deal?

And I get them.

And I always have an end date to it.

It ends on this day.

Everybody sales is urgency, right?

If you don't build urgency, you have an infinite amount of time.

You're going to take forever to choose.

So that is what's very interesting about what you started with which is the marketing channels so if you're marketing to the digital side those people are making decisions like if your hvac unit goes out 24 to 48 hours you know 72 hours they're making a decision i have no heat or cooling in my house i need to make a decision

What you're doing is very interesting.

You're saying, hey, I'm going to go OTT, streaming, direct mail.

And you're, before there's an issue, you're able to solve the issue, offer the financing so that they don't end up in this position.

We put them on the market before our competitors ever talked.

Almost every customer that buys from us never met with anybody else.

As soon as they meet with everybody else, they realize we're the most expensive.

And obviously we can win those battles sometimes, but the statistics go way down.

So I want to put them on the market and take them off the market.

That's why having a dialed-in process is important, but also just training on how to build urgency.

So like when my guys are in the house, I don't just tell them, hey, we have a promo that's ending.

My guys, every day or every day of the month, they have a promo in their hand that already expired.

Either it expired on the 15th or it expired on the 30th.

And what I mean by that is, like, if it's the 17th of the month, they're using the one that expired on the 15th.

They're going to call their boss and see if they can get that promo because you have to get it today.

If we don't get it today, I can't honor it, but I'm actually pulling strings to get this for you, right?

So, I like to give my guys sales tools to have in the house that they can use to obviously, just like any other, any store you ever go to on the planet has a sale going on, right?

Yeah, hey, this sale ended.

Let me see if I can get it, but it has to be something we make a decision on today.

If it's not something you want to do, I can't, there's nothing I can do.

There's just no way I can get it after you call me tomorrow.

Yeah, right.

So, I want to give my guys all the tools.

And I think that's one of the big failures in companies is they don't give their guys in-home sales tools.

Now, keep in mind, some sales guys are lazy.

If I didn't have them and I worked for a company, I'd make my own.

Okay.

Because I like money.

I've never been an hourly guy.

I've been commissioned only.

Only one time.

675.

A change in oil.

But I haven't been hourly since I got in the fuel.

I was a commission-only guy, right?

I eat what I killed.

So I have no choice.

I'm not going to go home and tell my wife that I just worked 16 hours and I came up with no money.

And I also believe that I don't want to go to work to make less money than humanly possible.

So I want to sell the best of the best.

And that's how I strive to be.

If I sell like a basic system, I'm not even excited.

So based on your sales process.

So based on your sales process, obviously you guys want to be the only one in the home that are pitching the highest price and everything else.

So what is your messaging around from your, in your targeting with your marketing and whatnot to get in the home that's going to allow you to do that service call?

and then complete the upsell.

So even like on our marketing, there's urgency builders, right?

There's only 100 of these spots available.

We have 40, it's a $49 tune-up.

We're offering this to introduce you to our company, but we only have 100 spots where we can take on new customers type of deal.

So it's all about tune-up service, 49 bucks, something cheap, get it, get in the door.

Yeah, some of our guys are run, you know, some of our specials, like on social media, I'll run a $20 tune-up special.

I don't care because you don't make money at 19.

You don't make money at 49.

You don't make money at 200.

So are all your sales guys trained on being able to do a tune-up?

Yeah.

Got it.

So we do have estimate.

People call in for estimates.

We have no charge estimate guys.

And I have guys that technicians that are not sales savvy, right?

But they're good technicians that turn leads.

So we'll have, I mean, that's the easiest way.

So if I can get a good selling tech, which is rarer, right?

But the selling tech, I'll let them do everything from beginning to end.

Most of our guys are turnover techs.

You know, I have 10 guys.

I call my Trojan horses.

They go in there, see what's going on.

They fill us out.

We have a call-by-call manager that's monitoring all day.

So like if my tech goes there, it's a first time out tune-up.

He's got a 20-year-old unit.

He's got both homeowners there.

He's got some things going on.

He has to make a call within 15 minutes and say, hey, I got this going on.

So we're probably going to send a manager out there for a buddy check or a training visit, right?

Right.

Who's going to show up there?

And I always tell my technician is like, let the customer know it's time for your quarterly review that someone might show up.

So in that, in that situation, so it's just say it's a 20-year-old issue.

They called you out because it's not starting.

You know it's a capacitor issue, but it's an R22 system.

You're not, you're, you're doing an authority close.

The tech is calling a sales guy or a manager who depends on them.

I have some guys that are good enough to be selling techs that can handle it beginning to end, right?

But that's harder to train.

Once they get to that point, that's great.

Those are the best because I don't have to pay two people.

I don't have to waste gas, trucks, all that stuff.

But if I got, I can train guys from scratch within 10 week course and i have a whole step-by-step course what we train on every every week every day to get that guy from knowing nothing to be able to run a tune-up and actually know how to flip it totally right so that's how we build our sales team and once they get good enough at flipping then we allow them to start selling their own stuff we don't just go say hey you can start selling if you can't consistently turn a lead that turns into a replacement so does the tech get because there's some you're essentially creating no customer acquisition costs if you can upsell them there what what's the does the tech get a they get a spiff they get a spiff Yeah, so they get three to four percent, depending on what the sales guy sells on.

And

the sales guy loses 2% of his.

So he's still, we, those tickets, we found that the a service to replacement is a way higher average ticket than a straight estimate.

So what is your, what does your total sales commission stack look like?

Are you 15%, 20%?

What are, what are you, the revenue?

So I, I really, my, my KPI ideally is 20, my 20% direct labor throughout my whole from install to sales, right?

So if I could stay below 20% throughout the business on direct labor, that includes the direct labor.

Installs, Labor and commissions, all of it included.

So my goal, that's our KPI in our business below 20.

You know, sometimes, some months that's 21, 22, depending on if we got a discount, things like that or whatever.

But we stay pretty close to that.

So if my installer is getting five, I got 15% to wiggle room room, right?

So it just really depends on the job for the most part.

But 15 is like the max.

And that's if we're splitting them between.

So you're not, when you talk about having a 65% gross margin, you're not.

you're taking 20% off that.

Or you're saying that's including

we build all that stuff in there.

Until you're you're going to take commissions out of direct labor.

Yeah.

Everything goes in there.

So it's actually cool.

If you go to my website called profitrocket.com, I have a pricing calculator.

You punch in the commission, labor, everything into it.

It'll actually tell you what to charge.

So cool.

So, yeah, it's way cool.

Love it.

Love it.

Yeah.

We're definitely a lot aligned as far as like the methodologies from pricing and

gross profit margin and sales practices and stuff.

So yeah, it's really cool.

The other thing we build into it, Chris, is we build, so everybody looks at financing as a loss, right?

We build it as we don't have, financing is not a loss for us.

It's actually a profit center.

So every job, like I said, on my pricing calculator, every single job that we do, we price in 7% for financing.

None of our financing costs 7.

Everything is below 6%.

So we always make a point on it.

Even if they pay cash, I'm still doing it.

I make seven.

Dude, we are 100% aligned.

That's exactly how I run my business.

Yeah.

So

it's actually a breath of fresh air.

Not a lot of guys that align with me on most of my principles there.

So that's great.

It's cool, man.

Yeah.

You know, it's interesting having that conversation around financing.

One other thing that I would add in just from a training aspect is when customers want, like, are persistent about paying cash.

One thing that we train our people on is just what a cash buyer, a Dave Ramsey guy or whatever else, really, what they most want to be recognized for, their ego is, I am a cash buyer, right?

It's not necessarily that they want to pay cash, but they want to be recognized as you can pay cash.

Right.

And so one thing that we do from a training aspect is when somebody is like persistent about, hey, hey, no, I only pay cash.

We say, hey, look, that's great.

This is what all of our cash buyers do.

And then, and then we show them how cash buyers actually pay for or do the financing.

And then if they ever want to just pay it off, they can pay it off at any time, but it's better to use that money and invest it.

And so we, and it's so funny because we convert so many cash buyers over to finance people because we recognize them for what their ego wants.

Well, so everybody, and then you say that, I prefer a finance buyer over a cash buyer, right?

Especially in today's market, it's scary to trust anybody that's going to pay you cash after the job's done, right?

And so like, and the other thing is an emotional disconnect.

When someone emotionally separates from $25,000 cash, it's completely different than $200 a month, right?

100%.

So the cancellation rate's higher on a cash buyer that says they're cash buyers, right?

And I always talk to them just the same way.

I say, look, you know, the cool thing is you get to use our money instead of yours.

We have a 12-month, no interest, no payment, rolls into a small payment, no prepayment penalty.

We don't know what's going to happen with the economy, right?

So God forbid something happens tomorrow, you lose your job, now you can't afford to pay off that thing, or or now you spent all your cash, you don't have your cash in hand.

Now, what are you going to do?

Yeah, right.

Especially the deal that you're running, which is no payments, no interest for the first year.

That's what Goodleap runs.

Yeah,

20%.

You pay on day 366.

Well, no, the example of the service finance has a hybrid.

You get 12 months, no interest, no payment, then it rolls into a 10-year 9.99 with no prepayment balance.

It's literally free money.

Right.

Free money.

And, you know, the thing about financing is like, I don't care how much cash you have.

Like, you can have a billion dollars.

it still requires a mental hurdle to come out 25 grand if you had a billion dollars yeah versus the the couple hundred like like it's

the the name of the game is ease right like the more easy you can make it for the consumer the better you don't want to overcomplicate anything you don't want them question anything you don't want them talking to anybody else make a decision right now give them a payment yeah

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's the difference between the small guys and the big guys.

Like I, I, I, it's very rare to to find people that actually want, everybody always wants cash.

And I'm like, dude, I, I just don't, I just don't see it.

I'm trying to finance everything.

And techs that really understand the financing game and are confident about financing, they win because

when you, when there's any ambiguity about like whether this person knows or not doesn't know, it goes to the buyer.

Well, exactly.

And that's what I talk about.

You have to know financing like the back of your hand.

Like we train on financing a lot.

I want them to know the difference between a secured loan and non-secured loan.

What, you know, what's it, what's a HELOC mean?

Cause everybody's everybody's like,

I'm going to go borrow money.

Well, let me explain how a HELOC works, right?

If they can't explain that, and then the customer is like, that's her out.

A lot of times that's their, that's their, hey, I got to go to the bank and get some money.

Well, let me explain how that works for you.

Well, you can use our financing for 12 months.

During that time, go get whatever loan you want from your bank.

But let you know this is an unsecured loan versus secured, all these things.

So we can paint the picture.

So now that excuse goes away, now the real excuse might come out, right?

But you have to train your guys on financing and how everything about it, right?

Back to front to back.

I got to tell you something.

So I've drawn this comparison before.

Last time I I was in Washington, I cracked a tooth.

I ended up having to get it removed.

So I go to the dentist, the CSR, you know, hey, come into your appointment.

Blah, blah, blah.

It's phenomenal.

They send the nurse over.

She builds rapport with me.

The doctor comes out, you know, washes his hands.

Hey there, big guy.

How's it going?

Seems like you had a tooth, right?

Spikes dopamine, does his diagnosis of the mouth and then shows you the picture.

So now I understand exactly what the issue is and then offers financing and the payment plan.

And you're sitting there and I never thought I need to get three quotes.

It's like, I believe the doctor.

They've run the process perfectly.

I understand the issue and he knows about financing.

So I have no reason to get up from this chair and he upsold me.

Well, that's what me and me and Chris were talking about before.

There's the similarities between that, that field,

the medical field and the home service field, right?

And it's true.

Like if you can run a process where you don't leave a shadow of the doubt, right?

Like you have to know how to like close all the doors along the way.

And that's what we teach our guys.

And I keep them a simple process, right?

I could take, we had this kid, 19-year-old kid in the business we just acquired in Alabama, right?

Never sold anything in his life.

The kid made $20,000 his first month, $20,000 his second month, and then $30,000 a third month in the field at 19 years old.

I said, trust me, just follow the process.

It's going to work.

He's like, it works every time.

I was like, dude, all you have to do is follow.

Follow the process.

You can create a related, like a repeatable process with your business.

Now, if you go hire guys and everybody's doing it a different way, there's no, there's no predictability.

No cowboys.

There's no cowboys in my business, right?

And keep in mind, there's some people I don't want to know what the hell they're saying sometimes.

I don't know what they're doing, but they sell a lot and I don't sometimes, but they still follow my process.

Yeah.

And we use things like Rilla and other AI stuff where we can analyze it and listen to it and see what they're saying in the house.

And I think AI is a big part of like, if you want to be able to ramp up, like Rilla has been massive, be able to see that.

From

just operations standpoint, do you have managers?

Actually, I know you have Rilla, but do you have guys go onto the field and still do one-on-ones in person?

Not very often, to be surprised.

I found that if you you need a manager, your systems are broken.

And so I try to think, and people like call me crazy.

I think the service manager is the biggest wasted position in the whole business.

I just don't see, they don't make you money, they lose you money.

They're just, they usually don't have, they have bad habits most of the time.

So I think if a business needs managers, there's something broken.

And I try to run my businesses as lean as possible.

Okay.

I'm not interested in 10 for 10 or 15% net.

Like we got to be over 20% or I'm not even, it's not worth my freaking time.

So like, how do I, you know, and rich, real, rich, rich people will talk like, so poor people talk about how, how many, but how many employees they have in their business.

Rich people talk about how many, how much that they get done with as little amount of employees, right?

Yeah.

So, when I look at operation, I'm trying to cut overhead.

I'm not interested in adding it, right?

So, I don't know.

That's my two sides.

And that's why you're so invested in AI companies because

I'm trying to figure out a way to cut overhead.

It's just, you know, obviously I love employees.

There's going to be other purposes for them, but there's things that we can cut out.

We can cut, and I can make more money.

That means I have more money to spend and grow the businesses and do all these things that are going to help provide for a better future.

Yeah.

Love it.

Love it.

Victor, well, we, we appreciate you having on the show, man.

It is a breath of fresh air.

Like I've, you know, I don't come from a background of the HVAC world.

And so it's been really awesome like the last couple of years diving in, getting to know different guys in the space.

And very few, I could say, that I have really close, 100% alignment.

And you're, you're one of the ones.

So I appreciate your, just your theories, your thoughts, your, your direction on business and for everything that you shared for us on the podcast.

I'm excited man I'm also excited and I know we got both you guys are going to be at our we have a sales training event in Ohio in November and I'm bringing so like I believe in bringing everybody together like I don't have competitors I bring I can I used to be able to try to separate people I'm bringing the best sales guys I can think of the best guys that are going to be able to help you guys change your change your processes or change your mindset on sales so I love I can't wait to see you guys

to tell them yeah it's gonna be November 10th and 11th outside of Columbus Ohio

beautiful facility we're gonna have about 300 people max I got probably 10 of the best sales trainers I could possibly find in the home service space, whether it's roofing, HVAC, pest control, solar, stuff like that.

And we're going to really just dive into processes.

I told him, hey, you guys can all have as much time as you guys want, but teach people that's something they can implement to go take over their business.

It's not a pitch fest.

It's actually down like step-by-step processes and how to dominate.

So I'm excited to have you guys.

I'm excited to work with you guys a lot going forward and figure out how that works.

I got to go.

One quick little thing.

You know,

one little thing.

I told this to you before he walked in, but I just want to say it on air.

You are really one of the nicest people.

Like you, you, you don't have an ego.

I know you have like an internet personality, but you're just like a really nice guy and really smart and really dialed into your processes.

Very hard to find high-level entrepreneurs that know, you know the numbers.

You know the business.

Like you are an actual operator.

And it's been really nice getting to know you.

And if you think, if you own a business, you need to know the numbers.

That was your last thing I'd say.

I used to tell myself, I'm just a sales guy.

I'm just this.

No, you're the operator.

It is your job to know every little in and out of your business and how it works.

And if you can't read your financials, get with the next level.

They'll teach you how to read the financials, teach you how to understand how to really grow your business.

Because the longer you push it out, the longer you're going to struggle, the longer it's going to take you to get where you want to go.

So, thank you guys for having me on.

It's been, it's been a pleasure.

Cool.

Guys, you heard it here first.

Focus on your marketing, get better at that sales process, implement AI, know your numbers.

Let's go.