Investing in Employee Training to Deliver Top Customer Experience

I've had countless, countless numbers, as I'm sure you've had, employees that have left because the grass is greener. They're chasing that $1, $2, whatever.
Not greener. Per hour, they go over to some other organization and they realize that they cannot thrive in chaos where they can thrive with us in a structured environment and what that means to them and the support that means to them.
So it's interesting as you begin to put structure around, you know, change, I think registers in the brain as pain. So anytime we have that change, you know, there's this resistance that comes from that.
But once we get settled into it, right, and we become accustomed to it, now we begin to see the byproduct or the benefit of that structure, and we begin to thrive. You know, you remove that, you realize, oh my gosh, I'm essentially naked without the support and the structure around.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs

and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's

really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.
Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert.
Today, I have a special guest visiting us from Sacramento, California. Sean Weiss, how's it going today? It's going well.
How are you doing, Tommy? I'm good. Let me just go over some of the things about you.
So Sean's an expert in negotiation, operations management, sales pricing strategy, and team building. He's based in Sacramento, BDR Business Development Resources, profit coach and trainer from 2015 to present, and Maki Heating, he was an operations manager from 2010 to 2015.
Sean Weiss has 12 years of experience in the HVAC and plumbing industries with multiple

roles in operation management and sales across the residential, commercial, and industrial

markets.

He has built and grown service installation and service teams from scratch and improved

performance in service installation and plumbing operations for each company he has worked

for.

He was named to the 2021 ACHR News Top 40 Under 40 list, an annual list that recognizes the most accomplished young professionals and rising leaders in the HVACR industry. Well, that's quite a lot.
I'm excited about this because you're right up my alley, man. This is like the stuff I love.
I love delivering value to the listeners and just your management experience. It's going to be really good.
So tell us a little bit about your history. What's going on out there? Yeah.
Yeah. So for the past seven years, I have been with BDR Business Development Resources, as you alluded to.
I started out with them just on the coaching side and was doing that for a few years and then had an opportunity to help out on the training side, which has slowly become my passion. I love getting in front of sales professionals, technicians, installers, owners, managers, you name it, and really just working with them over the period of a couple days in a training session to see those light bulbs go off.
So that's pretty much what's been going on, especially as we have been able to transition back to in-person stuff away from, not totally away from virtual, but it's been really cool the past, I'd say the past year, getting back out there and getting to see faces in the training. So yeah, that's pretty much what's been going on for the past while.
So your, your home is California. Is that where you're at right now? Yep.
Yep. Here in Sacramento.
Yep. So I'm not going to go too down a rabbit hole real quick, but today, I don't know if it was this morning, I was looking at some news and, uh, raising tax rates there possibly.
And they're actually coming out with a law possibly that if you move, you still got to pay those high taxes for 10 years. I don't know if you heard that, but I know.
Yeah. Another bit of news coming from the great state of California, right? So there's certain areas to do business.
It's a little bit easier to do business in. You know, one of the things I talk a lot about with coaches and owners and CFOs is how to pay for performance in a way that motivates our, whether it's CSRs or dispatchers or technicians or installers.
And, you know, some states make it a little bit tricky. What is the best? And I get this question every day, literally probably the biggest question I ever get is how do you work on compensation programs that motivate sales staff? And I consider CSR as part of the sales staff.
So what are the best ways you've seen? Well, it's a huge hot topic right now with compensation because I mean, what did we hit? A 7% inflation rate at the end of the year, at the end of 2021, which that's the highest we've seen since 1982 you know so everybody's feeling it right now and um gosh i mean in the past couple days i've had tons of conversations like like you're alluding to here from owners and just on that structuring and pay compensation what does that look like so we need to be on top of it and you know one of our recommendations just on straight wage alone is that we we need to know what's going on out there. And we want to be competitive.
And we also want to be better than competitive. And so what I've been working on with my clients recently is making sure that we're at least $5 to $10 an hour at any level, a stated rate higher than what's being posted out there through Indeed or whatever various job posting channels.
And in addition to that, looking at your benefit compensation, PTO is another huge one that's coming up and making sure that we're competitive on that. And again, with the number of clients I've worked with, we've seen that increase from anywhere from 2, 3, 5 additional days from what they were at at this time last year in 2021 to where they're at now.
And then when it comes to like your sales professionals, your CSRs, you know, having a good SPF package, call booking bonus SPFs, you know, it doesn't have to be crazy, but you know, something there for them to have additional income opportunities, SPFs on offering maintenance agreements and selling those. And then again, for the sales professionals, we want to make sure that we're looking at our compensation structure what does that commission structure commission schedule look like for them and i want everybody to win right i want i want the company to win i want our customers to win and i want our employees to win as well so i try to figure out what's fair for all of the involved and i've been really recently working on graduated commission percentages for sales professionals based upon the type of equipment that we're offering.
And as we increase in higher efficiency, which is a whole other topic on availability these days, but as we increase in efficiency, we can have better margins that can support an increased percentage of commission. Then we look at our add-on options, all those things that we can now take and personalize that system that was designed for the home, for the building, and how can we personalize that system for the occupants, the owners of that home, and now put some additional SPF compensation, whether it's a flat dollar amount, maybe additional percentage, what have you on those.

Yeah, it's a really big topic right now. And I think you're right.
You got to have all the benefits. One of the things that I've been hearing a lot of is the benefits that people really don't think about, like a new truck.
I think that's been a really big one I've been hearing is, I've been broke down last week. And can you guys get parts? I mean, it's funny this day and age age so there's the compensation programs that motivate people and then um what i've learned is is to bring in i'm way more successful and i learned a lot of this through al levy bringing in apprenticeships and it's garage door so it's a little bit quicker but i could train them in four weeks at an apprentice and then four weeks in phoenix what have you seen out as far as trying to get somebody already trained or training them from scratch? What's your perspective on that? It's the way that everyone's going right now to live in some fantasy world that you think this experienced talent is going to fall in your lap.
And if it does fall in your lap, is it really the cultural fit that we want for the organization anyhow? So two things, we're looking at hiring based upon attitude and aptitude. Do they have the ability to learn? Do they have the drive? And what's their attitude like? Is it a cultural fit for the company? Does it align with our values? Does this individual align with our values? Do they support those values that we have as an organization? From there, we can train that.
Now, that opens up a whole other can of worms as far as, okay, now that's the route we're going to go. What does that structure of training, that schedule look like? Do we have a facility to support that as well? I'm dealing with this with one of my clients in the middle of nowhere.
I mean, Illinois, they might have, I think, I don't even know what the population sign is on this town, but it's maybe a couple hundred at the most. And they've got some larger areas outside that they service.
So they don't have this huge pool of just population to even pull from. So they're really going straight to the high schools and grabbing some of these kids right out of high school.
And this year we're working on our training facility, setting up a training facility that we can basically take these individuals from nothing into a goal of, and you can expedite it a little faster, it sounds like, on the garage door side. But in three to six months, can I turn out at least a maintenance technician that's growing at knowledge? So yeah, the training facility is huge you know, how can we leverage that as a promotional item as well? I've seen it where we've got clients that are running, you know, commercials out there, TV commercials, as a means of not only attracting new business, but also attracting new talent.
Hey, you know, here's what we do. Here's the training programs that we have, you know, our technicians and installers are going to learn in the lab, you know, not in your home on your PC.
Yeah. Not getting paid to do, you know, I just came out with a radio commercial and I said, listen, I'm doing something that's never been done before.
I want to buy your old piece of junk garage door and I'll get to, I'll give you up to a thousand dollars for it because at my A1 garage door university, trying to put on my radio voice, but at my A1 Garage or University, we use those doors and we break them and we crack them and we strut them up and we do whatever we can to try to get the technicians to learn. So we've definitely turned that into a promotional item as well.
Absolutely. You know, the more I'm thinking about this day and age, it literally is bringing out so much of the crap that business owners have done these last few decades.
Maybe we didn't take as good of care of the employees as we should have. And it's amazing because I've always taught sales.
I said, don't hate that word sales. And don't worry.
You don't have to worry about the prices. I make the prices.
You just got to be able to repeat after me and be able to condone them.

And how do you do that?

Well,

we showed up in a new truck the same day.

We still got parts.

We give a lifetime warranty.

We sell oranges when everybody else sells apples.

And I wrote this on the whiteboard the other day,

two Thursdays ago on the top of the whiteboard.

I said,

believe.

And I said,

if you guys don't believe that we're the best company the best training the best insurance the best trucks the background checks drug tests which aren't given these days but we'll come out on christmas night and i said i want to show you guys something and i pulled up a cost for a max life spring it's a trademark spring and literally my cost on it was over 140 for spring. And I showed them because I just got the prices that morning.
And I pull it up on the whiteboard or on the projector. And I said, some of you guys have been around when those springs were 30 bucks.
They're 140 now. So we had a change.
And it's crazy because people are going, they can't be this much. I got this.
I'm like, literally, I'm four months out on doors.

Springs, if I get them for 140, and I'm trying to create a 65% or 60%,

I got to have those things at like $350, $400 per spring.

People are like, you can't charge that.

But now they're like, we don't know how to charge that.

How do we do that?

All these mom and pops are drowning.

They used to tell me, I was outrageous, but I'm like, I have an office, a training center, brand new trucks, brand new iPads. I got service type.
So there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast and some of them out there are thinking, I just can't charge that, but they don't have my overhead. They don't have a CFO and a COO and they don't have seven trainers and three full-time recruiters.
So what do you tell those guys? Because I'm not saying their price needs to be what mine are, but they're slowly understanding they're fading away that they can't keep up. I've had 10 companies call me in the last two weeks that want to sell.
Right. Yeah.
I mean, it's a situation where you evolve or you dissolve. And the problem is, is that a lot of owners don't know where they need to be priced at.
You know, in their numbers. So that's what we do is we take them into their numbers.
And it is, it's priced to where you need to be. And so for those owners, I look at it and I begin with the end in mind, where do you want to be? Where do you want to be? When this whole thing is said and done monthly, weekly, daily, yearly, what profit are you looking to get out of this? And what do you need for profit for future growth, right? If we want to have that working capital for future growth, what does that look like? And if we get those numbers out of a business owner, we can reverse engineer it.
We could say, yeah, I mean, our operating expenses are what they are. We know what that monthly average is is going to be and the only individuals in this organization that can pay those operational bills or those expenses are our revenue producers our technicians our installers right so well based upon the pricing well and sales you can get into stuff like that well csrs i mean the biggest mistake i see in companies is booking rates, and they think they're so good, and they're not.
That's something that I always talk about revenue generating, but then I go look, and I look at their conversion rate, their average ticket, I look at their cost per reposition, and then I look at their booking rate, and I'm like, you guys are not attending to your Yelp. You're not even answering Angie.
The booking rate always seems to be, I just was at the Wizard of Ads, Roy Williams, and he said straight up, Tommy, I've never seen a great call center. There's one, one of Henry got drunk.
That's a really good job. And he said, overall, I've not caught one yet.
That's big. That handles a lot of volume.
That's done a great job. I mean, and I know a lot of companies, I mean, one hour air, you know, the Benjamin Franklin, all those guys, and they're not necessarily turning a wrench sailing, but if they don't set it up properly and answer that call, but I didn't mean to cut you off.
I just want to know. Yeah.
I mean, we've got to have the opportunity first that we can manage to the opportunity, right? So there's a progression of dominoes that need to be knocked over. So yeah, looking at our capacity, what are those calls looking at? What are we doing to fill to capacity? And then once we're filling to capacity, you know, then again, I'm going back to that pricing.
What do these tickets need to look like? Where do we need to price it? Where do our margins need to be in order to overcome what we're expecting for cost of goods, you know, labor materials and everything like that? Do you price that to give me the gross profit to pay my operational expenses to give me that net at the end? And so that's what you got to get those owners to understand or what we work to get those owners to understand is that the pricing is what the pricing is. If you want the end result to be this, here's where we need to be, period, end of story, bottom line.
So we work with our CSRs, we work with the call centers, we want to fill that schedule to capacity, get us at least in the door of the opportunity that we've managed to do that opportunity and the expectations that we have, you know, and again, we can go down another whole rabbit hole on, you know, billing efficiency and all that stuff from our technicians and things like that when we're running service, making sure that we're, we've got those average tickets coming in, but is our, are our maintenance agreement priced where they need to be to give us that profit? And is that labor rate priced accordingly to support it? Subsequently, like you mentioned, that price that spring going from what? $30 however long ago to now $130, $140. Now this is a very volatile material supply market as well.
So it's a constant, every day we've got to be on top of this, making sure that our price books are updated accordingly. Or do we need to look at an alternative solution here? I've got one company that has one person in office on standby, basically ready to generate customized flat rate prices within a couple minutes of a tech needing a price because they're not trusting their price book because of how volatile the supply chains and material costs are right now.
Yeah. One of the things that we've had to really learn how to do here these last couple of months is try to find out what's at the distribution center and sell what that is because otherwise we're four months out.
So we try to find out what's in stock if it's a common 16 by seven garage door and sell that and really get the customer say this would look really great and try to get them to go that way because we know that the chance of it falling out in four months is a much higher probability plus you know we're on an accrual accounting system so we don't count that revenue until it gets fulfilled it's pretty interesting you know you mentioned the service agreements and i seen in HVAC and plumbing, entire companies make all their living off of service agreements, literally like Leland Service Champions, or you got Josh Campbell. I watch these guys.
It's an amazing thing that HVAC has become and done with the service agreements. And if it gets 10 years old, as you send a sales guy to go to the tune-up to get a more efficient unit.
You know, that model doesn't work in some industries. You could try to make it work.
It's working a little bit for me and garage doors. It's not to the level.
But I love that model. Can you explain kind of how that works and how the turnover works? Yeah, absolutely.
So, and I get this question asked of a lot of owners, you know, again, when I'm out doing in-person trading things, you know, what's the one thing, you know, as a plumbing or heating and air company, especially heating and air that we could focus on, or we should be focused on. And hands down to me, that goes back to the maintenance agreement, because how can we tie that customer and gosh, what a, what a benefit that you have through a maintenance agreement in a traditional heating and cooling scenario where you've got, visit for heating, a visit for cooling.
You're in that home twice a year. You've got a tech going out there twice a year that has that constant contact with that homeowner.
And now we're provided with these streams of income on necessary repairs to keep that system performing as it should and maintain life expectancy, maintain warranty. We've got all the add-ons and everything that we could do to customize that system for that homeowner.
But then again, we're going to reach that eventuality where we've fulfilled the system's life expectancy and it's time to replace it. And the statistics show that at that point, you probably have an 80 to 90% plus percentage of getting that sale if we own the maintenance agreement for that home.
So it's crucial in order to keep those customers locked to us. Then not only that, but as we're doing a great service for them year in, year out, we're creating raving fans that are a huge referral source for us too.
During our business planning process that BDR does each year, we go through and analyze what the value of a maintenance agreement client is over its lifetime based upon additional

income opportunities found through the service agreement itself, and then those referred

sources too.

What's our expectation on how many referrals we may get?

And you start looking at that and the gross profit dollar gains usually are anywhere from

like $5,000 to $10,000 worth of gross profit to the company each year that they maintain that service agreement from that customer from not only, again, like I said, parts, supplies, materials, things like that, that we sell to the homeowner while we're on those agreements, but then also from the referrals and new equipment sales coming from that source. it's crazy.
You know, man, we talk about this a lot, but it's, you know, it helps build a budget, it helps for forecasting. And the reason private equity loves those service agreements is you build a wall around those clients or a fence around the clients.
And you can start to build a predictive model of what you're going to make based on, there's a percentage that starts evolving that this many clients on the service agreements are going to get new units each year especially i gotta tell you a lot of my competition they don't understand how i do my marketing because i spend a lot of money on it and they say man the best marketing ever you get on these facebook groups is word of mouth and i'm like of course it course it is. But you're not going to grow 100% with word of mouth.
You got to own Google and the four algorithms on Google. You got to understand Bing.
You got to do well with certain types of mailers, service agreements. And you could use TV, billboard, and radio to kind of stimulate Google, really.
What it'll do is get more click-through rates and more bookings and higher ticket averages. the old way i feel sorry for anybody that's got to go against me in garage doors here in the next few years i really do because they don't understand service agreements they don't understand a maintenance tech now the reason why an hvac guy doesn't want to get in my industry is i can tell you it's way different and i got a buddy of mine who's doing quite a bit of money in garage doors, around $7 million range.
And he started an HVAC company last summer and he did 7 million in HVAC over the summer. And he's like, dude, if you got into HVAC and I'm like, I'm staying in garage doors here, I'm just way too deep into it.
And I'm not staying in garage doors. They're both got their own challenges.
The ticket just isn't the same size and the service agreements are a little bit harder. People are like, listen, I use this thing, you know, five, 10 times a day.
And when it breaks again, come fix it. But I don't really think about it.
But the air conditioning is like, I want to be nice. I want to feel good in the summer and be warm in the winter.
And I'm not, I would never want to compare because I think I can sell service agreements, but you got the filter and you want to check up and make sure the capacitor is doing its job and clean. I've seen those little combs.
Actually, I bought some because I thought I was going to do it myself and I never have because I saw my buddy do it and you cleaned the coils or whatever. Tell me a little bit more about what goes on at Business Development Resources exactly.
Explain the company a little bit. Yeah.
So we are a coaching and training firm. So we have multiple coaching offerings from what we call a head coach that kind of takes a look at all the functions within the business, you know, like operations, sales service, install, your accounting, all that good stuff.
And then from there, we actually have specific coaches that dive into specialty markets. So we've got specialty coaches concerning the financials that work directly with the bookkeepers, the CFOs, the accounting department.
And then we also deal specifically with the service department, have specific service coaches. I also do a couple of other specialty coaches, coaching arms, which is our labor management or essentially our install coaching.
So we work directly with install managers to streamline efficiencies on the installation side. And then also sales coaching too.
And I work with specific sales managers and their sales team to better their sales process. And then also the training, like I mentioned.
There's two things if you ever listen to my podcast that I'm obsessed with, and it's sales and marketing. And unfortunately, we're so good at sales that it masks other things sometimes.
And I tell some of my managers, and I'm not complaining, but I'm like, man, it's crazy what we're able to do because I talk a lot about these things and I want to get into this pretty deep here, but I have 250 techs. I have a little, yeah, right around 250 techs.
And I've got to see probably a thousand over the years. And I'm very fortunate because the first day I meet them during orientation, when I meet them, I say, here's my cell phone number, and I want you to call me when you break through a mental block, when you get that aha moment, and I've had hundreds of calls like this, and there's a common theme to a lot of it is they need a methodology.
They need steps. They need order.
That's the way to get an expected result, and the number two is they're kind of cool. The good guys to talk to, I believe them.
They make eye contact. They got voice inflection.
They kind of got their shoulders pulled back. They listen well.
They've got two ears. They ask very good questions.
They laugh a lot. They smile a lot.
They're very, very generous. They play with the dog.
They notice things. Hey, that's a beautiful Harley.
How often do you get out? Have you ever been to Sturgis? And they get to know the customer for sometimes an hour before they even discuss the issues. Now, we do disc profiling.
We try to understand who we're selling to because if you get me in a garage and I got a problem, I'm probably on the phone. And I'm just going to say, dude, what does it need? Give me a couple options.
I want the best, do it. But most people want to get to know and get educated.
So I'm just curious from your point of view, what are some of the mistakes when it comes to service offerings and just what do technicians do wrong? And where do you start with that when you're training them? Yeah. Yeah.
You're absolutely right. We see it in plumbing and heating and air all the time.
I've even had it with my own technicians that I've worked with where you've got a technician that has all the technical ability in the world. They're one of the smartest individuals, but they almost come to this disconnect with the homeowners where they're speaking over their head or too techie.
They're not able to make that personal connection like you're describing. right? They don't observe things.
It's business, right? And I've had them where they complain

about my other guys that are just real personable and they get in and they're pet the dog, like you

said, or they notice certain things. They're actively listening to what the homeowner is

saying and talking about solutions or stuff like that, or even just getting into personal

conversation. And the homeowners are endearing themselves to them.
And they're coming back with amazing tickets because the homeowner likes them and trusts them and says, hey, let's go with these recommendations. But you've got these real techie guys that can't adjust their mind to have those conversations.
So that's what I really work on with technicians is it's more so about the soft skills side of things than it is the technical stuff. Homeowners expect us to know what we're talking about.
That's why they called us, right? They can't do it. They found us on Google, wherever.
They've got a problem. They want us to come out.
They expect the problem to be fixed. It's that customer experience.
It's everything else that goes into it that really begins to build that trust foundation to where when we come to them with these recommendations based upon conversations we've had, we've now positioned ourselves to gain the acceptance because we've got trust. There's a direct correlation between the level of trust and the speed at which a decision is going to be made as well as sensitivity to price.
So whether it's service or sales, if I've got little to no trust, there's a high sensitivity to price as well as the potential for a slower decision process here, a period to where they make a final decision. So I'm looking at anything, again, whether it's sales or service, they're really no different.
When I'm with that homeowner, what are all the things I can do to start building a relationship here? And when we build a relationship, I know trust is a foundational component of any relationship. So we've got this relationship built now as I'm coming to them and I'm explaining what I'm seeing, what I'm finding, right? Usually what you get from the homeowners is, all right, well, what should we do? What do you recommend? Well, I think this, this, and that.
We give an honest answer at that point and boom, here comes acceptance. And that's the real fun part with technicians is technicians feel themselves.
I'm a technician. I'm not a salesperson.
And I'll bite on that. Okay.
You're not a salesperson, but regardless of whatever it is we're all salespeople right and sell as human yeah exactly exactly so when we're out there it's it's like okay now we've got to just you know get this relationship forged with that homeowner build that trust and make an honest recommendation no you're not selling anything you're giving them honestly this is what I'm, you know, communicate that to them. And that's usually one of the big problems that the technicians have is they just don't understand what that looks like.
They oftentimes will view the amount of the repair or the amount or how many options they're giving them. They'll look at that and go, oh my gosh, this would be a lot to me.
This would be expensive for me. And it's out of their own pocket.
Same thing with financing. I don't use financing.
Why should I sell it? Yeah. Right.
Right. But we have a job to do.
We have a responsibility to that homeowner to go in there and give an honest assessment of what we're seeing. In addition to that, talk about other things that we know we can do, other solutions that we can provide for them that they don't know about.
The average homeowner knows nothing about whether it's a garage door, whether it's heating and air, whether it's plumbing. On average, they don't really know all that we can do for them on average.
You're going to have some exceptions to that rule. So we have a responsibility to talk to them about this and explain it to them, educate them, inform them on how this is going to

benefit them, and then let them make a decision here. So once I start working with technicians

and kind of open their eyes, and then they see the other side of it when the homeowner is actually

excited about accepting these options and doing it, and then they're like, oh my gosh, oh okay,

this isn't so bad. This isn't as scary as I've made it out to be.
People actually want this stuff. They like it.
They're excited about it. I was working with a client out of Dayton, Ohio, not too long ago.
And they were telling me a story. They had gotten a service lead from Facebook marketplace.
And this homeowner went on, he said, hey, we've got an issue with the air handler furnace, whatever it was, above our master bedroom. It's keeping my wife up at night.
I called a company. They came out, gave us a quote.
It was like $3,000. We're just looking to get a second opinion.
Anybody have recommendations? And Facebook, this chat group, suggested this client that I was working with. So they send out their technician, Richard, out on this service call.
And Richard walks in the front door and he's taking his shoes off at the front door. And he looks down right there in the entryway and he sees a little sharper image ionic or whatever those things are, the little ionic breeze or whatever it is, you know, sees a little HEPA filter, whatever air filtration thing.
And he asked the homeowner, he says, may I ask what you're using this for? And this is when COVID was, you know, first starting out and it was a big deal. He said, well, I knew you were coming in and, you know, I just want to clean the air essentially, you know, around you.
And the tech goes, okay, well, I'll get in and take a look at your at your situation going on but

you know let me talk to you about some whole home solutions that we have for indoor air quality

and the guy said sure so anyways he goes up does what he does and gives the guy a price quote wound up just coming in less than what the competitor was quoting them and he said well in addition to that you know we talked to you about this whole home solution we can do whatever it was and install install that. So the homeowner says, sure, let's do it.
So the technician sells the repair, sells the accessory, the IAQ product. They go out, they fix the problem, no noise, wife's happy.
That homeowner went back on Facebook Marketplace and didn't even mention, didn't even mention the repair, didn't mention the fact that now his wife's not being woken up by the furnace air handler making noise up in the attic. All he talked about on there was the solution that the technician offered them.
And, you know, tell and text that story. Hey, look, sometimes it's not necessarily about the repair.
That's what they expect. It's about all the other stuff that they don't expect or don't know that they get excited about.
Nobody and and buys a car truck a new car truck and they're like oh tommy man you won't ever believe this i went and bought a new truck man it came with four tires it has a steering wheel it's got windshield wipers no they're talking to you like hey tommy i bought this truck and you know look it's got heated and cooled seats it's got adaptive cruise control where they talk about the options they get excited about the options and And that's the same thing in heating air. It's the same thing with garage doors.
Any of those excitable options outside of the fact that when I push a button, the garage door should go up. It reminds me, hey, listen, let me show you something pretty cool.
I got my door or it's my queue on my phone. I can open and close the garage door from anywhere in the world and it alerts me when someone opens it.
here's what's really cool on the opener the wall button i can have it close itself after five minutes so it'll keep some of that cooler in in the summer that warmer in the winter because the kids leave the garage doors open all the time and there's other features too is i could have a laser point down on your your dashboard of your car so you know where to park so you never have to worry if you're in far enough. You know, the old tennis ball, now we've got lasers that shoot down.
And by the way, I noticed you had a few things just, if you're like me, my garage was way worse. And I tried to, you know, you don't want to go there.
But what we did is we put these four by eight systems in and we've got this great storage now in the garage and it's great for all the holiday stuff and the stuff we just don't use, but every once a year. So those are the things I do agree.
And you're right. I always talk about this.
Get the customer excited, get them smiling. You know, like, listen, do you know that 40% of your home is your curb appeal? The garage door is a smile of your home.
It's one of the best investments you could ever make it. Believe it or not, it's better than the kitchens and bathrooms, according to Remodel Magazine last five years in in a row.
And they're like, really? And I'm like, yeah, you know, I love owning a home because I made 22% last year. I know it's inflation, but at least I own a home.
And then you never call it financing. Hey, Sean, let me ask you, with the beard, everything, you're wearing a T-shirt, it looks like you could use some financing.
No, you don't say that. You say, hey, listen, you want to see if you qualify for a promotion? And you know what Joe Cressara? I don't know if you know who he is.
He, uh, when he's building options, he'll be like, if you would have told me like the worst part is my son sleeps upstairs, his name's Timmy and the garage door wakes him up every time I leave for work is he'll call the best option. He'll call this to keep Timmy safe and asleep when dad leaves option.
And I love that little stuff. And it's interesting to think about because you listened and it's kind of like smiling and you say, listen, this is what I would do if I were you.
And I always said, if this were my mom's house, because people always say, now, what would you be telling your mom? Because so I say, listen listen this is what i'm going to do for my mom and here's why and then i it's very i pick certain words i don't say recommend and whenever i replace the part i said these parts are shot they're no good they're dangerous they're not safe let me show you here's a bad one if you know there's a little bit of grease i don't want to get you dirty but here's a good one and then i always use analogies i'm like have you ever gone on the freeway with your emergency brake on i haven't i hope you haven't but that's what these rollers are doing to the garage right now they're not even rolling look at this they're skidding along that's causing a lot more wear and tear on the bearing place and the springs and the whole system so we really need to replace these And a lot of people just kind of nonchalant say, do you want me to replace your rollers? They're starting to wear out. And it's like, I look at people, even on the phone sometimes, even at other companies, and I'm like, man, you suck.
You know, I guess I'm a little bit of an actor. If I'm having a bad day, I still got to act good to the customer because I can't be like, hello, yeah, it's cold outside today.
you know i guess i'm a little bit of an actor if i'm having a bad day i still got to act good to the customer because i can't be like hello yeah it's cold outside today you know right i don't know how i guess because i was a server i was a busboy i washed dishes i worked a lot in restaurants bartended everything that i just learned to be nice to people and just strike up a conversation no matter what and i do think that everybody if you have kids there, I recommend they work in a restaurant sometime in their lives as children. I came from it too.
I came from serving tables at a restaurant. Absolutely.
It teaches you a lot. It really does.
And those things look so good when I'm interviewing is tell me a little bit about you and we'll have a conversation. And you love the people that say, if you had to tell me something you need to work on, oh, well, I work too much.
I think I care too much. I always hear the same thing in interviews.
Like the one thing they need to work on is how good they are. This is a huge topic.
Let's get into this for a minute is hiring has been an issue for a lot of people right now. And, you know, we've got ride along forms.
We've got personality profiles. We got so many things we do and, you know, we're still getting 20 to 30 texts a month into our program and through the graduation process.
My program's not made to make it through. I'd rather you fail out than get you out there to where you're not successful.
What's your advice on that? Because it's a problem that's going around right now with everybody. And like you said, compensation programs are a big deal about that.
But what else, what do we got to do to find great people and make sure we train them accordingly with manuals and KPIs and cadences and checklists? Yeah. I mean, for one, we've got to always be looking and ready to hire and always, always be recruiting, always be hiring, looking at anywhere we go.
We go out to a nice restaurant, we go to a restaurant, we get great service, talking to anybody that we can, handing out business cards. But yeah, making sure that we've got structure when they're coming in and educating them on what we can do for them, what career paths we have, what's available to them in our organization here.
And so really working on what does that look like for you in your organization? What is the potential for everyone to get to, right? And defining that. We had one of our other fellow coaches that was walking into with his daughter in to go grab some Panda Express and noticed on the door that there was a little plastic sign there about that they were hiring.
Not only, I mean, everybody has signs that they're hiring, but it was showing the career path progression. If you started at Panda Express, you know, and what that looked like when you went from cook to work in the register to whatever it may be.
And it stated, you know, the hourly wage and the time spent in there and then a little testimonial from, you know, the team members.

So we kind of adopting some of that, too. You know, when we're in that interview phase with a prospective candidate here, you know, in this day and age, we're selling the company to them and we're selling the opportunity to them and what that looks like.
So we need to know in each of our organizations, what does that defined career path look like for somebody when they come here and how long we expect them to be at certain levels? What are those stated ranges of pay at any given level? And putting that all out there in the open, making it clear for everybody to know what that looks like. And again, beyond the field, we're talking talking about technicians or installers what does life look like beyond the field what opportunities you took the words directly out of my mouth you know this is it's crazy that you just hit said that because i was recently on a podcast with ben davis a pretty successful plumbing company in id.
And he said, well, you know,

Deion Sanders is not going to walk in and play for you. And I said, well, wait a minute here.

He played for Dallas. There was

obviously a reason. And I

said, if you were to try to go after Deion

Sanders or the best of the best

from other companies,

they all are looking for a path

to stop working in the attic.

And then millennials, they care a lot about, number one, do they get heard? Do they get recognized? And number two, I think there's, are you going to continue to develop me? And when you have baby boomers, they're just like, pay me more every year, a little bit more, and I'll come into work. And I hate it.
So, but they want to like work and it's so important. And, you know,

I'm going to steal some of that.

I think I'm going to make

an infographic of,

because I've got junior tech,

tech, senior tech,

then you become a lead tech.

And then you could also go

into our virtual product specialist

or a product specialist role.

But the cool thing about growing

as fast as we are,

I tell every group upstairs

during my orientation,

you guys are lucky to be here right now because we're at this point of the hockey stick where it's almost vertical and i said i usually say you know there's jobs that are being made that don't exist yet for us and that's what happens unfortunately yeah i hate saying that because i'm a big fan of work charts and stuff but there's certain in an assembly line you know henry ford one day might have said okay right here right here there's actually a job in between here yeah to make this thing even work more productively and i think that's the best way to describe it and i love an assembly line because you're a specialist and you get to focus on it and you get to hone your skills and you get way less kpis because when everybody's responsible for something nobody's responsible is what i've've learned. And I see these companies and they're like, I just can't find talent.
And I'm like, well, who would want to work for you? I'm like, look at your ad, for example. It looks like, you know, must be, must be only eligible if, have this, have this.
It's like, do you guys have fun there? Why would I, what's your culture like? You know, tell us about your Christmas party. Tell us about homeowners us about homeownership tell us about what do you do you want them to work for you the greatest ads don't mention everything they must have qualify that later because you never know what you're going to find of course a driving record but there's certain people that i've had drive with other guys because in one year that'll be fine and whatever you know what i mean so i've been able to kind of get around certain things but ultimately putting a great ad out there i look at marketing like this a great technician for me i have 10 guys that did over a million dollars okay 10 guys this past year my worst guys did less than half of that why would i not spend more money more time on marketing for great people my top csr books 94 of the calls my worst one is in the 70s why not top grade and find that person why go after more leads when you can change the amount of leads with happier customers and it's a controversial subject for people because they don't want to talk about it they're like yeah you just talk about sales you're damn right and the church does too the church talks about how much money when i go to church they say to keep the doors open they got to pay their bills when you met your are you married yep do you think that you were involved in sales when you met your wife a little bit oh you had to smile you had to ask her you had to make eye contact she's probably like i wanted to go out with you if you even make eye contact.
So I tell people, as much as you don't like the word, you're doing it all day, every day. When you go to your neighbor's house and you meet his kids, everything is sales.
And it's got a bad connotation because they use cars or something. But I'll tell you this is when you learn to accept that you are in sales, everybody's in sales.
The CFO has got to talk to the bank. They got to believe in us.
I don't care who you are in some way, shape or form. If you're a librarian, you still got to sell the owner of the bookstore, you know, whatever the bookstore or the library that you're, you're going to be good for that.
And people are going to buy the books you recommend. So even to tie in with that, with new prospective employees, like I said, we're selling this opportunity to this prospective candidate, right? And what that looks like.
I'll even go back, even back to business planning. And really, what is that as an organization? What does our vision look like? Where are we going to be in the next two, three, five, 10, 15 years? And then when we've got this talent coming in, we could show them, you know, here's where we're at.
Here's where our vision is. You talked about the assembly line and those positions that come in between the positions, right? That aren't even there yet, but they will be.
They will be as we grow and develop. So what does that look like from an organizational standpoint? What are those opportunities here? Here's our vision.
Here's where we're going. And these are the positions that are going to be coming available.
Look at, here's your career path. Here's what we think an average life of an installer of a technician is in the field.
But beyond that, when we talk about this, you're here, we get you to here. Then now here's what this organization, here's what the structure of this company is going to look like.
Here are all the opportunities that are going to be at your feet to move out of that field and move into other facets of the business. It's so important for everybody I talk to.
And I think that's going to be something I really, just after this weekend and talking about it again, is it's not a lot of companies, they run a lot leaner. So they don't have trainers.
They don't have, like, you're either a worker or you're involved CSRs or very few in between because they can't afford, they can't afford those other roles. And I look at it and there's some companies with 15 technicians with three people in the office.
And those are crazy odds. That's three to one, five to one, five to one.
I mean, I got to say, I, I'm trying to hit a two to one, but everybody, because I consider my sales guys that don't do a wrench. I consider those not necessarily, not fulfilling it only the fulfillment people that do the service and finish it yeah so my goal is to get to a two-to-one and then then maybe a three-to-one but you know they're running so lean it's amazing i got a buddy that bought a company in south florida and it was genius they've been around 20 some odd years and they do a lot of new construction, but they get so many calls.
I mean, they have their Google My Business stuff. They have their local service ads up.
They've been around a long time. They put a lot of stickers up, and they get 30 to 40 calls booked a day without any marketing because I got to go Greenfield.
No one's ever heard of us. That takes decades, literally.
So right now, we've come up with some ideas, but I'm going to get into into the acquisition model and what's interesting about acquisitions is i was talking to a guy yesterday a financial guy and he said he used to work at xerox when they were consolidating a lot of companies and he said you go on to their website if you want to partner with us and we basically spell out what you needed to do what software you needed to get on you know for me it's we got to have all these things. Your trucks need to look like this.
You need this chart of accounts. Your price book needs to look at least the same coding.
You need to be on service tight. You need to be on Paylossity.
But I'm going to pay a lot more for a company that does those things, even from the website hosting, making it easy to just put it right in. Right.
And you make them walk, talk, and act like you. It's interesting because I do think we have an opportunity to buy more companies than any other home service companies ever bought.
And that's what we're trying to work on. And there's the person that can handle buying a hundred companies from just a good person in your finance department is night and day.
Because now you're analyzing a different set of books with different expenses,

with different overhead. And you're doing that a lot.

And there's what's called a quality of earnings. And you look at these things,

but have you ever been involved with a company that's bought another company and

trying to get that, that synergy, that culture to fit?

Yeah. It can be difficult, right? Cause you're Because you inherit a lot of that culture that's there.
And not oftentimes is it the perfect picture, right? Where they have all the systems and everything's in place. A lot of times acquisition just happens because opportunities fall in our lap and it makes sense.
So yeah, that transition can be a bear. I've got one client that's going through it right now on the Indiana-Ohio border.
And there's a lot of disparity between where pricing is in one branch and pricing is in the other with the existing company and really working with the team to kind of convey the vision and get them to understand that this is where we need to be. So it's a lot of just groundwork education with everybody on the team that they're retaining to really understand rudimentary business functions and practices and things like that and what all goes into it because not everybody's well-versed in this.
And so you get technicians that say, oh my gosh, we used to charge $150 for that. Now you're telling me we're going to be charging double that amount? Why? Why are we now? Why are we now at $300 when we used to be at $150? And teach them, this is how business works.
And they're thinking, oh, well, maybe you gave me a couple of dollars an hour raise when you bought the company. But still, after you pay me, look at all this profit that you have that you have let's really start break down to these new employees okay well you know we'll call this gross profit here but now here's what this organization comes with all of this extra expense all this operating expense that we have now to support you that maybe you didn't have before so it's interesting when you go through it and it's hard because i'm not one of those guys necessarily that want to go through and say you guys all these bills but i do like to just explain to them the differences between us and um yeah it's interesting because a lot of these mom and pops they think they have a lot of happy employees they're overall they're nice people but my guys have this crazy thing.
victor rancor i don't know who he is he's in california that puts on a big show he told me when he was with leland he said there was a huge company even back then when he was there pretty big and he goes there was so much acknowledgement so much camaraderie we had exact lists of what we needed do. We knew what we needed to do.
There was so much meetings and checkups and ride alongs. And he goes, then I went, somebody offered me quite a bit more money as far as a percentage, but then I lost all that.
He goes, I got a little bit more money, but I lost my life. And it turned out to be, he loved the structure.
the accountability he loved the the fact that you know they made him and there's certain people that just it's weird because we might have made a mistake with hiring him but they it's almost too much for them to like wait we got these meetings every day we need to check in we got to do our trucks we got to do this this this but i'm like if you look at it and you just do it in a sequence, it's like making a bed. It's like, it's not that hard.
It's exactly it. And employees don't really realize most employees are resistant to structure initially.
And, you know, where there's lack of structure, there's chaos. Right.
And, you know, oh, I used to just, you know, do my own calls or I dispatch myself or I did this, that, and the other. And now I have to debrief after each call and all this stuff.
And they don't really realize how much benefit that that structure brings them, right? And how much it provides us to work together as a team and become better as individuals and organizations to serve our customers. You can look at it like, you know, I've got five kids in these kids.
I mean, they think that chaos is king, right? And they could run it, right? They've got it all figured out. But it's so funny.
My wife and I did a science experiment not too long ago and how from a structure standpoint, they were used to dinner being ready at a certain time. And so we took that structure away and we didn't have dinner ready at a specific time.
And what they do, they come out like, Hey, where's dinner? You know, it's five 30. Is it your six o'clock? It's time for dinner.
You know? Oh, well, figure it out on your own. And they're opposed to it.
And technicians, installers, anybody in our organizations, when they leave, I've had countless, countless numbers, as I'm sure you've had employees that that have left because the grass is greener. They're chasing that $1, $2, whatever.
Not greener. Per hour.
They go over to some other organization, and they realize that they cannot thrive in chaos, where they can thrive with us in a structured environment, and what that means to them, and the support that means to them. So it's interesting as you begin to put structure around, you know, change, I think, registers in the brain as pain.
So anytime we have that change, you know, there's this resistance that comes from that. But once we get settled into it, right, and we become accustomed to it, now we begin to see the byproduct or the benefit of that structure, and we begin to thrive.
You know, you remove that, you realize, oh my gosh, I'm essentially naked without the support and the structure around. As you grow, you need more structure.
The manuals become more important. And, you know, I like that change is pain.
You know, we built a culture of change and I tell everybody next month is not going to look like this month. It's different.
You know, you look at our training program, what it's evolved to, you look at the trips we go on now i mean it's i don't lose good people it's very very very very rare and i'm just getting started man and i'll tell you it's interesting because we did 74 million our budget next year is 151 so that's well over 100 growth yeah and there's certain people that work here that the great people, they say know we've arrived and we've done it and they trust me they do everything i'm literally like i talk at meetings and and i i meet and interview people but i'm not involved really on the day-to-day at all so cheers to them and it's the best team ever yeah but i will say that i talk to companies all the time i talked to one particular company recently seven million dollar company and he's like tommy i can't do it i'm falling apart at the seams it's impossible and i just feel like with the numbers i'm talking about it's got easier and gotten easier and gotten easier sure and i'm like man i'm just i feel like i'm just getting the hang of this thing and i feel like every day i walk in it's a little bit different so it's funny how but i'll tell you one of the things that alex ramosi put in one of his podcasts he said i brought on some really expensive high-end people and i had i gave him equity and whether that's fan equity or an equity incentive program there's many ways to go about it but he goes we hit a ceiling okay and i was like whatever i'm just gonna hire these guys to take a crack at it he goes this is a billionaire he's talking to because we do another seven times after we hit the ceiling because we hired the people that could take us to this next level that's right yeah and it's crazy because you can't get this type of employee that I'm talking about at 10 million, not at a hundred million dollar company. You can't hire a tech because if they do, they don't know how to work in that environment.
They can't go back to what I used to call firefighting. They need top graded quickly.
So when you get to a certain size, if they're able to build and get the right team, you'll see another, to 10 times growth. And that's what I've realized here over the last few years is so many people that are stuck because what brought you here can't take you here.
Right. It doesn't.
And sometimes your mentors, sometimes you could outgrow your mentors. I mean, literally, I've had coaches and I love them.
But at some point, they've never seen this. They've never done anything or even considered a 20 times multiple of EBITDA,

which is crazy, which Gettle just got. I mean, it's, it's nuts.
Yeah.

The stuff that's fascinating to me,

this kind of stuff that we're doing right now,

just these conversations and just these little notes.

Like the first thing I'm going to do when I get done with this is I'm going to

get an infographic made. I'm going to go to my team real quick, send email make sure they understand we'll jump on a 15 minute zoom call not maybe not today might be tomorrow i'll see what my assistant thinks and this is the plan and i'm going to use it because i took value out of this podcast i got a lot of notes and that's one thing that i think i've done well is I'm an implementer.
Sometimes it's almost too quick.

Sometimes people are like, dude, you didn't delegate that really well at all.

But I want to go, go, go.

And I want to push up.

What do you think some of the things that hold people back?

What are the things that these small businesses just can't get out of their own head and they

can't start getting rid of that chaos and the firefighting and they're just so afraid

of the mundane expected result of good customer service and good sales why is that well i think that they again kind of just why they get stuck in that rut is it's just they haven't expanded their vision right they need to increase their circle like you said man i'm starting to hang out with with or individuals that are operating at these levels you know and surrounding myself And what are they doing? What is it that you're the sum of the top five people that you hang out with? What does your circle look like? Who's speaking into your life? And look at coaches, look at mentors out there. And those that are doing what you think right now today may be impossible.
Surround yourself with those individuals. What are they doing? What steps do they take to get there? Expand your circle, expand your vision.
And I'm the same way, right? And I found it for myself where I was like, man, I'm just stuck. I can't see the forest through the trees here, right? And find those individuals that have exceeded beyond that.
And what are they doing? What were the things that they did? You know, subscribing to podcasts like yours is a huge benefit. I'm in this year of, for me, is two things, timing and also just educating myself and just learning, learning, learning, learning as much as I can from whoever I can and really paying really close attention to what that circle looks like.
Who do I have around me?

Are they someone that's going to pull me up and take me to that next step?

And we have to do that in business.

You know, if we can't see it, we don't see a path out.

There are ways.

We all know that.

That's why these organizations exist because they got there.

Right.

And they're not doing it on their own.

Some of them maybe, but a lot of them, you know, it's through who they have in their

circle and who's.

Well, it could be next door. It could be Pantheon pantheon it could be just getting exposure salt and like you guys i read this phrase a long time ago and i put this into my training is if you don't get inspired by the circle you hang out with then you live in a cage you're 100 absolutely if somebody wants to reach out to you what's the best way to do that sean uh you can get at me on email sean weiss at bdrco.com s-h-a-u-n-w-e-i-s-s at bdrco.com i'd be happy to answer any questions help anybody out that i possibly can also if you're in the heating and air plumbing uh you can check with your local distributor on upcoming trainings and things like that that I have going across the country.
So, yeah. Love it.
I love it. I always ask the same question.
Are there any books, a few books that you really maybe have changed your life? It doesn't need to be necessarily self-help or anything, but is there? Got it right here. This one right here by Ryan Holiday, who actually is from from sacramento the obstacle is the way and really just been mind-blowing to me it's changing my perspective on adversity as it comes to us so this is one that i i gotta read here growth i read it in the past but skinny little book it's ryan holiday is the shit yeah yeah great author he's got a lot of great information out.
Check that one out. I haven't seen the past, but skinny little book.
It's Ryan Holiday's the shit. Yeah.
Yeah. Great author.
He's got a lot of great information. I'll check that one out.
I haven't seen that one, but just changing your mindset, changing your mindset and how we process adversity that comes to us. And in this day and age, I mean, especially, you know, with supply chain disruption and everything, I mean, there is obstacles we're facing every day.
How do we leverage that obstacle to go beyond it, right? And actually use the obstacle in our favor to get us to where we want to go. You know, there's a, what's his name? A Jocko Willick.
Yeah. I put Wilkinson, but I do.
So he, I'm going to, I'm going to rephrase this. He said something completely different, but I'm going to say it in his terms.
So your suppliers are five months out. Good.
So your employees didn't come in on time. Good.
And he basically takes all these things. Good.
What are you going to do about it? Yeah. What changes are you about to make? What adversity are you going to look in the eye and challenge it one on one? Or are you going to let it jump all over over you you know what i can't stand is especially with the stupid freaking virus freaking i said freaking is people have a tendency to go yeah well covid yeah you mean your ppp money what excuse do you have that's that you failed what excuse do you have that you didn't hit budget and you know

what i'm not gonna say i haven't done a lot of stuff but the one thing i won't do is continue to scapegoat because i've heard it too many times well you don't know what it's like in oklahoma you don't know what it's like in milwaukee no one buys doors like they do in phoenix i'm in all these states right so i go yeah when i send a guy from phoenix and he tri your best guy, then what are you going to do?

Because it's going to happen like it does every single time.

And that's my job now is to remove excuses.

That's right.

And I say this all the time.

I'll say, Sean, listen, you'll come to me with something.

You'll say, hey, listen, dude, we're having a hard time getting our Google verified because

the COVID and Google's taking forever.

All right.

If I work with you, Sean, and we get it verified, what's going to happen? What are you obligate? I will work with you. We'll get through this adversity, but what's going to happen? Are you going to come back to me and say something else? Because listen, I don't embrace, I sound like Taffer, the bar rescue here, but I don't embrace problems.
I embrace solutions. You know what I mean? Yeah.
And I live and die and breathe by numbers. And what's going to happen if we do this and what can we predict you know the way that i kind of like to wrap this podcast up is we talked about a lot of cool stuff and i definitely want to do this again but i want you to kind of take a few minutes we might have not touched upon something you might have wanted to make sure the audience knew about but if there's something that's really going to be stuck with them something that's going to to change their lives or their business or their family's lives, I'll let you kind of give us a good closing thought to finish this up.
Well, kind of in talking with a lot of this stuff in the changing and not using excuses as a reason. And again, speaking more specific on the heating and air side, with supply chain disruption and maybe our inability to get some of these products that we've been accustomed to getting, certain efficiencies, whatever it may be.
That's been a crutch for, I think, a lot of organizations in the past is selling off of what the product can do for the homeowner rather than selling what we can do for the homeowner, selling ourselves, selling our unique practices that we do, all the value that we as organizations bring. I'm finding a lot of organizations that are up against this right now because what products I sold yesterday, I might not be able to get today and I'm selling a completely different product.
And I can't just sell on just the product alone because maybe i've positioned this one in the past to be the best it doesn't matter as the installing contractors or the contractors we're the ones that make the difference in all of this stuff homeowners need to understand and the same can be said for garage doors heating air whatever this is not like buying something off amazon buying something that i just plug it works, right? It all goes back to the install and how that install goes and what we do as an installing contractor to assure the end result. So we're talking about our unique install practices.
We're talking about everything that we're going to do. We're backing that up with third-party collateral, pictures, videos, testimonials,

whatever it may be. We're forcing ourselves as an organization to change off of the boxes or the product itself and the value that it brings because we may not have that high efficiency product.
So I can't sell on comfort and energy savings and stuff because it's just unavailable. So I have to sell down at this level.
You alluded to this with garage doors. Now, what does that mean? When I'm selling that other product that may not be as top-end because of availability, what are we going to do as an organization to ensure comfort, safety, security, happiness, longevity, all of that good stuff? So focus in as an organization on what you bring to the table and change the way you've sold in the past from selling the products, benefits, and features to more so selling what you as an organization bring to the table and what you do and how you are the difference in all of this.
Yeah, that's well said. I was on my mojo call this morning, right? We do one every morning, 15 minutes.
And I said, guys, I don't know what the customer wants. They said, listen, we're having a lot of problems right now.
And the customer's got three quotes. We're so much more expensive.
When it's really a lot similar. And I said, well, here's what I would really try to show you is if it's apples to apples, I got a price beat guarantee.
But you never do that. What I want you guys to understand is on a hollow back door, at least put a strut on every panel, at least give them a surge protector and a max life spring.
We can make it a good door, but no one else is doing this stuff. No one else has trademark stuff.
No one else can carry our trademark parts. So listen, you want something a little more economical.
We've got that option for you and there's no one else that's doing what we're doing. We're putting 14 gauge hinges, not 18 gauge hinges.
We're putting an operator reinforcement bracket. We're doing the oversized bottom rubber because the concrete's not level.
All these things. And then you tell them, here's the facts.
Everybody buys from Home Depot once in their life, but nobody buys twice. So you can go there and I've made a lot of mistakes.
I bought the cheapest roof. It's had the same warranty, but just not the right company.
And at least years later, but the fact is homeowners have known this. You know how many times my technicians call me? They're like, we're $800 more, but they're going with us.
All day, every day. Yeah.
All the time. And it's not, listen, you're buying the guy that shows up on time.
You're're buying the communication you're buying the guy that's going to be there two years when you need us and you're also listen i'm there i'm saying hi to your daughter when she's there she might be eight years old you got five kids i am never been in prison i have never been in trouble i don't have drugs the difference is i'm safe around your family and it's important that you feel that way. And also I've been invited to Thanksgiving dinners.
I've been invited to shoot pool, like go on motorcycle runs. It's amazing because people are like, whoa, dude, let's go fishing.
And that's the thing is, is people buy from people they like and they trust. Exactly.
Yeah. Build relationships, right? The sale is the by-product of the

relationship, right? That's a by-product that's going to happen. I work with salespeople and

service technicians, man, if you build this relationship, everything else will come.

Right. And I'm the same way I've been invited to parties and all kinds of different activities

from, from people I've met on a, on a sales call. Right.
And they just, we hit it off,

right. Cause we built a relationship throughout this process.
Right. And the sale came that

I'll see kinds of notes. Listen.
Love it, active listening, observe things, forecast.

I got all kinds of notes.

Listen, you know, when I get to this kind of notes that it was a great podcast. So I really, really appreciate you coming on.
We'll definitely stay in touch. And hopefully if you guys need any help, especially in the HVAC plumbing world, you reach out to Sean.
So thanks for coming on. Thanks, Tommy.
Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me.
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