< Previous20 MAY 2019HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYand multiplies our ability to sell. Testing and di-agnostics help our snowbird customers remem-ber the high utility bills they paid last summer for an empty house. They become highly motivated to make sure they have an efficient system. As we approach a sale, understanding where our customers are coming from is critical. You can imagine how the conversation and recom-mendations change once we know if they are full-time residents or are just here during winter. Our greeting and sales approach become critical in this situation. If we don’t ask the right questions and listen carefully, we’re bound to misunderstand their position for decision-making and lose the sale. Although you may not have the same set of con-ditions we have, the attention you give to under-stand your customers’ needs is just as critical.FROM UTILITY PROGRAMS TO SYSTEM EFFICIENCYUtility programs and energy efficiency are a big deal in our area. Southern California Edison was the national champion of the HVAC Quality In-stallation (QI) program for many years. NCI is a key player in helping contractors move beyond QI with testing, measuring, and diagnostics to improve HVAC system performance. Hyde’s Air Conditioning benefited from both organizations’ programs which helped reduce the cost of training, provided live field coaching, and significant incentive payments to both our customers and us. These programs have a considerable influence on our sales process because they focused on testing and diagnostics. But since the incentives went away, we have been faced with reshaping our sales approach. We picked up some good Every opportunity to work with a custom-er presents a unique set of circumstanc-es. Our ability to succeed depends on our meeting their wants and needs. We have enjoyed tremendous success over the last 10 years as we’ve included various levels of testing and diagnostics as we sell replacement HVAC systems. We launched our journey with National Com-fort Institute (NCI) around 2000. The first few years I personally learned to use testing and began to get a grip on the diagnostics. Then we spread the NCI culture of measuring perfor-mance throughout our company. The more we became successful in growing this culture, the more our sales and profitability increased. We are primarily a residential replace-ment company with 35 employees and over $8 million in annual sales.PALM DESERT MARKETOur market is a little different here in the Palm Desert area of Southern California. It’s not uncommon in winter months to experience 70F afternoons. Residents in our town nearly dou-ble in winter months, as many move from their homes in Canada and the Northeastern U.S. to enjoy our warm climate.Summer finds a good portion of our population abandoning their residences, returning home to their cooler climates, escaping our 110-degree summer heat. When snowbirds are here in winter and it’s time for equipment replacement, we have a hard-to-sell scenario. It’s a real challenge convincing them to invest in comfortable and efficient sys-tems when its 70F outside. Using static pressure and balancing hoods helps them “see” year-round efficiency more clearly Our Evolution with Performance-Based SalesBy Michael HydeSALESMAY 2019 21HVACTODAY.COMily high-efficiency equipment. We sold the equipment replacement first, then we’d come back afterward to test and see if we could sell an add-on system renovation.WE COMBINED TWO SALES APPROACHESThis approach really confused our customers. It may sound like an ob-vious mistake now, but we “devolved” into this double-sale method over time and it hurt us. As we became aware, it was clear that we needed to combine the two and sell system renovations at the same time as equipment replace-ment. This provides one clean mes-sage of comfort and efficiency that is much easier for customers to under-stand. Our closing rates climbed ac-cordingly.With these realities and changes af-fecting our market, we are constantly forced to improve how we sell to main-tain our growth and profitability. SOLUTIONS NEEDED, WANTED, AND DELIVEREDAs we became better at deliver-ing solutions, the cost of the job in-creased. We quickly recognized deliv-ering what we promised was no longer optional. Now, with our customer’s in-put, we develop a scope of work that includes equipment replacement and system renovation. When we help our customers under-stand a problem, they completely ex-pect it to be fixed. If you charge more, you must deliver. This has been one of the primary drivers of our culture here at Hyde’s. We have become complete-ly accountable to our customer to test at the completion of a job and verify the results of our work. This is who we are, and our customers believe in us. As we move forward, one of our goals is to continually build a better sales approach that nurtures our cul-ture and builds better long-term rela-tionships with customers. and bad habits from utility programs, but have seen improvement by mak-ing changes to more closely mirror what NCI teaches.However, efficiency is still top-of-mind for our customers. So, we have shifted the conversations away from utility incentives and now focus on in-stalled system efficiency. In that effort, we invite customers to use the balancing hood. It gives a clear picture of room comfort and we use it to calculate the installed efficiency of the system. When a customer sees their system operating at 40% or 50% of equipment-rated capacity, they see half their utility bill payment being wasted. Testing brings many questions to the surface that address invisible is-sues they would not have otherwise been aware of. The answers we pro-vide through diagnostics confirms the need for additional system upgrades. This question-and-answer process is key to how we make sales. Talk about credibility! The fact that we test and ask questions allows them to feel better about their decision.CODE AND BUILDING PERMITSWe are one of the few HVAC con-tractors that still pull permits on ret-rofit jobs. This has also been a major influencer on how we sell systems. The work required to comply with Califor-nia’s Title 24 energy code brings us credibility with our customers, but it has also allowed several detrimental habits to creep into our sales process. California code separates sales and testing. Testing is an after-sale activity required to satisfy regulations show-ing the system was installed correctly. Utility programs and code compliance tend to lead us towards selling primar-Michael Hyde Presented at NCI Summit 2019Summit 2019 took place April 15-18 in Orlando, FL. Michael Hyde was one of five Performance-Based Contractors™ presenting how they incorporate High-Performance into their companies. He is general manager of Hyde’s Air Conditioning, a res-idential retrofit and replacement contracting company from Indio, California (Palm Desert Area).Hyde shared real-life successes and failures as his com-pany forged a 12-Step sales process, taking their customers from testing to a full system upgrade proposal. The testing process has resulted in a profitable growth of 800% as a result. If you missed Summit, you can read all about it online at HVACtoday.com. Don’t forget to mark your calendars for 2020 when NCI Summit returns to Scottsdale, AZ. The dates are April 6th - 8th at the We-Ko-Pa Resort. We will provide more information in the next few months.22 MAY 2019HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYpeople to your website to learn more zGenerate leads zResult in sales, repeat business, word-of-mouth referrals, and customers for life.According to Content Marketing Institute’s (CMI) B2C Content Marketing 2019 —Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends (nci-link.com/CMIStudy), 79% of companies who have been using content marketing for at least one year say it has successfully enabled them to create brand awareness. Slightly more than half (52%) say it has generated sales/revenue.If you think content marketing isn’t for contrac-tors, think again. One of my favorite examples is Marcus Sheridan (also known as The Sales Lion), now a highly sought-after international speaker and author of the content market-ing book, They Ask, You Answer. According to Marcus’ website (marcussheridan.com/):“Marcus’ story didn’t begin on the stage. It started with a busi-ness created and run out of the back of a beat-up pickup truck. Marcus’ experience of saving his company, River Pools and Spas, from the economic collapse of 2008 has been featured in mul-tiple books, publications, and university case studies. From its humble beginnings as a three-man firm to one of the largest manufacturers and installers in the country, River Pools and Spas has the most visited pool website in the world, with over 750,000 hits a month.”How did he save his company all those years ago? He began by sincerely answering questions about pools – and the rest is history! Marcus Think you don’t need content marketing? Think it’s too expensive and there is no return on investment? Don’t even know what it is? Think again!At its heart, content marketing is about teach-ing – sharing your expertise. It’s about educat-ing your prospects and customers about how you can solve their problems. Sometimes they don’t even know they have a problem! You’re the per-fect person to teach them why they might need something your company offers.Content marketing is not advertising. And it isn’t just something you “do” sporadically. It is a long-term strategy where you use valuable, rel-evant content to build relationships with people so that if/when they do have a buying need (or someone else they know does) they will think of your company.Done right, content marketing can: zBuild awareness of your company – drives A Content Marketing Primer forHigh-Performance HVAC ContractorsBy Lisa BeetsMARKETINGMAY 2019 23HVACTODAY.COMning)? Do you need to optimize your website for mobile? Do you want to create and regular-ly send out an e-newsletter? Or maybe you want to increase your presence on Facebook, YouTube, or another social media platform.Develop an editorial and/or so-cial media calendar. Identify the topics you want to talk about through-out the year. You can align them to the seasons, holidays, news events, etc. It can be difficult and/or too time-con-suming to manage multiple social me-dia platforms successfully, so pick one or two on which to focus your efforts.Create, distribute, and mea-sure the content. Your content mar-keting strategy should define the types of content you want to create over the next 12 months, why, and how. journey” – are they just trying to learn, or are they ready to buy? Also think about any potential au-diences you want to attract. Where do those audiences congregate online? How can you get your content in front of them?Develop a written content mar-keting strategy. This doesn’t have to be overly complicated or written in stone. It will serve as your guiding document, but it can be flexible, so you can change it as your goals change and/or you learn what’s working and what isn’t.Focus on the initiatives listed in your content marketing strategy – do you need to make sure your website content is optimized? Do you need to develop new, informative blog posts (or even get your blog up and run-wasn’t focused on promoting his prod-ucts and services – he was focused on helping people by educating them about pools and spas!As High-Performance HVAC con-tractors, don’t you want to do the same thing for your business?HOW TO GET STARTEDIn a nutshell, here are the steps in-volved with content marketing:Assess your current branding, messaging, and existing “content as-sets” (website, social media sites, blog, e-newsletter, videos, case studies, etc.).Clearly define your existing au-dience and describe them in written “buyer personas.” Who are they? What are their pain points? What motivates them? What expertise of yours do they seek? Where are they in the “buyer’s 24 MAY 2019HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYMARKETINGachieve comfort in your home today)t Requiring the staff person or freelancer who writes our content to spend at least one day per quarter with our sales team, so he/she can further develop a realistic understanding of what prospects want and need.t Delivering content consistently (on a regular basis) to keep our mes-sage top-of-mind. t Grow the number of subscribers to our e-newsletter; get on a regular schedule of sending out our e-news-letter (perhaps once a month). Keep our content brief – link to a few infor-mative resources on our website and maybe those on our suppliers’ web-sites (in keeping with our goal of be-ing helpful).DON’T GET OVERWHELMEDThere are many areas of content marketing – strategy, content devel-opment, distribution, management, and measurement. The main thing is to NOT become overwhelmed and/or think “it’s too expensive.” You can start small and grow from there – but you have to be committed; it takes time to see results (it’s been estimated that results can take up to 18 months to be realized).Depending on your budget, perhaps you can hire a recent marketing grad-uate to get your content marketing off the ground (content marketing needs a leader/project manager – as I men-tioned in the beginning of this article. It’s not something someone on your ex-isting staff can just “do on occasion”). If you have a bigger budget, you may consider retaining the services of a con-tent marketing consultant or agency.“Sounds good, but how do you mea-sure all of this – will we see a return on action in our videos that says, “to learn more, visit www.OURWEB-SITE.com.” That URL will link to a landing page where the ebook is available. We will ask people for their email address in order to download the informative ebook (this is also known as “creating a gated content asset and putting it behind a registra-tion form in order to collect leads”).n Our goal is to generate at least 100 downloads/email addresses in 12 months via this initiative, and eventu-ally convert 10% into sales.Note how both examples above are strategic. We know our goals and have clear directions for getting started on achieving them. We also have an idea of how we want to measure success. We can always tweak/improve the strategy as we go.OTHER STRATEGIESWhile these examples are con-tent-specific, you might have other goals, such as:t Hiring someone to ensure we use the right search engine optimization (SEO) words on our website and in our content. Properly optimized content shows up higher in search results so it can be found more quickly/easily. This is known as “organic” search – search results that you don’t pay for, but rath-er rely on. Properly optimized content based on certain keywords and search terms your audience uses to find infor-mation. You can also pay for search en-gine marketing or SEM services, also known as pay-per-click, to get your content to appear higher up in search results.t Making sure all content includes a specific call-to-action (e.g., to learn more, download our ebook on how to Your plan might look like this: n We are going to create four, three-minute videos this year and re-lease them on March 1, June 1, Sep-tember 1, and December 1. The first one will be about A, the second one about B, the third one about C, and the fourth one about D.n The intended audience for these videos is our Buyer Persona “Eddie.” Eddie is someone who feels uncom-fortable with the temperature and air quality in his home. He is at the “top of the buyer’s funnel,” meaning he’s just exploring his problem.n To drive viewers to these videos, we will promote them by 1) writing about them in a blog post, 2) mention-ing them in our monthly e-newsletter, 3) talking about them at the upcoming local Home Expo Event, where we ex-hibit, and 4) posting them on Facebook. n Our goal for the videos is to cre-ate brand awareness and educate prospects. We want to generate at least 50 views on each video within one year, drive at least 20% of those to our website for more information, and convert at least 10% into email subscribers (i.e., get at least 10% to sign up for our e-newsletter).Or this:n We are going to have someone write an ebook for us this year to post at our website. The ebook will be ti-tled, “10 Ways To Improve the Com-fort in Your Home TODAY.” The in-tended audience is Buyer Persona “Sharon,” who is “further down the buying funnel,” actively researching options to solve her problem.n Among the several ways we plan to drive personas like Sharon to our website to access this educational content, we will include a call-to- MAY 2019 25HVACTODAY.COMresearch reports, and our annual Content Marketing World (con-tentmarketingworld.com) event held every September in Cleveland. At CMI, we’re passionate about con-tent marketing because it works – and we have hundreds of examples and sto-ries at our website to prove it! results – say a cheap and simple give-away over Facebook -- explode to cre-ate 200 new Facebook followers.There are many ways to measure content performance (including many technology tools), but you can keep it as simple as an Excel spreadsheet. If you’re looking for a basic primer on how to use something like Google An-alytics, check out How to Use the Most Helpful Reports in Google Analytics (ncilink.com/GoogleReports).CMI has many resources for begin-ner, intermediate, and advanced-lev-el marketers. Check out one of them: What Is Content Marketing (ncil-ink.com/WhatIsContentMktg) for more information.There is an informative blog, white papers, ebooks, training, webinars, investment?” you may be asking. Measuring success will depend on your unique goals for what you want to achieve and how well you execute … an intelligent strategy, quality con-tent, consistency, delivering the right content to the right people at the right time, your competition and market, how your staff treat customers, online reviews about your company (your reputation) – all of these factors and more play a role.You may find that a piece of con-tent that took a lot of time and money to create ends up providing the most long-term value in terms of sales gen-erated over time. You may find that what you thought customers would love is a flop. You might see something you didn’t expect to generate a lot of Lisa Beets is the research director at Content Marketing Institute (CMI). She has been with CMI since its inception in 2010. Lisa has edited six books about content marketing including the seminal titles Get Content, Get Customers by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barret and Managing Content Marketing by Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi. Lisa is a former managing editor of Contracting Business Magazine and has written extensively on the HVAC industry. Follow her on Twitter @LisaBeets.HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYdepartment is the key to generating these ideal leads. With the right tools and train-ing your techs can become lead-generat-ing machines, and your customers will love you for it.With just a few measurements, your ser-vice and maintenance technicians can un-cover long-standing problems that affect comfort, health, energy use, even safety. By measuring Total External Static Pres-sure (TESP) at the equipment, along with a couple of other pressure drops, they can re-veal high static pressure issues, airflow prob-lems, restricted returns, incorrect refrigerant charge, leaky ducts, and more.By performing combustion, draft, and car-bon monoxide (CO) testing, they can unveil serious safety issues. These can include vent-ing and combustion air deficiencies, even mechanical problems.LEADS THROUGH DIAGNOSTICSThere are a few different ways Perfor-mance-Based Contractors across North America are generating leads through ser-vice. The simplest way is to have your tech spend a few extra minutes reviewing their findings with the customer, and offering to schedule a diagnostic visit. Technicians can also leave behind literature on what can be done to improve their system’s performance. The visit can be followed by a letter ex-plaining the benefits of a more in-depth diagnostic, inviting the customer to sched-ule one. Then follow up the letter with a phone call.If you have “Selling Techs,” they could of-Imagine if you had the option to create your ideal lead. What would it look like? Would it be a qualified prospect who is prepared and ready to do business with you? Would you want to be the first company in the home, and preferably the only contractor called in? Would you want the customer to be well edu-cated about their comfort system and why it isn’t making their home as comfortable, healthy, and energy efficient as possible? What if the customer was keenly aware you might be the only contractor with the solution to their problem. What if the lead was generated by your own technician? What would that lead be worth to you: $200? $500? More?NO COST LEADSWith High-Performance Service and Main-tenance you can generate leads like this every day with little or no cost. In some cases, you can get paid to go on those calls. Your service Generate Leads with Little or No CompetitionBy Dominick GuarinoSALES The ABCs of High-Performance HVAC Contracting: PART 10Catch up on all the installments of this series:Part 1: What is High-Performance HVAC and Why Do It? ncilink.com/ABCs-1Part 2: Is It the Right Fit for Your Company? ncilink.com/ABCs-2Part 3: Five Steps for Becoming A Performance-Based Contractor. ncilink.com/ABCs-3Part 4: Five More Steps to Becoming a Performance-Based Contractor. ncilink.com/ABCs-4Part 5: Your Investment in Performance. ncilink.com/ABCs-5Part 6: The Five Keys to Quality Training. ncilink.com/ABCs-6Part 7: The Right Tools for the Job. ncilink.com/ABCs-7Part 8: High-Performance Selling: Prepare for the Call. ncilink.com/ABCs-8Part 9: Six Steps of High-Performance Selling. ncilink.com/ABCs-9MAY 2019 27HVACTODAY.COMthey should be. You could ask some leading comfort questions, and once the customer un-derstands there may be an issue, you can offer to come out to take a closer look – just to be sure there won’t be long-term consequences of running the system that way.Contractors who use this approach have reported tremendous success with closing rates over 80% - usually with no competition.One High-Performance Contractor in South Carolina has been using this approach for years with phenomenal success. “When I follow up a service ticket showing high statics, 90% of the time the customer welcomes a visit from me,” he says. “So far I’ve closed sales ranging from a simple air upgrade to a com-fer a “deeper” diagnostic right then and there, then call the office to have another tech grab their next appoint-ment, and continue with the Perfor-mance-Based Selling Process outlined in Part 9 of this series (ncilink.com/ABCs-9). Depending on the time of year, back-log of work, etc., you can offer a more thorough analysis of their system at a price ranging from free to several hun-dred dollars. Done right, this in-depth testing and documentation is worth every penny. Another approach is to simply have your technician collect the data men-tioned above and take it back to the office. Your team can then generate a follow-up letter and survey, with an offer to perform further testing. Depending on the situation and time of year, your comfort advisor might want to follow up right away with a phone call to the customer.THE FOLLOW-UPThere are a number of ways to fol-low up. A popular low-pressure ap-proach is to call and explain that you were reviewing the service tick-et from their visit and noticed the system’s pressures seem higher than One follow-up method is to call the customer and go over the results of your testing and diagnostics. Include suggestions for what next steps could be taken.Performing the proper tests and diagnostics provides the data you need to help customers make buying decisions.28 MAY 2019HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYSALESyour motives.A better ap-proach to keep customers en-gaged is to share that you found some pressures and other readings in their system to be outside of manufacturer’s specifica-tions. Reassure them that, based on the age of the home and HVAC equipment, their system is fairly typical. Be sure to reinforce the fact that the technology, tools, and training avail-able today were not readily available 10 or 15 years ago. In fact, many of the testing tools used today have only be-come available recently. Use analogies like air bags on cars and laser surgery, both of which didn’t exist until the early eighties. In all industries technology is constantly evolving and improving. Next mention that while their sys-tem is typical, the symptoms they’ve been experiencing can be significant-ly improved. The key is to gently bring the customer up-to-speed on what im-provements can be made while demon-strating that your company is the right choice to do the work. at no cost in both the Apple App store (ncilink.com/AML1A) and Google Store (ncilink.com/AML1D) for Android devices. It allows you to show the homeown-er key indicators of how their system is performing using easy-to-understand graphics right on your smart phone.KEEP IT POSITIVEWhen discussing your find-ings with the homeowner, it’s import-ant to keep the conversation positive. No one wants to hear they made a bad buying decision, perhaps when they bought the home, or last replaced their equipment. Telling them this is one of the worst systems you’ve seen this year, their statics are through the roof, and it’s a wonder the equipment hasn’t had a complete meltdown by now is not a good approach. Not too many people would respond well to that. In fact, most would look at it as a scare tactic, and become highly sus-picious of your claims and worse, plete change out and total duct make-over at very nice margins. “In all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never seen an approach that gen-erates replacement and renovation business out of thin air like this one does,” he adds.KEEP IT SIMPLEWhen your technician is attempting to share his or her findings with the homeowner, he or she needs to keep it as simple as possible, using layman terms and analogies the homeowner can relate to. Don’t confuse people with techni-cal terms like CFM, inches of water column, or BTUH. When discussing static pressure compare it to blood pressure. Everyone knows high blood pressure is not a good thing.You can also increase your credi-bility significantly with third-party leave behinds, like NCI’s Home Com-fort Reports series of brochures and pamphlets, and by using software like ComfortMaxx™, or NCI’s free Air-Maxx Lite App. The smart device app is available MAY 2019 29HVACTODAY.COMBALANCE YOUR MARKETINGWhile you can’t rely sole-ly on sales generated from service and maintenance, these visits can be your best source of high-quality leads with high closing rates. It’s important, of course, that you balance your mar-keting with multiple ap-proaches including direct mail, newsletters, email, and especially your website. Be sure to make your site as con-tent-rich as possible. Not only will this improve your standing with search en-gines, you will quickly become the go-to resource for information when peo-ple are having home comfort issues, or are doing research before replacing their systems. Education is key in today’s fast-paced environment. More consumers than ever before are using the internet to become well informed before they pick up the phone or click on a website to schedule an appointment. In Part 11 of this series we will ex-plore how you can get started on your path to High-Performance without overwhelming your team or disrupting your existing business model. Dominick Guarino is publisher of High- Performance HVAC Today magazine and CEO of National Comfort Institute, Inc. He can be reached at domg@ncihvac.comHere are just a few examples of Performance- Based HVAC Contractor websites containing good consumer content.Next >