< Previous20 AUGUST 2023HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYever in the Fall of 2024. Click here to see a review of everything your purchase provides. NCI Members can save $100 immedi- ately! You’ll see your discount reflected in the cart. So what are you waiting for? Contact us to give members of your team access at no additional cost. Go to ncilink.com/ Summit23Rec to get started. Call our customer care line at 800/633- 7058 if you have any questions. High-Performance HVAC Contractor Authors Needed This magazine seeks High-Perfor- mance HVAC Contractors like you, to write and contribute articles and article ideas. Sure, you already have a full-time job, right? But think about this: As an author, you have a tremendous opportunity to stand out in your marketplace. Think of your articles as content you can market to customers. So what do we need? Some typical ideas can cover: Tools: This can be a 250-word review of something you use to test static pres- sures, measure airflow, temperature, and heat in residential and commercial HVAC systems. Processes : What strategies do you have in place for your techs in the field and/or your office personnel to manage everything from recording field mea- surements to tracking high-performance training, objectives, and so on? Sales: How is High-Performance HVAC Contracting impacting your sales? Business/Marketing: How do you in- corporate testing, measuring, and diag- nostics into your service agreements? How do you use social media for market- ing your High-Performance Contracting services? How do you explain test results to customers? Technical: How do you train/certify your field service and installation team? We understand you are busy. That is OK. We can help make it as easy and painless as possible. If you’re interested in helping by writ- ing an article, simply go to the following URL: hvactoday.com/contribute. Fill out the very brief form there, and we will contact you to get the ball rolling. If you have any questions, please reach out to Editor-in-Chief Mike Weil at ncil- ink.com/ContactMe . The NCI High-Performance Summit took place in April 2023. If you’ve never attended before, Summit is unlike any other industry event. It focuses entirely on High-Performance HVAC Contracting! As we gathered in Branson, MO, we knew we needed a way to allow our contractors to re- visit all the wealth of information that Summit provides. This year, instead of the usual educational breakouts, we dis- cussed best practices with contractors. An NCI trainer facilitated each session which ran four times with four different groups of contractors. These recordings present all the break- outs – with all the ideas they generated. Do you want to hear all these great ideas for yourself and your team? Well, you can because, for the first time, you can buy this Virtual Summit re- view package. It even includes one full registration for Summit 2024, to be held in Asheville, NC. Get tons of content from Summit 2023, and lock in your registration for what will surely be the biggest and best Summit NCI UPDATE Did You Miss Summit 2023? We have Great News! HVAC SUMMIT 2023 HIGH-PERFORMANCE AUGUST 2023 21HVACTODAY.COMIllustrated. These publications were able to place regional advertising in issues delivered to our area. People were surprised to see Owens ads along- side major national brands. Whether this did any good in terms of lead generation is hard to tell. My brother Jim created a campaign around the CFC issue in the mid-1990s. The campaign in- cluded different print ads, seminars, and even a radio spot. Again, we could gather empirical evi- dence that these efforts generated increased leads and sales. Today, any smart marketer will tell you that it’s hard to correlate ads and business increases directly. When our company entered the residential business, Jim knew we had to do something. So, we tried almost everything from mailings, to in- serts in local newspapers, to a full-page ad in the yellow pages, to the tune of about $70,000! TELEVISION ADVERTISING TURNS THE TIDE Fast forward to 2015, when I met John Lons- bury (Lonsburyconsulting.com), an Em- my-nominated creative director and market- ing strategist who talked us into doing TV ads. He had a lot of experience in writing and pro- ducing ads. So off we went. This time we had an easy way to track where leads came from. When T he thought of HVAC contractors as “marketers” is still a foreign concept for many today. This belief is true, espe- cially among smaller businesses with an owner mindset that price drives sales and volume drives profits. So much information is available from the HVAC trade press, marketing gurus, and consul- tants that soundly put those ideas to shame, but for whatever reason, many contractors remain dogged in their desire NOT to market. But the fact is, EVERY business needs market- ing. Before Owens entered the residential busi- ness in 2000, we did some marketing for our commercial business. I’ve always thought our strengths in commercial HVAC were due to the “feet on the street.” On the other hand, residen- tial is all about making the phone ring. Marketing is vital for a residential HVAC business. STEPPING UP OUR MARKETING Back in the 1990s, our company stepped out. I attribute this to two factors; my late brother Jim earned his MBA from Kellogg School of Management, and my younger sister Catherine worked for Time Warner. With Catherine’s help, we developed a cam- paign where we could insert our ad into major publications like Time, Newsweek, and Sports 22 AUGUST 2023HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY Customers Want HVAC Contractors They Can Trust By John Owens LEAD GENERATIONcustomers don’t get a second opinion or price. These contractors then charge two to four times what the cost should be. Such practices are happen- ing as you read this. By the way, other contracting out- fits charge only $49 or even $19 for a tune-up! They want to get into a home to charge exorbitant fees for repairs and replacements. CASE STUDY Two customers called us for a sec- ond opinion after encountering one of the two contractor types high- lighted here. Our team went to their homes and found the furnaces were operating fine, each only needing a minor repair. These two homeowners told their story for our TV commercial, and then I came on at the end and said, “Don’t let another company red tag your fur- naces without getting a free second opinion from Owens Companies.” This commercial has been a hit! Our customers tell us they want a contractor they can trust! Not only will we not “sell” them something they don’t need, but by following the National Comfort Institute protocols and looking at the whole system (not just individual components), we are providing added value and the right solutions for their home. Truly a win-win. My message is first to train your people to know how to do the work right, then build your reputation for honest and good work. Don’t be afraid to talk about all of that, plus the services your company provides through good marketing. Customers will grow to trust you, and your business will grow as a di- rect result. people called in, we’d ask them how they came to call us. We then cod- ed the work order as a TV-generated lead, giving us some empirical data to measure. But anecdotally, we had another tracking system. My face! Everywhere I went, someone commented about seeing me on TV! It was crazy, and it happened every day! Several of our first ads stood out. In the Minneapolis market area, we have several less-than-honest HVAC contractors! They don’t send a technician to cus- tomers’ homes; instead, they send salespeople! The salespeople are equipped with a picture of a cracked heat exchanger and are turned loose on unsuspecting homeowners. These salespeople just have to get into the furnace room for five minutes and come back and show customers the photo their managers gave them. Based on the fake picture, they tell the customers that their furnace is dan- gerous and must be replaced. To add insult to injury, these con- tractors tell potential customers they can replace the furnace that day so AUGUST 2023 23HVACTODAY.COM John Owens is presi- dent and CEO of Owens Companies, Bloomington, MN. He has 45 years of experience helping building owners. The company pioneered preventive and predictive maintenance, which is the first step in controlling energy costs. The Owens Companies recently announced their partnership with Orion Group – a national platform built by partnering with exception- al family-owned facility services businesses and providing resources to help fuel their next chapter of growth. To learn more, go to ncilink.com/ContactMe . HVAC SMART MART 24 AUGUST 2023HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYAD INDEX HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY TM Publisher Dominick Guarino Editor-in-Chief Mike Weil Art Director Judy Marquardt Online Development Director Brian Roseman Circulation Manager Andrea Begany-Garsed To Subscribe to High-Performance HVAC Today: ONLINE: Visit HVACToday.com/subscribe for a FREE digital subscription. PRINT: 1 year/$72; single copy $7. Canada: 1 year/$92; single copy $9. Payable in advance with U.S. funds. Prepaid subscriptions may be sent to: High-Performance HVAC Today, PO Box 147, Avon Lake, OH 44012. Phone: 440-949-1850; toll free 800-633-7058; or visit HVACToday.com/subscribe to order online. Go to ncilink.com/ContactMe with your comments and questions. Advertiser Index AUGUST 2023 25HVACTODAY.COM Arzel Zoning Technology, Inc. | www.ArzelZoning.com ...................................................... 5 Baker Distributing Company | www.BakerDist.com ........................................................... 24 Daikin Comfort Technologies North America, Inc. | www.northamerica-daikin.com 25 Duct Saddles | www.DuctSaddles.com ..................................................................................... 15 Evergreen Telemetry | www.EvergreenTelemetry.com ........................................................ 9 Lazco Corporation | www.Lazcocorp.com ............................................................................... 8 R.E. Michel Company | www.REMichel.com .......................................................................... 20 Sauermann | www.sauermanngroup.com ............................................................................ 19 Southern California Edison | www.on.sce.com/hvac.com ................................................. 2 TEC (The Energy Conservatory) | www.energyconservatory.com ............................... 15 To Your Success | www.ToYourSuccess.com .......................................................................... 24 Tru Tech Tools | www.TruTechTools.com ............................................................................13, 24Cherokee Lake to the North and Douglas Lake to the south. Another great advantage is that it is within 4 hours or so driving distance to many great cities and towns, including Cincinnati, Louisville, Nash- ville, Birmingham, Atlanta, Charlotte, Greens- boro, and many others, and just a few hours more to most of the southeastern and central U.S. NEW BEGINNINGS By spring of this year we secured an amazing 11,000 sq. ft. building to house our offices on the main level and a 5,500 sq. ft. training center on the lower level. The facility has everything we’d hoped for in- cluding what will be an incredible 1,400 sq. ft. “live fire” hands-on lab. This lab will house six- plus permanent HVAC systems of different types including a boiler and hydronic system. Since the building was originally all-electric, we just ran a natural gas line to make sure we can provide hands-on combustion and CO safety training. The training space includes two other key areas: A 1,600 sq. ft. classroom that can easily accommo- date 25-plus students complete with 65-in. digital screens. It has a 1,400 sq. ft. video studio complete with a separate AV control room where we will broadcast most of our online live training. We’re very excited about this soon-to-be state- of-the-art High-Performance HVAC training fa- cility. In addition to our regular classes, we plan to hold special in-person bootcamps here for con- tractors from across North America. By the way, all of NCI’s phone numbers and email addresses remain the same, so it is still easy to get in touch if you have questions or issues. We hope you will come visit us for the training and stay for all the awesome amenities this area has to offer. See y’all soon! I t’s been nearly a year since National Comfort Institute (NCI) started planning to move our headquarters from northeast Ohio to eastern Tennessee. Finally, just last week we physical- ly moved the contents of our offices and training center buildings to our new HQ Building/Train- ing Center in Morristown, TN. Moving a company 500 miles has been an in- teresting experience complete with hundreds of details and logistical challenges. LESSONS LEARNED As with any major change, many lessons were learned. One benefit was we purged 30 years of accumulated “stuff,” ranging from files, books, old tools, unnecessary furniture, old computers, and so forth. In all we purged almost 50% of the clutter within our buildings! Big lesson: Don’t wait for a major event to clean up your shop. When shoulder season hits, take advantage of that time to clear out that back room, or that dead corner of your warehouse. We all pretty much have that area in our shops. We shredded over 100 boxes of old files and pa- per. Some were scanned and saved digitally, but many were so old they were shredded outright. It felt good to just get rid of stuff. We still have tons to go through but we will never have to deal with a significant amount of it again. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION Once our decision to move was set in stone, we started the process of looking for a new home for NCI in a small town called Morristown, which is roughly an hour from Gatlinburg and Knoxville, TN, and an hour and a half from Asheville, NC. One of the many reasons we chose Morristown is because it is nestled between two awesome TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) lakes, with 26 AUGUST 2023HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY ONE MORE THING... By Dom Guarino National Comfort Institute Moves to Tennessee! Dominick Guarino is publisher of High-Performance HVAC Today magazine and President & CEO of National Comfort Institute, Inc. He can be reached at ncilink. com/ContactMe .Next >