Mastering the Art of the HVAC Service Call: How to Thrill Customers while Creating Replacement Opportunities with Superstar Sales Trainer Estee Jaacovi

Welcome to The Successful Contractor powered by CertainPath, a show for residential contractors about residential contractors. We chronicle business journeys, share insights, and celebrate successes in this wonderful industry. I'm your host, Bob Houchin. For more information on how CertainPath can put your contracting company on a certain path to success, visit our website, www.mycertainpath.com. I hope you enjoy today's show and take away another 2. Esti, thank you so much for being on the show today. I'm very excited to have you. For those who've not met you at a training or an expo or watched any of your other videos before, can you kind of share with everyone your name and what you do for CertainPath? Sure.

So my name's Esti Jacoby. I've been here with CertainPath for almost 6 years now, and I've been in the trades for about— gosh, it's going to be 16 years now. With CertainPath, currently I am a coach and a training facilitator. I primarily work with HVAC, but I also work with members of other trades— plumbing, electrical, sometimes roofing— and get to do a slew of different classes. So it's a lot of fun.

That's very exciting. Yeah, it's been, I guess, a couple of years since we've had you on. I think it's been— it doesn't feel that long, but I think it has. And your video on the HVAC sales process is still one of our most watched. So it's like we got to get Esti back on. For those, for those who really didn't get to watch that one or hadn't met you, you said 16 years. Kind of talk about your journey in the trades, what all you've done.

Sure. So I came into the trades on accident, and I love being able to tell this story because I had zero plans for it. But I got placed with a temp agency at a heating and air conditioning company in Palm Springs, California, who was a member of CertainPath. And I love to talk about how they recognized in me what my specialties were and what I wasn't so great at. And part of that was paperwork. And when they brought me in, I was an admin assistant. And I'm much better with people than I am with paper. So they said, let's find you the right seat on the bus. And so I went to sales lead coordinating, sales management, eventually transitioned into the field as a comfort advisor. And that's where my career just really took off. And being with you guys as part of your program, it taught me everything that I know. And just once I got out into the field, started making sales. And by the time I knew it, within a year and a half, I was already doing close to $2 million a year. And then my first solid full calendar year under my belt, I did just shy of $2.5 million. And Became the certain path first female champion over a million bucks or two million bucks.

That's right.

That's right.

Wasn't were you a three-time crown champion if I'm not mistaken?

Oh, was it? Yeah, three-time crown champion.

Yeah, and that was I don't want to you know date you, but you know age me now, right? It's it's not when all the numbers have been inflated like they kind of are now a little bit.

The 2011, 12, and 13, and I like to think about it like what would those numbers look like? You know, 2.5 back then. What would that translate to today? That's a lot to think about.

I know. Yeah. But anyway, so you definitely have credibility in this subject and want to let everyone know how long you've been in it. And you've certainly been lots of ride-alongs and helped plenty of other crown champions. I know Sean, our Sean Mitchell videos, another one that we get tons of clicks. And you, you know, he learned from you and your training class. So. If you guys haven't watched Esti's other stuff, please check it out on the channel. But today I wanted to talk about kind of what a senior service technician's process is through a call. So, you know, he typically or she goes to older systems and how we kind of convert those from repairs to where it probably makes more sense for the homeowner to look at replacement opportunities. So I kind of want to start from the beginning of the process, if that's okay with you. So absolutely. And that's it. That's that drive to the home. So what do you do or what do you train technicians to think about? You know, what kind of research should they do? How do they get their mind right as they approach another call?

So I always like to say the first call of the day is the easiest call. Hopefully for you, you've gotten up, taken a shower, feel good, had a cup of coffee or 3 if you're like me. And can get out on the road. And hopefully you're not carrying any of that home life or previous day baggage with you. So that's why I like to say the first call of the day is probably the easier one. After that, let's, let's say maybe we didn't have such a great call, or maybe we got a no when we were hoping to get a yes. We've got to learn how to keep the last call at the last call and not take it to, to the new homeowner with us. So a lot of what we talk about is making sure, first things first, that physically we look good. Because I always tell people, the last customer of the day doesn't get a discount because you crawled through a dirty attic or because you smell like you crawled through a dirty attic.

Yeah.

So there's no discount for them. They still have to pay what the first customer paid. So we've gotta make sure we're putting our best foot forward for everybody. So first things first, check yourself. Do you smell bad? Do you look bad? If you do, make sure you have a change of clothes with you and that you can attempt to mitigate some of the smell. After that, it's getting your mindset right. For me, that was blasting really loud music and having fun sing-alongs in the truck by myself. Sometimes I would touch base with my dispatcher just to say, hey, I just need to vent for a minute to get it all out. And she would listen and tell me, you got this, let's go. And she would help me, just pump me up and get me ready. So, it really just kind of depends on what works for that person. But being able to separate last call, home life, whatever's going on in your world from what you're about to go do is the most important thing.

Sure. Did you like talking to the homeowner as you drove there, or did you really rely on dispatch for background on what that call would be that you're facing?

So I think it's a little different for each role because I was a comfort advisor and not a tech. I made that initial call on the way to the customer. It was a great way to introduce myself. They could hear my voice, they could hear the excitement in my voice. So even if that meant I had to muster a little extra something for them, I did that before I got to the call.

Sure.

It just sets the tone. Most of the time technicians are being dispatched by the dispatcher, so they're not the one to touch base. But if that is part of their role to call, absolutely do the call and put your best voice forward.

Right, right. For sure. Now, when you, you know, as a technician driving to the call, what, like, what kind of information is most beneficial from the dispatcher to kind of get your mind right on, you know, maybe start somewhat deciding what needs to be fixed or looked at or something like that? Or age of the home or what kind of stuff would you recommend a technician know before going?

The first thing I would like to know is, are they an existing customer? Have we been there before? And if so, are they a club member or not a club member? Because that'll determine a lot of the conversation is introducing the club membership if they're not already, talking about the perks, things like that. If they are a club member, we've been with them for a while. Let's talk about maybe some work that's been done in the past. How much money have they spent with us? And looking at the last call or the last couple of calls, if they've been more frequent, what's been going on at the home, what recommendations have we made, and have they gone with all of our recommendations? After that, I do love to know, if possible, the age of the home. I would use Zillow or another similar website just to look up the house itself. That way, when I'm driving down the street, I don't miss it and look silly and have to turn around and come back at it because, you know, the homeowners are looking out the window or their Ring doorbell is going off or Whatever that may be. So I just was always making sure that I knew what I was looking at. And then finally for me, if we have the age, fantastic. But I really wanted to know who was I going to go meet? You know, are they the homeowner? For sure. If they're not the homeowner, what am I doing here? Who am I going to be able to connect with to get authorization for anything that I'm doing? So seeing if there's any of that kind of notes in the system for me as well. Right.

Good stuff. Great stuff. Very good. All right. So we, uh, we get to the house, you know, you make the knock, you step back, homeowner lets you in. Uh, that's just a critical first moment to make that connection, right? No one's gonna listen to you if they don't trust you. Trust starts with that conversation. So how do you kind of recommend people, you know, get people to warm up to you? What questions do you ask? Do you have any kind of advice in that? particular situation?

Sure. So instead of allowing the homeowner to drag you right to the area of concern, 'cause that's a lot of times what they're gonna do, like, oh, I'm so glad you're here. Hey, you know what? The condenser's on the other side of the house. Just go take a look and come on back when you're done. When they do that, I can't spend time getting to know them in the beginning. So I would always use my value statement just to kind of take that friendly control of the call. Like, hey, you know what? I'm actually gonna take a look at that. In fact, I'll take a look at the entire system for you. But before I do that, Do you mind if I come in, maybe ask you a couple of questions, get to know you and how you use the home and the system? So that way, as I'm going through and doing my inspection, if there's anything specific I should look for, I'll know what to look for.

Right.

Very good. Very good. So once you get in, though, you don't— you don't typically jump right into the questions if you can, right? You try to make an observation of the home or, you know, try to start off on a light— lighter foot, right?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. If we can build rapport in the beginning, the rapport will carry out through the entire call. This is the foundational part of our call. So the more we get to know them, the more they like us, the more they trust us, the more they're going to be willing to listen to and consider our recommendations. So yeah, observing something in the home, maybe they have a cool car in the driveway, or like for those that have come into my home, they notice like pictures on the wall and will say, hey, did you take those? Tell me about it. And it's a great way to get the customer talking about something that they like. Which gets them to open up.

For sure, for sure. How much in those, those early moments are you paying attention to body language and how they converse with you to try and kind of self-diagnose them on— in terms of DISC, we use that as a personality profile, uh, tool, a certain path. How much of that are you doing in those, those early stages?

Oh, a lot in the beginning. I'm, I'm wanting to see what kind of mindset they're in currently, because if If they're stressed out right when I get there, they're gonna be more stressed out as I go through the call because they know anything I find means dollar signs to them.

Right.

So if I can bring them down, ease their mind, you know, set the tone, show them that we're professional, then I can do that from the very beginning. Or for me being, if we are talking DiSC, I'm an I on the DiSC personality profile, which means I'm kind of a talker and love to socialize. And if I'm against someone that is, the absolute opposite of me, I've got to pivot very quickly so I don't turn them off from the first 5 minutes that I'm in their home.

Right. Sure. You brought up an interesting point I want to follow up on in terms of putting people's minds at ease. I think that's a big part, right? Because so many people are stressed out. My furnace isn't working, whatever, you know, and they're worried about money. Is there anything you do to kind of reassure them? You talk about a credibility statement, you know, maybe you just have that Comfort that oh, I have an expert in here, or what? What do you recommend to try and ease homeowners get the blood pressure down just a little bit?

So that small talk and getting to know people for a big majority of the community that'll work to help put their mind at ease. For some people though, it might have the opposite effect. They might be like all right, let's just get to the point. I want to know what's going on in my home. So being professional and walking through the the first few steps there, which it. In our case, is all about talking about today's service experience, what they can expect to see on the call. And when people understand what the path will look like, how we're gonna take them from, we're stressed today, to, I've solved your problems later on, I think they like to see that because then they know, hey, we're following these steps, we're gonna be professional, we're doing everything that we can, and we show them how it's— in their benefit to be able to do those things. So for us, opening up a straightforward pricing guide, walking them through the first couple of pages, actually showing it to them, saying, look, this is what we do for all of our customers. So this is part of our process. We are professionals. We're going to help you. And we've got a lot of options and ways that we can solve your problems. So we're going to make this really specific to you, your wants, your needs, your budget.

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I don't want to give away all the the the details that people get when they come to your training classes, but maybe we give away one or two. I know a big part. Part of that is asking the right kind of questions, whether it be about what problem they're experiencing today. And, and there's a whole bunch of other things on our comfort survey. Is, is that when you kind of go through that as well, that survey at that point, or is that later on?

So if I'm a technician, I'm actually going in in tech mode at this point, right? There's a problem and I'm looking to solve it. So these are more of the— we used to call them thermostat questions. They're discovery questions, right? Is, you know, tell me about how your system has been working. If you could solve anything about it, what would we be doing for you today? Looking at hot and cold spots and do they feel comfortable? That kind of stuff is important early in the call. And then when we have realized we have an opportunity for replacement, the questions start to shift a little bit, right? And we start getting more specific information relating to replacement as opposed to solving a service problem.

Very good. Yeah, I wanted to bring that up because I think it's a mistake a lot of newer technicians that get into sales— those are problems that they stumble themselves into. So I wanted to bring that up. That's great.

All right.

So we had some initial dialogue and some questions with the homeowner. It's time to start diagnosing the system. So, you know, what do you teach technicians once they start seeing things that are wrong? Is it we do like show and tell with the homeowner and showing them parts or, you know, trying to educate them? How do you recommend technicians kind of handle that as they see issues once they're diagnosing the system?

If it's accessible and you can bring your customer to the area of concern, absolutely. Always show and tell more so than tell and show pictures if possible. If it's not, if it's up in an attic, down in a basement, somewhere where you wouldn't wanna drag your 90-year-old customer with you, you'll probably wanna take pictures and videos and bring it down to them. But Seeing really is believing. And when they can see not only what the problem is, but through our description, what the ramifications are of that problem, they can make better informed decisions. So we've got to educate them along the way. Otherwise, it's like going to the doctor and them saying, well, you're sick. Here's all these drugs that you should take. And you're like, wait a minute, I don't even know what's going on yet. What does this do? What will that do? What happens if I don't take that? Right.

Right, right, right. Very good. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's— I always listen to guys that— and gals that have great analogies. They try to connect what's wrong with the system with something people can understand, right? You try and make those connections much easier. Um, just to kind of pivot, we've kind of talked about a call where there's a breakdown, but I know a lot of these senior technicians are going on calls where they're tune-ups just with older systems, right? There's an opportunity there. So how do we make our tune-ups so much better than what someone's had in the past? Right. So if someone's having you out for a tune-up, probably means they've done it before. They know the, you know, they know the benefits of having their system maintained. But how do we— are there any things that a senior tech can do during the tune-up to really make it shine and someone go, wow, I've never seen a tune-up like this before?

So especially for those people that are not members of our club that haven't used this consistently, maybe they just bought a new house and haven't had anything looked at, or maybe they just discovered the fact that we need to have preventative maintenance done on our system. So we need to really do some more digging and ask really good questions with those types of customers. You know, how long has it been since anyone's looked at this before?

Right.

How often are you really finding that you're having problems? From those answers and from what we find in their home is really putting together the full synopsis for them, right? Here's what's going on. Here's, you know, kind of like how we do it with our you could do, you should do, and you must do when it comes to your options. So really saying, hey, we've got band-aids. Everyone can cover up the band-aid and get it fixed for now, but does that address the problem over the long term? And it's Especially if the system has some age, has wear and tear, or a combination of both. We talk about, you know, let's look at what this system is truly costing you to own it now in comparison to what a new system will look like for you.

Right. For sure. For sure. So when you, you know, you've looked, you've utilized the system performance report, that's another tool we have. I wanted to be sure to mention that. So, you know, you're taking a full a view of what's wrong with the system. I guess at that point, should, should a technician create 3 options even though they know this is really a good replacement opportunity? Or should that technician kind of mention, hey, Mrs. Jones, I, you know, I know you think this might be a repair. Maybe we need to look at— have you thought about replacing your system? Kind of how do you handle that transition from service mode to potential replacement mode?

This is where the magic happens and this is what differentiates a technician From a selling technician, from a comfort advisor. And they really have to nail, I hate to call it this, but the song and dance part of this step in the call. Because without a smooth transition, it can feel very salesy. And the reason why selling technicians work so well in the field is because they're not looked at as salespeople. And not to give salespeople a bad name, I was one. I love salespeople. We make the world go round. But that, it's a different level of trust with a technician than it is with a salesperson. So they need to stay in that tech mode and make the transition very smooth. So this is where we start to introduce those opportunities to make that choice. So I always tell technicians, do not go in guns a-blazing with, hey, let's get it replaced, right? Go through your options. Mentioning replacement, it's great to do. You can even bring it up before you get into your options. Mrs. Jones, I just wanted to let you know, after looking at this system and realizing that it's 14 years old, we do have some wear and tear items. I'm going to go through all of those with you, but just based on age alone, have you considered replacing it? And if they say, no, I haven't thought about it, or it's been on the radar, we want to wait, whatever the answer is, just take that one and say, fantastic. We can do whatever it is you want to do today. And I'm going to give you options that will give you choices. Let's go through what's happening with the system technically, and then I'll let you see, you know, based on what we've got going on, what works best for you, what the next steps should be. So we don't wanna shortchange the customer and not give them their repair options because that's what we were called out for. And it's when we start leaving those out and go straight for the kill that we get the reputation of being Absolutely.

Wendy, is that maybe a time where you use, uh, to drop another CertainPath tool, the True Cost Calculator? Is that when you sit down? Maybe, uh, on a high level, share with people what that is. That's something that I don't know, maybe other organizations have it, but I certainly know we do. And it is, uh, a moneymaker for, for a lot of companies for many years.

Oh yeah, that is the transition tool. So it's a calculating system that's very easy that helps a customer to understand not only what they're gonna have to spend today to get this system up and running, but to look at the system as a whole and what it will cost them not only to keep it now, but over the next however much longer they wanna keep it for. So for example, if a customer says, you know, I've been thinking about replacement, but I really just wanna hold off a couple of years, or, you know, we haven't really saved anything for it and I don't wanna get stuck having to pay a bunch of money. You know what? I completely understand that this is that kind of project no one really wants to tackle. But let me show you, based on these few things, what it really costs to keep it. So not only are we looking at today's repairs, we have to look at future repairs. So that's why something like the Systems Performance Report checklist, and ours is with red, yellow, and green. Green, good, right? Red, bad. Yellow, stop and think about it. So this is that stop and think about it kind of section. Like, hey, Not only do we have today's repairs, we have this, this, and this that may fail in the future. Plus, we have to talk about the fact that maybe they've done repairs in the past. You've already spent that money. We're not getting that back, especially if it was with another company. And then we have to look at how much does it cost to actually run it. We know utilities go up every year and we've seen some really substantial rate hikes in certain areas. I know here we went from like $0.09 to $0.16 a kilowatt hour. That's almost double. The cost for electricity. So how much is it costing to run it? How much will it continue to cost, especially with inflation? Those future repairs we have to consider. And thinking about, we've got price increases coming in our industry, like big time, as early as next year. So do we really want to spend that extra money just to wait, or should we start realizing those savings now, get something in so we're comfortable? So those are the kinds of Things we look for through the true cost calculator. I love it.

That's great. That's great. So at that point, you know, most most homeowners, it seems, will go okay. Well, I'll at least let's at least look at what our replacement options are. Well, you know, you've shown me the three repair options. Let's at least explore that. So what what do you recommend for you know a senior technician at that moment? What what are the next steps of that now sales opportunity? What should he or she be doing?

Now we transition into the comfort survey. So once they've expressed that interest and they want to look at replacement options, we let the customer know, fantastic. I'm going to ask you a few more questions because when I came, I was looking at ways to solve your problem by either doing a repair or a maintenance. And now if we're looking at replacement, we're looking at a different ball of wax. So let me make sure I've got all of the information I need to help you make a good decision. So we go through the survey. And then we turn around and we do a heat load calculation. So I know people use different methods to do heat load calcs. We have a great one that actually comes in our survey that makes it super simple, but we've got to perform that heat load calc. Otherwise, how are we going to be able to provide any kind of guarantees if we don't know if it's the right size system?

Right, right. And we still do the manual one, correct? We like to walk with a homeowner and have a— maybe talk about the value. I know there's a lot of tools out there that can do it quickly online, but there's, there's value in spending time with people, right?

Absolutely. If you can get them to go room to room with you while you're doing that heat load calculation, you're going to find out some amazing information that'll be useful during your presentation. Who uses this room? Are they experiencing hot or cold spots? Is the air blowing directly on them? Should we find a way to make them more comfortable? All of those things that you wouldn't know unless the homeowner's there with you step by step. But not every homeowner wants to go do a heat load calculation with you.

Absolutely.

So we go do it by ourselves. But once we are done with the measurement and sitting down and manually performing the calculations, or if you're on tablet, you can do it in the tablet, but showing your work. You think about it, when we were in middle school and high school and math homework came home, I was pretty good at being able to find the answer. I don't know that my work always reflected that I got to it the right way.

Right.

But if I turned in the answer without the work showing, the feedback I would get back was, show your work. How— prove to me that you know how to get to that answer. And that's kind of the same thing with our heat load calc. I mean, I could guess, I could look at the old system and say, I think I might— it may be this size, but none of that is accurate. So showing them how we got there is the most important part.

I've talked to enough salespeople over the years. I know so many of them that have been doing it forever. They go, I know generally what size equipment they need right away. But, but walking from room to room, you pointed it out beautifully. You know, we learn what people, you know, what their, their usage is of their home, right? We're trying to find out the little bits of information to better serve that homeowner. I think that's something that gets lost. We're not just doing it to try and put on a show. I mean, certainly there's a part to that, but we want to learn. We want to serve them best. So they're, you know, taking, taking that extra time is so critical.

It really is.

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So after you've, you've made your calculations and, you know, you've had this time with the, the homeowner, let's talk about— I don't wanna, again, I don't wanna give it all away, but maybe some, some nuggets for people and what the presentation should look like from what your comfort, your company at Widget, you know, Air or whatever we wanna say that the fictional company is, how you guys are, are better or different from the competition. There's some, some takeaways we can give people.

So, I mean, just starting off on that professional foot, walking them through the process, doing the survey, heat load calculation, all of that equals professional. But next steps after that is really sitting down and explaining not just the features of the equipment. We can rattle off what it does all day long. It's more about what it does for them. So with our method and what we go through and teach with our students coming through classes is Let's not focus on the brand. Let's not focus on the SEER rating. Let's not focus on the materials being used. Let's focus on what the customer wants to focus on. What's it going to do for me? How much is it going to cost to run it? How much will I save? Will I be protected? Bottom line, what am I paying? That's what they want to know. So being able to give them the information that they need without giving them too much to put them in analysis paralysis is really the name of the game.

Yeah, for sure. And then once we get to the end of that presentation, always show options, right? So what do you train? How many options should we reasonably give someone so that we don't bombard them, but we also give them some choice? So what's a good number?

3 to 4 is going to be your sweet spot. So you can either think of it in terms of your good, better, best, or platinum, gold, silver, bronze. We do optimum, supreme, premier, basic, whatever works. Terminology-wise for people, but 3 to 4 really is that good spot because we want to have a middle, because most people will tend to find themselves falling in the middle. So having 2 in the middle is great. They have a choice even in the middle, but at least have a middle. Don't just do 2 or 1. There's a middle with 2 or 1.

Right, right. And then there's always a little nugget.

I—

maybe I shouldn't give it away, but what the heck, we've been, we've been good. So Always start with that top option, right? Maybe talk about the psychology of starting with the top option.

Absolutely. So it's so much harder to add things to a job than to take things away. For example, maybe a customer had in their mind that it was going to be $5,000. I don't know why they all think air conditioning costs $5,000, but they do. And if your bottom option is $10,000, you've already freaked them out. You can't go up from there. They're done.

Yeah.

So we started off and maybe the top for me, let's say at CertainPath Heating and Air, my top option is $25,000. I've got a full inverter system and they're happy, but they don't like that price point, but they like what it does. Now I start taking away some of the features of what it does for them and talking about, you're losing this benefit, you're losing this benefit. And the more I take away, the less they like that, but they see that The price might be going in the way that they wanted, or I find that sweet spot of what fits for their budget without freaking them out from the first one and shutting them down.

Yeah, for sure. That's great. That's great. Obviously, a big tool for for HVAC sales, especially because because of the cost, is financing. And I know for a lot of technicians, they get the heebie-jeebies when talking about trying to figure out dollars and cents. But you know, really. It's such an incredible tool. And what— how do you recommend talking to homeowners in terms of financing? I guess always looking for whatever tool gets you to the lowest price, monthly price, correct?

Absolutely. And introducing it early in the call as part of your option proposition, I think, is nice. We're going to hear from customers a lot, oh, I'm going to pay cash for that. But again, they could be that person that saved $5,000 because they were told it costs $5,000 and then Right. They're halfway off the mark from even our basic package. So knowing that there's financing on the table, even if they don't want it, is a beautiful thing. And I gotta tell you, it was a great closing tool for my very wealthy clientele. Not that they needed it, but the short-term, no interest, maybe 6 months or 12 months at the most, they're like, great, I have some time to move my money around. I'll borrow yours for free. And that was the closing tool. But there are so many people that cannot afford to do these kind of bigger packages. So we need to make it easy and affordable to do business with us. And if that means taking the longest, most drawn-out term that you can find, 10 years, 12 years, in some places they can go as far as 20 years, whatever that means, getting them into the most affordable payment possible is the name of the game. Because if they decide, I don't want interest, Well, they can switch to a 6-month or 12-month no-interest plan, or they could pay it off very soon with no prepayment penalty. So give them something to choose from. Right.

So it pays off to try and take some time to learn what those financing options are and being able to offer them. I know it's not fun for a lot of people, but it is a, it's a great tool. Is there anything you do to try and help create urgency to buy that day? I'm obviously don't wanna be forceful, especially if you're the, technician that's come there, right? And you've built a lot of goodwill throughout this call. But is there anything you can do subtly to create urgency?

Sure. I mean, the big thing for me is we're going to spend a couple of hours together going through this process. And if they're a longstanding customer or someone that's used your company in the past, if we reiterate the relationship that we've created, you know, and bring up the fact that They don't wanna go through this again and spend another 2 hours with another organization just to find that we had what they were looking for the whole time, which is the full package, not just the value that we bring with the actual equipment we offer, but the professional level of service that we offer to them. That's what they're usually looking for. So that's a way to create urgency. Like, do you actually want to go through this process again? And then repeat again and then again. That's a lot of time. Plus, when doing business with our company, you know, if they've, perhaps they've spent some money on repairs in the past, maybe we use that as a bargaining tool to be able to credit back a couple hundred bucks. No one else is gonna give them that money back. So that's some urgency there where it's sitting in our bank, basically. Let us help you with your down payment.

Sure.

This time of year, so right now it's, It's the end of the year. We know that price increases are coming. We've been told some people have already received them. Some are going to be receiving them the beginning of the year. There's going to be more throughout the year. There always are. I work for a manufacturer. They come all year long. So letting them know today really is the least you will ever spend on this project because I can't guarantee my price will be the same 30 days from now.

Yeah. Yeah. You offer, I, I didn't get into the objections really yet, but you, you hit a lot of little talking points people can, you know, you can bring up to handle those objections. Like, oh, well, I want another bid, but well, do you really wanna spend all that time? I'm sure these are things, you know, that you use, uh, you know, outta your tool belt to handle those objections. But again, I don't wanna get into all of them. If you wanna learn how to handle all of them, be sure to come check out Esti's class. It's, it's definitely worth, uh, the investment of, of time and money. Um, Let me ask you this. So let's say someone's just really like, I just don't feel like moving forward with a replacement option at this point. I guess you just go ahead and move forward with repair, or will you give them some more time to think? Maybe they just need to process all this information. They didn't expect to be in this position. How do you handle that situation?

Sure. We definitely don't want to lose the customer altogether because if we don't close the replacement and we don't close the repair, we've given them the opportunity to go shop us. And that's the last thing we want to do. And we've set them into the wild to go find all of the bad information that's out there. And I know this is going to live on the web, but not everything that lives on the internet is truth. So we want to be able to give them the best information. This is truth, but I don't know about the rest out there.

No, I know what you're saying. I just think it's funny. Yeah, right.

So we want to make sure that We're able to close those doors for them and be able to speak to them and give them what they need.

Yeah. Let's talk about kind of the post-close process. I think that often gets overlooked both in service and sales. You know, let's say, you know, we've made— let's say on a service opportunity, the person is like, no, I just want to do the repair. That's fine. You go through the repair, you do the best job you can. Is there— what recommendations might you have with— to give service technicians on how to really Leave that as a great experience for that homeowner, making them feel like, boy, I'm really glad I called CertainPath Air today, right? There's some certain things they should be doing.

Absolutely. So first thing is reiterating that whatever decision they make is a good decision, right? It's their home, it's their family, it's their budget. They know what they need to do. And then letting them know that they're going to be there for them. You know, if things change, if future repairs are needed, You know, hey, we're here, we're here to help you. But planting that seed, and not every company does this, and if you don't, maybe it's a great thing to talk about at your organization, offering to credit back a certain amount of that repair for up to a certain amount of days, right? Maybe it's, my policy might be up to $500 for up to 30 days you can get back. Now, again, we become the bank for their deposit. No one else is gonna give that back to them. So we're holding onto that. That gives 'em a month to think, Well, should I have just replaced it? Maybe. And they can change their mind easily. But follow-up from the office is really important on this as well. Gotta do that happy call, you know, make sure that there was no miscommunication. Maybe they didn't understand the importance of looking at the options. All of that could have, could have been misconstrued by the customer. So ensuring we're doing a happy call afterwards and then putting that customer on a follow-up rotation, you know, making sure we're checking in with them a few weeks later before that 30-day How are you doing? System still running? Were there any other questions that you had that we can answer for you? Because maybe they did go do some research, maybe they talked to a neighbor, and maybe they're ready to change their mind. But if we don't reach out and ask, we're leaving that opportunity on the table.

And at least make sure you get that club membership sold too, right? On all those options, your options. So we get, we for sure get back in the house. That's right. That's right. On the opportunities where you've sold them, they're like, I definitely see the value of this. But, you know, still people will start having second thoughts maybe after you've left. So there's always that risk of cancellation. What should— in those circumstances where we've sold the system again, what should that technician be doing to make that person feel really warm and happy about, you know, they weren't expecting to spend this money, but they feel really great that they are doing it with you. So is there anything they should be doing? those warm and fuzzies.

Educating them about the install process, making sure they understand what the next step is, who will be reaching out to them, you know, really playing up how awesome your installers are. You're gonna love them, they're a great team. And then being available yourself as the technician to answer any questions. You become the project liaison at this point, right? You are the go-between from the customer to the company. And they need to know that you're available to help them. So letting them know, I'm here to take care of any needs that you have, that eases their mind. They feel good about doing business with you. And then again, reiterating that whatever decision they made was a good decision and here's why. So just highlighting all of the things that they're getting and especially hitting hard on those guarantees and warranties.

You know, tools like videos like these, And there's other stuff on YouTube. I know we have plenty of things on our CertainPath YouTube channel. They're all valuable, but really speak to the value of going to in-person training, how much more you can learn and, and what that does for, uh, whether it's a technician or a salesperson. There's a, there's an incredible amount of value in a multi-day training.

Absolutely. I couldn't sell until I went to training as well. I mean, it wasn't in my wheelhouse. This is a learned skill. I'm a great talker. I didn't have a process. So going to the training gives you the process, and then it allows you to really not only just role-play with other people that are in your position, but to be able to ask questions of those people and pick their brains. And I am still friends with people that I went through CertainPath classes with 13, 14 years ago. So you create a community and it's It's really nice to be able to have that, but getting live feedback and being able to practice on other people in your industry and not practice on your customers, that's the best place to practice.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. And then talk about maybe the importance of when you go home, of continuing to train and how frequently you should be doing it so those skills don't get forgotten and lost.

Yeah, 'cause you're gonna get home, you're gonna feel like a million bucks and you're gonna be ready to go sell a million bucks. But that feeling will start to fade and you get back into the monotony of the day-to-day. So a strong leader will make sure that they're reinforcing what the student learned in class, going through role-play scenarios, asking them for the highlights. What did you learn? What are you going to be working on? What are some of your 30-day goals, 60-day goals, 90-day goals? So setting those goals as a leader with this person to hold them accountable to the process that they just learned. And if you as the leader have not been through the class yourself, it's gonna be really hard to be able to do that. So managers and owners need to go through at least once to see the baseline of what their people are learning, to be able to come back and speak to it and understand what they experienced.

That's a good, that's a good takeaway right there. All right, last question. As you know, you were a high performer salesperson. You've seen and trained Countless high-performing salespeople. What are some things that you do, they do to really hit those highest numbers? Like, what differentiates themselves? You know, something that— say I'm a new salesperson watching this, I'm like, give me a couple. Is there one or two takeaways? It's like, I need to be doing this on a daily basis or weekly basis to get me to your level.

Uh, and number one is knowing your process inside and out. So if someone throws a wrench into your system and you're 2 steps into your process and They gotta jump on a call or the dog escapes or whatever can throw off the call.

Yeah.

Being able to jump back up and pick up where you were or pivot and go to something else and be able to come back and hit all the necessary items to close the call. That's number one for me. Number 2 is being educational. We're not there to present to people. We're there to educate them on what we know. Educated people make informed decisions. And they make those decisions a lot quicker than people who have to go do research. So don't leave out the information that they would really need to know. And the only way we know what they really need to know is getting to know them. So don't skimp on the first part of the call where you're getting to find out what makes them tick. Ask them those good questions. We have a tool called the 12 Benefits Card that you get when you come to class, and that helps you to, to discover what's really important to your customer and speaking to that throughout the entire call and personalizing the experience for them. Even if your options don't change from customer to customer, what is important to them changes from customer to customer. So focusing in on what's in it for them and not what the process feels like to you, because it might feel monotonous doing the same call over and over every day, but your customer's never been through it before. So it's Absolutely.

Good stuff. Well, Esti, thank you so much for all your great insight and your time. I, I just can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

You are very welcome.

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