The Sales Process That Took Us From Losing Money to $12.5K Tickets
1 Jan 2026 · 31 min
In this episode of Owned and Operated, hosts John Wilson and Brandon Nairo, partners who run a $30 M home‑service company in Northeast Ohio, walk through the multi‑year evolution of their HVAC sales operation. They begin by describing a loss‑making, repair‑first model that sold single pieces of equipment at a $4‑5 K average ticket. Over three distinct phases they raise the average ticket to $8‑9 K (still unprofitable), then to $12.5 K (profitable) and aim for $14‑15 K. The transformation is driven by (1) shifting the mindset from repairs to full‑system sales, (2) instituting a repeatable, KPI‑focused sales process with dedicated Comfort Advisors and a sales trainer, (3) adopting specialized software (Mantle, NextStar) for accurate load calculations, option generation, and proposal strength scoring, and (4) introducing early financing offers (e.g., 72‑month 0 % plans) that increase close rates by 13 %. They discuss how the software surfaces higher‑efficiency equipment, indoor‑air‑quality add‑ons, and warranties, raising attach rates. The hosts also examine operational challenges such as re‑tooling the install crew for high‑SEER and communicating system installations, and they compare performance of marketed leads versus technician‑generated leads. Throughout, they emphasize data‑driven coaching, call recordings, and proposal rating metrics to continuously refine the process. The episode ends with a reaffirmation that “process, process, process” is the key to sustained growth.
Chapters
Today we're talking sales. Like, we weren't profitable, really. We lost a ton of money.
The problem was getting worse because we weren't looking at things like conversion rates or how often they're flipping over to a sale in the first place.
So we went from $5,000 average ticket and then now we're at $12,500 and we're profitable. We're now putting in like premium top-of-market equipment.
We just had to offer it. Our own data in-house, it's 13% higher close rate for technicians who offer financing before options are offered. In my mind, if you're using financing as a rebuttal tool to price objections, it's too late. You're on an uphill battle because everything that you do to work against that's going to make it harder.
Any closing thoughts on improving HVAC?
It's stupid simple, right? It's—
Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson, and I'm here with my partner in crime, Brandon Nairo. Together we Run a thirty million dollar home service company in Northeast Ohio, and for fun, we have this show that teaches other people how to do the same thing. Before we get much further, my mom needs to know that I'm popular on the internet. So if you could either subscribe or give me a five star review on Apple or Spotify or wherever it is that you're listening to this show, I would be really grateful, and my mom would know that I've made it. Okay, today. It's good to have you back. Just had you on a couple weeks ago. We were talking about leadership, we were talking about training. Today we're talking sales. We're talking that fat stacks of cash hitting the bank.
Nice.
All right, thank you, thank you. All right, so, uh, we have done Lord Jesus's work on our sales.
That's for sure.
Over the past, uh, Year and a half, 2 years. You know, I'll like set the stage a little bit. So we started taking HVAC, plumbing, electric, and like the sales side of it a lot more seriously. 2023, you think?
Probably.
Right about. I mean, nowhere near to where we currently are. Like now we have a sales trainer. We have like, it's a, you know, we're KPI driven. Yeah, we're— it's a process. We're a lot further. Along than we were. But maybe I just want to like talk about that a little bit. So when we've— and like really focused, I think a funny way to think about this would be average ticket.
Okay.
So if we— and let's just talk HVAC because I think that's the easiest. So 2 years ago, 3 years ago, average ticket was— we could look it up. I mean, it was probably like $4,000, $5,000.
$4,500-ish bucks.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's for HVAC equipment sales. So like, you know, for the listener, I think Nexstar tells us $12,000 or something like that is like, you know, where we should be. When someone's average ticket is really low like ours was, then what we're probably looking at is like single piece of equipment. So I'm selling a bunch of like AC onlys or furnace onlys. And our job is to sell a system. Yep. So I don't know, you want to like, do you have any many memories of like what that HVAC looked like when we started taking it more seriously? One of the tools I've personally seen make a huge difference for service business owners is Quo, formerly OpenPhone. Because when you miss a call, you're not just missing a conversation, you're losing business. Quo is the modern business phone solution powered by AI that helps you stay responsive and connected. It logs calls, creates summaries, and automates next steps. From drag-and-drop setup to AI-powered call tags, every detail is designed to make your phone system smarter, your customers happier, and your team more in sync. It's one of those tools that makes you wonder why you didn't already switch. 90,000 businesses already have. Start your 7-day free trial at the link below and get 20% off your first 6 months just for being a part of the Owned and Operated crew.
Whoa.
No missed calls, no missed customers.
Yeah, I mean, the, the problem really lied in exactly what you said, which was we were repairs focused, right?
Yeah.
And we would repair something—
$2,000 repairs like all the time.
Even more than that. I mean, we were averaging like $4,000 on some days and it was things that just shouldn't have been repaired, right? That we were— that was just the mindset, right? It was you could repair this thing no matter what. You can replace a heat exchanger. Who replaces a heat exchanger, right? Like, you, you know, at that point we're talking a furnace replacement. Um, so the mindset was very much on repairs, and when that couldn't happen, then it was okay, this individual piece had to be replaced, this furnace, this AC. Um, but we really didn't tend to look at the whole system, which frankly is a downside, right? We know that to the homeowner. That's where we— the— I wanna say the aha is where we started to realize, okay, we're actually doing a disservice.
Yeah. Yeah. It's like kind of a wild disservice to—
yeah.
And to at least not talk about it. Like, hey, we can replace your heat exchanger, but why would you want to? That would be like replacing the engine in a 20-year-old car. Like, somebody might do it.
Yeah.
And like, you can, but like, we should talk about just buying a new car.
And just the concept too of, you know, putting a brand new AC on top of a 25-year-old furnace. Like, yeah, you know, that furnace is eventually gonna go out probably sooner than later 'cause we just disturbed everything while replacing the AC. And now that homeowner's gotta go back, Yeah. Do that when they could have probably gotten a little bit better of a deal just doing the whole system in the first place.
Yeah.
So that was where, you know, the, the change started to occur is, okay, let's, let's start looking at this in a more holistic— it's better for the customer, it's better for us, it's an all-around better experience for everybody involved.
Yeah.
We got to change what we're doing.
Yeah. I remember designing the system that we used to sell. This was like 10 years ago. And the idea at the time was I was really concerned that technicians would— because it was selling techs.
Yep.
So like not Comfort Advisor, Or salespeople or anything. I was really concerned that technicians would like take advantage of the homeowner, and you know, I almost we almost like forced ourselves into this repair-first mentality because I was so concerned about the other side of it, which you know, I don't know. Lessons lessons learned. I think most of it, like we've over the years eaten a lot of like bad warranty calls or like system failures because we repaired something. And we never even like we've looked back at notes and we just never even brought up replacement. So we definitely learned our lesson over the years of like, hey, this is right for the business. It's also just right for the homeowner to at least talk about it.
Yeah.
Yeah. So when we first started selling HVAC, HVAC was kind of hard for us to grow, but we did selling techs. And I remember it was a very immature sales process. So we would hire a tech and like they would basically sell something. And if it worked, great. If it didn't, okay. But like, we weren't doing measurements, we weren't sizing stuff, we weren't doing good material lists. It was very like, does this person know how to bring up the fact that this is an option? And then will they give a price? Yeah.
And we really didn't even understand the process at the time either, because we weren't looking at things like conversion rates or how often they're flipping over to a sale in the first place. It was just if it happened to happen.
Yeah, great.
Then we would see what went from there. So then there was a lot of evolution that happened through that learning, painful learning.
Yeah, painful learning. Yeah. Then we brought on professional sales and painful learning there too. The big stuff, but average ticket expanded. Yeah. So we went from this $4,000 or $5,000 average ticket to $8,000, maybe $9,000 average ticket. We definitely started selling more systems, but Very low end, very discount-driven, and we weren't profitable at all. Really, we lost a ton of money in the process of expanding average ticket, which was a little, I think, disorienting for us at the time because it's like, well, average ticket just went up so much, how are we losing this much money?
I remember multiple points through that, misguided at the time, but where we were debating about reeling back off of CA, the Comfort Advising process altogether, back onto selling texts. Because it was just like, what's happening? This isn't working right. And as fast as we were diagnosing it, the problem was getting worse. So we were trying to solve through that whole thing. And what we found is just really the process. So we unlocked a lot of things, but we didn't put guardrails in. So those—
It was still too person dependent.
Yes.
So Yeah, it wasn't a process and it was like, this person is able to sell stuff at a discount, but we didn't figure out anything else. We didn't get better as a business. It's just like we had someone that could sell stuff for less than it cost.
And we put no guardrails. You could do whatever you wanted inside of that. All we did was the tech could get the flip, which is great. And that process was starting to become a thing. But once the Comfort of Ours was out there, we didn't, again, Had no process there. So it was kind of a free-for-all. You could do whatever you wanted to do. And I think in the moment, thinking back to that, a lot of it in the beginning was just like, this is amazing because the install team's busier than they ever have been. So probably blind to the—
And we didn't have, yeah, we didn't have clean accounting reporting either.
So it took some time for us to realize the impact of how, yes, it was great that my schedule was full, but holy crap, we are, yeah, we're losing our butts on this.
Yeah, it's bleeding. It's Hilarious. Yeah. So I think, so still back to process, we didn't deliver a consistent process. And that was a couple years ago. And now I think average ticket last month was low again, but low for us now is higher than it ever was. Low was probably like 10 grand or something like that. And that's because we were doing a big—
Bingo.
Yeah, we were doing a big coupon during shoulder season. But the past few months we've been at 12,500, which is the next star KPI. So we feel really good about that. I know people in the high teens, I know a couple people in the 20s, I know some people at 14,000. But for us, 12,500 was a really big accomplishment.
Yeah.
That felt like a win. And it's more profitable than ever. It's actually contributing and it's not killing the business anymore, which is awesome. So Over the past, I'd say we got there in the past year. So what were the things that we did? So we went from $5,000 average ticket, and that was just like, techs were just selling basically whatever. We went to $8,000 or $9,000, and that was like we installed a CA, but no process driven, and just very discount focused, selling stuff for less than it cost us. And then now we're at $12,500. And we're profitable. So what's the third evolution of our sales look like?
It sounds cliché, but it was systems and processes. We didn't have a good setup and we realized that and recognized that. One of the things that I think was a benefit for us is we realized quickly after that, that it wasn't going to be worth the time for us to come up with our own process. We needed to find something that was designed and built around it.
Yeah.
And that would, we could leverage instead of us coming up with our whole own process.
Yeah.
That would've taken us forever long and we would've failed repeatedly and probably never successfully had done it.
Yeah.
So combining our processes that we utilize from NextStar and software as well too, to help with the tech side of things. So sizing things correctly.
Yeah.
Understanding options on a more fundamental level.
Yep.
That was a big step up there. And the software we ended up using, which I think was a big help to us as well, is Mantle. Um, that was a big unlock for us. And I, again, one of the things I thought was very important behind that was we had at the time, I think one CA, right? And we were trying to figure out how to get more comfort advisors.
I think we might've had 2 or 3.
Was it 2 at the time?
Yeah.
Maybe it was. Okay. Not a lot, right? And we had the lead flow for more. We were struggling to find a good way to get comfort advisors in who had all of the technical capability and knowledge to quote those systems. Systems, um, understand the model numbers and things. I mean, to this day, there's too, too many model numbers out there, too many different brands. So understanding what all that was just becomes complicated. So we needed the software to help ease that sales burden. How can we take someone who's sales-oriented and understands the process and understands the value building and give them the tools to sell HVAC instead of trying to find someone who is wildly technically capable and then teaching them how to Yeah. Right. And that I think was the big, like, that was the next iteration. Okay, so we can, we can hand this to literally anybody that we can trust in a home and we can teach them what they need to know to do the HVAC side of it. We just have to know that we can trust them inside the home and give this process to them that'll work through.
And some of that proved, it ended up proving like wrong.
Yeah.
Like, and not to anyone's fault, but we did end up finding it easier to bring in industry.
Yes. I think it leveraged a lot though as to how technically capable Yes. Right? Like we could bring a tune-up tech that is good in the home and has just a base knowledge to it versus a 10-year experienced technician.
Yeah.
Right? Like the bar or the barrier to entry into the CA level dropped substantially. Not as far as we wanted to. The goal was obviously that 0% rate. You could take car salesmen and make them that. We tried that, didn't work great.
Yeah.
But we definitely were able to bring the bar down to a much more manageable level that our recruitment teams could actually fulfill and sustain.
One of the funny things about this journey is pure numbers, we got better and we learned new things along the way. And the most recent iteration is we drove process with the help of software, with the help of internal training, with the help of external training like Nexstar. But we also like it created some new problems too, which I think is kind of funny. Like, because one of the things we wanted was like, how do we increase— it's called attach rate. So how do we increase attach rate? So how do we add more indoor air quality or how do we add more extended warranty or whatever, like in order to beef up average ticket?
Yeah.
And it worked.
Yeah.
Sort of in a way to our detriment because we didn't quite know, the next iteration isn't even like, hey, our average ticket improved. It's more like, hey, we're selling stuff, this is really cool, but we're selling stuff we've never sold before. How do we do that? How do we retool our install team to be able to handle 26-seer stuff? They don't We've never done that.
Heat pumps were an anomaly to us until this iteration, right?
Or like, uh, like communicating systems. Yeah, it went from like, you know, we went from like this discount-driven, like everything we're gonna sell is 13 SEER, bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, to like, hey, we actually install a couple communicating systems a week. Like maybe one a day. Like it's a lot.
It's a lot.
And, uh, yeah, we had some warranty pickups. So I guess like walk me through We went from this sort of low-cost provider, the discount HVAC guy, to we're now putting in premium top-of-market equipment. What did that look like? Your team's doing the work. Big Reputation makes sure that Google knows it. Some of the key areas they help are if you have multiple GBPs, they can post on every single one of them every day. They can send reviews by your closest GBP to wherever the job was completed. And they have built-in SEO heatmaps that show exactly where you rank on the map pack in real time. There's no more manual updates, no more missed opportunities, just results. Get started free at bigreputation.ai and unlock 15 free SEO scans today.
Ironically, way simpler and frankly an accident because I don't know that we intentionally set out to do it. Our focus was increase the average ticket. We thought about things like IQ, we thought about Um, full systems, right? But even the SEER rating, like getting just the higher efficiency systems in, heat pumps, side discharge units, all these things that are easy average ticket increasing.
Yeah.
Um, they weren't front of mind at the time. A lot of that came from, again, the software choice, right? So when we introduced Mantle into the team, a lot of that just started to happen because that's the process.
I remember the first week. Yeah, we just like sold a 20-something and we're like, what?
Yeah, we sold it on accident and it was like, oh crap, okay, we have to do this now.
We have to figure out how to do it.
But it's because the options were, it's stupid simple, right? It's, we just had to offer it. We weren't offering this stuff in the first place. We had in the price book, but—
13 SEER only.
Yeah. It's 'cause that's what you're comfortable talking about. So you never put it out there. It's the same thing with IAQ. We never offered the IAQ because you saw the humidifier and you left it there. So people wouldn't think to, hey, let's offer a new one.
Yeah.
Well, suddenly when you go and you lay out, it's a 2,500 square foot house, it's 2 floors, and here's the load calcs on it. This is what it looks like. Uh, here's the existing system, et cetera. And it spits out everything from a 13 SEER up to 20 SEER side discharge heat pump. Yeah.
Yeah.
Everything came included with a duct cleaning, um, humidifier and UV. Suddenly that's right in front of the customer from the rip, right? So we're not having to add these things on post-fact if they ask about 'em. We're just offering right off the rip. I—that's where we start to see it from because it's you know suddenly it's not you as the comfort advisor having to add them; it's there for you. So when you go to present from the rip, you're already offering those high-end products. You're already offering those IQs, and it's up to the customer to say no, not for you to upsell mid-sale the system itself already. Yeah, become a much easier sales process. Probably some backend psychology behind that too, right from the homeowner having to physically want to remove that stuff. They see it on there and. They had to be the ones to say no. Uh, we just saw that inherent increase from that too, right? Where suddenly now, okay, yeah, we got to train on IQ, we have to train on proper UV installation, um, side discharge units, how they function. What does it look like diagnosing those things during install? Because they're things that we just have never even done before.
Yeah, yeah, that became good. Our next iteration will be kind of interesting because we're expecting like— so, so we went through like a period of like, hey, this is new, like what do we do now? And now we have that figured out. Our install manager really took that on. I feel like he did an awesome job. And where we're at now is we're back refocusing on average ticket again. And the way we think we're going to get there is financing. So do you want to share, I guess, where our current thoughts are on that?
Yeah. So the financing, the conversation we're having now is around the total value of a system versus the total monthly cost. The entire thing is following car industry standards there of homeowners. Do they care as much about how much the upfront, like this is the total of the system versus how much can I afford monthly? That financing is accessible to them. And at which stage in the process do we introduce it to them? Right?
Yeah.
And the theory we're working off of now is the sooner we introduce that, the better, because we're gonna—
Some of that's just from like our data. Like we're recording calls and The earlier in the process, I think it's one, we're more likely to close, and 2, the average ticket is like $6,000 more or something.
Yes.
If we bring up financing in the first 5 minutes, it's some like outrageous statistic.
Our own data in-house, so I can't speak for holistically, but it's 13% higher close rate for technicians who offer financing before options are offered.
Yeah.
Right. So historically speaking, people would like to go in and put that into their sales process. So here's the options, here's what you have, here's your total investments, and these are what the monthly payments would look like. So the theory we're working off of with the financing now—
Yeah.
Is when we're looking at how soon that we offer it, the sooner we offer, the more likelihood that we have of a successful sale. Where historically we've thought about, we offer the option, we talk about total investment, then we talk about financing. We already have a heightened customer, right? Because they're, they have that shock. from how much that system's gonna cost. Now you have to bring them down through the explanation of financing.
Yeah.
Versus if we start from the beginning, which things like—
Hey, we have a ton of great financing options.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yep. We already bring the barrier down. And then when we're in the presentation steps, for example, like how we use Mantle, the very first thing that the homeowner sees is that financing option. They're gonna see the best financing option we have out there. So before they can even see that total investment cost, it's $20,000. We're already bringing those barriers down by seeing, oh, it's $125 a month.
Yeah.
Once we then talk about total investment, we're no longer through that shock and awe, right? We've now justified, okay, we can afford, we're in budget for $125 a month. That's okay. We can process that.
Yeah.
We want to know the total investment. We still want to be transparent about the things, but it's much easier to have that conversation after we've already justified what we can afford inside of that.
Yeah.
So the process that we're going through now is how do we make sure that every time we're in front of a homeowner, We're having that conversation and we're using that process upfront, talking about that as we go through those presentations and leading up to it. So we're prepping the homeowner for that so that way we can have a better and more successful closing process.
I haven't bought a car in a while. Like, how early does it— or, well, I guess most of the advertisements are like, check out this. So really, like, even pre-experience, like, someone's got financing on the brain.
Yeah, and that's part— exactly, they have financing on the brain. And the other side of that too is how enticing is the financing? Now, whether or not they qualify for it, right? It's what's getting them in the door to talk to you.
Yeah.
I say this all the time as we're going through this theory now is we're trying to mimic the Ford concept, right?
Yes, yes.
That 72 months, 0%. People see that whether they can qualify for it or not, it's getting them in the door to talk about it because nobody else is offering that.
Yeah, that's pretty nice.
Yeah, and that's, again, will be unique for us currently 'cause the best thing we've found competitive locally is in the 48 to maybe 60 months, very rarely. 72 is frankly unheard of around us.
Yeah.
So being able to offer that, the way we're treating that is you get financing promotions or you get special pricing.
Yeah.
So leveraging that through the software, we're able to— the very first thing they see is they're seeing that 72 months, 0%. And that's just a wildly attractive monthly payment for them to see right off the rip, which is just setting us up better to handle any of the other objections that we have come down the line there.
Yeah.
And when you start to see that, right, 72 months, you understand What that is, then the technician or the comfort advisor can have that conversation. They're thinking about the IQ, right? We're talking 72 months, 0%. That IQ, we're talking $5 a month difference, right? Now it's much easier to talk about those add-ons in there because what's $5 a month versus $1,000 upfront cost, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This will be interesting. It'd be fun to watch. Like, I, I think what's been interesting is our sales process has developed. Like, one, average ticket's obviously expanded quite a bit. We're up from 5,000 to 12,500. We're now probably going to be in the 14,000s, 15,000s with this change. It should be a meaningful impact to the business. So hopefully triple the average ticket in 4 years. And almost all of it through process, not finding unicorns, but do we deliver a consistent process? Can we repeat it? Well, the interesting separation is now between marketed leads And tech-generated.
Yeah.
Because our average is $12,500, but our average for marketed leads is like $8,800 or so. It's a very low competitive, but average for TGLs I think is in the 15s. I have to pull it, but it is kind of significant. So what I'm expecting to happen, I don't think our TGL average ticket's going to change much. It'll probably bounce up a little bit. I think where we will see the most lift is our marketed leads because we're going to come in like hot and heavy with like a new financing promo that other people just don't have or can't afford.
Yeah. Yeah. But again, I think even with the financing promotion, even if you can't get your hands on a 72-month, it's how it's executed. Yeah. When are you talking about it? At what stage in the sales process? Even if you can't get your hands on 70, what about 60? What about 48? What about 36? It doesn't matter as long as you've got something. To work off of. It's at what stage in the process do you bring that conversation up with the homeowner? Yeah, because in my mind, if you're using financing as a rebuttal tool to price objections, it's too late. Like, you're on an uphill battle. Yeah, you're not trying to justify your cost versus you've already warmed the lead the entire time through that process. So it's seeing it, bringing it up during the, uh, the value build, during the rapport build with the homeowner, then during your presentation step. Like, you should not be presenting your total investment prices before your financing prices, right? Because everything that you do to work against that's going to make it harder. So the better that lineup is in the beginning, whether it's an amazing plan or just your standard financing, is going to help in that process.
Yeah, yeah, agreed. It'll also be fascinating to do like a 6-month-from-now check-in on average ticket and see where we ended up landing. Yeah, but yeah, my guess is like $14,000 to $15,000. It should be like a big uptick.
Yeah, it should be. And again, we've seen it so far, even just with our TGLs did go up in general as well too. That's a new process.
Yeah, switching over from like CAs to our current model was like a dramatic average ticket change.
But that's part of my caveat, I think, as to why I like the out-of-industry on this. Our— the flip process that we have for our technicians, right, is that over-the-phone sale with the inside sales rep. Yeah. They are not HVAC techs by nature. Yep. So they just trust the Mantle process, right? Mantle says Put these IQ on here, put this on here. These are AHRI matchups. These are guaranteed to work systems for that setup. So they just trust it versus like that backend. Well, I've been a tech in the field for 10 years. I know what should go in here. They're trusting the information that's been provided, that Mantle's going to provide the right output, and then they're going to roll off of it. So yeah, it's that. I think is why we've seen a higher tick in there as well too, because if you look at a CA versus the inside sales, IQ is never removed. It's just always assumed that it's going to be on there because it is, and it sells because it's really a non-question to the homeowner, right? So it's—
Yeah, do you want clean air?
Exactly. Yeah, for sure. And that's been one of the side effects or one of the benefits we've seen from that process in conjunction with everything else.
Yeah. So as we're prepping to go from like 12.5 to like 14, 15, uh, what we've learned as we've driven process is like how frequent and effective is our coaching and our training, like sales training, but also just like training in general. Yeah. With our CAs and like how are we measuring and what are we doing to continue to improve? So like what, what, what does that look like for us now and what do you think it's going to look like?
Yeah, I think the— so the tools of the trade is I think what has been a good changing point for us, right? Where before it would require ride-along with those comfort advisors to really understand what's happening. And even then you're getting a short glimpse of this. Yeah. The softwares— again, I'm just going to use the Mantle as the example here that we're— that we utilize in this— is we're able to get more in-depth understanding as what's actually happening inside the home.
Yeah.
Um, where homeowners are focused, right? So we can see how that technician or how that comfort advisor went through the presentation with the homeowner, and then we can understand where are they fascinated on, right? So if they don't close on site, if something doesn't happen there in The homeowners looking at those quotes afterwards.
Mm-hmm.
We have access to understand where are they going inside those quotes? What are they focused on?
Mm-hmm.
Comparing that up with, like I said, we record our conversations in the home. We can tie that, okay, so why are they focused so much on this specific part, right? Maybe they're focused on specifically this 15 SEER option. What did the conversation look like inside the home? So we can pair those 2 together, really understand, Were we the ones leading the conversations there? Is the homeowner led there? Which can give us some information. How are we— how can we coach better to the comfort advisors? Right. Did we steer towards the middle of the road or did the homeowner go there? How do we talk about our high-end options versus the economy low options there? You know, is that comfort advisor guiding the homeowners in those directions? Are we steering them away from them? How do we talk about the IQs inside of that? We can tailor those pieces together to really understand What's happening? Yeah, and then we can—
Well, you talked about like, are we removing stuff or are we not?
Yeah.
And I think there's a rating.
Yeah, there's a—
You can like—
Yep. Yeah, there's a—
Directly score or something?
Yeah, it's the proposal rating. So it shows us how good the overall, let's say you offer 5 options, right? What does the strength of that proposal look like? So did we offer a good separation between there? Maybe did they manually override It's called the magic button. So it automatically gives you good dispersion across the lowest tier system to the highest tier system that fits in the criteria, right? Did you go in and override those?
Like price dispersion or?
Price dispersion, efficiencies, a whole bunch of factors that's in there, right? So—
So we're not just presenting like 4 options of 26 tiers. Got it.
Yeah. So it's looking at how well did we set up those options? Yeah. And price alone, right? You don't want to have something that's $14,000, $14,200, $14,500. The customer, even though if you explain the differences, aren't going to understand that. Yeah, they're going to want to see price differences. They want to see SEER differences and understand, okay, there's an actual difference here, not just a random dollar amount. There's no logic behind. Yeah, that proposal strength gives us that again, another coaching tool to say, are you using the system correctly and what you're outputting, is it giving a good customer experience?
This was good. Any closing thoughts on improving HVAC?
Process, process, process. That's the biggest thing. I mean, I'll say it's lessons learned, painful lessons learned, but the— as our process has been more refined, as the mechanisms that we use to move through that have been refined, it's been continued improvement and success. I think we'll iterate probably 5 or 6 more times off of this as it just— we learn more of the details and what the homeowners are looking to see out of it. Um, but it's made a big difference.
Yeah, huge difference. Yeah. Awesome. Cool. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Make sure you give me 5 stars wherever you're listening to this and hit that sub button.
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