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Summer is when HVAC companies shine—but it’s also when things can start to slip.
In this episode, Mary Carter and Stephen Ross talk about what really happens during peak season—from higher stress and more mistakes to slipping product mix and lost revenue opportunities. They share practical ways to stay sharp, including slowing down your process, reinforcing your sales fundamentals, and keeping your team focused when the pressure is high.
You’ll also hear how to manage burnout, maintain confidence, and avoid the trap of “being busy but less profitable.” Whether you’re in sales, service, or leadership, this is your reminder to stay disciplined, think long-term, and finish the season strong.
Interested in becoming a Trane dealer? Visit us at partners.trane.com to learn more about how you can partner with a leader in HVAC innovation. Explore opportunities to elevate your business and stay ahead in the market with Trane!
Creators and Guests
Host
Mary Carter
Mary Carter is a seasoned sales and marketing leader with over six years at Trane Technologies, currently serving as Regional Sales Manager. With a strong foundation in RHVAC, consumer finance, and strategic account management, Mary brings valuable insights and real-world experience to every conversation.
Host
Producer
Editor
Kerianne O'Donnell
Kerianne O'Donnell is the Digital Learning Manager at Trane Technologies and serves as the editor of the HVAC Full Blast podcast. With a background in graphic design and a strong passion for developing digital learning experiences, Kerianne brings her creative expertise to the podcast, delivering engaging and impactful content to listeners.
What is HVAC Full Blast?
HVAC Full Blast is your bi-weekly dose of HVAC business growth, powered by Trane. Hosted by Mary Carter (Trane Technologies) and Stephen Ross (Sandler), this podcast is built for residential HVAC dealers who want to scale their business, sharpen their sales, and lead with confidence.
Tune in for expert interviews, dealer success stories, and practical tips on pricing, service agreements, workforce development, and more. Whether you're in the field or in the office, HVAC Full Blast helps you stay ahead in a competitive market.
Interested in becoming a Trane Dealer? Visit our website at https://partners.trane.com/
We'd love your feedback and suggestions on future episodes. Please email us at hvac_full_blast@tranetechnologies.com.
This podcast channel is for general informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed in these episodes are those of the panelists and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Trane Technologies. Trane Technologies makes no warranty or guarantee concerning accuracy or completeness of the content presented in this webinar.
Trane does not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. This material is for informational purposes only and it should not be relied on for tax, legal, or accounting advice. Tax law is subject to continual change. All decisions are your responsibility and you should consult your own tax, legal, and accounting advisors. Trane disclaims any responsibility for actions taken on the material presented.
All trademarks referenced are the trademarks of their respective owners. ©2025 Trane. All Rights Reserved.
Today, Mary Carter and Stephen Ross bring a little summer energy and a lot of real talk about what it takes to stay sharp when business is at its busiest. They break down how to maintain mental toughness during peak season, avoid getting sloppy when the pressure is on, and keep your closing rates, product mix, and performance where they should be, even when you're overwhelmed. If you're in the middle of the summer rush and trying to keep your team focused, confident, and performing at a high level, this conversation will help you finish strong. Let's get started.
Welcome back to HVAC Full Blast. I'm Mary Carter.
I'm Stephen Ross.
And a very, very nice patriotic wave there. Are you are you feeling patriotic this summer for any particular reason?
Well, here's a here's a tip for you, Mary. If if you ever get elected to be or or you win a pageant and all of a sudden you're missed fourth of July Oh. They're gonna put you in a convertible, and then you ride down the street. Right? And so it is elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, wrist, and then elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, wrist.
Oh, wow. If you're listening to us on our audio only experience, highly recommend checking out our arms on YouTube.
Yeah. Wow. Elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, wrist, elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, wrist.
Wow. Well, I miss fifth of July because that's my birthday, but now I kind of wanna be fourth of July too. So that's pro tips, Stephen Ross. Alright. That's today's episode. Thanks for joining us.
I mean, you know, pro modeling tips here on HVAC full blast.
That's amazing. Not not what the listeners thought they were going to get, but hopefully getting a few smiles out there. So, well, it is summer when we're we're recording this in summer. We're lucky enough to publish this in summer and it is our country's two hundred and fiftieth birthday, which is also kind of exciting.
So are you doing anything fun to celebrate the holidays?
Or maybe even better yet, do you have a favorite I mean, you always say on the podcast, like, I'm old. So what was your favorite of the last two fifty?
My favorite of the last two fifty? Well, I've been here for twenty percent of them. So I, you know, I would say, you know, seventeen I mean, nineteen seventy six was also a big year for the country. Right? That was the two hundredth.
Also, the year I was born, also the year the Pittsburgh Steelers won their second Super Bowl. So, I mean, it would be hard to beat that just in general if you were lining up all of the years.
Nineteen seventy six would be a good one.
Wow. Two hundredth. Not not bad. Not not bad at all.
Yeah. Yeah. I've been around for lots of our country's milestones, Mary. I'll tell you about them sometime.
I don't know if I have enough time. No. I'm kidding.
But no. That's great. I I I love summer. I am a a huge summer fan.
Not only is my birthday in the summer, but I think summer flavors are some of the best of the year. Like, I, like, love a watermelon. I love anything on the grill. And so whenever it comes into summer season, it's usually whenever I'm working with like a fitness or health coach that they are giving me a lot of critiques because they're like, wow.
You just, like, you just went wild every day this week. I'm like, I can't help it. Like, I need I need all the summer flavors all the time.
So Well, you'll be glad to know.
I I also have my Rocky Balboa American flag shorts ready to go for the fourth of July barbecue. So those actually already arrived.
So Yeah.
Like, red, white, and blue iconic. It's such Yeah. I'm here for it. I'm I love love the summertime.
Of course, I love boating, so I'm out as often as I can get. And one thing that happened to me recently, so the kind of boat that we like to sail, it's if you're pressing pretty hard and really going for it, especially in a race situation, you can capsize. And some might even say like, you're not trying if you're not capsizing. I think you can try perfectly well without going upside down.
But anyway, the other week I knocked out my first ever and second ever capsize on the same night and talk about kind of being a little out of my depth in terms of knowing what to do, very scared because it was blown pretty heavy. And so you gotta recover quickly, but also just not really knowing what to do with my body and where to go and where to be. And I'll be honest, my mental toughness did not show up for me in that moment. I was just like, I don't know, I'm out.
Like, this is really scary. And thankfully my husband slash skipper was like, Nope, come on. Here we go. We had a plan.
And he's done it many, many, many, many times, but kind of somewhere we were talking about going today is how do you build up that mental toughness, especially in the summer season? Summer is so notably crazy in our industry. This is really kind of our our chance to shine and go win.
But when the cup runneth over, you know, how do you sustain and still make really good positive strides when you're just kinda feeling like you're in the water and the boat is floating away? Like, how do I get this going?
Yeah. Yeah.
I think it's a good question.
I would always try to schedule a pretty good pep talk for my company in July and there's a couple themes that I think we would hit on every year.
You know, the the first one that comes to mind is, you know, if you have a problem on every tenth install, just to make it number. Right? Like, nobody's perfect. The salespeople aren't perfect.
The installers aren't perfect. You're gonna have some issues, and you gotta you gotta overcome those issues. So if during, you know, say, March, you have a a problem one every ten installs, but maybe it takes you two weeks to do ten installs. You're like, hey.
If we have a problem once every two weeks, that feels normal. Well, then all of a sudden, summertime hits, and you're doing ten installs a week. And now you have a problem once a week. And it feels like, oh my god.
We have so many more problems than we used to. Yeah. And and maybe you don't necessarily as a percentage. It's just that the volume is picked up.
And so that's true whether it's the service department or the warehouse or the dispatchers.
You know, if your dispatcher makes a a mistake every twenty fifth call she dispatches, well, all of a sudden summertime hits, and she might be dispatching twenty five calls in a day. And, you know, where normally that might take two days. And so it just it feels like we have way more problems. And, certainly, we have more problems.
It's just it doesn't necessarily mean that the wheels are coming off, and we gotta redo everything and, oh my god. This is terrible. It's just kind of a healthy perspective of, yeah. I mean, if we're doing twice as much work, we're gonna have twice as much problems.
So I think just maybe sometimes a little perspective midsummer to go, hey. I know it feels like each problem is catastrophic because there's we're so busy. And so if you gotta stop and take time to fix a problem, that's time you could've spent with another customer doing something proactive or or or maybe a little bit more profitable. But, you know, let's slow down.
Don't make it don't make mistakes. Don't feel rushed. You know? But we are gonna make mistakes.
There are gonna be problems during the summer. So I think just kinda step one, if if I was giving a pep talk midsummer would just be perspective. Like, we're in good shape. Like, life's good.
Like, we we built for this. It's busy. It's crazy. There's gonna be mistakes, but it's okay.
I think that that was kind of step one.
Yeah. I love being able to gather a little bit of perspective and sometimes you have to talk to people to get that perspective and do that check-in. So the idea of doing it as a group and getting a big pep talk going, I think could be really helpful. And even if you just talk to maybe a peer in the industry too, and you just talk to somebody else that just is maybe going through what you're going through.
I know I do that with my own peers on my team all the time. And it's amazing how the tunnel vision of all your problems can seem so overwhelming. And then all of a sudden you talk to somebody else who's maybe going through a similar thing and then you're like, Oh, well, maybe this isn't just overwhelming. This is just what I am dealing with right now.
And actually I can tap into some expertise to help me out. Actually, in my sailing example, that's exactly what I did, right? I had to reach out for some help and someone with much more expertise brought me right along. So taking my own analogy even further, I think that is really good advice.
Just get some perspective and then also reach out to see where you can find some expertise. What about, let's say in your example with, you know, we're dealing with one problem every ten installs.
How are you kind of capturing those problems so that maybe we turn those into solutions or improvements? Yeah.
It's, I'm a sales guy, and so I I tend to view the world through a sales lens. And and so on one hand, that doesn't mean that I mean, there's always just in every industry well, this is interesting to see as a Sandler trainer because we we work in multiple industries, but there's always tension between sales and operations. In any company, any industry, that tension exists.
And, but, you know, viewing it from the sales perspective, a lot of times, problems do start on the sales side. If the job isn't sold correctly and we're trying to force something through a funnel that really should doesn't fit. I mean, there there's there's lots of things like that that that could happen. So I I think it is incumbent on the sales team to really buckle down to go, okay. Hey. What do we need to do a little differently to tighten up?
My business partner had we've interviewed Tim on the podcast before, but, obviously, was in the marines for a long time. So he brings the the marine mentality.
And and one of the sayings is, you know, fast is slow.
Slow is quick. Meaning, you know, if you're rushing through things, you're gonna make mistakes, then you gotta stop, undo the mistake, fix it. But if you go slowly, methodically, then you get to the finish line, quicker than you do if you're making mistakes. So that was the other thing that we're always kind of trying to preach was, hey.
You know, take enough time with any one customer to make sure it's done right. Because if we have to go back a second time, whether that's a sales call or an install issue or a service call or or whatever it is, that going back the second time, that that does kill profitability. It kills profitability anytime during the year. But during the summer, it's it's like it's exponential.
So slow down is actually the the other message, that we would give our folks is just take your time wherever you are. Be there. Don't be thinking to head to the next call. Don't be thinking backwards to the past call.
Just focus on what you're doing and and try to knock that out.
Yeah. I've I've never been able to follow that advice more clearly than with my own reading of my own email. Right? I can be in my inbox sometimes knocking things out, firing off.
And then the next thing I know, I'm not really reading the emails anymore. I'm just kind of finding keywords and I know certain words mean certain solutions. And then you next thing you know, you get a response back that's like, what do you mean? And I'm like, what do you mean?
What do I mean? And then three emails later, you're like, oh, if I just slowed down and actually read the prompt for the question, could have saved what could have been a text message. Right. You know, I hate text message emails.
Like those are the worst.
And then same with our customers. How many times has a homeowner called in? Maybe it was just a simple question or even just simple troubleshooting, and then that turns into a full blown service call around a truck. And next thing you know, that's lost time revenue that you could have been doing something more productive when maybe they could have just handled something over the phone or, especially with some of our diagnostics platforms now, right? There's a lot at your fingertips more than we've ever had before. And have you taken the time to kind of ready the team to be able to troubleshoot virtually? You know, that can be a great way to kind of slow down, but then also save, save that time.
Interesting, interesting ways that we can slow down. But I always find that that advice while so true is the hardest to hear and the hardest to apply when you're in it, when you're just feeling inundated.
Yeah, it works as well as telling somebody who's really stressed out to calm down. It's tough to hear, it's tough to take the advice when you're in the middle of it for sure and emotions are high and energy's low and all those kinds of things. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yep.
I know. And what is it about this work that makes the emotions so high? Because I feel it too. It's, you know, I guess if I had to answer my own question, it's that I just care about my customers so much and I want them to have the best experience with me all the time. And when I feel like they're having a bad experience, I wanna do everything I can to fix it. And I imagine there's some version of that as we go through the supply chain here, that it's just hard to be in situations where you're working with people who don't seem like they're happy.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I think that, you know, with dealing with customers, I mean, this is where, you know, sales training, we we try to do it year round at Sandler. Like, we know you're busy. We know you know, in historically, our industry has said, hey. We train in the spring and the fall, and then we're too busy during the summer to do the training.
And, you know, one of the things that we see is it it's a little bit like elementary school. You know, you learned how to read, and then you get to May, and then you're off for the summer, and you come back in August, and you've got how to read. And so the first month back to school in August, the teacher has to kinda refresh your memory and help you remember what you learned in in May. And that happens, obviously, with all human beings.
I mean, anytime we're talking about content, but the the opportunity cost, if your sales tactics slip, if you get sloppy or lazy in the summer, the the opportunity cost, what you're missing out on is enormous. So we try to do training straight through the summer in the sense that, like, is it busy? Yes. Do we have an hour and a half?
No. But could we still do forty five minute blocks? Could we still work on technique? Could we still make sure we're remembering what we're supposed to do?
I think just keeping keeping an eye on the basics is is huge when you get stressed out. I mean, don't don't get sloppy. That that that would be the other the other takeaway, I think, from having having had some rough summers.
Yeah. Anything stand out from what you've seen?
Well, you know, it's a couple of things. I mean, one of the things that when I'm looking at a a heating and air company and I'm on the phone with a business owner or sales leader at some sort, and we're looking at metrics, for instance. You know, we're always looking at, say, product mix. You know, how many inverters are you selling versus single stage versus the multistage?
How many of your installs have an accessory attached, some sort of indoor air quality accessory, or did we upsell anything at all? Could be vapor barrier or insulation in the attic or depending on the company. Right? And one of the things that you see during the summertime is the salespeople get busy.
And so average ticket actually drops because they're not spending the time to talk about multistage or inverter. They're not spending the time to talk about indoor air quality. They're walking into a house. It's ninety degrees inside the house.
They're like, here's what we got. Do you want it? Yes or no? And and so one of the things you see is your product mix drops.
Well, again, you know, if you've got an average ticket of fifteen, sixteen thousand dollars in May, but an average ticket of twelve thousand dollars in June, I mean, that that's a huge discrepancy there that you're leaving money on the table. But then the other one that goes hand in hand, I mean, sometimes we think, well, we're if we're just doing basic stuff and just basic sales that at least our closing ratio is going up. And and that often case is not that that's not true. It when you are a heating and air company that you're built on selling high end equipment, good quality equipment, indoor air quality, and inverters, and so on.
If you get sloppy, then you actually see your closing ratio drop too. And so I sometimes I'll be on the phone with a sales guy, and the sales guy says, man, I had a I had a good month. I had a a three hundred thousand dollar June.
And then I hey. Congratulations. That's awesome. But then you look at the numbers. What's your closing ratio?
What's your average ticket? And you go, man, if you had the same average ticket in March and the same closing ratio you had in March, you woulda had a four hundred and fifty thousand dollar June. And so sometimes the fact that we're having a big month just masks that we we got sloppy. And that's where you go, oh, man.
Like, you know, that that's, I think, the crux in the summer is if if you coulda had four million dollars in revenue through three months in the summer, but you only had three million dollars, hey. Congrats. You had three million dollars, but, man, you left some money on the table. Like, that's that's the shame.
Yeah. I'm I'm never balking at three million dollars. Right? But Yeah. Like, show me an opportunity cost of one million, and I'm now I'm just crunching my nose.
Right? Like, that's that's rough. Because what you're saying, makes total sense if your average ticket goes down but you close more jobs.
Good. I mean, well, or in theory, because of the volume of the month, you're closing more. Right? But because you're closing more jobs, your operations costs are gonna go up as well. You've gotta go serve all those customers now, but now you're serving them with less profitable equipment and couple that with maybe a potential loss on the closing ratio.
No wonder sales and ops fight all the time. Right? Like, it's like everyone's trying to say, show me what you've done for me lately. And the sales numbers are kind of going down and the ops numbers are going up and they're like, you know, this isn't working. So you can see why organizations get into that push pull more often than not, especially maybe in these busier times of the season when customers are really thinking about your service as top of mind, need to work on it right now.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that the techniques that if you're if you are slipping and this would apply to service technicians as much as salespeople and so on. But if you're seeing your average ticket drop, what is it?
Where do you tighten up? And for the most part, we would say you you probably don't have to hard close people in the summer. Where you should tighten up is the first five minutes that you're with the customer. If you can really I mean, it you're busy.
They're busy.
You're dripping sweat. It's eighty five degrees inside their house. You know, nobody wants to slow down when you walk in the door. The customer's like, oh, thank god you're here.
Let me show you where the unit is. And and so that's a lot of times where the process is getting shortcutted. And so if you can just slow down that first five minutes in the house and say, hey. Breathe deep.
You know, is there an a current problem? Yes. But are there systemic problems in the house? Probably.
I mean, if this is an old enough home where the heating air system might need to be replaced, like, they're probably short of return air. They probably have leaky ductwork. They probably don't have a good filtration system. So don't just fix the Band Aid.
You know, look for systemic problems, not just what the urgent piece is. And that that thought process, both on the part of the technician and the homeowner or salesperson, like, all of that gets started that first five minutes. And so if you just gloss over the first five minutes and just go right into the unit and start diagnosing, that's where it's costing you money.
Yeah.
I met a sales professional recently in our industry and just sort of a getting to know you kind of meeting. I wasn't gonna come in necessarily with like, let's burn this down and rebuild what you're doing from the ground up. Pretty successful young entrepreneur and doing well, adopting some more consumer financing into their proposals. But it was very interesting because with his owner, he really didn't like the proposal software they were using.
And there was definitely a little friction between the owner saying, well, that's kind of the route we're going. And then this guy saying like, I don't think the proposals really tell the whole story that I'm trying to tell when I'm trying to get the sale. And I'm like, wow, that's so interesting. And I'm sort of like playing peer mediator in the room, like listening to these two points of view.
Was really, it kind of fascinating. But ultimately what happened when the owner left the room was that the sales guy said, you know, I don't like the proposal software so much that I've just gone to be a one system guy. I offer one system. I know what they need.
I know what it's going to be. I don't even need to offer the four options. I'm just doing the one because I know what I need. And I was like, wow.
I said, you know, I don't wanna blow up your spot. And unfortunately I'm the only one here. So if I give the feedback, he's gonna know where it came from, but I really think you need to share that feedback with your owner. Like that's a huge, huge just tweak that we could make to not only present more best in class options, but also like just shore up this relationship between what he wants you to sell and what you're actually selling.
And it was just so interesting.
And I'm curious if people are having those kinds of conversations with their sales team. Is it just all directive or are we getting the feedback? Is it two way to sort of say, does this work?
Didn't know if you'd ever run into anything like that or you've seen that before. Because I was definitely learning live in the moment with the customer.
Yeah. I I had a job about fifteen years ago where I was VP of sales for about a thirty five billion dollar a year company. So we were doing a lot of commercial and a pretty good chunk of residential, and we had a residential sales guy. I was let me think of how old I was.
I was probably thirty five when I took that job, and he had been working at that company for thirty five years. So he was not very excited to have a thirty five year old boss. And so he hated my guts. And so but he was a one system guy.
Like, I go in. I've been doing this forever. I know what they need. I tell them what they need and so on.
And so I kept trying to get him to use four proposal you know, use the proposal software, give four options, and so on, and he just refused. And so finally, what I said, which was I was about one step away from firing the guy, I finally just said, hey. If you don't give the customer four choices, I'll pay you a commission just a flat rate of two hundred and fifty dollars. So I'll pay you to go out there and survey and write down all the measurements and everything else, but I'm only gonna pay you two fifty.
If you give them four choices, then I'll I'll pay you commission. And he had made, you know, I don't know, seventy, seventy five thousand dollars a year for five or six years before I got there.
Three years later, he made two hundred grand for the first time. I will tell you this, Mary. He still to this day probably hates my guts. So there is a point at which you just go, I don't care if you hate me or you don't hate me, but you're gonna give four choices because that's what customers need to make a good decision. And so even despite the fact that he saw the income benefit of doing that, he still hated me. That's fine.
Oh, man. Well, you know, I don't know. I guess maybe, you know, I hate you when I'm rich and versus just be bitter when I'm poor, you know, I don't know. Is that is that is that some self help book out there named that?
Probably not, but Whatever.
You know?
That's so interesting, But see, that's like, it's kind of where I'm getting at is what a way to just sort of say, okay, understand you don't like it this way, but this is why I'm doing it and create that sort of bridge of understanding and kind of slow down to understand it versus like, this is what this guy wants me to do and I'm not about it and I'm just gonna go on my way. And it was interesting looking at some of the ticket sizes.
They were, I will say lower on the product mix end than maybe where we would hope this company could grow towards.
And just looking into what was going on and again, really not anything going on wrong in terms of sizing systems. Like there were still load calculations being done and whatnot, but because the total ticket price was such a driver for this professional, it just precluded him from the ability to be able to see what was possible with other options.
So it was very interesting. I don't know, maybe I'll go back and just share an idea with the business owner to try to get somebody motivated. I also do though, I do wanna give the sales professional a little credit because the proposal software, we ran through a couple of examples.
I can see why you didn't like it. It was kind of confusing and the proposals and the examples that came out as just kind of playing like, you know, Susie Homemaker looking at it when we were in the office. I can see why he's getting feedback from his customers that are saying like, I don't really know what I'm looking at here.
So I do think there has to be sometimes that two way communication of like, Hey, we gotta modernize this. We gotta change this a little bit. We gotta make this a little bit more appealing for people to grasp.
Maybe you don't do that in the summer season, but that could be one note that you take to reevaluate in the spring or in the fall so that your company shows up really well in the summer season. I think that that could be a different way to take some of that feedback and make an improvement.
Yeah.
I think, you know, I one year when I was managing sales for a company in Denver, Colorado we were the official heating and air company of a professional football team in Denver, Colorado and not necessarily a great use of marketing money, but the owner got box seats so there was that.
But I got a chance to sit down with the offensive coordinator at one point and you know they say that there's no dumb questions. I asked a dumb question. And so my question was, you know, how many audibles does a quarterback have to choose from? Right?
Like, my high school team, we had four audibles. We had a run play to the right, a run play to the left, a rollout pass play to the right, and a rollout pass play to the left. That was it. So if we called an audible, it was one of those four.
You know? And, you know, that that was the year that Peyton Manning was there. And so, like, his ability to throw the ball was nowhere near as good as it had been when he was in Indianapolis, but he's still the quarterback because his ability to diagnose the defense, call the play, and so on. So my question was how many audibles does he have to pick from?
The offensive coordinator goes, man, the list is endless. He goes, first of all, what's the personnel package? The quarterback has to figure out, alright. We got an offensive line.
Do we have two tight ends, two receivers, and running back? Do we have one tight end, three receivers, and running back? Do we have two running backs, two tight ends, one receiver? You know, who's on the field?
So that's step one.
Step two is he's gotta figure out what's the defense doing. And so what's the best lineup of our people that are already on the field? We can't change our personnel. So based on that, what play do we need to be in? Then he calls an offensive line audible.
So is it are they just standard blocking? Do we think that their defense is gonna blitz? So we have to blitz block. He's gotta call for audible for the running backs.
So the running backs, if there's a blitz, one of them's or if it's only one, he has to stay in and pick up the blitz. So that's an audible. If there is no blitz, then I'm calling a pass play for the running back. Then I've got a a audible for the tight ends and then an audible for the receivers.
So when you figure out how many different options there are for each of those, it literally is almost an endless list of audibles.
And yet, Peyton Manning could call an audible, correctly diagnose the defense, and get that done in about fifteen seconds.
And but he knew his playbook. And I think sometimes RSPs, you know, I understand, hey. The software has to be good for the homeowner. We have to be able to understand what you know, the homeowner has to be able to understand what they're buying. I get all that. But sometimes the issue is the RSP, the comfort adviser, whatever we wanna call them, they don't know their playbook that well. And so if it takes them ten minutes to come up with option number one and then ten minutes to come up with option number two and ten minutes to come up with option number three, well, then they're never gonna give the customer four options.
If on the other hand, you've memorized your playbook and you know what to call, you know, if if this is pro level sales, you should know your stuff inside and out. You should know what the matchups are that you go to. You should know how to find them. You should know how to do it quickly.
You should know what size cabinet filtration is gonna go on that air handler or that furnace. So part of it is just sometimes they don't know their stuff that well. And so while I have sympathy for the proposal software, yeah, go get some good proposal software for sure. But a crappy sales guy with bad proposal software, just because we give him good proposal software, he's still a crappy sales guy.
So you gotta fix you gotta fix that.
Yeah.
I think that's ridiculously fair. And it's kind of interesting thinking about play calling and system design. Right? It's kinda it's not too dissimilar when you think about all the different pieces, you know, and just kinda how complex they can get. But like you said, if you don't know what all those options can be in each of those holders, then how would you be able to make that like a compelling offer? Right? Like if you don't even know what you have to offer, how are you gonna get somebody to be really interested in that?
So it's a really interesting analogy. We love a sports analogy around here. We do. We just yeah.
But I think that's how you differentiate too. I mean, if if the other heating and air companies are coming in and they're doing as we've made fun of best, better, good. And they've just got three standard options. I mean, the way to blow that up is to customize your options Yeah.
So that there's some differences in each of those levels. So now the homeowner gets to understand what's the difference between the variable speed air handler versus an ECM air handler. And why given the same outdoor unit, why might you spend a little bit more to get the variable speed air handler versus the ECM? I mean, those are the if you can have that kind of discussion with the homeowner, not super technical, but, hey.
It costs a little bit more, but it's a little bit better. That differentiates you from the heating and air company that just comes in and quotes one air handler all the time. So I I think that's that is part of your strategy.
Yeah, and being practical with the application of this, right? So if you're sitting here and you're listening to this and thinking, you know what? Yeah, I don't know if I could speak to that eloquently in a tight package in front of a homeowner. That's a great place to say, all right, I gotta slow down.
I gotta spend thirty to forty five minutes reading about what these are and what these do. Believe me, manufacturers loved to throw you literature and graphs and ideas on how you can spin this. Ask me how I know and learn it, commit it to memory, get your take on it so that you feel comfortable. I always say all the time, like, you know, sell it to yourself in the car, right? I sold more systems to my steering wheel than I care to admit, but just keep that going. And then natural, then that becomes second nature and something in your wheelhouse. So that's a great example of where you can slow down and practically apply this even in a busy season.
Yeah. And I it's, you know, not only I mean, you don't even have to read, the engineering manual. I mean, we've taken classes, made little modules that you can go sit it through online, and somebody will teach it to you. So that's available. It's just, you know, you have to take the time to do it.
And and I get it. Hey. We're busy. When do I get the time to do it? Well, I mean, quarterbacks, if you wanna be a highly paid quarterback, you're probably studying your playbook at home on the week you know, on the weeknights. So, know, maybe it does take a little extra time to get to know your playbook, but it it pays for itself for sure.
I think we've we've been speaking at this kind of from a, okay. It's it's busy season, and we're kind of overwhelmed. We're figuring out where we can sharpen our edge. And in my mind, that's a really highly motivated individual who maybe even though they're a little bit underwater and feeling the crunch, they're still motivated to get through it and do it.
What about our other individual who is in the crunch and maybe experiencing a little bit of that burnout kind of a feeling? How do we get that person motivated to keep this thing going?
Well, I think there's a couple things. It never hurts to just sit down and kind of reevaluate where you are. Right? I mean, it's, you know, you're halfway through the summer.
It's grueling. You're tired. You know, are there some tweaks or changes that can help you make it through the end? And it's a little bit.
It's both equal parts just a physical struggle. You physically are gonna get tired in the summer in this industry, but also just the mental struggle.
And I think that just that recalibration helps a little bit. I'll give you an example for me, two examples from when my kids were little.
One example would be every now and then I'd get a phone call and it would be a technician and they would say, hey, this customer without air, like, we gotta do something and it's seven o'clock at night. And so I've got to decide, am I gonna go out and and run this call?
Am I tired? Are we gonna wait till tomorrow? What are we gonna do? And, you know, a lot of times the the way that scenario would play out is it maybe it's my night to cook dinner.
Maybe it's my night to put the kids to bed. Maybe it's my night to kid give the kids a bath. Right? And so that that factors into it too.
And so if all of a sudden, I'm like, well, hey. I'm gonna go run this call.
Now you've got, like, the family implications of I'm working a lot of hours, and it's grinding on me, but it's also grinding on them. So I think from a goal setting standpoint, one of the things that was helpful for me was to sit down with the family and go, hey. What are our goals as a family?
And, you know, is there something like, could we celebrate at the end of the summer? Could we get to the end of the summer and go do something fun?
And so the way that would change is, you know, if I called my wife and I said, hey. A call just came in. Like, I'm gonna go run this call. She would say, you jerk. It's your night to put the kids to bed. Now I have to do it. Right?
If on the other hand, we had some goal at the end of the summer, like, hey. If I sell this much, then we get to go on this trip, then I would call and say, hey. This call just came in. I'm gonna run this call.
She would say, well, you better freaking close it because I'm gonna have to put the bed. Right? But at least it was a little bit different conversation than just, hey. You jerk.
And so I think getting aligned on goals during a stressful time from just a family perspective, I think for me was huge.
I agree. I actually just kind of went through this even with my own family because my travel schedule and season is a little crazy. I'll just leave it like crazy. Yeah.
It's a little crazy in Q1 and we kind of count April in as Q1 because it just kind of goes through April. And I was explaining it to a friend and then she said, it kind of sounds like you're an accountant. Like you, if you were an accountant and you said to your family, I'm just not free until after April twenty, they would all kind of understand and just sort of say like, yeah, no problem because I'm not an accountant. When I say that to people, people kind of like, why are you so busy for so long?
So anyway, the recalibration I have with my family was to sort of say like, Hey, my business requires that I just really kind of dedicate my time from January to April in a way that doesn't allow me to do a lot of extras. However, love all the extras when I'm free in these other months. And just having that mindset, all of a sudden, just kind of it allowed everybody to just remember like, Oh right, this is why Mary works this way. And this is why she does it this way.
And it's kind of funny because it's really similar to your own advice previously, where you just say, kind of like slow down. Maybe in this example, it's more of like a zoom out, get a little bit of the tangibles as to why you're here and what you're doing so that you can make a better conclusion and really kind of capture that for everybody that's involved, right? And just so that there's some shared understanding there.
I've also had this too, where I've experienced my own kind of burnout here and there where I've just kind of like pulled poured so much of what I wanted to do and do an activity, and then I have nothing to give anywhere else. And one thing that's always been really helpful for me, and you kind of mentioned it, is that you know, there is a physical strain that gets involved when you do something like that. And just checking in on your own basics, like catching up on some sleep or going for a water instead of a coffee or an energy drink, like Sounds so elementary, but can do wonders to just kind of recalibrate home base here.
And sleep has been one that has caught up on me a little bit more in my career more lately. Not so much when I was younger. I feel like I could do anything for twenty four hours a day. I was like invincible, but now I'm like, you know what?
Like I have to sleep. And if I don't, then I'm not a functional person and I can't give my all and I can't do the things that I wanna do. So it's okay. I think also to just sort of like recognize those signs and make sure you're taking care of yourself in that way, which I know that kind of gets like the mental health syrupiness on it, but it's true.
It's really important.
I think the the other strategy is, you know, as you get towards the end of the summer, and, again, maybe you're full blast still in in July, but, you know, there's light at the end of the tunnel, is starting to think about the fall. Like, hey. It is gonna slow down, and most contractors have a slow month, whether it's September or October or whatever that slow month is. And so just planning on that a little bit.
And I I think the the the two things that jump out for me are, one is figuring out what's critical versus what can wait, but then pre selling what can wait in the sense that I would say go ahead and collect a deposit. So in the in the sense that, let's say, Mary needs a repair, but maybe it would be better for her to replace the system. Well, in September, we're gonna have a a manufacturer rebate program. We know we're gonna have a fall program for that.
I'm gonna be a little slow and so on. So to say to Mary, hey. If you put down three thousand dollars now, we'll discount this for the fall, and we'll go ahead and put it in. And the discount doesn't have to be a discount I get.
It it could be the fall promotion, you know, just ballpark. You hey. You'll save some money. So that ability, you know, I don't wanna just blow the customer off and say, well, call me back in the fall.
I might lose the customer. But it but to go ahead and get a deposit or go ahead and sign the contract and get the steps taken, you know, that that can save you a little bit of wear and tear in the summer for somebody that's not urgent, but also you you wanna go ahead and capture that revenue. You don't wanna just do a repair and then leave and and who knows where that goes. So I think that we covered that, I think, during one of our our marketing sessions of just, you know, when are your slow months?
Can you presell? Can you push work in into that slow month?
I think that's also a strategy for just dealing with the craziness in the summer. And and it it doesn't seem like a big deal. But even if you just picked three, four, five jobs over the course of, the end of July and August. And you said, hey, we're gonna do these jobs.
Instead of doing them in July or August, we're gonna do them in September. That can make a huge difference just in employee burnouts. It can make a huge difference in just balancing the revenue out a little bit and so on. So that strategy has been very effective for me over the last decade.
I love that idea of using the promotion time frames to create that pre sell activity. I think that's really smart. And if you don't know what your national consumer promotions look like, talk to your salesperson for your manufacturer or talk to your distributor because they know and they keep a lot of tabs on it. They're tracking all those redemptions.
So that's a great call out to use some of those, I don't know, kind of more broad brush rebate periods to create business for you in a time where you might otherwise be scrambling to find a lead. So I love that tip a lot. We're gonna try to link a few more things in our show notes. Show notes are kind of a different foray for us.
Like we haven't really gone there yet, but we'll try to link a few of these episodes that we referenced before for you because they are.
It is intriguing to kind of remember these things that we call back on. So let's see.
What other, what else do you think about this mental toughness going into the summer being just, I don't know. I I'm, I'm not kidding for the amount of times that I've said summer, I'm like ready for a hot dog and just a bunch of mustard. I just I can't you say summer, I taste mustard. I can't help it.
Well, I can tell you this. My football coach in high school, we would end a lot of our practices with him just saying and eat a banana. So, you know, you get dehydrated, your muscles cramp up, you need a little more potassium. Bananas are a good source of potassium. So, you know, set make sure you're aligned with your goals, make sure you're not super stressed out, get your team ready, keep an eye on your closing ratio, your average ticket, pre sell the fall, and eat a banana.
I love that. That's that's a great, great pro tip.
Do you think do you think people have been practicing their elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist? Is that it?
I know a few account managers that are probably driving down the interstate in Kentucky right now specifically going elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, wrist. So there you go.
And I feel like you have to do the Julie Andrews Princess Diaries like thank you for being here today. Like, that's great.
You never know when you're gonna win a beauty pageant. I mean, I got my Rocky Balboa shorts ready to go, so I I might win one myself this fourth July.
You know, you never know. And Stephen, that's why you just stay ready. You know?
Yes. Stay ready.
Well, I hope that all of our listeners have stayed ready and are crushing it right now as you're going along.
But just know that we are always here to take on your ideas or hear a little bit more about what you wanna learn from an HVAC perspective. We're always looking for guests as well. So we'd love to hear from you. Please reach out to us at HVACfullblasttraintechnologies dot com. And with that, I just want to say thank you for being here today.
Wait. Hold on. I'm I'm doing like the Yeah.
Yeah. Elbow. Elbow. Wrist.
Wrist. Wrist.
There you go.
Fabulous. See you next Bye.