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HVAC-ology
Welcome to "HVAC-ology," your podcast for all things related to commercial HVAC systems! Whether you're an experienced technician, an HVAC engineer, a curious business owner, or simply someone interested in understanding the parts and pieces of HVAC systems, this podcast is perfect for you.
In each episode, our expert hosts and enthusiasts delve into the complex world of commercial heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). We cover everything from the latest equipment technology advancements to practical tips.
Music credits: "Bring Me Back" by Deleveled (instrumental for intro and with lyrics for outtro).
HVAC-ology
HVAC-ology: The Power of Service in HVAC with Brigham Dickinson
Brigham Dickinson, founder of Power Selling Pros, joins us to share his journey from marketing specialist to HVAC customer service expert and reveals how company culture directly impacts your bottom line.
• Started by training CSRs who were missing opportunities by misjudging "price shoppers"
• Training customer service reps to achieve 85% call booking rates by using empathetic scripts
• The best time to sell service agreements is during the initial anxious phone call, not during the technician visit
• Creating culture through training precedents from the hiring process onward
• Building individualized career paths keeps talented staff engaged long-term
• Company vision needs purpose, mission, and core values that align everyone's thinking and actions
• Success in business comes from gratitude and service - "your wealth is determined by how many people you can help"
Visit powersellingpros.com to learn more about CSR training and brighamdickinson.com for Brigham's books.
Please be sure to subscribe to our podcast and share with anyone who might be interested!
Welcome to the HVACology experience, where we talk about all things HVAC industry topics that are so hot, they are cool.
Speaker 3:Welcome to another episode of HVACology man. Season two is feeling good, isn't it, kelly?
Speaker 1:You know what, ryan? It feels better than season one. I think we're just. We're on our game right now, mainly you, oh no, it's.
Speaker 3:You and I are equally yoked. We we're just going down this path together we really are stumbling along it is. You know, what I'm realizing, kelly, is that as I I'm letting my hair grow out a little bit right now, I keep asking my wife, should I cut it? And she's like no, I don't like it, but I'm looking more and more like the dentist from the 1964 Rudolph the red nose reindeer. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1:Like Herbie the dentist, like he's like I want to be a dentist, I'm independent. Yeah, good job, kelly.
Speaker 3:Did you listen to that this past Christmas?
Speaker 1:Every Christmas, come on, I'm a child of the 70s.
Speaker 3:Oh man Gotta love it.
Speaker 1:Gotta love it.
Speaker 3:You know we were talking about it a little bit before we got on to this podcast, but it is crazy that, like I was thinking to myself, you know, artificial intelligence, ai, it's out there, right, it's going to be out there in the future, but, like slowly, things are seeping in more and more into my daily life, my, my freaking, uh, I had. So today I had to delete youtube at the youtube app, and the reason why is is because I get dead legs when I go to the bathroom now because I sit there and death scroll till I can't walk.
Speaker 3:It's terrible, you're like I gotta, I gotta stop with youtube I was like this is eating up way too much of my life, like I need to have more to give to this world than death scrolling through youtube or social. I actually got rid of Instagram and Facebook a while ago, and now YouTube had to go next.
Speaker 1:I haven't given up any. I'm not a desk scroller. I read too much. That's my yeah, I've got a terrible reading addiction. So my Kindle app stays, though on my phone it stays.
Speaker 3:Good for you. I wish I had that kind of hobby.
Speaker 1:You have too many others, it's all fine. You know I was, uh, I was Googling. I was trying to Google all things, Ryan Hudson, before this came up. Cause. I wanted to surprise you with a fun fact.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:But the fun facts about you. Like I was like how cool is this? You wrote a blog a couple of years ago, um, about chillers and like low flow, and it says disappeared. But everything that comes up about Ryan Hudson is like all of these cool, like I've written this, I've done this cool HVAC thing. So I'm really impressed with you, ryan Hudson. Oh, kelly, I like it, I know I like it.
Speaker 3:I'm impressed that you are in the VRV training room right now. If you're watching us on YouTube, you will see behind her a condensing unit. Yep, yep. You can't see anything else and some refrigerant piping yeah.
Speaker 1:This is where we train all the technicians.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm, very cool.
Speaker 1:So fancy.
Speaker 3:Well, what is it? I don't think there's no such thing as coincidences. So tomorrow I am doing a two-day sales meeting and of all the days we could have booked Brigham Dickinson to come on happens to be when I'm about to walk into the sales meeting. So Brigham welcome, thank you.
Speaker 4:Thank you. I wanted to lend some encouragement to Kelly and her addiction for reading. Look, you can stop it, kelly. Be strong, you don't have to read.
Speaker 1:No, I don't.
Speaker 4:Anymore I can watch more TV.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 4:That's it, at least a few hours a day.
Speaker 1:Grab some video games Right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yes, because that's it At least a few hours a day. Grab some video games.
Speaker 1:Right yeah.
Speaker 4:Yes, because that's different.
Speaker 1:That's going to be better for me.
Speaker 4:Oh, I don't know about better, it'll be different. It'll be different for sure. There you go, but hang in there.
Speaker 3:Kelly Hang in.
Speaker 1:Thanks.
Speaker 3:Talking about watching too much TV. Isn't that amazing how many famous people now do just regular like TV shows on streaming networks?
Speaker 1:So many.
Speaker 4:Because the money's there.
Speaker 1:That's right, because everybody's watching streaming now.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they follow the money they're not stupid.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:I mean maybe, but so one of the things that we like to do with our folks is we like to paint the picture of how in the world did you get to where you're at today? So if you could take us from that beautiful May-ish day whenever you graduated high school to getting to where you're at today and then kind of a fill in the listener of what it is you actually do right now today and how that ties into all things.
Speaker 4:HVAC for HVACology Ready set go Wow, let me see if I can unpack this. I shouldn't have graduated from high school. Okay, I found out that I shouldn't have graduated from high school after I came home from a mission. You see, I went on a mission to Brazil for two years right after my mission. So I graduated in June of 95 and I was in Brazil in July of 95.
Speaker 3:Bro, I was in Brazil and I think 96.
Speaker 4:Oh my goodness, were you on a mission trip too.
Speaker 3:I was on a mission trip.
Speaker 4:We were there in Brazil at the same time. How about that Same time-ish? Yeah, in the ballpark, that's crazy. So 95 to 97, I was there trip. We were there in brazil at the same time.
Speaker 3:It's about the same time ish somewhere, yeah, in the ballpark.
Speaker 4:So 95 to 97. I was there oh so yeah, same ball, the same same time yeah, that's cool man yeah, what part of brazil were you in?
Speaker 3:I went uh to rio, uh, and then I went to uh, we actually, once we got done with some of the mission work we were helping out with a ministry for youth there and then we went up to a camp that they took people into the Amazon and helped with fixing some of their piping they had. And then we went to an island called Buzios and hung out there like the last day or two, which was it was beautiful.
Speaker 4:That is awesome and it really is beautiful. What's part part of what is beautiful is the culture there. People are so inviting, very kind, wonderful people. So, yeah, it was great.
Speaker 4:I learned a lot learned learned to stop thinking about myself at the at the age of 19,. I needed something. You know I I grew up poor, I thought, until I went to Brazil and realized what poor really is. I realized I had it pretty darn good when you can walk around barefoot on carpet. That's pretty darn amazing. That is the life of leisure. I didn't realize that, I didn't know that until I had to experience it. Or having to take a shower with flip-flops on because bugs will dig into the soles of your feet, it's not a pretty picture. So learned a lot in Brazil, came back with a whole lot of confidence because, my goodness, if you can learn another language, you can pretty much do about anything. At least that's how I felt. I mean, in the beginning it was rough, but once I learned it I was like, wow, if I can do this, I can do anything. So I came back full of confidence.
Speaker 4:I went to grab my transcripts to apply for college and they kind of looked at me and were like, oh my gosh, you shouldn't have graduated, why? Well, apparently I didn't pass Spanish class. So here we are. Here we are talking about me potentially shouldn't have graduated because I failed Spanish class as opposed to at least getting a D, and I thought, for sure I did well. But the teacher was no longer there. So they just said you know what? Here are your transcripts, get out of here. So I was like, okay, sweet, I'm out of here and went to school. And since then and since then I have been messing around with this, and that I started a marketing company right out of college.
Speaker 4:I got my degree in marketing and thought I was going to be a big time marketing muckety muck and a lot of my clients were talking about how the leads were no good. And I was like, what are you talking about? My leads are no good. And they said, well, they just want a ballpark price, they just want to know what your charts come out. They just want to talk to a technician. And I started listening to the phone calls and I realized that no, it wasn't the calls at all. They were interested in buying a air conditioner, they were interested in buying a furnace, they were calling and inquiring about it, but because they were asking the wrong questions. In other words, they were saying, hey, what do you charge for? Just for you guys to come out, or you know what? I was looking for a ballpark price on this or that. And the CSR would assume that those aren't opportunities, that they were just price shopping and they'd move on. They'd say, oh sorry, we don't give pricing, we're going to keep things by, don't get pricing, or going, okay, thanks, bye done. And so I said to the owner I was, I was talking to troy nearing's of nearing's plumbing and heating in salt lake city, utah, and he said he wanted to put the advertising on hold because he doesn't know how to book, or his team doesn't know how to book those calls.
Speaker 4:And I said, well, I will train them, let me train them. And he said, all right, I'll let you train them, we'll see how it goes. We increased the call conversion of of those types of calls by 20%. And then, about a month later, I got a call from Tom Robichaud of Precision Plumbing and Heating in Boulder, colorado, and he said hey, I hear you're working with Troy. You know this is a small industry, or at least it feels that way. Right and I said yep, I do. I also do as advertising, so if we can get some advertising going, he said well, I've got advertising covered, but I'll pay you to train my CSRs. And I was like oh, people will pay me for this.
Speaker 4:And so, and so I started a business training CSRs, and Tom and Troy got together and they said hey, we need to help bring him out. He's doing a really good job for us. Let's see if we can't refer him to somebody really influential and really really get his company growing. And so they referred me to a guy by the name of Mike Agugliero of East Brunswick of New Jersey, owned a company called Gold Medal. And Mike called me up and he said hey, why don't you come down? Why don't you fly down and meet with us? And I can remember booking the flight.
Speaker 4:Finances weren't great at the time, and so I put it all on a credit card and hoped for the best, hoped that he would sign while I was there. Of course, I forgot to tell my wife about the fact that I was flying across the cross country without any guarantee of a return on my investment, and she wasn't very happy about that. She's like you should not have done this. Blah, blah, blah. So I wrote on my journal. I just kind of said, hey, this is the way I'm going to go. This is kind of my Hail Mary pass. If I don't close this, maybe I'll do something else, but I think this is the way to go. And so that day I went and visited with Mike and he just wasn't ready to close. And so I had a conversation with my wife that night and she wasn't very happy with me. She was like I told you, blah, blah, blah. Well, the flight was leaving the next day back home around two o'clock in the afternoon. So that morning, instead of feeling sorry for myself, I called Mike back up and I said hey, mike, why don't you, why don't, why don't we figure something out? And he said do you have time to come back in? I said I do, so I got in my car, went back, negotiated a little and then he signed up. He signed on the dotted line and he referred me to about 20 different companies during that year.
Speaker 4:And, you guys, I started hiring all my friends. They're all paid friends. I don't have a lot of friends and we've been working together since 15 years and we went from training six CSRs at Troy Nearing's shop to all over 1,200 today. We train them one-on-one twice a month using their own phone calls. We take them through four levels of certification. By the time we're done, we guarantee they'll book at least 85% of their phone calls. They'll actively sell service agreements over the phone and, most importantly, we're going to make sure that the experience is so good over the phone that the homeowner calling in will call us and it's like 9-1-1. There's no 9-1-2. They call us. They feel like you know what I'm done shopping and we want to make sure that you're the only one going out to the customer's home, and so that's what we've been doing for the last 15 years, since then.
Speaker 3:Gotcha, so the audience knows, explain what CSR is. Customer service reps.
Speaker 4:People who answer phones for you. Now, whether it's customer service reps answering the phones, whether it's dispatchers managing the schedule between customers and technicians, or whether it's lead coordinators who are specifically focused on replacement-type leads as opposed to service leads, regardless of who it is over the phone, we monitor their calls and we coach them one-on-one twice a month using their own calls.
Speaker 1:Why did you? There are CSRs in every industry. Why did you choose the HVAC industry to focus on?
Speaker 4:Well, troy Nearing's and Tom made it easy, they got together and they said hey, let's get Brigham going. Of course, their, their friends, their peers, were all in the industry and so, okay, yeah, and so you fell into this, just like all the rest of us that's right, and I've never looked back.
Speaker 4:it's been an absolute blessing in my life. Since then, I've done hundreds of ride-alongs with technicians because we like to work with techs and comfort advisors as well, and I've got a team that monitors calls on a regular basis and provides coaching to, like I said, thousands of trainees in our program. So I just I love the industry. My son is training to be a technician as we speak. He's a senior in high school and he was going to get college credits for this technical school. It only cost me 2000 bucks. And so I said, absolutely come to the industry. And I said, son, here's what you need to do. Don't just go in and learn to be a technician. I want you to ask yourself every day that you're there, how do I get the rest of these guys, the rest of these students who are in the class with me, to follow me when I start my own business? And he seems pretty darn excited about what he can do in this industry and I'm excited for him.
Speaker 3:I think that's one of the things you're saying. Is is a lot of young people are moving into our industry. It's actually a very big trend. I forgot what it was, kelly, I was, was reading an article, but it's astronomical, the boom that our industry and the electrician and plumbing industry, uh, is seeing. It's. It's, it's amazing. And the kids basically say I don't want debt, I don't want debt, I want to earn income now, I do not want debt.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the fact, yeah, and the fact that if they go at it hard, I mean you're talking six-figure incomes.
Speaker 4:That's right. That's right, and you can do it very, very quickly. So, on the technician side, yes, learn as much as you possibly can If you have the ability to learn sales. It is obviously that six-figure income is based on your performance, your ability to interact, connect with the customer on an emotional level, get them feeling really comfortable, feeling safe, have just a little bit of fun. If you can learn those things, you will go very, very far in this industry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think I want to make sure I clarify with the folks listening you know what Brigham is talking about. As far as service agreement sales, service agreements are so needed and if's running smooth from a heating standpoint Spring into summer, I'm making sure that it is prepared to be able to cool my home. You're going to see reduction in energy bills. You're going to see the in energy bills. You're going to see the unit actually last significantly longer. Example my HVAC unit just went out, but it's 19 years old and so it had a shelf life of something like 12 years, but I was able to extend an additional seven because I'm a nerd when it comes to HVAC, and I made sure that it was properly maintained. Oddly enough, kelly, what do you think is the biggest thing? That if people just did it, units would last incredibly longer.
Speaker 1:I bet like clean the filter or change the filter.
Speaker 3:Kelly, yes, yes, change the filter. It's amazing what you can get out of it the filter.
Speaker 1:It's amazing what you can get out of it, but it worries me.
Speaker 3:Ryan, mine is at 19 right now and, uh, I'm now I'm worried because yours just went out, so yeah yeah, I could have fixed it, but it wasn't worth fixing, I'd rather just replace it yeah, it's more efficient probably so, brigham, tell me, whenever the uh, the csrs are talking with, what's the biggest apprehension do you think people have when they receive this phone call? What is the hurdle to say, yes, I would like this no-brainer thing of a maintenance agreement? Do they feel like it's snake oil? Do they feel like I can do this myself? But they never actually get to it. What's the sentiment?
Speaker 4:Usually, when customers call in, they don't want to spend any more money than they have to, so they're already concerned about what it's going to cost them. They weren't planning on it. It usually comes as a surprise that their system's not working all of a sudden and they're fearful. They're fearful, they're frustrated, they're concerned about how much it's going to cost. They're upset that it just happened out of the blue. So you're catching them at a very vulnerable time, right, there's some emotional angst that they're feeling, and it just so happens to be the very best time to sell a service agreement. You see, I'd rather a technician focus in on the customer's needs while in the home as opposed to hey, let's also think about this agreement. I'd rather have that agreement sold by the time the technician gets there. That way the technician can think about indoor air quality, hot areas, cold areas of the home so many. If they do plumbing, there's tons of plumbing opportunities. Let me just kind of tell you what I'm getting at. If they do plumbing, there's tons of plumbing opportunities. Let me just kind of tell you what I'm getting at. I was at an event a couple months ago and my daughter called and said hey, alicia, my wife is trying to drill a hole into a doorknob because we had some friends staying at our house and all of their luggage, all of their clothes got stuck in this room and the door locked for whatever reason and there was no way for them to open it. And I said to Alicia I asked my daughter to tell Alicia to get a locksmith. Get a locksmith, they'll open the door without ruining the doorknob, without ruining the door. And so the locksmith came and, sure enough, he opened the door in no time flat, and he also replaced the doorknob and he left. And so after he left, I asked alicia how the experience was and she said, oh, it was great, he was able to open the door. He said that's good, that's good and, and if I understand correctly, he he replaced the doorknob. He said, yep, yep, he replaced the door. Cool, and how many doorknobs in our house that do we have like that? She thought for a second. She's like all of them. And I said, okay, so today it was luggage. What if tomorrow it's our granddaughter, our two-year-old daughter, behind that door? Are you going to wait for locksmith? She said no, I'm going to knock the door down. Cool, then I'll have to pay for a new door. How about we call the locksmith back and we talk to him about replacing all the doorknobs in there?
Speaker 4:Now you can blame anyone you want in this scenario. You can talk about the customer not asking more questions. You can talk about how the locksmith didn't say hey, I'm happy to replace all the doorknobs while I'm here, I can give you a special deal if you buy all 12, so on and so forth Between you and I. I don't want to be in an event and get a phone call where I can't do anything about it. So guess what I would do. I'm not going to care about the price, I'm just going to have him do it.
Speaker 4:And so it's this scenario in a customer's home that repeats itself over and over and over again. And if you can understand that, that's what the customer is dealing with, and great customer service basically says hey, I want to take care of you today as well as tomorrow, as well as a year from now and two years from now. That's what the service agreement does. It gives you the ability to be in that customer's home on a regular basis so that, whatever their need is, you have the ability to take care of it, not just the thing that you're called out to do. But whatever their need is Okay. So best time to sell a service agreement is to do it over the phone. Okay, mr Jones, I'm looking at your notes. I've noticed that you've called us a couple of times. We've taken care of this over the years. Have you ever considered a service agreement? The only reason why I bring it up is because it prevents things like this, the thing that you're dealing with right now, from happening. Now, if you want it, it's very simple. It's $20 a month. I can get you going on it right now and close it. Close it while they're feeling the emotional angst.
Speaker 4:Now the technician has agreed right, because that's what a service agreement is. It's an agreement to serve over the long term and the goal here is for that technician or that company to be that homeowner's company. For an example, I have my own plumber. Okay, I take ownership of that plumber because he's the guy that comes out whenever I have a plumbing issue. And, funny thing, the first time he was here I said look, I need a water softener in my pool house, I need a new water softener in the main area and I also need to make sure that I've got a humidifier that's working well in the main area as well, because it gets really dry here in the desert in southern Utah. So he comes, he takes care of all that New water softener soft. He ended up giving me two new water softeners.
Speaker 4:He's got me an air pure air, not an air purifier, a water purifier in the kitchen and I didn't see him for six months. He comes back in six months and he says hey, brigham, um, your salt is all gone from both your water softeners. You totally, you basically made me feel like I blew it. I was like I did blow it. I should have made sure there was water softener in there.
Speaker 4:And then he said hey, do you want me to just take care of this every six months? And I'm like, yeah, I'm never home, I'm never home, please take care of this for me. And now he comes on a regular basis every four months. He puts salt in both my water softeners and I don't have to worry about it, right? I don't have to worry about my appliances going bad, he takes care of it, right? Everyone that is in home improvement or home services of any kind should be selling these things like hotcakes, because most of the time people don't want to worry about it. Some are concerned about price. Yes, but most don't want to worry about it.
Speaker 3:They don't care about the price, they don't want to worry about it, so just offer it yeah, you know, I think the thing that hangs up residential folks when it comes to a service agreement is whenever they can see their TV and they can see their channels. So they have cable, their car can be seen by other people and they can hit that gas pedal.
Speaker 3:But air, you know it's just magic and they don't ever see it like. They just know it's always comfortable in their home and then, when it's not, the whole world falls apart, especially where we're at or me in particular, in Columbia, south Carolina, where it is hot and humid as Hades. What you're saying here is that really it's a point of understanding the person's pain point and then being able to be the person, quick, to be useful, helpful for them and help them hit the proverbial easy button, because the world is really, as we were talking earlier about AI, the world is moving to the easy button everywhere, and so we want that unit to be serviced and maintained. And it's just a function of how do you say it in such a way to where they're comfortable with you and want to do business with you. And I'll say it on the flip side too, brigham, is that, as somebody who used to own an HVAC company, there's some folks that I don't want to do business with. I've worked with them before and they're nightmares to have to deal with.
Speaker 3:And so it can go both ways.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and if you're the owner, my intent would be for you to stay away from the phones. I wouldn't even have you go in the customer's home unless you've got to solve a situation. I'd like for there to be a system inside the office as well as a system inside the customer's home that they're following on a regular basis. I'm okay with the owner judging a customer every once in a while, but as far as the CSRs are concerned, you book every call that comes in. You wow every customer and if there's a customer that is put on the do not call list or what have you definitely want to make sure that that's done by management and not by the rank and file of the team. The reason why I bring that up is because sometimes rank and file gets in their minds that there are certain customers that we don't want to work with and they say no to more customers than they should. You spend a bunch of advertising to make the phone ring and then they judge that customer to be a price shopper and they file them into a group where we have zero opportunity to work with them, where it could be that they just didn't know what really to ask, except for how much is it. We cannot judge a customer off of a 90-second phone call. So if you do it as an owner, great Rank and file. We want to build a culture up in such a way that I have a yes mentality right, I have the right mindset, I own my process and I wow every customer that calls in and selling a service agreement would be a natural um, a natural step in that selling process. And the same thing would be true with the technician.
Speaker 4:I'd want them to go in, recognizing that their objective is to create an environment of safety, comfort and fun, and inside that environment, my goal is to earn the tour, not just the thing that I was called out to do, but the tour where I can walk around with the customer and take a look at everything that's going on and they feel safe, they feel comfortable and they're having fun, so it's okay for them to do that. They've already gotten the day off for us to come anyway. Once you've created that environment, you've got the tour. You're going to get very curious about what's going on inside the customer's home. You're going to provide options and then you're going to simply get to yes or no. If you do that, you follow that process, you're going to find that you'll be able to take care of the phone, whether it's in the home. Let's have a system and a process and the right mindset. Make sure the culture is right so that we can get the most out of our team.
Speaker 3:So how is it that you go about finding good customer service representatives, because that seems to be a problem that I have friends still in the industry for the residential business. How do you find those good folks?
Speaker 4:So I look for people with great attitude. If they have a great attitude, they can be taught. They can be trained Right With customer service reps. I like to practice with them beforehand, but of course that's when they're already in the funnel. How do you get them in the funnel? Well, I hate to. I hate to just refer another company on the podcast, but I'm going to do it who hire. Who hire is an awesome company for recruiting, whether it's technicians, whether it's CSRs. We have a bunch of CSRs in our training program and whenever one of our clients says, hey, we're down to CSR, we refer them to WhoHire and they specialize in industry and they are phenomenal at finding CSRs and techs in your local market. So, short answer to your question, ryan let's get the right help. Let's get the right help.
Speaker 3:Let's hire WhoHire the right help, let's get the right help. Let's let's off, let's hire a who hire? Yeah, very good. So, uh, one of the things that I think is a kind of a talking point that you've developed over the years uh, as you've been doing, I've been in your business is how company culture dictates. Uh, your bottom line kind of give us an overview of, of what looks like, because that's something I'm very interested in. Culture seems to be the thing that keeps people engaged in your business. No longer are we in the 1990s Wolf of Wall Street kind of mentality right where you just say this is what you're going to do and lord over them or micromanage them. It's really. You've got to create the right culture to where good quality folks want to stick around because they're in for the experience more so than maybe the income in some senses.
Speaker 4:So your culture starts with training. You want to set goals, the precedent in the hiring process that you are a company that trains everyone on a regular basis, and the way that you go about doing that is, you'd simply say in the hiring process, you'd say here's a small script. I want you to take five minutes and review it a couple of times and then we're going to practice, just the two of us. Um, if it's for a customer service rep, I take the. I would take the first 30 to 50 seconds of a phone call. I teach them to show the customer how they're listening, show them how they care and reassure them. They've called the right place. I'd like them to do that in the beginning. So I'd have them look at the script, review it for a second and then I'd role play with them. So thanks for calling totally awesome off.
Speaker 4:So heating and cooling. This is Brigham. How can I help? Hey, I've got this air conditioner and it's blowing hot air. Now, if they follow the script, it's going to be somewhat like this. It's a great question. Can you tell me more about your situation? What's going on? Well, I've got this air conditioner. It's blowing hot air. My gosh, that's not good. That means you've been in this heat for the last 48 hours. Yeah, it's not good. My wife is upset. I've got a four-month-old baby. I need to get this thing fixed. Well, look, you've called the right place. We can totally help you. When would you like us out? Oh, this afternoon would be good.
Speaker 4:So I'd give them the script and I'd practice that with them, just to see how receptive they are to practicing. I'm not too concerned about how well they sounded, just to see that there is a willingness for them to practice. Now, by doing that in the hiring process, you're showing them that we are a training company. We practice. That's what we do. That's just part of our culture. So once you start building that precedent that we are a training culture, whether you're a CSR, a dispatcher, lead coordinator, whether you're counting beans, whether you're a technician that's going out to the customer's home, we are a culture that practices and trains on a regular basis and you've got to be willing and have the right attitude to do that. That's number one.
Speaker 4:Once you find that this individual that you're interviewing, or group of individuals that you're interviewing, that they are willing and they have the right attitude to learn, they're going to learn some really great things that are going to affect their income in a very positive way, at which point you've got to make sure that you're building the culture in such a way that you have the right mindset, you own your processes, that you can sit down with them and you can simply say and this is one-on-one you simply say, hey, where do you see yourself in the company Totally awesome, here at Totally Awesome in the next three to five years? Now, the reason why this is so important is because you might get some people who say I don't know how to answer that question. Truthfully, I don't plan to be here in three to five years. Well, isn't that a good thing to know? It's probably a good thing to know ahead of time, right? Okay, so where do you, where do you see yourself for three years? What?
Speaker 2:do you?
Speaker 4:want to do. Well, I want to do this or I want to do that. Now, many times you're going to be able to realize that there are dreams, that they have ambitions, that they have that they can do inside, inside the organization that they're currently working with, and you've got to help them see that and sell them on that. And then they go, wow, I didn't realize that you'd be open to have me do this or have me do that inside your organization. Well, yeah, and then you're all of a sudden you're painting a career path inside the organization. Now, every talented technician, I promise you, has ambitions. I promise you that every astute and capable CSR dispatcher, lead coordinator inside your office has goals, ambitions for their careers. It is imperative that you sit down with them on a regular basis, show them that their presence inside the organization, their contribution, is important to you, and simply say where do you see yourself? And then what you do is you dream with them. You dream with them, and then what you'll find is is that you'll have tasks that you've been doing that you can, one by one, offload to them. Instead of you doing it, they're doing it. And now, now you don't just have a job that you created right. You actually have a legitimate legacy that you're building a culture, that you're building a training culture where they have the right mindset and they're owning their process and now, because they've taken ownership of some of those responsibilities that you've given them, they feel like there's progress, they feel like they're moving forward in their career, they have the ability to control their own income and they stay with you longer. Okay, even csrs, if you give them a way to make more money, say, be it through um service agreement. Sales say they have the ability to take service calls that come in and turn them into replacement calls and you compensate them for that. Say they, uh, heating cooling call comes in and you're able to book a plumbing call um, and you compensate them for that. They can stay in that seat a whole lot longer as a CSR because now they have control of their own income and they have the ability to make as much money as they want to make.
Speaker 4:Now it's a career. It's not just a job, it's a career and in that way you're building a culture of growth, a culture of progress. You see, that's what people need inside of a culture. They need to feel like they're working towards something individually as well as collectively. Now, on the collective side, now that we've talked about the individual side of culture, let's talk about the collective side. Collectively, culture is simply broken down to what people think, feel and do, okay, what they collectively think, what they collectively feel and what they collectively do on a regular basis. And so all you need to do is program that thinking, okay, program the emotions that they're feeling, program what they do on a regular basis and make sure they're all consistently doing it. They all, they are all thinking, feeling and doing the same thing. All right, so how do you do that? You build a company vision.
Speaker 4:Now, this is something that every company knows they need to have, but they don't have, or it doesn't go anywhere, except you know it's on their wall. How do you get what's on the wall? The company vision, and what does that include? It includes a company mission, a company purpose and a set of core values. Okay, what's a purpose? It's that thing that should inspire the company for the next hundred years. It's that north star type of. This is where we're going.
Speaker 4:A mission is something tangible, something you can achieve in three to five years. Okay, it's. It's a legitimate goal that absolutely can be achieved. Okay, nike did this with reebok once back in the 80s. Reebok was making, uh, making progress and and basically eating the margins of Nike, and so Nike had a very clear mission. It was beat Reebok. And of course they did that and they've set many missions since then, but it's mission-critical type stuff.
Speaker 4:So you have them work with you and I would get the purpose about 80% there. I would just ride out and in the back of your head you might be thinking, thinking how do I do this? You know what? Use chat gpt. It's an amazing technology, technology. Use it, okay. Type in the things that are important to you and work with chat gpt to kind of wordsmith it.
Speaker 4:And then you basically get your team involved and you say, look, I've got it 80 there, the purpose is 80 there. Will you help me with the remaining 20%? And then you get them involved and get their buy-in. And then you talk about specific missions. You know what we want to be at a million by this date, right. We want to be at 2 million by this date, right, it's mission critical type stuff. Or we want to have this many service agreements by this date Mission critical, have to do it Right. And then you have a set of core values, and that core values will basically dictate how you go about achieving that mission. Okay, so you're essentially programming the way people think, the way they feel, the way they do, and that's how you, how you move the culture forward in a very positive way or an HVAC business.
Speaker 3:What's the best purpose you've heard someone come up with.
Speaker 2:Great question Off the top of my head.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I would look up your best company in the marketplace. And if you are the best company in the marketplace and you don't have a purpose, I would highly suggest you go to chat GPT. Go to chat GPT. There's a free version. Type in what's important to you as far as and you guys, it can't be about making money. That's not. No, okay, not everybody. You may be making a ton of money, hopefully, but your employees, you know they'll, they'll do six figures, but that's not a ton of money. So you got to have them emotionally engaged with something other than money. Ok, for example, hope Heating and Cooling in Oklahoma. This is pretty cool. Actually. They don't do any advertising at all. They do a day of hope each month in their local market area and essentially, whether it's a leaky roof, whether it's a dishwasher that's not working, whether it's food, whether it's clothing, they do a day of hope every month where they just serve the entire day.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 4:Yes, and they get this local publicity from all the media. They're constantly covering it, constantly talking about it, and that's his advertising. And he's growing like crazy. The company is growing big time. It's a very cool idea. So that's one example of purpose. He's got them all aligned behind that purpose. They're all thinking and feeling the same thing, hope.
Speaker 3:So earlier you that's great, earlier you had said that your son was getting into the business and you had challenged him. How do you get the other folks in your class to come on board with you? If you were talking to your son, but you're talking to him over this podcast, what would be the way that you would want him to go about to quickly ramp up and build a successful, serving the market HVAC company?
Speaker 4:What would be step one in your mind? Step one serve a mission. I hope he serves a mission. The thing that I learned on my mission is this I learned to be grateful for what I had, and there's something about gratitude, and I realize, Ryan, that this isn't necessarily the answer that you were looking for, but it is the right answer we get when we come out of high school. We are very selfish creatures, we are very self-centered. We're kids, and that's just what kids do.
Speaker 4:Well, at some point, that boy needs to become a man, and the way that he becomes a man is he realizes that in order to get what he wants whether it's money or wealth or what have you you've got to help enough people do that. In other words, you've got to find out the thing that they need, and your wealth is going to be determined on the amount of people that you can help. So the more people you help, the more money you make, the better off you're going to be. So, first things first, you got to be grateful for what you have, and then you've got to turn that gratitude into service. Why? Because you have been given much and you too must give. And when you do that, when you serve your fellow men, you're going to be successful. Now, when you're selfish, your fellow men, you're going to be successful. Now, when you're selfish, sooner or later you're going to get caught and it's going to cost you. Okay, yes, there are opportunities and there are also opportunity costs. So, the first thing I would want anyone to learn who's trying to get in this business I would write a gratitude list every day, and I'm not just saying this, I actually do it.
Speaker 4:Okay, I write gratitude lists every day and I send them to my family first thing in the morning, it's right after I study. And the reason why I do this is because sometimes there's this thing called stinking thinking, thought betrayal that comes to my mind. Let me give you one example. Okay, I'm going to Mr Appliance here locally in St George, utah, and I'm training them as a group in the morning. Am I doing? And I'm doing right along throughout the day. You guys have done this hundreds of times over the last several years. Okay, but in my mind that morning at six o'clock, as I was driving over to Mr Appliance, my brain said you're going to fail, you suck at this. Okay, that was my brain that said that, um, I I let that sit in my head for maybe a second or two and then I said you know what? This is going to be the best training I've ever done. You're wrong. You're wrong about me're wrong about me. I'm enough.
Speaker 2:And sure enough.
Speaker 4:I went and gave an awesome training and did some great ride alongs, and they've been referring me to other companies ever since then. So the first thing I would want to do with anybody wanting to get into this industry, wanting to start a business, first thing you need to work on is recognize how lucky you are to be in a place where other people don't get this opportunity. Let me explain something.
Speaker 4:There are 7.5 billion people on this earth. 325 million were born here. Okay, we are born into opportunity Tons of it, more than we can possibly handle. You need to recognize that and you need to recognize that you are enough that you can do this. If I can do this, anybody can do this, and what you do is you turn that gratitude into service, that you're going to serve as many people as you possibly can, and the amount of people you do are you able to serve will dictate your income moving forward in this industry. And if you don't have that mindset going into this industry, moving forward in this industry and if you don't have that mindset going into this industry, I don't want you here.
Speaker 3:You can go elsewhere.
Speaker 1:Well, kelly, what other thoughts do you have? So, a, brigham, your passion is so much fun for me. It's really fun to hear you A to start from the message of gratitude. We don't hear that a lot, especially from people in business, so I appreciate that perspective.
Speaker 4:I don't know how to function any other way.
Speaker 1:I like it Thanks.
Speaker 3:There was a study that came out about the best leaders that they could find. I forgot who it was that did the study, but the overarching word that described all of these leaders was the word humble. I thought that was pretty interesting. Well, very good. Brigham, thank you so much for your time today and I think we're better for it. And if folks, I did get a chance to check out your website and there were some pretty interesting books on there how can folks find out more about you?
Speaker 4:So Power Selling Pros is one way to learn more about the services we provide. Csrs we also do write-alongs with techs. We've got some great tools there as well. So, powersellingproscom If you want any of the books that I've written, you just go to brighamdickinsoncom and you'll find an easy way to take a look at those books and maybe even order those books. So just B-R-I-G-H-A-M, d-i-c-k-i-n-s-o-ncom, and that's how you can get access to the books.
Speaker 3:Very good. Well, thank you so much for your time today and thank you for uh thinking through uh how to sell maintenance agreements and what it looks like to have your company culture improve and improve your bottom line as well. Kelly, if folks enjoyed this podcast, how in the world do they find out more about it? Or how in the world do they get more of HVACology?
Speaker 1:Well, what they should do is subscribe to our channel at any one of the platforms that you might listen to a podcast on, follow it like us. Subscribe, do all the things.
Speaker 3:Well, with that, we're all done.
Speaker 1:We're all done. Thanks so much.
Speaker 3:Bye-bye, thank you.
Speaker 2:Bye, I'm out. Thank you. The words inside, but you always bring me back. It's your blue eyes, twenty years of staring at that freckle on your left shoulder. Who would have thought all I needed Was to think of you to bring back the words inside of me. I drove an hour to see you. Things just seemed to matter more to me anyway, got lost in reality. No answers to cancer. We never got to talk, lost so many friends as I got older. Wish I had the strength to hold you a little bit longer.
Speaker 2:Always meant to write these words down, thought all the best of you faded in an endless sea. All the best of you Faded in and in the sea. But you always bring me back. It's your blue eyes. Twenty years of staring at that freckle On my left shoulder. Who would have thought all I needed Was to think of you to bring back the words inside of me? You always bring me back At your blue eyes. Twenty years of staring at that freckle on your left shoulder. Who would have thought all I needed Was to think of you to bring back the words inside? But you always bring me back at your blue eyes. Twenty years of staring at that, that brickle on your left shoulder. Who would have thought? All I needed was to think of you to bring back the songs inside of me. You were always inside of me. You were always a part of me. You were always a part of me.
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