I hope you answered a resounding "MINE!". Your customer invited YOU into their home to sell them a new comfort system. So, why do you leave without the sale? Well, there are lots of theories that say if you do a two call close you will increase your sale amount but I will tell you that when you leave your customer's home without the sale, you have drastically lowered your opportunity to capture their business. They want to buy. They are ready to buy. That's why they invited you to their home. And, they want to buy from you. They have done some research on who they should have do the work. They may have asked friends or family or looked for the best ad in the Yellow Pages or maybe they have experience with your company. Anyway, they have invited you there today because they trust you or your company and they are ready to buy. So, MAKE THE SALE! If not, your customer will, more than likely, go do business with someone else. Don't let this happen to them or to you.

Now, I am not saying everyone is ready to buy today. Some are still doing research but it has been my personal experience that when someone finds the right system for the right price from the right person, most of the time, they are ready to buy. And, they don't want to sit through the sales process with any more companies. So, even though they thought they were not going to buy today, when you are done and it all makes sense, it's amazing how many of them will buy. All you have to do is ask for the sale. We will elaborate more on this in a later article.

How do we get this done? First, let's start at the beginning. Before you even accept a lead and drive to your new customer's home, become the most prepared sales professional in the industry. Being prepared means getting an education like I offer in my exclusive CLOSE Sales Program for Comfort Advisors and CLOSE Sales Program for Selling Technicians. These programs will give you a process to follow. A process is extremely important so that you know what to do, when to do it and what affect all the parts to the process have on the sale. Once you have a process you follow every time you are in front of a customer, you will then be able to evaluate your performance, see what happens when you do or, more importantly, don't do a particular action or make a statement. Knowing how the statements and actions included in your process affect the outcome is the key to a process presentation. Find a process and make it part of you. Live it, be it, perfect it.

Another part of being prepared is knowing your product and services. Become a student of HVAC. Get the product books and brochures from your company and learn everything you can about furnaces, air conditioners, heat pumps, coils, TXVs, venting, indoor air quality and products and services that make air healthier. Subscribe to industry and other publications that talk about what is new and exciting in this great industry. Learn! Learn something new EVERY DAY. If you ever get to the point that you feel you have nothing left to learn then go ahead and lay down to die because your day has come. Learn! You will never know enough.

Next, be ready with a list of questions that gets the customer involved in the process. You are there to find out what the customer wants to achieve with their new comfort system and offer them options so they can chose. How will you find out what they want if you don't ask them? Here's an interesting point... how do they know what they want if you don't tell them what you offer? I think it is really cool when I walk into a customer's home, ask them what they want and find out they "think" they just want a basic furnace and basic air conditioner. Nothing else. Then, after I tell them all about their old stuff, compare it to 80 percenters and 90 percenters and 95 percenters they want more than basic. When they see how much a higher efficiency system can save them every month, they move from wanting basic to wanting to save as much money as possible. So, remember the answers you get from your initial questions may change as you educate and teach your customer how to look at heating and air conditioning for their home.

So, once you have a written list of thought provoking questions (Mike Treas will give this to you with the CLOSE Sales Program), be ready to do a complete survey of their home. Measure the entire house and complete a load calculation. There is no way you can be accurate on your system recommendations without doing a complete and thorough load calc on any given structure. If you don't agree with me you are just fooling yourself. Besides, it makes you different because not many others are doing load calcs and you don't want to be like them, do you?

One advantage to doing a survey of the home is to have a chance to get to know your customer a little better. Talk with them, educate them but most importantly, work towards earning their trust. If they like you, trust you and know you truly care about them and are willing to do whatever it takes for them to help their family, they will want to buy from you. Notice I did not say they WILL buy from you. No, it's not that easy. You still have a lot of work to do before they will buy from you. I am just saying that they will want to buy from you. To earn their business, you have to create more value than your selling price so get ready to start presenting.

One way to add value and stand out in the field with your competition is to DIFFERENTIATE yourself. No, don't wear a clown suit or do magic tricks, but do demonstrate how your company is different from everyone else in your community. Highlight all the things you offer that make you different. Do you even know what they are? Do you offer a 100 percent Total Satisfaction Money-Back Guarantee for one full year? Most of your competition don't yet but some already have this one. Okay, so you have to start searching. How about that Lennox offers the Better Homes and Gardens Good House Keeping Seal or the Energy Star affiliation? The JD Power and Associates Award of Excellence? Maybe your installers are trained on the proper way to install high efficiency furnaces and air conditioners and each holds a certificate to prove it. The list can go on and on, and it should. Highlight ALL the things that make you different so your customer sees how valuable you really are but most important, how different you are. If the customer perceives no difference, no difference in value and they don't see you as different, then all you have is price and even if you win on price you lose on profit. Be different and offer lots of value.

Well, I think that is enough to think about for one month. I will send you another ezine next month. I will talk about offering creative solutions that save the customer money, offer better comfort and healthier air. We will discuss making a presentation with passion, not just talking. And, we will discuss creating urgency to get the customer to make a decision.

Until then, go get a book by Gitomer or Rumbauskas or Carnegie and read it several times. Learn, learn, learn. Learn something new everyday. And, exercise. Commit yourself to self improvement through exercising your mind and your body everyday and I guarantee you all the success you desire.

Now, be your best and go sell something!

Are you good enough to get better? Think about it.

Mike Treas is a HVAC Business Coach specializing in residential replacement sales, sales management, customer service and maintenance agreements. Mike has worked with hundreds of contracting professionals all across the United States and Canada using proven processes and motivation to increase sales and customer retention. Mike has 10 years in the contracting industry working directly for Service Experts, International Service Leadership, Contractors Success Group and Lennox. For more information on how Mike can help you with your business call him at 913-568-3280

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