I’m certain that far more HVAC jobs are sold by technicians rather than by full-time in-home sales persons. And many contractors who have full-time sales persons also empower their technicians to sell replacements, particularly during the busy times.
I’ve written about this before but haven’t run the numbers; here’s an example:
A technician makes 1,000 customer contacts or more a year. Subtract PTU calls, warranty calls, call-backs, etc. and there might be 500 demand service calls remaining. Most techs will be very capable of offering a replacement on a failed unit or old unit where the repair costs clearly don’t make sense, such as a cracked heat exchanger or failed compressor. That might net down to 25 replacements at $3-4,000 each, so let’s make it $75,000- $100,000 in sales. Looks good so far.
Now let’s say the technician is very good at offering the Repair Vs. Replace information on every billable service call regardless of the age of the equipment. He just brings it up as information, not to sell but to inform. He shows them the quick analysis which establishes that it’s almost always less expensive to replace old equipment than repair it and he then asks if they would like to talk with their comfort advisor to get more information. The result? Out of 500 demand service calls there will be 50-100 leads produced, with a 50% or more close rate, at $6-8,000 or more. Being conservative again that will produce $150,000-$200,000 in sales or more and at a higher profit margin.
In every way having the technician trained to create a lead and hand it over to a competent comfort advisor is better…for the customer, for the company and for the technician.
Good Selling!
Tom