Revolutionizing HVAC: The Matrix Unveiled with Brandon Stowe – Sales Mastery & Beyond

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Episode transcript from the Close It Now podcast with Sam Wakefield.

Well, welcome back to the Close it now podcast. I'm excited about this interview because in fact, a little bit of backstory on this one. I reached out to this guest. This is Brandon Stowe, everybody. I reached out to him a few months ago in fact, because we have a mutual friend, Mr.

Corey Barrier. What's up, Corey? Shout out to you. And Corey and I were talking about AI and how AI can be used in the industry, et cetera, et cetera. Well, I was seeing Brandon post some really, really cool stuff on his social media pages about some of the things in AI he was doing.

So I just reached out to him and blindly is like, hey, I'd love to interview for my podcast. I hear you're doing some cool stuff for our industry. And across. So we did an interview and we did a podcast recording and it turned out to be just a load of a massive amount of technical. Just technical everything.

So if you've listened to this podcast, you know that of course that's not where we want to be. We're stuck in the technical. So we said, you know what, let's hit pause on this one. Let's can it for a little while and get to know this program, get to know some of this and just get to know each other. And now here we are a few months later, we're rerecording.

So this you're not. No one will hear the other one unless it comes out in blooper reels. But this will be a much better. Yeah, this will be a much better episode. So I'm excited about.

So everyone, welcome to the show. The most infamous. Well, actually I wouldn't say you're the most infamous man. Now, maybe a few years ago, I. Think it's petered out a little bit.

Yeah, you're not near as polarizing and controversy or a few years ago, there's actually, there's a few other people that have taken the ranks of the tops of that in our industry. Happy to pass it off. That's. But this is a man of many, many talents. He owns Cracker Jack Heating and Air.

He is been working on a really cool project I'm excited about and overall he is just an excellent, excellent sales master. He's one of the what I wouldn't say guru. I hate the word guru. That, that word's being thrown around a lot lately and it, it grosses me out. But he is excellent at sales.

He's a great trainer as well. And I'm super stoked to have on the show today Mr. Brandon Stowe. Thanks for joining me again today, man. Man, thanks so much, Sam.

And I tell you what, it probably wouldn't be a very convincing blooper reel. The last, the, the last go we had at this. In fact, I believe sometime afterwards it was me, right? Like I came up to you and I said, hey man, that podcast, like throw that in the garbage bin. That was horrible.

You're like, that was, let's not let, don't release. Let's never let that see the day of light. So for those interested that's locked in the vault forever and maybe like in a, in like a five year recap, Sam might be able to pull it out. Oh, it'll be one of those, it'll be a cool moment because it's one of those that what you've been working on, it was so many versions back, it doesn't even look the same now and just a few months later anyway, so I'll make sure you get it to get it to you for like the posterity of it. But, but let's dive into where we're at.

So I'd love to start with. So everybody that's listening, Brandon, give us a quick highlight reel. Who you are, how you got here and really, I guess a good first question would be share a bit about your journey and how you became an expert in HVAC in the trades. Because at this point you're definitely renowned as one of the experts in the industry. So how'd you get there?

Well, well, Sam, you know, for me, my story isn't too far off from your, your typical, you know, HVAC come up story. Right. Like started at a young age. Obviously there had to be a father or a grandfather involved. For me, it was my grandfather.

And basically it was pretty simple. You know, I was pretty bored in my bedroom. I'd gotten into some trouble at school and, and led me to getting expelled for, for Some time, right? I was that kid in school that, you know, I'd sneak into the library and change all the keyboard keys so that the next kid trying, you know, and this is school, so everyone's still trying to, you know, they're looking at the keyboard and they, they end up writing the wrong stuff. And I stole clip or just general like class clown stuff and got into some trouble, you know, just fooling around in school.

And I was bored at home one day and my grandfather came by and he said, hey man, you're coming with me. So he took me out, we started doing some HVAC together, you know, made me hold some tools, help clean some condensers. And I remember the first time that like I got hooked on HVAC. I was 13 years old and we had just pulled a motor out of air conditioner and normally, you know, I would just help him. He'd throw them in the back of his truck, do what he did with them, scrap them, whatever.

But I looked at him this time, I was like, you know, I'd like to have that motor, I'd like to see what it's all about. And he's like, well, what are you going to do with it? I said, I don't know, take it apart, look at it. See what, see what's happening. So he gave me the motor and I took it to my bedroom.

And this is, you know, most 13 year old kids are playing, you know, Xbox or whatever. I'm sitting in the middle of my bedroom on the floor, crisscross applesauce with a bunch of, with, with my screwdri, with, you know, my six and one. And I'm taking this motor apart, I'm pulling the stator out and looking at the windings and, and at the time, you know, Ask Jeeves was, was like the website. Yeah, yeah. And you could, you could ask it like any question.

And I'm sitting there typing in like, how does a motor work? You know, like, what's the deal here? Like what, what are the magnets? Like how, how is this all possible? You know, that this thing spins, but it, the shape of it doesn't seem this way.

And so, you know, I got really interested in the, in the mechanical engineering aspect of it. So I stuck around with my grandfather until I moved to Washington. And that was when I was 18 years old. By the time I got to Washington, I'd already been taking rounds doing, you know, pretty much all the convenience stores and supermarkets in the South. I did a lot of commercial refrigeration and I got to this residential home company called P L Johnson Mechanical.

Now P L Johnson Mechanical was, did a lot of commercial and industrial as well, which, which I kept doing. But they also introduced me to the residential market and to sales. And at 18 years old, getting in there was probably the, the start of like this really cool experience with residential clients and a big proving ground and everything else. But you know, it all started there with my grandfather at 13 and kind of progressed out from there. Since then I have, I've owned, you know, mechanical companies all over the country.

I've owned a few plumbing companies, some electrical companies. I have traveled the nation extensively and worked with sales teams and business owners. And I've also taught on the academic level in H. Vac. I taught at the Northwest College of Construction for four years.

I taught a post secondary associate's level degree program based on the NCCAR curriculum and the ABCs. To say that five times fast, right. That's a lot of acronyms. Associated Builders Contract Contracting of America. And so we taught the journey level programs there today.

Fast forward. I am certified journeyman or master in seven states. I hold business licenses in six states. And yeah, man, we just, we rock and roll. We do what we do.

I love it. So before we move on past this, how old are you? I am 32. So at 32, this gentleman is clearly ahead of the, ahead of the curve of most of us. So one huge, huge shout out.

I mean, you've done it by the time you got 18. Old enough to drink or. Well, 18 is not old enough to go fight South Carolina. There you go. By the time you hit 18, you already had a career under your belt and you were like to the point where most people are beginning at the end.

So I mean, quite an impressive history. And clearly it's not just because you were just working in the field of some of the things you've done are because you have a drive and a passion and desire to excel and to be that top performer, to be that achiever. And so what is, you know, what's some of the biggest challenges you've seen along the way? Because it's not all always just on top of the mountain. We got to climb the mountain to get there, right?

Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I think I've fallen off the mountain more than I've, more than I've climbed it. But, but you know, to be pretty brief here, challenge wise, like first challenges was my age. You know, like you mentioned, I'm 32, but getting my start, I was 13, 14, 15 16.

By the time I was 16, I was traveling by myself in a Ford Ranger all over the, you know, state of South Carolina, fixing air conditioners, rooftop package units, walk in freezers, you know, ice machines, you name it. And, you know, the. The big challenge that I got there was, you know, like, you should still be in school, you know, things like that. Why don't you get a real job? Yeah, when I got to.

When I got to Oregon and Washington, that challenge seemed to be made even worse. Right? Like, people in the south are just like, oh, yeah, we've all been working since we were young people in Oregon and Washington, they're like, man, you're not, you know, you're not 40 years old with gray hairs. Why are you in our house? And so, you know, I always got like, the call to the supervisor, like, you sent a kid out here to fix my furnace?

You know, yeah, I've got more experience than most of the adults in the room fixing their furnace. And. And so that was always a challenge that I had to overcome. And plus, I got this baby face. It's not as bad now, but when I was in my 20s, I consistently looked like I was 16, 17 years old.

So that was a big deal because I'd have to constantly, like, prove my age to people and things like that. And then, as, you know, the challenges that I have nowadays, like, I'd probably trade the young challenges for some of the challenges I have now. You know, challenges now revolve around, you know, larger line items like general leadership, you know, maturing in your. In your 20s to. To act, you know, much older than you are.

A lot of us would like to enjoy our 20s, you know, and unfortunately for me, you know, I got caught up because I got married early, and so I was super responsible early on. And I did go through a divorce. And so when I did that, I was like, I gotta go regain all my 20s, you know, I gotta go. So in a way, like, in my late 20s, I. I had a lot of immaturity and acted like my early 20s, you know, lost a lot of leadership points, you know, went, you know, two steps forward, five steps back.

This is where the infamous part of. The life, right, the infamous, you know, probably stems out from some. Some of these spirals. But, you know, the thing about challenges in general is that. And the thing that's kind of defined me, I think that people have watched me over time.

I have one person comment one time and say, man, this guy's like a phoenix. You know, he just continuously, you know, he'll get into trouble and then just like, rise from the ashes. And the one thing that I can probably say about myself is that I don't know the meaning of give up, quit, or back down. Like. Yeah.

One thing that's been driven in for me is that I always try to analyze what went wrong and what can I correct, what can I. Where can I course correct here? How can I make it better the second time? And then I go back at it again, you know, despite what anybody else thinks or says, I'll just pick back up. And, you know, and that's the Venus part of it is I.

I just don't know how to let it go. I'll never work for somebody as an employee, you know, it just will never happen again. You know, I enjoy a lifestyle that. That it enables me not to have to do. That is your freedom.

So then it's just like, where do we go from here? Yeah. You know, how do I continue to inspire a team? You know, how do I continue to build an organization that can run independent of. Of me as like some kind of polarizing leader?

Yeah. And those are the. Those are the challenges I really embrace these days. Yeah. Before we move into some of that, the leadership and some of the team building and that kind of thing, let's camp out real quick on what you just said that's so crucial because I know a lot of the listeners, and I mean, I've done it in the past too.

You fall into that place of when you have a knockdown or you have a setback or you have failure. So many people will one either stay in that place too long or let it drag them down, or they decide that, well, maybe this is too hard and they change direction. So what is something that you can speak into that with? Where did you get that resilience and the steadfastness to be able to learn from it and can. So kind of, where does that come from?

And also talk to that person that maybe is struggling with overcoming those setbacks and failures. And you talked about being able to debrief the situation, learn from it, really analyze it, and take notes. Can you take us through a short little exercise of how to do that? Yeah. And I think it's important to take a quick step back.

Right. Because I kind of gang weighed into this thing. And you're right, there's a foundation for everything. And for me, it's very much forged in fire. Right.

Like, you know, some of the reason that we become consultants or go out and help people is like, because we've walked through a certain experience that maybe we don't want other people to have to tread down. Right. Like, there's always an easier way for me, you know, learning about, you know, being able to rebound, come back, you know, from a challenging event and then course correct. Started when I ran my first company, Stone Mechanical. Right.

You can look it up. The reviews are horrible. Right. Like, what. This was in a.

This is in a. By the way, this is in an age before, like, we were all going out and getting, you know, 500 reviews so that the 10 negative reviews didn't look so damning. Right. So I've got the 10 negative reviews, but none of the positive. Right, But.

But it just described the entire solar industry. Yeah, exactly. A lot of big ones, and it's only negatives. Yeah. And so, you know, when I started that company, I was 24 years old.

2 million. And, you know, let me correct that figure, because if you read my Northwest College of Construction article that I did, actually, I don't think it was Northwest College. It was some magazine. They interviewed me. 8 million at the end of the year.

So let's. Let's use a smaller figure, but still. Let'S t to that, too. What year was that? That was 2016.

Okay. So everybody listening? 8. Yeah. So 2015.

Everybody listening? That's more like 7 or 8 million first year in today's numbers. Well, here's. And all kind of things. Yeah.

And it's. It's actually even worse than that because it was probably 7 or $8 million in 2015 numbers. 8 million for probably 7 or $8 million worth of work. Sure. So.

So, you know, these are mistakes that you make when you start your first company. Right. You. You underprice everything. You.

You cut a lot of systems out. There are a lot of systems you don't even know about. I got to that number surely just based on my ability to go out and sell. Right. Go out and close jobs over and over again.

I was the sales guy, went out, I closed jobs. That's what I did. And, you know, for the first year, we had a lot of fanfare in our company. The whole town was. Was, you know, gathered around the company.

The mayor was endorsing us. The mayor of the town. We did his work. We did the police department, we had hospitals in the schools, and pretty much everybody was a customer of mine. In the entire town.

Now this town's a town of maybe like 6,7000 people. And then the greater areas, maybe about 20, 30,000 total. Yeah. We had like 99% of all the people there. Like all the other companies got driven right out of town.

Yeah. We even ended up with the largest building right in the center of town. And it's a tourist town. So we had a mechanical building like right in the middle of tourist town by all the restaurants and everything else. Right close to the ocean, right on the beach.

And, and so, you know, things were going seemingly swimmingly and distributors loved us. Everything was good. I ended up going through the divorce. Right. And the divorce was kind of like one of these jarring things.

I'm going to share some details about this. Sure. Craziest thing. Right. Like you start a business, you hire a guy, you find out that your right hand guy that you hired had an affair with your wife.

Horrible. Right. Like that's not the news you want to hear. Right. And I learned about this while I'm out on a job with the dude.

Oh no, because she sent it. She sent him a text on our company phones and I went to check it. Anyways, I won't get in the details, but that ended the marriage pretty quick. Yeah. And, and now this is many years ago.

Wait a minute. Why is my wife sending you pictures on our company phone? I'm glad it wasn't pictures. That would have been worse. Right through the ceiling.

But, you know, so those types of things will start your first challenges. You could have like the semi charmed life. Like everything up, up to that point was going really good for me. You know, I had, I had two young kids. We, we had a nice little picket fence home.

You know, I never really actually run into much challenge. You know, it was, everything was just boring. You know, I, Yeah. Mowed lawn, check the mail, you know, went back to work. It was easy peasy.

The problem is, is that I was a workaholic. So. So, you know, problem one, you know, so ever. For every challenge there's a route. Right.

So I spent a lot of time blaming other people. You know, I gotta tell you that it was only after a lot of reflection that I went back and said, okay, I was a super workaholic. I was never home. Like, what else was? Yeah, anyone that doesn't excuse someone for, you know, cheating or anything like that.

But you know, you gotta take some accountability if you're not in the relationship. What relationship is there? Yeah, you know, and so, so that's important. But Anyways, that started the kind of the decline of that company. So going into the second year, I lost my right hand guy who was also responsible for a good amount of the production side of, of the company.

So I was doing a lot of the sales side. I did a lot of the technical side as well. So like the really advanced, complex things, that was me. And then he did a lot of the production the day to day, like the installs, the daily installs, you know, things like that. So losing that kind of cut, cut us up a little bit.

And then because we had other systemic issues like that, you know, we were underpriced, you know, things like that. Now if you're not constantly making more revenue the next month, you know, call this robbing Peter to pay Paul, I'm sure you've heard of it. But if you're not, if you're not snowballing forward, if you start slowing down and you're systemically broken like that, your company will fall apart. Yeah. So challenge number two, now I'm going through a divorce now my company's falling apart.

Right. And. And just every bad thing that you could possibly, you know, have thrown at you. And so I ended up having to a company that I was able to grow to nearly $5 million in the first year. Had the building in the center of town, had all the news around me, had commercials on the radio, had 20 some odd employees running around buzzing every day.

By the third year, I was selling it for assets. You know, a big old sheet metal shop, everything. Third year, couldn't even, didn't even get to exit that company. Just sold it for assets. Yeah.

You know, so liquidated the vans and the equipment and, and moved on my merry way. So, you know, at 26, I think at 26, 27, when that started to fall, you know, sell out, I. I just kind of started thinking to myself, like, where do I go from here? Yeah, right. Like you're at this rock bottom place.

You're. You're kind of alone. You've had to exit all your. I mean, I'm used to being surrounded by a bunch of employees at this point. I've got my, my.

I had this lady named Leanne. She's watching this. She's on my Facebook still. But she was my office assistant and she did everything for me, booked all my plane. T started just taking care of my whole schedule and now I've got nobody.

I don't got solo doo out there. Yeah, solo dolo. And I, I just kind of went and started and I got near homelessness after I sold everything, you know, I didn't, I had to pay other things and. Yeah, and that's a huge pivotal moment too. I mean that's where really the rubber meets the road.

If you get the. It reminds me of the Jim Rohn quote. That's like the winds of life blow the same on everybody. It's how we set ourselves that determines our destination. Are we going to get smashed into the rocks or are we going to, you know, get to where we want to go?

And it reminds me of that. We have it, things will happen. It's how we decide to respond that makes the difference. Right. I always thought of the Invictus quote, right.

You know, like I'm the captain of my thing, I'm the master of my soul type stuff, right? Like, so here I am, I'm in my own personal self made prison, right. Like you have to come to this realization that I spent a lot of time blaming other people. Now I'm really starting to look at myself saying like, what, what happened here? And how do I take extreme accountability?

About the same time I found, you know, the Daily Stoic, which is a book about stoicism, right. And, and then I, I started reading the passages, I started really reflecting on like, this is my issue and my issue alone, so that I'm the only one who can fix it. Because if I blame other people, then I'm expecting other people to come and fix it for me, right. So I started seeking some guidance and I found, you know, it's funny because I, I was looking at going back to school and I have an engineering background, engineering degree. And I started looking at like business.

I'm like, maybe I need to go business. And so I found Harvard Business School online and they were just having this course on business negotiation. For whatever reason, I was like, wow, that's what I'm going to sign up for, right? 1700, 1600 bucks, 1300 bucks or whatever. Yeah.

Quick little course, you get a little Harvard Business School certificate at the end. So I'm like, oh, that's cool. Spend the rest of my money on this thing. That's never going to help me. And.

But I did it and I ended up reading the Michael Wheeler Harder Negotiation book. Great one. And in that book, the book is great for sales. I would recommend anybody read this book, Michael Wheeler, the Art of Negotiation, I believe that's the title. And Michael Wheeler is this guy who is just this phenomenal, phenomenal educator.

And he talks about this story of a guy, the guy who bought the Entire city block in New York. I don't know if you've heard this story in other books or, or, you know, elsewhere, but basically this guy went around, he had a deal with a bank. The bank wanted to open up a new building, but it was going to be a city block. And at the time, like it was unheard of. Buying a city block is in high.

Is incredibly complex because you have to, you have to make deals in such a fashion and in, in such coordination that you. For instance, there are holdouts in real estate. If someone gets wind at the other end of the block that you're buying out the whole block, what are they going to do? They're going to hold out, right? Because they're going to raise the price and wait until you buy the properties and they're going to hold out.

But then you also have different, you know, faculties that are there. Like, there's a church that's been there forever, there's a place that housed low income people. You know, there's doctor's offices and other things. And so each different building you go into presents a different set of challenges for how you negotiate that deal, how you close that deal, and what it takes to finally buy out that city block. So this is a.

So I read this story about this guy and I was incredibly inspired. I was like, man, if there are people out there who have done things like this, like we talk about selling door to door furnaces, you know. Yeah, exactly. Selling solar, selling a roof. There was a guy who went and bought an entire city, negotiated a bank's money and bought an entire city block and negotiated every single deal with such perfection.

Right. That it was advantageous and the bank ended up money ahead. You know, that is the, that's like the pinnacle of sales. Yeah, Right. And so I just started thinking to myself, like, man, I'm not good enough.

Right. I suck. You know, like in the grand scheme of salespeople out there, I need, I've got a lot of work to do. Right. I mean, I think that every single day.

Right. Don't wish things were easier, wish I was better. Yeah. And so that little fire, so that lit fire, that kind of got me out of my slump because I'm highly. I'm hyper competitive and you know, being alone, I.

I felt like I had no one to compete against and I just need to change up the format. Like I need to find something to compete against. So if you find yourself in that place where you are kind of lacking that motivation and you feel like it's because you're alone or you have this sense of, you know, loneliness in, in your race. You have to scale up to something. For me that's really important.

I found out that that was really important. I have to scale up to something. So I, I put that book in my. And I realized that you can do this with books. It doesn't have to be a person that's right next to you or a person in your company.

It doesn't have to be. It was like anything that's alive, you know, where it's paper, you know, it's words on a paper. And I'm like, I've got to stack up to this story. Yeah. You know, and, and really that's an infinite source of motivation.

So, you know, I started, I finished this course, you know, I read that book, you know, seven, eight, nine, ten times over. I got other people doing the course. And you know, that course probably changed my perspective on how I approach everything since then, you know, and, and now I can weigh myself. Like now it's like a temporary lack of motivation. I just weigh myself against that and boom, I'm right back at it.

So now it's like I've got a never ending source of motivation. So that was it for me. Yeah. No, that's incredible. I love that.

And I'm, I'm so very much the same way. And I know the people that, a lot of the people that listen to this podcast, everybody out there to be a top performer and to focus, really sales minded. Their personality is very much like ours. Meaning that if you're anything like me, if I don't have a deadline, I'm probably not going to do it in any kind of timely manner. So I'm always forcing myself these absurd short deadlines for things that I have to get accomplished.

So that's how I've done it. I was the guy that was like the one small company in a town of 13,000 people. Kind of like when you started. But I was the one sales guy, right. So you know, I was the guy on the island.

This is before the Internet. I, my first course, man, I remember I'm going to date myself here real quick. But I had to, I found a Brian Tracy course in a magazine. I had to call the office. They gave me an address to mail an actual check to and then wait for my CD and workbook set from Brian Tracy's organization to come three weeks later.

That was my first like journey into like owning myself and saying I have to invest in myself. Right. So $330, which was the most I'd ever spent to mail a check. Right. So.

But I'm with you. We have to do that. So. You know, Sam, it's funny you mentioned Brian Tracy. I think we touched on this last time, in fact.

But Brian Tracy was one of those. When I first got into P L Johnson that I, I looked up and, and really incorporating his, his cassettes, you know, at the time. Psychology of selling and eat. The psychology of selling. Yeah, it's like a 7 or 11 part series that he did.

And, and it was. I actually didn't buy it. I'm. I got to admit that I kind of ripped them off the Internet. I went.

Limewire was big at the time and I hope it online. I think I found it online wire and downloaded it and put it on a little. One of those little Zune MP3 players. Yep. Have my earbuds in and I had one too.

That's the only thing that would make it. They made those things like tanks. The only thing that could make it through 140 degree attic every day. Everything else I got was just like crater in no time, you know. And then the other, the other book, just one more book that I picked up and this goes into like applicable cells, you know, out here today in the house.

I've been, I've been talking a lot about it. I think a lot of sales trainers out there probably based their whole process off of it. But the book influence, you know, Robert, what's that pal Dini's or however you say his last name. That book and the, and basically the core six principles of persuasion that he outlines are my daily go to in how I approach every single sale that I'm out there. In fact, I teach my employees now that like it's, it's compounding, right.

Like when, when we start teaching sales, I, I make sure everybody understands the concept of the butterfly effect. Yeah. Really important that you understand the concept of the butterfly effect. And that's everything compounds off the last thing. Right.

You know, if, if your office did a great job answering the phone, right. Then you're going to have a better time when you get to the door. If you called before you arrive and you introduce yourself and you give them an ETA and up three to five minutes earlier than the ETA you gave them. That's a compounding effect, right. You know, you put on your floor savers.

That's a compounding effect. You set the tone with a great customer survey. That's a compounding effect, right. And, and, and you're asking permission along the way. But you, you create this ultra compounding effect with your client while you're building this relationship.

And you let the one thing ping off the other. I took all of that and I started incorporating like the influence principles into that compounding effect. So for instance, you've got reciprocity. Right. One of the first things that you practice when I go inside the house, you know, if the newspaper's outside.

Right. We always teach these, like, arbitrary things. But like, what's the, what's the mechanic behind it? You know, bring in the newspaper, you know, you do something for me, you know, if I did something for you, you'll do something for me type of thing. Roll their trash cans up off the curb.

Exactly. It's a, it's a very good prospecting way to, to get your customer or your client to give back what you're putting in. Right. Scarcity, authority, commitment, consistency, liking, you know, all these different. And consensus.

And all these different principles. If you do one, you have. Let's. Let's say you've got a 10 better chance of closing the deal. Right.

You do two, now you got 20. If you do all six of those, you're walking away with that cell. Like, I, I don't. If you do them and you do them well, the more you can incorporate into that sales process in each call and there are different pockets to, to throw these in. Right.

Like, so I believe calls should be dynamic. Right? They should, they should flow. You don't want it to be choppy and you don't want it to be awkward. Right?

So. Yeah, exactly. So I make sure all my calls flow. I do it in order in a way that I can guide the conversation. Right.

But everything, so many keys that we have, the locks are in a very specific order in their mind. We have to unlock them in order or the whole thing falls apart. You're right. Yeah. And don't get me wrong, if you read, if you read the Art of Negotiation, you also learn about what's called Zopa and Batna.

Now I say this a lot in groups and no, but nobody understands. I'm just like some guy on a mountain screaming out so far. And they're like, what are you talking about? I love this. Maybe with this.

So for super quick pop out for everybody listening, I have started the Close it now book club. So there's. This is one of those clubs that my only intention is to raise the standard of our industry. So for everybody listening, if you want to join the book club, all you have to do is join the fa. Close it now.

Facebook group. And I just put the announcements in there. We meet once a month on Zoom. And it sounds like that we need to put this book in the list. Put it in the list.

Because, you know, you learn about this concept of zone of possible agreement. That's Zilba. And then Batna's best alternative negotiated agreement. Right. Okay.

Now, you know, a lot of people go, go in and they've got one bullet in their gun. Right? Yeah. And, and so the, the problem is, is that you, you get into this like, scripted process that someone taught you. And, and when something goes off course of that scripted process, you have no.

Don't know where to go. Frazzle out. You don't know where to go. You get stuck and the cell falls apart. You know, the most common thing I see out in the field when I'm talking to sales tax, comfort advisors, etc, is that as soon as, as soon as they get thrown off guard by something, they struggle to recover.

They, they really do. And so I started thinking like, okay, Batna, Batna, Batna. The best alternative negotiated agreement. Like, why aren't, why aren't we practicing like this backup? Like, oh, well, if this is the case, I'm going to pivot over here because I have this.

I've already thought of a backup plan. A backup plan for that. Right. And so, so if I'm hearing you're right, that means actually doing some brain work ahead of time and being prepared when you show up for your appointments. You got to.

Not just winging it every time. You got to review the call. I, I play the whole entire call in my head on the way there. So I, I actually watched a really great podcast with the, I think his name's Mike Bad with names. But the, the guy who is the one of the top sales guys at CM Heating in Washington and he did 8 point some odd million dollars.

Yeah. Verifiable sales. And he was being interviewed and he said a lot of things that like, struck me as very similar of my process. And by, by no means is my process. My process.

Right. Like, it came from a multitude of different great people in the industry. Same. Just patch it together. Right.

Found what worked. And so, but he, he said the same thing. He said I play the entire sales call in my head. Like I, I imagine the whole entire clothing closing process, what I sold them, how it went down, where we were when we sold it, you know, et cetera. And that's something I've been doing for many, many years.

Yeah, I used to, before we were giving Six options and things like that in my companies, before I was on the Facebook groups or even knew about that kind of stuff. Yes. I would always at least make two or three options. But back. Back in the day, we do it all on paper.

So I would actually, at the office, I would go over the call, and I would print different actual printed estimates. Yeah. And I would fold them up, and I'd put one in one back pocket and one in the other. And. And what I would do is I would get into the call.

There's much better ways, but this was really effective, you know, back in the day, I would get into the call, and when. When the solution met what was in my left pocket, I'd simply say, oh, and you know what? Just to show you how good we are, I've already got the estimate for you. I pull it out, and it would be printed, and it would have his name, and the whole thing just talked about. And I steered the conversation a lot the whole way, but I knew it could go one or two ways.

Like, I reviewed the call, and I was like, this is going to be a furnace or a heat p. It's going to be this or that, or the duck list is going to have three zones or five zones. Right. Like, so I'd have these parameters that I kind of scope out with the information I had on the call, what, what they were asking for, what the notes said, etc. I play those out, I make the estimates, and then when I got there, I'd share the conversation.

But one was always in the pocket, unused. Right. Like, one was just there. And if the call had gone another way, you know, to my alternative route, I would have pulled that one out, and it would have still been accurate. Right.

So either way, I was like, just depends on the pocket. Now he doesn't know I have one in the other pocket. So he's just like. He just pulled out the right one. Just magic.

Right. And so that would always impress customer. Like, almost every time, they'd be like, how do you do that? That's amazing. How'd you know?

Yeah, like, yeah, how do you know? It's like, I know that. I've done this a thousand times. Don't worry about it. Let's sign right here.

You know, and so. And. And so that's kind of what I do today in a different way. We use how. We have software now, right.

So we have all these advanced tools. We have the ability to kind of really go in and, you know, kind of customize what the customer wants based on A load calculation thing, a good block load on the house, and then really just pull out the exact right thing for the client. Right. And that. That's.

That's what's important. Right. And so you mix that and then you add the six principles of persuasion into it Right along the call. How can you lose? Right.

Right. Like make. Relate to the customer, find common ground. As soon as you get in the house, establish common ground. Customer survey, ask permission, go through their home, involve the customer, you know, in the process.

In the load process. Happily involve the customer. I like to call, you know, like. Yeah, it's. This isn't some.

You know, I'm gonna go off now after meeting you for three minutes and. And be by myself for the next 40 minutes. Let me wander through your house for an hour. Yeah. And then I'm gonna disappear to my truck for 20 more minutes.

Right. And then when I finally come out of hibernation, out of the truck, I'm gonna come and talk to you and try to pitch you in five to 10 minutes. Right. And see if you want to buy my product. And you've known me for now, collectively, seven minutes exactly.

I've been there for an hour and a half. Yeah. You know, and that's how. That's how so many people train. And it's awful.

And I. Grosses me out. This is a relationship business, right? Yeah. If I can't be with the customer the whole time, then what am I doing there?

Like, I can do all that at my office. Yeah. We've got Google, We've got property data. We've got pretty much. I mean, I'm not saying that's totally accurate.

You know, I'll probably get ate up online for saying that, but there's so many. But you're right. There's so many things we can tap into. If we've done this any amount of time, you can figure out the problems from the street. In most cases, however, we have to remember, what is it?

The house is not the one writing the check. People write the check. People buy what they want, not what they need. Yeah. And I would venture to say, if that's your sales process you're actually doing.

If I was a customer, I'd rather you just email me over a quote. Yeah. Based on some assumptions. Then come and waste two hours of my time. Don't involve me.

I've talked to you for seven minutes, and now I have seven options sitting in front of me. That's worse than an email. You got it. And our industry is wondering why homeowners are opting for online shopping when it comes to heating and air systems because that's the only experience they've ever had. And they're like, this has been a waste of time.

I could have just picked one out online. It's the same thing. Yeah. And, and also it really, if you have 7 or 10 or 15 or 20, I don't care how many minutes you say you have, it's still not enough. If you have that much time in front of a customer, it's, it's almost impossible to form a really meaningful relationship.

It's almost impossible to know who that customer is. Right. You know, and so, I mean, I'm pretty acute. I can go into a house and, and tell you who this person is pretty quickly. And that's after practicing for many, many years and having many, many years of multiple million dollar sales years and high closing rates.

So at that point in time, I can do that. You know, everybody I train doesn't seem to be gifted in that way. They, they have this longer dating process that they have to go through with the customer really establishing who they are and who that client is with each other for, for a while. And so their mating dance is just longer. Right.

It's, it's a, it's a, it's a deeper, longer rhythm to get into it. And so in 20 minutes, if you tell me, you know, the customer, either you're the most gifted salesperson on the planet or, or you're, you probably don't know what you're talking about and your sales rates probably reflect it, you know, and, and so we, we really make sure that like, the biggest thing is showing up and being there with the customer, you could be really sucky at most of these sales principles. But if you do all six, and you do them in a, you know, kind of an awkward way, but you're still there with the customer the whole time, your sales rate's going to be much higher than if you're polishing for seven minutes. If you show up and you ever just truly care for them and be like, hey, I'm here to really solve your problem. I'm not just here to, you know, grab a couple measurements and try to force my square peg in this round hole, let's actually listen to what you're telling me and then create a solution according to what your concerns are.

Wow. Just that one little bit of mindset change and it all changes, right? Huge. Yeah. Just spend some time with your customer.

Like, you don't have to be perfect at the process first Start with time. Put the process in through the time. By the way, you get more experience practicing the process if you're spending more time with the customer. Yeah. You know, first step is first spend more time with the customer.

Now I don't care if you just sit on their couch and talk the whole time. You know, if the rest of the process needs help, you're still going to have a better chance. Yeah. And so, so we, we really preach time, time over everything. You need time and grade time with customer time is number one.

Right? Yeah. So many of us, especially in the busy seasons, get, we. We feel like we get so rushed, we're putting these false expectations on ourselves, but the opposite is actually true. We should slow down and take longer.

Right. And if we rush anything, everybody listen, don't rush the discovery conversation time. Don't rush through the questionnaire. If you have to rush anything, rush the measurements. Don't rush this part.

The conversation, the discovery is the part that makes the most difference. In that part. They will tell you everything that they want to buy and all the reasons and they'll tell you all of the reasons that would keep them from buying if you listen and ask the right clarifying questions. Yeah. That's not to say that there's not a really strategic, you know, once you dial this shit in.

Right. Like, oh yeah, you can get super surgical with it. Right. And so like, this is, this is what separates the men from the boys. Every single second of my appointment, I can tell you exactly what's happening, but it feels like a normal conversation.

So that's that mastery level, right? Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

I love it. So let's turn the corner a little bit because so. And thank you for all of that kind of getting us caught up. And your, your philosophy is. Is very similar.

It's very similar to mine. I think that's why we resonate with each other so well. And now. So I'm really curious, what are you super excited about right now that we've got. So we've got all these things.

We've talked about the psychology and we've talked about building in the moment of rapport with the homeowner and really solving their problems, offering solutions, etc. And so that's kind of brought you up to. I feel like we're kind of in this place now with what you've been working on. So tell us a little bit about that. Yeah.

So, you know, obviously, as you can see, sales has been a passion of mine and it's something that I have loved more than most of the functions in a company, and I've done them all. And don't get me wrong, I love the higher level challenges, but sales is just something that I've been able to zero in on, hone my skill for a long time. And nothing makes me more excited than getting to walk up to a customer's door and knock that first time, straighten myself up, put my best smile on, look them in the eyes, shake their hand and let them know that I'm here to take care of them. Right. And so, and by, by the way, Tommy Mello says it all the time, so I give him credit for this.

Hopefully people have been doing it longer, but smile, you know, smile. Look them in the eye. Right? Like if you can't do that again, you cause some kind of issues. There's psychological triggers that happen.

Yeah, we should be having fun. If we're not having fun, find something else to do. Yeah, exactly. So. So it brought me down to this is I started thinking in 2017, 2018, like, there's got to be a better way to get my people.

I have, I have four selling techs at the time and one comfort advisor, which is kind of a weird way of doing things. But that's just what I had in my hodgepodge company. And I wanted to get a better way to where they could all offer the same things. Because what I found out is my comfort advisor and this is why companies do this. My comfort advisor only ever has to focus on what's the newest rebate, you know, what are the financing options?

Go, goes to the training, sees what the new variable speed units are and things like that. So he's really dialed in on the sales process. Our selling techs have to also put in their brain all this information on technical stuff, all this information on fixing things, and they don't have time to be researching every single rebate under the sun. If you go to most companies and you ask the service technicians, what are all the rebates on new units and what's all the stuff with CO2 and stuff? I doubt you'll get any good, consistent, inclusive answer.

Yeah, it's just a matter of bandwidth and time availability, Bandwidth and time. And so, you know, I want to develop something that I could give out to my people, train them up fast. And I wanted the company to control. Products and services are number one in a company. Next, marketing.

Right. So your products and services have to be well defined. You can't just be out there offering everything under the sun or anything under the sun. Right. You have to Know your products, and that way you can be experts, subject matter experts in the product that you offer.

Right. And so you can really hone in on it. So I wanted a product that could take the. The challenge of having to store all this information in your brain and then help through the sales structure that sales process. The same sales process we just talked about everything from entering the home to the survey to the block load, all the way to getting and presenting options.

I noticed that the. The challenges that we spoke about this whole entire time. Like disappearing into the truck for 20 minutes. Yeah. Right.

Going around the house by yourself, making scribbles on a notepad that if. If that paper gets ripped and stuck in your truck and you sell the job, that doesn't necessarily ever make it to the install department. Right, Right. One of the biggest disconnects in our industry is what was sold was not. Was what was installed.

Then you have an unhappy homeowner. Yeah. I mean, and you also have the installers. Yeah, for sure. So quick note on that.

Everybody listening. That's the big. Also the biggest reason negative reviews happen. So if you fix that part of your business, everybody listening, that'll make immediate changes really quick is make sure the information that was communicated to the homeowner from the sell side of it was also communicated to the production crews to make sure that it happens. So picking up right there.

Yeah. So, you know, so I wanted to develop that. And what we came out with was this laminated. Really crazy. We came up with these laminated cards.

There's about six of them you can flip through on a ring. And if you're. I got this idea because I was a service tech and all the old service tech. Quick. You know, tech books were always this.

Laminated cards on a ring you could flip through. You could hang in the back of your truck. Yeah. It could rattle around. And so we made these and we.

Pressure is high. This is happening. It's probably this or this. Check this first. We gave our guys some dry erase markers, and we told them you could go in and all the prices are already set.

Just do the load calc. And then you can circle the options with the customer. And it basically incorporated what we call the paper towel clothes with. With some type of reusable formatting for actually listing units that didn't. Didn't kind of get discard on the paper.

The idea was after they were done, they would take a picture of it and send that off to the. The office and. And we kind of do this manual process. In 2020. I decided that's not good enough.

We need to turn that into software. And so we embarked on what was called Matrix and the Sales Matrix. In 2020 we hired two developers, they came from Detroit. We bought their development firm and we imported them to California, brought them up the Oceanside. They were with us.

I'm sure they hated the move to California from so much. We had so many good nights on the beach. They were, one was from Iraq, the other was from India. But they, they love to take their hookah out onto the ocean and this really nice like bamboo matting in these chairs and stuff. And so I'd always go down and like on the evenings after a good long hard day we just sit there and, and, and, and, and smoke the hookah or whatever the vapor thing is in there.

You know, I'm not a pro at it. And we just tell like fun stories. They tell stories about like how things are over culturally and you know, things like that. And so you know we had a lot of good times. Problem was is they, they, they weren't the best developers.

So really fun to hang out with on the ocean and not so fun when we sold the product to about 150 contractors in the first week and the development wasn't finished. And so after about four or five weeks of lags and delays and stuff we end up having to refund all these contractors. And so the Matrix kind of got this up and close and so I dropped the project because you know, for me I need to focus on what's going right. Like I need to put my energy into what's making money and what's moving things forward and, and that seemed like a failed project at the time. So maybe I'll revisit it in the future.

Fast forward to 2022. I'm sitting down with one of my business partners and we're, we're working, we've got Service Titan, we've got the enterprise version of it because we have multiple branches so they have like partner portal and so we dial in with central CSRs and stuff and can book into multiple branches and, and Service Titan is a great program, I'll say that to anybody. I love Service Titan, right. Don't love their prices but I love the product. And the one thing that I thought could have improvement was the sales arm.

The sales arm of the, and the follow up arm frankly. But right. Yeah. I'm not personally not a big fan of the way their layout for the presentation at all. Well and the problem is Service Titan caters to 100 different verticals yeah.

So because of that they can't create such a custom process. It's out of their hands. So what they've created for what they have is the best that you can possibly do. I'm convinced of it. I've looked at so much software, but it's invoice based optioning.

It's the same thing as what we did on paper 20 years ago. It's the same thing what we did when we wrote it on triplicate and things like that. Oh yeah. You know, even I remember writing the contracts up on carbon copy paper, man. 100 have been there.

Yeah. And so, so because that hasn't changed much and we have all this technology around us that didn't sit right with me. I was, you know, and we, we were having a sales discussion meeting and we were going over the same trainings over and over like this. How you offer this, These are the options we need to be getting off the table. This is how you do six options.

And, and you know that, that training still produces. No matter what company I've gone into, everybody does it slightly differently from the other. And it's, and it's really difficult to hone in a super consistency. That's why you end up having this large disparity over your sales team of who the rock stars are and who your average players and who your, who your low end guys are. And so I think that's created a lot.

It's created through the sales process for sure. Like your acumen towards a good sales process is one thing but, but that's only because the sales process isn't structured, you know, with the technology. So we set out to make technology that structures that sales process from front to back. From the time you enter to the time you do the customer survey to, to involving the customer on the, on the block load or room by room calculations to going into custom system builders. What are we building today?

Are we building a ductless unit? Are we building a traditional HVAC system, a package unit, you know, etc, a boiler system? And each one of these different items has such a different building process. Ductless system in our trade is zonal. You know, so it's a zone by zone, it's room by room.

Right. You know, you don't have to do a whole load calculation on the house because ductless are indifferent of an entire house load. Unless you're taking care of the whole house. You're just putting in one room. That's all that matters.

Yeah. And so, and then with ductless, it's Also very difficult. Most companies have a hard time even offering Douglas because there's so many different options and configurations, especially when you get. Into the multi ports, like how many heads can I put on this unit? And how many beats you can have.

Yeah. And you can also have like a, a ducted system, you know, an air handler ceiling ducted unit, you know, one of those pancake units. And so there's so many different configurations. So how do you account for training your sales team on engineering one of those systems? And so if you have a traditional comfort advisor set up where your comfort advisors aren't necessarily experienced field tax, they're great at sales, but they're not necessarily filled techs, they're gonna have a hard time putting together really convincing ductless systems that are engineered properly.

So we decided we're like, let's do all these steps, then let's put builders in there that are specific to the use case. Let's make them easy to do. Let's make this whole process fairly quick. And then let's also give them the ability to draw up the ductwork system and schematic and get that to our install crew. And everything gets automatically saved and ported over so nothing gets stuck in your truck or garbage away.

And then finally we get down to the proposal. Like, let's make a super compelling proposal that who cares about six options? Let's give them every option that's compatible with their home. Let's. When we talk about Batna, best alternative, negotiated agreement, it's only as good as however many we can store in our head.

Yeah. And in Service Titan, it's only as good as however many we can store before the dogma of it being too many hits the customer. Right, Right. Like that. Fatigue.

You know, you can't go through six options with a customer. It's impossible to go through six options with a customer and explain every option and have the customer. Yeah. Confused mind says no. Confused mind says no.

And so. So the way we mask it is by what I call hiding the floor. Right. Like that's how if you, if you do six options, you. You don't show them where the bottom is.

The bottom doesn't exist. So you start with the top option and you say, this is the solution for you. You wait till they throw up some kind of objection and then you might go down an option. Sure. But they never know where the floor is.

You stop when they. You start when they say go. Right. So that's the best way to present six options currently in the field. That's pretty Haphazard man.

And if all six of your options didn't resonate because you did a bad job with your selector, like your, your noodle, you weren't thinking exactly what fit the customer in that scenario. You could strike out even on your lowest package. I see it all the time. They put their lowest package, they still got all the air filters, cleaners, surge protectors, everything else, and their lowest package is still $17,000, $16,000. And they wonder why they can't walk away with a sale.

Right. Well, sounds like they didn't listen well enough. Right. It's a listening problem and they didn't emotionally tie it to anything. It's just strictly, it's.

It stayed logic in the head and didn't move into the heart to make a now decision. And the problem with listening and, and by the way, there's no problem with listening, but the problem in the sales process, on the proposal side of it, with listening, is that it's only as good as you are capable of listening. Right, Right. And every person is different. So you cannot have consistency in your sales process as an organization if it's based off of each individual's ability to, to listen individually.

Right. Because everybody's going to hear things differently. Yeah. Process it and regurgitate it in a way back to the homeowner that they hear. We play the telephone game in our company all the time to illustrate this.

Right. Like, you start at one end of the room and you whisper something in someone's ear. They have to whisper that into the next person's ear and so on. By the time you get to the end of the room, the other person has to say out loud what. What the first person said.

And usually it's something vastly different than what the first person said. Like, it, it's not even in the realm. You know, I love this. I'm training here in a couple weeks. I'm totally going to do that exercise.

And this, this is the problem when we have 20 people in an organization and they all, they all listen differently. Right. They all hear things differently and then they all give it back differently when. They filter through their own, like prejudged, like lenses. Sure, yeah.

Just their life experience, different levels of intelligence. Like even just down to the basic things. Like, some things are hard to understand. Some customers are very complex. Some customers say things in very simple language.

And so, you know, you might not resonate with one side or the other. And so that, that for me, I need clarifiers. I'm very complex. I clarify with the Customer all the time. Yeah.

And so another person might take something very simple and say, well, that's what he said. You know, that's it. That's all there is. I'm not asking for more. That was, that's what the guy said.

Don't you get it? You know, so, and so that's why I wanted to make a process that it's indifferent of listening. If we have every option and we just tear it by efficiency and let them choose based on what, how the system is going to benefit them and they can decide their likes right then and there because they listen to themselves better than we'll ever listen to them. Yeah, right. They already know what they want.

So why do we even have to play that backwards forwards transition of I told you, now you decide, then you tell me again. Yeah, it doesn't matter what they say. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to cut the middleman out. Right. And I'm just going to give them a choice.

So in short, we developed a product that does all of that and, and then helps you close it by showing energy efficiency, tiered financing, so on and so forth. And it's, man, it's working great. I mean, we've got a lot of people on it now. We started demos February 5th. Happy to say.

We onboarded our 50th company just, just this morning. And so we're, we're full steam ahead. We've got it in use in our company and our closing rates have already went up 14 points across, across our technician, our comfort advisors and we're, you know, we're hearing feedback and, and making it better every day. Nice. I love it.

It's a special day for me when you launched it because you actually launched it on my birthday, which is really fun. That's right. That's right. It was your birthday. I remember that.

But yeah, so the cool thing is so everybody listening. I actually got a. When we were talking at the beginning of this episode, we were talking about when we connected before. Well, what we did before was just this massive screen share of all of the technical stuff, which is cool to get to see the background of it. But in the last several months I've gotten the ability or had the privilege to kind of Brandon pull back the curtain for me to see some of the.

What he's doing behind the scenes. And this thing is incredible. I'm really excited about this program because if you're like me for years and years and years, there's not been a decent presentation software out there anywhere. There's some okay ones, but not, not any that I've personally gotten excited about. And this is the, this is the first one I've seen in years that I actually believe, believe would actually work and follow a process.

So it's nice. But it's also got some other things to it other than just the sales presentation part. Right. Yeah. So you know the Matrix is an ecosystem, right?

It's an entire app ecosystem. And so. Well, let's drop the buzzword too real quick before you get into more of it. So everybody listening. It is AI driven.

So there's your buzzword. So it's fully ranked us. You probably do. I've noticed something if I mention AI in any of my posts on Facebook, zero engagement, it's like, it's like Facebook is like it's become white noise. Yeah, yeah.

Like they have an algorithm that if you like, happens to be in the, the product name. So that's really unfortunate for me. I can make a normal post and I'll get all kinds of reactions and comments. I say anything about AI and I've tested it with just sharing news articles about normal AI developments that are happening. Nothing.

I'll get one like over five. It's so intriguing too because I think what's happening is all of a sudden the availability to develop AI is everywhere. It's almost open source and there's some really great things being developed like this and there are also some not so great versions of different things out there that are getting promoted that is really giving people a really bad taste in their mouth. So with any new technology, you know, time will prove it, prove it out. Of course, with, with AI, you have to have guardrails.

You know, if you're, if you're a developer and you're making a software with AI, you can't just make another chatbot. There's too many chatbots. Everybody has a chatbot. You can go to OpenAI right now and make a chatbot. There's nothing special about a chatbot.

So when you're making convincing like AI enabled apps, it has to do something dynamic that is aside from a chatbot. For instance, one of the ways that we use AI is in our customer survey. We talk about the customer survey. We just recently got the ability to record the customer survey instead of doing a manual form entry. So you can do it either way.

You can turn off your mic if they don't want you to record. You can just press a button on the app and it won't transcribe it but. And you can enter it manually. Just like you do on Service Titan or any other CRM. But you could turn on this button and it'll automatically.

You just read out the questions, you get their answers and it just fills it out for you. That way you don't have to sit there and fill out the form. As you know, you can have just a conversation. Right. That's important.

Mind blowing. I didn't even know about the component of it. I love it. Cool stuff, right? But the what's really cool about the customer survey is we hope.

And you always ask this question to any salesperson, like, what do you do with the customer survey? Right. Like at the end of the day, are you just recording information because your boss told you to and you put it in the system and then you go off on your merry way? Or are you taking that insight and incorporating and folding it into your process so that you can really understand where that customer is and what they're going to need and how you're going to offer it? And so our customer survey has to play that role.

We try to take as much of that out of your hands as possible because, you know, you're focused on so many other things. I want you to do a really good job on the block load. I want you to do a really great job with just having a great connective conversation with your client, like getting to know them and everything. Yeah. I don't need you juggling 87 different concepts inside your head.

And what did they say on question four that was really relevant today? Write that down somewhere else or do I got open my app back up and find what that was? You know, that's. That seems cumbersome. Right.

And so, you know, you'll pick up a little bit just naturally, but you'll pick up the natural good stuff. I don't need you to pick up everything, but we want everything to be useful because we don't ask a question that doesn't have a usefulness. Right. So we take that information and we use AI to interpret it. And we basically tell our AI.

We say, hey, this is the, this is the answers that this client has given us based on these questions. Tell me what kind of buying customer this is. Tell me what kind of consumer psychology is involved in selling something to this customer. Tell me if this customer's an economy customer, if this customer is relational, if this con, if this customer is transactional, and how do I attack that? So please give me a, give me some insight on this customer.

Right. And so we tell our AI answer this. Right? Yeah. And then we Say, letting the AI part of it be the psychologist for us so we don't have to all of a sudden become a psychologist at the same time, along with everything else.

We'Re doing, right, we've got these Robert Cialdini's like stuck in the app, right? Like, and it's writing the book for us, the book of influence. And so what's happening is then we say, well, how do we format this? We don't want it to just give you some blurb about the customer. And if that's in front of the customer, that doesn't make any sense.

We want to be kind of stealthy. So we say, well, how would this look if we outputted it through product descriptions? How would this look if we made subtle edits throughout the software that are forward in the software that the customer doesn't see or know? Like, by the time you get there, it's just new product descriptions. It's based on that customer selling psychology.

So for instance, a typical product description, we got a train furnace or a train ac, right? An air conditioner. And a typical product description for that might say, hey, this is 14 seer. Hey, it's 56 decibels. Hey, it's got a steel, you know, baked on enamel coating or something like.

That still chance bolt grommets. It's got a spine compressor. Yeah, yeah, it's that compressor sound cover, you know, like, okay, like, what does that mean to the customer? Now I would normally have to translate this, you know, because the customer doesn't understand it. So by the time we look, what's this one do?

Well, you know, because it's got 56 decibels. Let me illustrate that to you, you know, blah, blah. And so I don't like those product descriptions, you know, and I. But what, what we can do is we can have the AI take what the customer survey said, interpret that and then rewrite the descriptions based on what the descriptions are. So for instance, the customer says that they prefer a quiet.

Quietness is, is paramount, right, because they have a bedroom not far off of where the AC is, right? And so on and so forth. So that unit that says it's, you know, got low decibels or whatever, you know, it's going to rewrite that description. And now instead of it saying, you know, runs at 36 decibels, it'll say something like, this unit is fairly quiet. This unit is great for homes where the air conditioner might be close to a bedroom or a living area where, where quietness is a desired, you Know thing.

So, so now it's going to write it in a way that reflects back what that customer's fears and, and needs and, and wants are. And so. And repeating back their own language. Which is cool. Yeah.

And I call it repeating back their love language. Right. Like, yeah, it's speaking their love language to them. And so, you know, we're trying to incorporate the AI in ways that are stealthy like that. We're not incorporating it as just like some chat output.

Yeah. I feel like if in a program, if AI is a parent and you can tell it's AI, it's being done wrong. Correct in most cases. Yeah. And the only AI that we have where you're like, this is an AI that I'm communicating with is inside of our app, we have two, two really special AI companions, I call them.

And what they do is one of them is our sales sidekick, which is like having a sales trainer in your pocket, you know, for lack of a better word. It's, it's not on site training or anything like that, but it's nice, progressive steps in the right direction. It's when you're at a customer's house and you're facing an objection and you need a quick, you need a quick script, you need something that's going to help you navigate that objection, you know, fast. And, you know, maybe you're not in Sam's program where he gives you his direct cell phone number and you can call him up at 247 all hours of the day. Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute.

This is. There is a program. I, I signed up. It was on your website, the website you just launched. Yeah.

And so you didn't know they put that there. It is true. I am one of the most accessible trainers in the industry right now. So I give myself a number out on Every episode. It's 512-364-8559.

Text me, text them. And, and if you can't get to him, get to me and I'll bug him and I'll make sure he responds. But no, this gives you a quick script and then the other one is the roleplay bot. And the role playbot is really, really nice because now, just like the customer survey, you have the ability to call these trainers, call these bots and talk to them, and they have a physical voice. And so the role play bot acts like a customer and it, it gives you kind of the, the scope, what you have, what you've presented, what the options are, and then it gives you the first objection.

So now that we're up to here, this is what I'm think. I'm just really worried about this price and, and blah, blah, blah, you know, and, and so now your job is to close the sale, right? So you have to go through all the objections. You have to handle the customer in the proper way. You have to form a relationship.

And you can't just give it objection handling technique either. It doesn't buy it if you're not forming a relationship and making it feel comfortable, at ease, making it feel like it, it can trust you, that it has a friend, you know, things like that. It looks at all these different factors based on if it'll give you the business or not. And at the end you're hoping it says, you know, where's the pin? Let's go.

And so it's a sales role play bot. And so we have these two that are available in the app and they're on demand. They're available to our technicians anytime through the Matrix platform as well. Love it. Massive, massive practice time.

And it's. It. Well, I tell everybody when they're learning scripts, when you're role playing this, I always ask, how often do you think you should do this? How many times in a day? People are like, I don't know, 20, 30?

I'm like, hundreds, hundreds of times. So this gives you the ability to do that in your own time, day and night, which is awesome. I love this. At your house, sitting in your living room, you don't have to be at the Monday morning sales meeting. When they do role playing in the office, you know, that's really important.

But when you're at home and you got some time, you could be on call of duty or you could go through the role playing. You know, for me, I would pick the role playing. This is just case scenario. I mean, imagine that we talked about disappearing to the truck, but you know, if you get stumped in a house and being like, hang on, I just remembered I have to measure something, let me go check on something. And you step into the back into the attic or out to the condenser or something, hop on the phone with this role play bot and give it the same objection and see what happens.

Right? And how many times do we get out into the truck where we're like, hey, you know, I don't know the answer to that, but I'm gonna go get my supervisor call, see if I can get some information. Yeah, and you get out to the truck and you call them and you get their voicemail because they're busy, right? And now you're just sitting out there and you're like, I gotta come up with something. Texting them, gotta get me back.

Yeah, yeah. And here's an important note. Everybody, all the homeowners, they don't expect you to have every single answer. What they do expect, though, is you have the ability to get the answer within a timely manner. That's all they expect.

They know. Not every person knows everything, and that's okay. So give yourself permission to not know everything. Just be able to get the answer in a, in a decent amount of time. That's beautiful.

I like that. Yeah. So, you know, and so we go to the truck and you can't get them, you know, develop the app, you know, turn on the app. Like, if that's your first line, use it as your second line. You know, I couldn't get my supervisor to answer the sales question, hey, my customers saying that this is a challenge or, you know, they want, they still want to get three quotes.

What do I do? Help, you know, and it's going to be like, hey, you know, I understand your customer wants to get three quotes. Here's some scripting that'll help you overcome that and close the sale right now on site, you know, and so, you know, what, what are you looking to find in the three quotes? You know, the typical advice you would hope to hear from a, from a top level sales trainer is going to be delivered in a scripted format that you can then kind of read over real quick. Get your feet back under you.

Okay. Yeah, I remember that. Great. That's what I remember learning. Okay, cool.

I'm good. I'm gonna go back in and slay this thing. Right? Slay this dragon. Come out with a sale.

Right? Anything that can help us, give us that small edge. Right. You know, it's, it's, it doesn't have to be anything huge. It could just be a small reminder, you know, maybe you're a little frazzled and you just forgot the obvious.

And it's like, hey, you know, it's saying the wife isn't, you know, my wife's not here. I'd like to confer with her first before we make a, you know, decision. But it sounds really good. Okay. Ah, shoot.

What was it that I'm supposed to do here? Okay, let me go get this answer. You get the answer. Boom. Okay, can we get her on the phone?

Is she accessible? You know, what, what is the, you know, how can we move this forward now, you know, etc. And so that is where that Particular Sidekick comes in handy. Love it, love it. So impressive.

So super cool. So there's one more part to it as well, right? We have a whole call center part of this. Yeah, we have a call center which is like whoa. Yeah, it's not part of the sales side.

This is definitely for companies that, you know, especially the way that I want people to think of it is. And we've had a lot of people on board. Yeah, we could just highlight reel this part of it if you. Yeah. If you want to know more, of course, you know, schedule a demo and check it out.

I've actually made it real easy. com really simple win in HVAC because that's what you'll be doing with this app is winning. But if you go to that website, it's got all the information, beautiful images, demo information, and sign up for a demo that's free. Take advantage of it because the sooner you get on this, you know, for the cost of the software you're paying for it, than, than to get onto it later. And so definitely get on it now.

It's really important for you and your company, for your employees. But the call center, it's really cool. We basically have made if, if you're a company owner, you're probably inundated with the ads on Facebook about outbounding these, these agents and they, they have great voices and things like that. But you have to go through a lead center and then they outbound based on some knowledge base and then they can schedule leads to the lead center and then you might be able to put a zapier connection on it and do some other things. And it's a whole process.

Right. We've just simply simplified that. We've abridged it so that our AI can take inbound calls, answer the phone just like a normal CSR and schedule and book the calls right into your preferred CRM. So if you're on service site, in your housecall Pro or etc, they can take that call, book it and it's in your CRM just like as if you had a CSR sitting at the desk. So we want it to be as natural process as it is with your normal inbounders.

And the best way to use this software right now, if you want to get started with it, you have some CSRs in the office. Great. They're doing a fantastic job. Awesome. But I bet your on call service, your 247 service that you're using doesn't do a seller job.

In fact, it's almost impossible to find one that does. They all drop the ball. They put your customers on hold for two or three minutes at a time and, and then at the end of the day your CSRs have to come in in the morning and clean it up. Right. Clean up all the mistakes, the double bookings, the, the fact that they created new customers where customers existed in the database.

Tried them all, I've done them all. And they all end up that way. They all start good and then end up doing that. So we developed this really to take over that process. Yeah.

And to create great after hours inbounding that works for the company. And so that's if you got great CSRs, try the software there because it's going to make a big difference. Yeah. Something I just thought of too is like that's and this is in no way replacing csr. So don't hear this wrong everybody, but something I just thought about is like say I've got a call center of four CSRs and it's the busy season and I have 20 lines ringing.

Demand spike. Wow. So now we have a way to be able to answer all of the additional ones in the moment, which is super cool. So we don't have lost calls because the second somebody's not answering, I'm calling somebody else if I'm the homeowner. Yeah, and that's a good point.

It's infinitely scalable. So in this case, you know, you hit a demand, temperature spikes 110 degrees outside and everybody and their mom was calling your company. Yeah. Great news. Except for you only have two CSR sitting in the office.

They're swamped. You forgot to turn off the Google leads halfway through the day when we fully booked the schedule. And now calls are ringing in and ringing in but nobody can answer them because we're on long hold times. And so you're spending the lead money and you're not booking half the customer. So your booking rate goes down and, and good news is you're closing in the field.

It's not horrible but, but you reduce some of that, that revenue there. And so in this case you have infinitely scalable on demand agents that can take over. For instance, when the phone rings more than three times, you know who's answering that? Well, AI is now your backup up. Cool.

They're always answering, they're booking. They. It looks at the schedule dynamically so it's not going to double book any, anything. And if the schedule is simply packed until next week, it's still going to relay that Information. Yeah.

But you have a much higher chance of scheduling that customer, even a week out, even if you have to deal with a cancellation call, which, by the way, the AI can handle those as well. Yeah. Then to have that customer off your system. Plus, if you score a card on top of it now, you can go back and reassess priorities and. And move some of those higher scorecarding customers.

Yeah. Start sliding into a little more callback call that way, too. Exactly. People that are really implementing that. Yeah.

Yep. Helps keep that process all in check. And that way you're not just like the. The. All the repair calls that you end up doing.

And we've run into this over a demand spike in the summer where, like, all the first calls we get happen to be these little 200, $300 clinkers that don't really do much. And all the ones that, you know, all the. All the plug condense. All the plug condensing, drain lines, you know, all that stuff. Yeah, exactly.

You know, in the winter, it's like all the furnaces we installed in the summer and forgot to turn the gas valve on. Yeah, exactly. You know, so you definitely don't want that to be your full schedule. And so scorecarding, those calls really helps. And with the AI, at least you have all those leads in your system and they've all been booked instead of just ringing and then hanging up and going somewhere else.

And plus, if the leads are in your system, you can always market and outbound back to them in the future. Right. Yep. Love this. So let's spend more time on that.

Right. The second, obviously you can deep dive into the demo and Brandon will go over, you know, all the nuts and bolts of it with you, but, man, I love this. This is. So thanks for the conversation today. One, there's been a lot of nuggets that.

Anybody listening, I hope you're paying attention to some of the things that Brandon was saying, because a career this long of a journey with. With at the high level of experience that he has, some of the things he said today are massive. So pay attention. But before we go, let's do this, because we are a sales podcast, and what it's known for is immediately actionable items they can implement right away. So let's drop a nugget of something that you have seen.

What's the parting big nugget for everybody today. It could be what we were talking about beforehand. It be. Could be anything you want. Well, you're gonna put me on the spot.

You know, when we scripted when we scripted this whole thing and you gave me this script to read a week ago. You didn't tell me. I'm just kidding. Well, so this is the part of sales is being able to pivot, like we were saying, at a moment's notice and, and be able to come up with something on the spot. Right.

And, and, and understand this. So, so when you get hit with an on demand question like this, actually take this note, what I just did. Right. Like turn it into a fun conversation. Make a joke out of it.

Yeah. Give yourself time to fall back and think while, while you're, while you're crafting some kind of creative, you know, comeback. So don't fall back and laugh and say when we scripted this, blah, blah, blah. And then in the foreground, think about like, maybe what you're going to say. Yeah.

You know, for me, I think what's really important to take away for technicians selling techs and comfort advisors out there in the field is look, you know, we face so many different challenges. I watched a podcast just the other day with my buddy Everett, who does in this house sales tales, and he had on HVAC Gin Jennifer and, and she talked about struggles about, you know, being a woman, you know, and going in, into some of these houses where she is. I think she's in Maine. She's somewhere over there. And how people in that area are still very like, she, she.

Every single call she goes on is. She still has to combat that. I'm on the west coast and it's totally different. Yeah. You know, but like, we all have this challenge.

My challenge was age. Her challenge is being a woman. You're going to have a challenge that is specific to you. Right. And you have to rehearse every day how you're going to overcome that challenge.

So what I would do is I would wr down the, the top five challenges that I recurringly get from my customers that are about me as a person one way or another. Because you can refine a sales process, but the customer is getting to know you. It's about you, you, you, you, you and your company, you and your relationship to the customer. Right. And by the way, you co op the company.

It's. It's typically not the other way around. So when you're in a sales environment, it. You, you develop your relationship and then you pitch the company as a trusted source. Right.

And so really important that you figure that out. So that being said, if you're facing, you know, five. I had a talk with a guy and, you know, not to get Specifics. He messaged me and he said, yeah, it's, it's really easy for you, Brandon. And I don't, you know, I don't want to say anything about myself, but he's like, it's really easy for you, Brandon.

You know, you're young and, and, and you're not, you know, some overweight guy with. Dealing with this and this and this and, and, and, you know, he's basically saying that because I look or act a certain way. Yeah. I'm so much better suited than him out in the sales world. Yeah.

Giving away all of his power and taking no responsibility for himself. Absolutely, 100%. And so, you know, the same thing I instructed him to do is I said, you know, write down your five challenges. That sounds like it's something that really affects you, impacts you, and probably makes you self conscious when you get into a call and you need to take control over that. You need to get power over it.

It's the only way you're going to move forward and get past the anxiety in the call that your customer is detecting every single time. And if your customer's bringing it up, it's because you're making it obvious, you know, and so confidence, you know, and you got to get down to the root thing. Is it confidence? Okay, then let's start there. Write down these five things.

Write how you're going to overcome them. Write some examples that your customers have been giving you feedback they've been giving you about it. And then write your response to it. You know, take control over it, and then go into that sales process the next time and fight that to the bitter end. Each time it gets easier and easier and easier.

You know, for, for me, age was hard to overcome. When I was, when I was first starting and early into sales, being young in this trade was hard for me to overcome. In Oregon, in a retirement area where everyone's like, you look like you have four days of experience. You know, I had to really develop this acumen of, like, my resume. Yeah.

You know, and, and come in with like, these are the guns. Like. Yeah. And, and by the way, for a while, when I was really young, you know, when I was 20 years old and 19 years old and I was in there trying to sell systems that investments customers would make $20,000 of, you know, financial investment into, I lied about my age. You know, like, I go in there and they'd be like, oh, you look like you're 19.

I'd be like, well, I'm actually. And I. And it's Funny, because the age I gave them, I wish I was back at that age again, but I'd give them like age like 24, I thought, like saying 24 or 25, because I want to strike like this believable, you know, don't find a lie to answer these questions. But you know, back then that's just what I did, you know, I, I was like, well, 24 is believable. And I'd say, oh, you're very kind, but I'm all right.

24, I got wife and kids, you know, I, and they'd be like, wow, you're really youthful then. That's really nice. Yeah, good for you. And, but then all of a sudden the age thing was gone. Right.

Like, and, and they moved forward with me. So, you know, find the challenges and, and make sure that you're addressing those, the challenges of you, not just the challenges of a call or a customer. Figure out your challenges as well. Write those down, execute them, you know, like, get them out of there. Love it.

That's so, so powerful. Thank you. That's really putting feet to. Putting boots to the ground of what we talk about a lot in this podcast of work to become someone worth buying from. And this is exactly it, you know, so when somebody says, well, you know, I'm this overweight dude that, well, so what are you doing about it?

Right? You don't. We have to remember we're not a tree. We can move, we can change our life circumstances. Right.

Okay, so then I got one more to share. So Brent Buckley, he, he's a, he's just a beautiful guy inside and out. And I was, I was chatting with him and what did he say to me? Let me just get to this real quick. It's right up here.

Let me just hear the second person say that. Okay. Okay. So I said, I, I commented on one of his stories and I, it, I don't even know what the story was. I just said something like, whose foot is that?

I don't know what story. Apparently something with a foot. Who knows? Yes. Might remember if you're watching this print comment, but he said you're the second person to say that.

Right? Just normal banter. Yeah. And I said, and I was just joking. And I said, always coming in second with a laughing face.

Right? Like just give it self deprecating. Right? Yeah. But this is the, this is the mind of a high level closer.

Right. Like he doesn't see that as like, okay, yeah, always coming. Hahaha. You know, like to him, he's like, what Are you gonna do about that? Yeah, that was his response.

His response to me is, what are you gonna do about that question? There's the gauntlet man challenge, right? Like I just made like innocent. I'm like, oh, he's coming in second. Just a funny little joke.

And he's like, so what are you gonna do about it? It? And, and that is what he asks himself, right? Like, you know what people ask themselves by the way they ask others, right? And he's asking that of himself every single time he has a challenge.

What am I going to do about it? You know, and so, you know, I get a switch now I'm in serious mode and I'm like, overcome inconsistency. By far my greatest struggle, right? Like now we're in a conversation and he's shedding these golden nuggets about consistency. And so, you know, I'm really blessed to be around some really high, high level people that if I get in to their dms, they, they just give me this nugget of wisdom that you kind of carry with you.

But in this case, what are you going to do about it? I guess that's another question I'll give to the audience here today is like, find those struggles and then what are you going to do about it? You know, do something with it. Don't drop the ball. So good, so good.

Well, thanks for hanging out with us today. For everybody listening, go to win. com winnhvac w I n I n so two I's together, right? Or W I n I n. Yeah.

We'Ve made it way more complicated than it was. But yeah, something around there. Just keep typing it in and it'll come up. It'll come up. Yeah.

So go there, schedule a demo, check this, check this product out. And more importantly, I hope you all got some value from this episode. And man, we're going to, we're going to end this off the way we always do. So one thanks for being a guest. I appreciate it so much.

I know we're going to do plenty more in the future together. And everybody go to win in HVAC. net I can get you connected. net and make sure to pay attention to the March event coming up that I am hosting. Two days of everything we talked about.

But we're going to deep dive into. Why in the world does every time I show up at a on site training, the whole team closes above 60% every single time while I'm there and then stays there. So we're going to deep dive into that. You're going to learn that process, which is consistency. And so that's the event coming up.

But just wanted to pop that in there. com and connect with Brandon on on social media. He does a lot of really great educational posts that you will love. And I'm just appreciative, appreciative of you being a guest today. Sorry, everybody.

Appreciate it. I'm glad. I think it went better this time. What do you, what do you think? 100%.

It's polar opposite. At some point in our lives we'll drop the blooper reel. But awesome. So everybody, it is a mystery. For now, if you want to know more about it, you got to come to the events.

Exactly. Go to the events. All right, everybody. Go save the world one heat stroke at a time. Go save the world one frostbite at a time.

Thanks for listening to Close it now with Sam Wakefield. Subscribe to the podcast now so you're first to hear new episodes jam packed with actionable tools and tips to make you the top HVAC professional in your market. If you have friends and colleagues who would like this show, share it with them and send them to our Facebook community for more in depth discussion about the challenges we all face and how to overcome them on the Close it now podcast.