Selling HVAC Without Federal Tax Credits

A friend told me about taking his 8- and 10 -year-old daughters fishing for their first time on a stocked lake where they caught fish after fish until they couldn't hold their rods any longer. They had a fantastic time, he said. Once in a lifetime, I replied. Sure, it was fun to hear about the fabulous experience, and I was happy for my friend's time with his daughters, but I couldn't help thinking that it was a bad way to start since now they will expect that every time. We have taught them that fish will bite within seconds and they can catch more than they can count.

I've often mentioned how our business's dependence on the weather and the success that hot and humid summers and cold winters brings to us is not such a good thing. While it's nice to have the sales come knocking on our door, it trains us to wait for a knock. When the knocks don't come, we don't know what to do. Except complain.

The recent federal tax credit program did the same thing to our industry. When the program ended, our industry seemed unable to sell high-efficiency products. For those of you living in the United States, you may not know that Canada had a similar program and a similar business turndown after their program ended.

In my travels and conversations with contractors all over the continent, I found some who seem unaffected by all of this. What they were doing will not surprise you. Here's what wholesalers might coach their contractors to consider and, better yet, help them implement.

Some decided they would not participate

There are time-worn adages that tell us that the results we will get (in life) depend largely on what we expect. If we expect that people won't buy high-efficiency products, then they will behave in a way that fulfills that expectation. At the kitchen table, this translates to us backing off at the first sign of resistance to high-end systems, or worse, not even showing them at all.

Some looked for new opportunities

I recently conducted a series of sales training workshops for a distributor client who wanted to help their dealers be more comfortable and confident in selling ductless, mini-split products. As always, I learned a lot from the participants, and it seems that the ductless market is growing even without the federal tax credits and even in our declining economy. Ductless products offer many benefits and have many applications that the “ducted” mind-set most of us have simply doesn't let us think about. In some situations, a combination of ducted and ductless provides a terrific solution to a long-standing problem, and offering it makes you different from all of your competition.

Some looked outside our industry for ideas

What are the car dealers, furniture stores, orthodontists and other high-end retail businesses doing to make it easy for their customers to buy their products? They have been emphasizing alternative financing programs. Financing companies want to sell their products too, so they've created new programs to make it easier for your customers to get what they want. For example, GE Money, who works with several equipment manufacturers, has a 1.25 percent payment factor program that translates to $1.25 per $100. Using this, you can offer a $10,000 system for $125 a month … and the utility savings will often pay for half or more of that.