What did you say??
Communication and listening
By Rich McCarten
Do you remember playing the game “Telephone”? You know,
where someone starts by whispering a phrase to the person next to them, that
person then repeats to the next person and so forth until you get back to the
beginning where the originator then announces with great laughter just how
totally unrelated the end result is from the original statement! It is quite
fun and can illustrate just how fragile the communication process can be. If
any of you have had an argument with your spouse, you know what I am talking
about! You thought you were very clear in your statement, but your significant
other heard an entirely different account of what you said. There are many
reasons why this may occur and certainly more intimate family relationships are
trickier than selling a furnace, but some basic understanding of the
communication process will go a long way in our business of servicing and
maintaining our customers’ HVAC systems, especially when a sale depends on
being clear and involving everyone accurately in the sale.
There are a few guidelines I try to remember when in a customer’s
home to help me:
1.
Make sure ask plenty of questions then listen to
what your customer’s say. You should listen twice as much as you talk. Humans
think 4 times faster than we speak, so unless your subject is EXTREMELY
exciting, our minds start thinking of other things that need to be done. That’s where asking a lot of questions and
showing how you can provide solutions to homeowners’ problems will keep your
customers engaged with you. I want to
tell homeowner all about the features, btu’s, variable speed, modulation, etc. that
my product has and while important, unless you answer WHAT those features can
do for customers or how they will solve a problem, we end up confusing homeowners.
Remember the phrase “WIIFM” (… What’s in
it for me?) Consumers want to know how they will benefit from what is inside the Furnace/ Black Box!
2.
Most households today have two incomes. Both
people tend to work outside the home and sometimes we are fooled by who
the main bread winner is. Never make assumptions! We also work in a male
dominated industry and many of us old timers tend to forget to include the
woman of the household in the sales process. This can be FATAL! The jury is out
on this! While studies indicate in a major purchase decision like a Central Air
Conditioning System, the man often picks which black box may go in the home, it
is the woman who decides WHO will be allowed in her home for the installation.
Make sure you address and include BOTH people in the household in the sales
process.
3.
Try painting a picture of what each feature
means in everyday terms that people can relate to rather than talking in our
technical jargon. For example, “...A Modulating gas valve is like the cruise
control in your car. As you go up a hill, the system automatically increases to
maintain your speed (set point) and conversely when you go down the other side,
the system automatically reduces to maintain your speed (set point). Or “this
variable speed blower allows you to run the fan 100 % through your Infinity Air
Cleaner to protect your family from the indoor pollutants without costing more
than a 60-watt light bulb”. You get the
idea, take some time to develop your own analogies to explain in every day
terms what all of our features mean to customers and how they help solve a
problem that you uncovered during your question asking phase.
4.
Welcome objections! Yeah I know it sounds weird!
We all hate objections because we think that we somehow made a mistake, or we
are going to lose the sale, or the customer is being difficult. An objection is
simply a request for more information. It means you did not provide enough
value to overcome the customers’ fear of making an incorrect buying decision.
Again, the best way to handle an objection is to ask questions! People do not
want to feel like they are getting “Sold” An objection is often a way to try to
put you off. “So Mrs. Smith, I hear you are concerned that you may not need
this WiFi thermostat because it costs more. Tell me more about that? Is
controlling your homes’ system remotely important to you if you leave and
forget to turn your system down? Is there peace of mind that this feature gives
you?
These are some examples of how to handle objections
and there are volumes written about the art of questioning and objection
handling that are well worth your time to read. Being prepared is the solution
to handling objections!
There is no better advice that employing
the Golden Rule in sales. Nobody wants to feel like they have been “sold” or
taken advantage of. Todays’ Central Comfort Systems can be hugely expensive and
customers often have sticker shock. We buy a system, on average, once in every
15 years roughly. Imagine the sticker shock if you bought a car like that and
never stayed current with prevailing prices. You would keel over! Remember too
that what we do is EXTREMELY important in a homeowner’s world. HVAC accounts
for 40-50% of energy costs in a home. We provide one of the only systems that
can provide a legitimate ROI in a home. We all have seen people drop huge
dollars on plumbing fixtures in some of these expensive homes only to try and
go cheap on the HVAC system. How backward is that? What is the ROI of that
pretty Kohler fixture? Think about not only the energy savings in one year, but
take it 10 years out and we are talking about real money!
By understanding the importance of
communication, questioning and providing solutions, we can then provide the
correct system at the correct price and make the correct margin to continue to
provide the correct service!
But
not if you haven’t listened to your customer and uncovered their needs first!!
