¶ Intro / Opening
Hey, welcome back to another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed with Thaddeus and Evan, where we have good conversation with the good people, and of course any good conversation worth having is worth having drunk. Profit Rocket 2022. We had some gentlemen on from BillyGo. You've probably heard of Sera Systems. Well, BillyGo is the proven grounds and testing grounds for it, but we had Blake Monforte and Jordan Wiggins, two top selling techs that were actually in attendance here today.
great individuals and, I love the topic of hearing from a selling tech in their point of view. And really what are some things that, you can do to make customers ask for you by name? You know, one of the things that these two gentlemen do really, really well is when people call in, they say, Hey, I want
¶ How did you get started?
to have Blake come out and service my unit, or I want to have Jordan come out and service my unit. So how can you get that same buy in as a selling tech on that if you're an owner or a manager, listening to this podcast, how can you also take what they said to be able to get your guys to buy into it? it's phenomenal and, a worth a really, really deep dive. But one other part, I'm gonna tune our own horn a little bit.
They got into why they love our podcast, so, Be sure to listen, and also live a note down in the comment section on whatever platform you're consuming this content in, on what your top takeaway was. Enjoy the show. Alright, back again. Service Rocket 2022 I got it right this time. I had to pause a little bit and of course well cheers guys. Cheers. Oh yeah. Sorry that's just us today joined. We have Blake Monforte, Jordan Wiggins, they are with BillyGo.
And you haven't had heard of BillyGo, well, one's wearing a BillyGo shirt, one's wearing a Sera shirt, they kind of want in the same house, which is kind of neat. And had a great conversation with these gentlemen last night and we're gonna talk a little about the sales role from the selling text point of view. So right over to one of you guys. How'd you get started?
I'll get started. So Jordan and I have the same role in Billygo. BillyGo we're selling technicians. So what that consists of is a lot of responsibility. First and foremost, taking care of the customer and giving the customer a good experience. And how that's done is finding out the customer's needs their wants and not being too focused on your goal.
Cuz I find that with a lot of selling technicians that can be a challenge of since you're able to sell equipment now is just go for the home runs all the Whereas we take a lot of pride in actually planting seeds, doing what we need to do that day to keep the customers experience at a high level and having them continue to want to work with us. So Jordan and I are the two top guys in this location, and we get A lot of customers who want us back in their home, right?
And we take a lot of pride in that when they ask for us, when they say, Hey, I want Blake one 40 in my house, or I want Jordan Wiggins in my house. that's something that we, take a lot of pride in. And Jordan's very good at what he does as far as technical selling. And I mean, I can't say enough how much I love working with this guy how much the customers love having him. So I'll let him speak.
I would pretty much second that mostly as well, Blake one of the many things that Blake taught me, and, Blake and I were like best friends, so he's my brother my choice no doubt,
My brother from a different mother.
That's it. Yeah. So, on days where we don't feel like necessarily talking about h. I have him to lean on. He has me to lean on. But I think one of the biggest things that Blake taught me in this industry was that we are not air conditioning sales guys we're not air conditioning, we are in the market for people and air conditioning is the truck that we get to use to be in the people's business, right?
So one thing that we pride ourselves in is obviously being trans. Being thorough explaining to the customer all of their options as well as just making sure like, what Blake said, having a good customer relation, a good customer experience for them, cuz at the end of the day, we're in their home, so we want to make them as comfortable as possible because heating and air conditioning is not something that not everyone thinks about buying. And for one, have never met anybody.
That woke up and was ready to buy an air conditioner so.
Well, we had, that happened once to us but we didn't have an air conditioner,
So what do buy an air conditioner? Well, and that's, the great thing about this industry is 100% of the time, this is something that a customer needs. Right? Yeah. I mean, your house is only as good as. comfortable as it is, right and If you can't get your home to be comfortable, then is it something that you even want to stay in? I mean, at that point you might be better off staying in a hotel, right? right? You got kids and animals and all that.
And it's not just yourself, there's only so much so much you can handle. So that's why this industry is great because we really are helping people. I mean, I, I'll just let people know very passionate about. Helping man helping where I came, I mean, I'm a teacher at heart. And I found that air conditioning when I got into the air conditioning industry I was born and raised in New York City and moved over to Texas four years ago with my family. I had two babies at the time.
my son was two months old, my daughter was 14. And I had no friends, no family, no job lined up, no house lined up. And we just packed a U-Haul trailer five by eight. Hooked it on the back of a Subaru legacy. And we would, we were moving to Texas we did a lot of research on it and it was the best move we made by relocating our family because I was doing mechanical in New York, but it was commercial, right?
And I wasn't able to tap into, to skillset that I never knew I had until I started using it, which, communication, helping. And when I say helping, I mean like literally like really teaching somebody, like really what's inside of somebody and that we can pull it out of them to get them to go to the next level, and we hear it all the time. What's your why? Why do you get up? Why do you come to work? What's the reason you do what you do?
And. I was able to tap into that, that and I don't like to speak about myself too much, but I've had a lot of friends and a lot of people that I've crossed paths with that said that I've helped them grow and change their lives. And when you get just a little taste that it, at least from me it's motivating and, and it's kind of like anything else, man. If you play sports and you play baseball, you hit a home run that feels good when you round those bases. So what do you want to do again?
You want to hit a home run and get that feeling again, right? So, I mean, I'm chasing that feeling. I really am. Right? I'm chasing that feeling of someone else's success because I've come I mean, I'm past my years and I. Selling equipment is easy to me. It's a light switch. I could turn it on, turn it off. It's a skillset set that you turn it on, you turn it off.
But for me, I, I really enjoy training and get other people to tap into those abilities and say, Hey Blake, you really helped me, you. you changed my world, man. There's a guy here that came up to me and Jordan before and he owns his own little company. He's a one man show and he's telling Jordan, which is crazy cuz me and Jordan have a journey together and I could tell Jordan's so I'm looking at Jordan because he's watching this guy, William, talk to him about me.
And Jordan's so invested in what he's saying because Jordan. Lived a little bit of that. Right. And, Jordan's his own person. Jordan did not need me for his success. He was destined for that. He was gonna make it there regardless. But he tells me all the time how he helped me and yeah. How I helped him.
A lot of the times in this industry we come across where we feel like we're always explaining ourselves. We explain ourselves at home, we explain ourselves to our customers, to our boss. Yeah. So it's like we're always wearing that selling. All the time because if you're not selling air conditioning, if you're not selling repairs for air conditioning, you're selling yourself to your wife. You're selling yourself as a father, you're selling yourself as a husband.
a lot of the times it's a little exhaust.
Or to your mama who's calling right now,
or to my mama who's calling me now, face timing matter.
Pick up, up and said, mom, I'm on podcast
Shout out to my mom. But
I saw you on the Facebook
But Blake's a good dude to be around. I'm glad that when the first day I met him, I knew that this was gonna be a long lot, long-lived friendship. we just had a good time. We clicked and, thankfully enough, right? He's got me, I got him. And, and we dominate we had a, what was that dude's name?
Oh, no, no. Andy, Andy.
Yeah. That dude is amazing. And that's Blake's my Andy. Each and every day
Right. And you guys, you mentioned it your brother's at work, right? And we talked a little bit about everybody has this same theme of creating this amazing culture within, the organization. And when you do that, like that's literally what you guys are saying. Now you guys as selling tax, you're not business owners you're not the general managers. You guys are the selling tax.
And I know before we jumped on, you're like, we can't really talk about efficiencies for profits or from business side of things. We can talk from employee side of things. And so anybody that's listening, if they're listening to these, to these shows in order, the last three episodes that we had. Are phenomenal because now we're actually listening to the text side of you from what those owners have told us. So one thing that you guys mentioned earlier was this customer experience.
And I know we had a, a previous guest on a Prestige Group, Ryan Blackburn and Richard, I forget his last name. But they thought about customer experience is gonna be the new battleground, and I firmly believe that. So in terms. A selling text point of view. What are some things that you guys can do as sales techs to increase the customer experience and make sure that they ask for you by name? What's happening for you guys right
¶ In terms of a selling technician's point of view, what are some things that you can do to make sure customers ask for you by name?
now?
So, I've done a lot of training. I've trained a lot of techs in the field. I've had the pleasure of being a field supervisor at a previous company. And one of the many things that I was so persistent on when I was training a new tech was when you get into the home. You don't, you talk about anything and everything else other than HVAC, right? Friends buy from friends.
Yep. So if you can come in and genuinely have an interesting conversation with that customer in order for them to feel comfortable, because every customer that you walk into, each and every day, they have this, what I call an anxiety balloon. And that thing is inflated. But if you can come in and make 'em feel comfort. And kind of deflate that balloon and make a friend and talk about the guitars or the pictures or, the family, how many kids, what's their names?
And then reference those names back into the conversations to make them feel kind of give it like a little personal touch when you're speaking with that customer. That is the biggest thing and making sure a customer feels safe and secure inside of their own home. Because at the end of the. At the end of the day, regardless of you're in their home. Exactly. and at that time, a lot of the times, not every time, you are the most important person in that home. Right.
And they genuinely want to hear what you have to say. They want adequate solutions they, and especially if it's broke down, they just Hey, whatever needs to be done, please do it. We need it fixed and just being able to explain that in the best way, possibly all in all, but first and foremost, always make sure that's a good piece from your experience.
That sounds like Dale Carnegie's book a little bit.
Right? I'll add to that a little bit because he's a hundred percent correct. I mean, anybody new getting into this industry, anybody who's been in this industry, who's out in the field and look, I'm an emotional guy. I wear my heart on my sleeve. So when I say things, I say with a hundred percent everything I got in me and I can't tell you how important it is to sometimes give a customer a hug. And some of you might think that's crazy, right? Cuz they're strangers. I can't tell you.
I've probably, in the four years I've been doing this, I've probably given out 40 hugs. 10 hugs a year. They're totally free we don't charge for them. But just sympathizing with people, I mean, come on, we go in people's houses where they weren't prepared for this, right? Some of them are and some of them aren't. And some of the things that I like to teach the people is, dude, if they spent $90 with you today, that's $90 that they didn't expect to spend.
and I don't know about anybody else, but I mean, I've, been to points, Jordan's been to points where we had no money in our pocket and I couldn't imagine if something like that happened to me. And I'm unprepared and I have children that I gotta take care of. So when you ask the question of how do you get people to ask for you and how important that is, Well, to answer your question, the way you get it is by really being on the same page with the customer as much as you possibly can.
I would say 85 to 90% of customers we deal with are very sweet people. They do want your service. They called you for a reason and sometimes they just need a person to talk. And at the end of the day, they want the air condition fixed. But when you go to fix air conditioning, sometimes you realize that you're fixing other stuff. You're not just fixing air condition. I can't tell you how many people prayed for me, man in their home. Hey, can I pray with you?
Hey, can we sit down and pray about this? Can we talk about this? And that's the stuff I live for, man. And that's what's great about this. And you never know there's no two days that are the same. Yep. There's no two days that are the same. And I don't take that for granted. I never do. it's something I'm very serious about. I love what I do. I'm gonna keep growing. I'm gonna keep helping other technicians. I'm gonna keep helping business owners grow their business.
And Jordan and I I'm 30 years old. Jordan's 20 25, 26. Okay. And, I feel like we're the next generation man. We got good heads on our shoulders
And you know you're doing your job right. If you don't have to pass out business cards, people know. Yeah, me and Blake. That's a good point. First name basis. Whenever they call into the office and that dispatch later said, dispatch lady says, Thank you for calling BillyGo how may we help you? And they say Hey, it's time for your maintenance, blah, blah, blah. They go, please send Blake Monforte, or Jordan Riggins.
And when you walk into the house and that customer is just so excited you're doing your job right. That all in all right there is everything. Being up front at the beginning of the call, making a friend, letting them know, I mean, there's such things as agendas. Every day we live by an agenda. Yeah. We give those agendas out to our customers each and every day. So they're fully prepared on what's about to happen, why I'm in your house what could happen moving forward.
that's all part of having a good, giving a good customer experience. No doubt.
Love it.
Real quick, cuz we are running up on on 15 minutes here. So one thing I wanted to distinguish between, cuz I know a lot of companies run their business in such a way where a technician goes in and they do repairs and that. When it's time to give a quote on, a sale or a replacement, they gotta bring in a comfort advisor. Right, And that they come in and close it. Yep. So you do things a little bit differently.
You are a sailing tech, you're making the sales yourself, you're doing estimates yourself. Correct. Talk to me about why it is that this is the way BillyGo is run.
Not a lot of people do it that way. and this is something that we were talking about last night. Was companies usually have a service team and they have a sales team because they want the sales team to get really, really good at selling things and being educated on the equipment. Yep. And they want the service tech team to get really, really, really good at fixing and diagnosing and setting those leads for a comfort advisor to go out. BillyGo a brand new company.
The shirt that Blake's wearing is Sera which is a whole nother other conversation. That's what BillyGo oh, there you go. Sponsored bySera right there, So,Sera is just, on that just a little bit.Sera has created HVAC industry to love my job. I've loved my job working with Sera all over again. But anyways we're a smaller company. we're building our customer clientele. We've heard in the past that we're gonna rebrand this thing and maybe in the future we're gonna go and do it that way.
Not that there's, it's not that it's the wrong way but right now we have success with It, should
¶ Why is it that Billy Go has service technicians also operating as sales techs?
be where there is a dedicated service team and a dedicated sales team. And a lot of people would agree with that. But Billy's a smart dude, really smart So we, we trust him.
We're, we're not, we're not opposed, we're not opposed to having the comfort advisor role. But some things that's good about this role, right? Because life is about seasons, right? So right now, this is where we're at. we're at the selling technician role. So this is the season that we're in today. And what's good about that is I've seen it the other way.
I've been to technician who flipped the calls to the comfort advisor, and I had customers ask me, why, how come I can't just give a quote, right? Mm-hmm. as a service, dude, you're in the house, you're building. You're spending time, you're diagnosing, you're doing that maintenance, you're, the customer knows that you've been in their home for an hour and a half to two hours, right? Some customers want you to get that credit.
Some want, they feel like it's all about persuasion and stuff, and they feel like they wanna. Reciprocate the gift that of you giving them a good service. They wanna make sure that they're giving you credit back if there is any credit, cuz customers will ask you that Hey, do you guys get credit for this? Right? I'm an honest guy, I tell 'em a little bit about how this works. I got nothing to hide.
So there's that aspect of when you have a selling technician is you don't have to get in that sales guy. That the customer thinks, oh, now I'm gonna get sold on something. Is this guy gonna upcharge me? I don't even know this guy. I know you. You've been here in my home for two hours, helping me. Why are you sending some out some other guy? Now I gotta make sure I'm home again. Now I gotta book a whole nother appointment. Right. Is it a bad thing? Absolutely not.
But there's different pros and cons. Like they say, there's more than one way to skin a cat. Right. So. Right. I, I mean, that's where we're out where we are with it. How much time do we have left on this podcast? Two minutes? All right. I wanna say something. Can I say something? Oh, yeah. I just wanna say thank you guys. No, I follow your podcast. I've been in your inboxes we've chatted in Facebook a little bit in recently.
I want to thank Everett Lippel for putting a good word out for me on Facebook and things like that. But this platform that you guys have is a big one and I appreciate the things you guys do, the sacrifices you made to do this every day. Cuz at the end of the day, you still have to make an income for your family and to just. Sit here and, hope that you get an audience and hope that you know you have enough guys that want to join your podcast.
I just wanna let you know from the outside looking in this was a goal of mine to get on your podcast. So you guys are doing awesome things and I'm glad you're both smiling while I say this because it's awesome, man. You guys deserve the credit. I'm not sure how much we give credit to people while they're still alive, right? We always give flowers afterwards. We always go to funerals, wakes, and we give flowers and I think it's very important.
Compliment while we're still here and just give that kind of feedback. So I appreciate Evan and Thaddeus and I'm glad Jordan's here with me on, on you it's my first time on the show and I'm, I wouldn't want to be on the show with anybody else with Jordans
Well, I very much appreciate those kind words. Yeah. It is validation for the value that we try to bring towards everyone. And you are right. People hear that you don't give enough g. No, people don't hear enough thanks. And I'm not just saying this for us. I mean, it like, it, it just keeps us going when we hear that from somebody. It keeps at least me going anyways. To continue to do what it is that we do. And I think more people can express gratitude to everybody in their lives.
Yeah. Absolutely. I did wanna say one final thing just on that before you, you went on there. The part about efficiency, and I know thatSera and Billy go is really, really dialed in for efficiency. When somebody joins Sera, they double their efficiencies. Usually they're like 35 to 78% efficient in and around those numbers. Yep. But what you've talked about there is having the sales or the, repair technician
¶ Why do you love the HVAC Success Secrets Revealed podcast so much? 😉
in there, the selling tech in the house for an hour and a half, two hours. That report is there right now and you made so much sense. On a case to not have a comfort advisor and to just have those selling texts. So sorry to those that think that that's the right way, that is the efficient way, right. Not necessarily the right way, but the efficient way. Very efficient. Very efficient.
And, Either way could get you to your goal, man.
Like you said, there's many ways it's gonna cat and that's just one of the ways, and I just, I think it's an efficient way myself.
Exactly. That's why don't have any complaints.
Well, appreciate you guys taking the time. Yes sir. You no worries. Until next time. Cheers! Well, that's a wrap on another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed. Before you go, two quick things. First off, join our Facebook group facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed. The other thing, if you took one tiny bit of information outta this show, no matter how big, no matter how small, all we ask is for you to introduce this to one person in your contacts list. That's it.
That's all one person, so they too can unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Until next time, cheers.