The Home Service Expert Podcast
00:39:11 · Zach Deering, Tommy Mello
[00:39:11] S0: Yeah. I think it's it's a bit of a tale of two cities. There are fewer leads coming in, they're more expensive than ever, right, it's not uncommon, right, to spend 500 or $1,000 to get a replacement opportunity. Prices, particularly in HVAC, but across the board, are significantly more expensive for equipment than they were 5 or 6 or 7 years ago. And so against that backdrop, there are the folks that are succeeding, and the way that they are doing that is through creating a shopping experience. Are you meeting the homeowner where they're at? Are you personalizing? Are you showing them different options? Are you putting them in the driver's seat, or are you slapping down three prices on a sheet of paper and a bunch of jargon? Right? Those are sort of the two things, and I think a lot of people are having a hard time. I mean, look at HVAC, for example. Shipments are significantly off. Right? You'll see some reports that say up to 49%. Yet, there are contractors that are succeeding in spite of it, and what are they doing? They are creating shopping experiences. [00:40:18] S3: Yeah. You you know what's really frustrating is when I go online and I don't really shop for Rolexes, I got one. But a site that gave me the information, I know it's gonna be expensive, it's a Rolex. [00:40:31] S0: Sure.
00:40:31 · Zach Deering, Tommy Mello
[00:40:31] S0: Sure. [00:40:31] S3: I'm not expecting to find a deal, but I hate it when you gotta click get a bid. Sure. You gotta put your email in and someone's gonna contact you and it's like listen, I know why they do that and I understand the science mind and just get them on the phone, close them. But it's so much more transparent. By the way, the LLM machines love the transparency. [00:40:51] S0: Sure. [00:40:52] S3: And I think it's gonna give a really strong edge over over that. What do most contractors get wrong about sales today? [00:41:02] S0: Yeah. It's a great it's a great question. I think fundamentally at its core, they don't really put themselves in the consumer or homeowner's shoes. We talked about it already that as a consumer, you know what you want, you wanna be educated, you wanna be in the driver's seat, You want it to be personalized, and a lot of contractors don't actually build an experience that executes on that. Right? I think the good news for contractors out there is you know what great looks like. Right? You might not have seen it in home services, but you know because you recently bought a gun or a car or something else somewhere and someone did a really fantastic job. Think about what they did and then think about how to bring that to the garage door you're selling or the water heater you're selling or the generator you're selling.
00:41:02 · Zach Deering, Tommy Mello
[00:41:02] S0: Yeah. It's a great it's a great question. I think fundamentally at its core, they don't really put themselves in the consumer or homeowner's shoes. We talked about it already that as a consumer, you know what you want, you wanna be educated, you wanna be in the driver's seat, You want it to be personalized, and a lot of contractors don't actually build an experience that executes on that. Right? I think the good news for contractors out there is you know what great looks like. Right? You might not have seen it in home services, but you know because you recently bought a gun or a car or something else somewhere and someone did a really fantastic job. Think about what they did and then think about how to bring that to the garage door you're selling or the water heater you're selling or the generator you're selling. [00:41:49] S3: You know, I I can't keep... I can't stop thinking about just this customer obsession, and it's not something I feel like we've done an amazing job on. But it's something that I think everybody that's listening will be forced to start doing more. And that customer obsession and it it's kind of not fun to listen to customer complaints and the one star reviews [00:42:10] S0: Sure. [00:42:11] S3: And doing secret shoppers. But if you really focused on those things, imagine how great your company would become within six months.
00:42:11 · Tommy Mello, Zach Deering
[00:42:11] S3: And doing secret shoppers. But if you really focused on those things, imagine how great your company would become within six months. [00:42:19] S0: Totally. Totally. And and here's the reality, you can either focus on it or you cannot, but either way, homeowners are having that experience. Right? So the only thing maybe tougher if you really think about it than focusing on it is thinking that if thinking about what happens if you don't focus on it because it's just going to expand and increase. [00:42:39] S3: Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely something that I think most people need
00:42:39 · Tommy Mello, Zach Deering
[00:42:39] S3: Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely something that I think most people need [00:42:42] S0: to start taking more seriously. How can top performers balance transparent pricing without commoditizing themselves? Great question. And I'm sure there's a lot of people out there based upon this discussion that are wondering this. I think what it really comes down to is, are you educating? Are you building value? Like, what are you doing to stand out from all the Dan's and the Vans and to make sure the homeowner understands what you are going to do? I think a consistent challenge is a lot of these home service purchases are really different than anything else we purchase. If you buy a car, does it matter the dealership you buy it from? No. It's the same car. It's built in the same factory. However, if I buy a garage door or if I buy a water heater, really the only thing that matters is who installs it, right? Like the equipment is such a small piece of the final experience. And so I think educating homeowners on that is really, really important. And that's, I think the way that you can do it is if you are clearly articulating the value, then you can be transparent about pricing because again, price is only the most important thing if you don't understand anything else. [00:43:54] S3: Yeah. The the whole thing is is how do you prepare the presentation that educates through the process before the price is given? Instead of just a big pop up of the price, there needs to be some education to to provide value.
00:43:54 · Tommy Mello, Zach Deering
[00:43:54] S3: Yeah. The the whole thing is is how do you prepare the presentation that educates through the process before the price is given? Instead of just a big pop up of the price, there needs to be some education to to provide value. [00:44:09] S0: And where I'm pushing our company, our partners, and really the industry is how do we get rid of the word presentation? We don't wanna be presented to, right? Like imagine if someone came in and just lectured at you for twenty minutes on any purchase, like would that be how you wanna play? [00:44:25] S3: I wanna be involved, like I'd wanna be like listen, show me the different colors unless I have an HOA. There are a lot of choices. I mean, we broke the price book because there's so many different combinations. So there is something that needs to be out there, but get me involved. Absolutely. [00:44:41] S0: And is a great shopping experience. Right? Imagine a personal buyer. Right? You go into some high end department store or high end gun store and, yeah, there's a thousand different guns in there. But what are the five or 10 guns that make sense given what you've shared. Right? [00:44:54] S3: I just did a gun experience for my Breeze father. And I said... We walked in and they said, handgun or rifle? And they pointed to the rifles or the handguns and he asked a few questions, but he didn't really get involved. [00:45:10] S0: Yeah.