Ask the Experts | How to Sell More IAQ

Question: I would like to sell more IAQ. Do you have any recommendations to help me do this?

Weldon Long, New York Times Bestselling Author:

Absolutely, and it kind of goes hand-in-hand with the previous question. It comes down to, when I walk in the house on a sales call or a service call, I have to look for all of the additional problems that I can solve.

I told this story last week and I’ll do it again this week, because it really goes to the heart of the issue. I had a contractor come out to my house – I’m having some steps poured – and as we’re in my driveway talking about having the steps poured, he notices I have this motorcycle trailer parked on the side of the driveway. So he asks me why the motorcycle trailer is on the side of the driveway, and I tell him, as you can plainly see, the driveway is not wide enough to park the trailer. He says to me, “Well, when I’m doing your stairs, I can widen your driveway.” And my budget went from about $1,000 to $10,000, right?

So the key is you have to take a broader perspective of the home. Don’t just look at what the homeowner called you about. Your homeowner is never going to call you and say, “Hey, my furnace needs to be tuned up or it’s not working, and oh by the way little Susie has allergies and I was wondering if you could improve the air quality in the house.” That call is never coming. They’re going to call with their basic problem. It’s your responsibility to make sure that you’re looking for the additional problems you can solve.

As we have this discussion, Toviah’s running through the various trainings and opportunities we have on egia.org. So the technician communications training is all about identifying opportunities for indoor air quality; there’s a whole program, as you can see on your screen, that’s dedicated to how you can sell more indoor air quality products. Because the beautiful thing about IAQ products is that, number one it’s a great opportunity to solve a problem for your homeowner. But, number two, as a general rule the margins on IAQ products tend to be very, very good.

So here’s a good example: Technician Communication –Indoor Air Quality Selling Process [as seen on egia.org], we had a whole program on that. If you go into Gary’s side of the EGIA website – the Best Practices Library – and type in “IAQ,” all the videos, all the trainings that Toviah’s going through right now are going to pop up for you. So: overview of indoor air quality; how to sell it; how to diagnose problems. So just go on the Best Practices Library on egia.org [must be logged in], type in “IAQ,” click on that, and it’s going to take you to a ton of training on the basics of indoor air quality, how to sell it, how to convert. There are six programs it looks like. So these are all going to be really important.

One of the things I love about EGIA is that, if a contractor has an issue, a concern, a problem, the resources that you need are right here and they’re super available. We have the ten core foundation courses we’ve talked about – the ten core disciplines you need to master, or at least have an understanding of. But then you go to the Best Practices Library and you see that search bar up there, that’s kind of like your Google for HVAC. Type in “IAQ,” type in whatever question you have, and a series of videos and content created by Gary Elekes is going to pop up. You’ll watch those videos, understand the concepts, share them with your service department, you use them at your next service tech meeting or sales meeting, and the next thing you know you’re going to have much better results in terms of selling IAQ or whatever the problem is.

So the key is to take a broad perspective on the customer’s home and make sure that you’re looking for every problem that heating and air conditioning and IAQ can solve for your homeowners. If you do that, you’re going to open up a lot more opportunities on every service call.

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