"I mean everybody's an expert on something and they're an expert because they said they were you know they have nothing beside behind them other than this website that says they're an expert but people take their opinions as real and because of that instead of being really educated when they go to make a buying decision they tend to be kind of poorly educated".
In this episode of The Pipeline To Profitability Podcast with Allan Ferguson, Joe Cunningham discusses how important the trades are in today's society.
Check out this episode of The Pipeline To Profitability Podcast! Learn how training your team today can bring huge benefit tomorrow!
Contact Allan Ferguson at Service Success Academy.
Podcast Episode Transcript:
I mean everybody's an expert on something and they're expert because they said they were you know they have nothing beside behind them other than this website that says they're an expert but people take their opinions as real and because of that instead of being really educated when they go to make a buying decision they tend to be kind of poorly educated all right so I want to welcome Joe Cunningham to our first podcast back as a continuation of our pipeline profitability podcast which was a great success when we first launched it back in 2013 we're up to about 40 episodes and we took a little bit of a break and now sorted to come back and give the industry what it needs which in my opinion for plumbing air conditioning we need to give content that's going to give all of our loyal listeners some direction of where the industry is heading so rather than me do an introduction for John I'm going to let you do that yourself and I just want to say before I hand over the the microphone to you we've known each other for nearly ten years you've been working tirelessly to improve the HVAC air conditioning plumbing industry not just in the US but down in Australia you've helped me out a ton you've now helped me out by allowing me to work with you in the service success Academy being the sponsor of our podcast I'm gonna hand it over to you Joe and I'd love to hear your thoughts if you introduce yourself some self of course I where do you feel the industry is heading well thanks for invite me Alan I'll give the folks who haven't heard about me or been to any of my programs before a little bit back my background I won't take real long doing it I've been in the heating and air conditioning business oh 30 or 32 years my first trade was actually in plumbing I worked for my uncle who was a licensed plumber when I was young so I I've done pretty much all of the parts that anybody could do and in the plumbing or the HVAC side I've worked as an apprentice I've worked as a helper I've worked in all the various levels of it I've worked with manufacturers I've worked with distributors and I've been a contractor and still am a contractor right now the air conditioning business really did change my life and the things that I learned in from some really smart people who are very open to sharing and help me take the things that I knew to do from other industries and put those in place and because of the things that they've done I've been voted contractor of the year two times in the US one time in Australia then voted by contracting business to be one of the most influential people in the heating and air conditioning industry this year I had the honor of being abducted in the HVAC Hall of Fame now I wrote all that stuff down and I put it on the refrigerator or my wife can see it so she knows how special I am but she looks at it and says yeah just go ahead and take out the trash so I guess it's not too impressive to some people but to me I think I've come a long ways from my childhood and I've learned a lot of stuff in these industries and and I've taken a lot of the stuff that I did before because I was all also in the home improvement business and put them in place and I've I've watched this business grow and and not just the HVAC business but the plumbing industry as well and I've watched it grow from a trade actually into a profession and I'm real happy to say that I was able to help that transition take place I was one of the first people that ever sold $1,000,000 worth of replacement air conditioning equipment in a year and I didn't have an air conditioning company when I did it I sold that in my home improvement company I got a lot of recognition from distributors and manufacturers who asked me to help their contractors weren't doing so well and because of that I wrote to him sales and marketing programs for the carrier distributors here in Texas and then carrier nationally I got involved with a company called retrotech who has gone on to be comfort institute now help them put some of their things together I worked with Jim Abrams drew contractors success group around future university for him and then Jim asked me to help him also over at service experts so I was part of the first wave of consolidation and the thing that I've seen change in this industry have been tremendous but you know the the changes in our industry today are coming faster and it seems like the steps that everyone is taking are getting bigger and bigger and bigger and and there's some things that have happened really in the past few years that I've seen that if we don't learn to address them there are some of us aren't gonna make it but with that being said if we do learn to address them and we do learn to embrace these things and figure out what to do because of it I think there's going to be some massive successes in this industry and and we're seeing it right now with guys building tremendous companies and very short periods of time and right now there couldn't be a better time to sell than I've ever seen in the past because they're taking these companies that they've built and they've only taken four or five years to do it and sell it for millions and millions and millions of dollars so the opportunities are there but these guys have kind of figured the things out that you need to do and as I talk Sam and I asked them what they think because these are some really smart guys that I respect a lot and and most of these guys are really well known in the industry they talk about the things that they went through and they talk about the things that they had to change and then I see because I also have an air conditioning company and we're adding plumbing and some other stuff to it some of the changes that we've had to make to grow our business it's been pretty incredible I'm really lucky and able to and being able to see some of the things that I do because of the way my businesses are set up my primary business has a lot of you know is consulting I work with heating air conditioning electrical and plumbing companies all over the US Canada and now Australia I work with manufacturers and distributors like I said before and and I get to see the inside inner workings because of that and those relationships and heating and air conditioning companies and some of the very best ones I think I've seen more than anybody in the industry that I know of and I've positively trained more people than anybody in this industry to be successful and because of those relationships a lot of people share with me so the changes that I'm being told about and the changes that I see and the changes that I experience every day they seem to be kind of like in in three areas and the the one thing that's really changed our industries the most is our customers and how they are now buying and doing business you know years ago I remember sitting in some meetings with carrier and somebody said you know people are soon going to be buying equipment off of the Internet well that was when the Internet just started and I didn't even have a computer so that was so foreign to me you know buying stuff on the Internet who is going to to look at this computer and be willing to send money off somewhere and hope people are going to send them something that I never thought that would catch on but it's now caught on and it it's doing a lot of things to our customers that's made them change the way they they look at us you know with our customers what I'm seeing is people buying make decisions a lot differently what I see causing that is the Internet like I just said it's easier to look and find anything you want uh Google has changed the world and that name you know when I first heard it though what the hell is Googling and what does that mean but Google is actually a verb now you know I Google you Google and they they translated into other languages like the Spanish people say googly Amish which means we're all googly and you know so it's changed but the way people think they can buy has really changed and it's changed there's psyche on how they make a decision you know the Internet the social media you know I want to know about something so I go on Facebook I go on whatever groups that I'm in and I say have you ever done this have you ever had one of those have you ever bought this and you get all these answers and there's a rise in the number of gurus and keyboard warriors out there every day I mean everybody's an expert on something and they're an expert because they said they were you know they have nothing behind them other than this website that says they're an expert but people take their opinions as real and because of that instead of being really educated when they go to make a buy procedure they tend to be kind of poorly educated they think they know what they're talking about and they think they know what they're looking at and because of that the Internet tends to turn everything that they're buying today into a commodity they're kind of an EBay purchase even service you know they they're absolutely convinced because of the Facebook ads because of the things that other people tell them you know that it's taken that you need to get three bids now we need to talk to 200 people and take a look at this in a it's turned everything into just a Christ driven industry in their mind unless you change it and the reason for that is because there's no distinction in a customer's mind from what I see and what I hear and and what I get from when we talk and buying a finished good and and unfinished good you know they when customers are buying air conditioning services when they're buying plumbing services or buying electrical services on the Internet they think you're buying a finished product like a TV or a refrigerator and they don't understand that plumbing services don't come like that humming services a toilet and air conditioning system a sewer system a septic tank a new electrical box none of those things already finished product they are buying pieces and parts and then they're depending on their provider of that finish their job I mean it's no different than if if all the parties dealers went away and when you wanted a new car you would call the factory and tell them hey I want a new Ford pickup truck and this is the color and this is the seats and this is the engine and this is a transition and two weeks later they just deliver the parts to you and put them in the driveway and then you got to find somebody to put it together so you have car right now is a finished good but if they just brought your parts unfinished good and that's what they're buying when it comes to home services and they're just not mentally aligned with making that decision so it's up to you to change that because when you commoditize things the customers tend to place pricing more as a primary consideration than before and they also become less loyal to a past service provider or less likely to create an allegiance with a new service provider if they aren't given solid reasons or re educated before they make that decision you know that the days of most companies having second and third generation customers I see that less and less and less and what really tells me that is when we do outbound telemarket we do outbound telemarketing especially just cold calling and finding neighbors in a neighborhood that we'd like to be in we call them up and only 20% of the people can even tell me who worked on their air conditioning last night which means there's no loyalty because of the Internet because of social media because of the groups on they're like next door in and you get on there and and every day it's on there can anybody give me the name of a plumber that's real reasonably priced reasonably priced reasonably because they think they're all buying the same thing then the next week you read about him I hired this guy in a gamer deposit you ripped me off well they don't realize that's gonna happen so we have to do a better job of educating these people we have to do a better job of being there in front of them all the time so they can really see that we're different because you're going to have to fight this this Internet idea you're going to have to do something different to get the customer's trying to make that happen or they will continue to do that and they'll buy systems online they'll buy everything online and it'll all be price driven another thing that's changed our customers that's just in the past few years is this pandemic thing you know everybody's now getting paid to stay home where they work for a while you know so they get paid to stay home and they're sitting in this damn house and they're supposed to be working remotely well they're not working remotely unless you consider watching Maury and eating baloney sandwiches part of your job launch scenario and you're not doing anything and then putting in 10 minutes a day but what it's done is it's turn these people into leisure buyers they have nothing else to do watch a little TV do a little Internet shopping and get prices for stuff that they know they're not going to buy for three or four years so because of that a lot of sellers service providers go to amazing lengths to appease these trends instead of doing the couple things that they need to do is which is really educate these courses and show them how they don't really do a better job of reaching out to grab hold of these people and get into their mind and tell them about why they're different in our customer base is changing because of that now when it comes to growing our business you know there's some things that have changed there you know what ranch Smith's been a good friend of mine for a long time and everybody kind of puts this quote to him and it says the purpose of every business and organization is to get keep customers that's what we need to do we don't need to grow our business we don't need to make a problem just get and keep customers because that takes care of everything but the guy that actually said that was chef Pike and he's been in business even longer than Ron but the thing about it is we do have to focus on getting and keeping customers and people are asking more and businesses are acquiescing to that and trying to do all this different stuff instead of understanding the three basic things they have to understand about sales and service and once you understand these three things it aligns you better to understanding and knowing what you have to do and I called them A3 truisms and I mean you have it in one of your videos where you talk about it but also it's just three simple things you know it's it's no one buys a solution to a problem they don't really have so we've got these customers out there who don't know anything about plumbing they don't know anything about air conditioning they don't know anything about electricity they don't know anything about solar whatever service it is that you've got and we wonder why they just don't want to open us up open up to us and and tell us what they like to buy well they're not going to buy a solution to a problem they don't know they have even though that we know they do have a problem we have to spend more time educating our customers about the problems that are in their home the problems that are with their systems and we don't do a good job of it the second part is in this one always stumps most people and they have a really hard time getting around it and its price is only important if that's all the customer understands and what happens is it takes contractors and it puts them in their italics situation when the customer says well we've already had three people here and Bob's air conditioning Fred's plumbing Floyd's electric said they can put it in for less and it takes these good contractors and gets them to the point where they've heard it so much that they're automatically just dropping that price when that's not what they need to do the price isn't the problem it's a customer's understanding of the problem and that comes from us as contractors and they really don't understand the third one and that's saying no is often just defense mechanism and the customers are saying no because they know what the hell you're talking about and those are the things that keep us from growing and keeping our customer base and because of the US not understanding that the customers we do keep we're given the farm away every time we do business with them and we don't have you do not have to have special pricing every day on everything you've got no that's right you just gotta realize you know when that customer says your price is too high he's times it's just something that he's heard people say so it sounds good and he thinks you're going to drop the price or he doesn't know what he's comparing it to because if I think the price on your product is too high I have to have some idea of what somebody else will well sell it for but you know price over the years has not proven to be the biggest reason people buy you know if we take a look at something as as price supposedly sensitive is par industry yes and every time you look everybody's got a price you got a special deal we got a big rebate we do this we do that we got the lowest price in town they advertise in the Sunday papers and on TV and on the radio bringing your invoice and we'll beat it by 100 that will give you $1000 I mean it's crazy what they do but in reality the car business is not driven by price because the two oldest automobile manufacturers in the world and Rolls Royce and they are positively not the cheapest cars out there so you have to learn how to get away with it get away from the police situation and when we take a look at all of those things and we ask ourselves You know we got the we got the Internet problem and and we got the customer problem we got the problem we got the price problem so we need to deal with that then we take a look inside of our business and and you ask yourself what's one of the greatest challenges now in growing our business and dealing with all these changes because we have to do something different to what's keeping us from doing that and I think one of the biggest things that's keeping us from doing that is a changing workforce that we have coming in and everyday to serve our custom and that again is caused by the two things that are causing our customers to change amongst them number one is the Internet uh the Internet with employees and all of this stuff they've done with the remote work field the Internet just provides us constant mindless creativity killing meaningless entertainment source that people get sucked into yeah I mean I I'm riding with technicians and they can't stay off the damn telephone ever you know there's there's not that many people in the world who send messages to but they're on their between calls you know they're they're catching up they're streaming movies they're doing this they're doing that they're shopping here they're going there and the Internet pulls their mind away so they're not as focused on their work as they ever were before and they're more focused on how much time can I suck out of my work to go do that you know we have telemarketers in the back and if you go back there and you don't stay on top of what's going on they're back they're trying to make calls and they're watching a movie on their telephone so how how can I deal with that Internet that's changed my workforce a lot and the pandemic changed the workforce a lot with all the entitlement payments giving them were giving people more money than they were making to work to stay home and do nothing and it's really changed their attitude as to what they'll do you know so sorry to jump in just you've you've touched on something that I think actually I don't think I know it's probably one of the big areas of frustration in the industry and this is the school shortage and this is not a new thing I mean I can you know having run business through the GFC I believe that the the the school shortage we can take all the way back to 2000 and eight 2009 when contractors stopped bringing in new talent but I have from put this questionnaire to my my audience my group on social and and my clients is is there really a skill shortage is there really a school shortage or is it really a lack of training in the industry to bring and and and this is this is leading into your training schools job but is it is it a skill shortage or are we just not training correctly to bring the kids or you know I've had many mature age apprentices in my businesses that were fantastic tradespeople but is there really a school shortage I mean I don't think so because I believe we have the ability to train and bring new people on in a short period of time but just I'd like your thoughts on that my friend well you know that you know Matt I believe it's Matt Jones down under does a podcast this much six or eight months ago and he said you know here in Australia in a lot of places we have about a 75% fall out and our apprentice programs from the time they start to when they make it through it and actually how long how long is your apprentice program he said well it's about four years for almost anything well four years is a long time yeah and if you if you don't have your your training program set up properly do it the old way which is I've got some guys that they're they're my best guys and they do most of what i want them to do so since they're my best guys i'm going to give them these off premises
Because they're my best guys I'm going to give them these apprentices and let my best guys train them well what happens with that process is if you do it that way you're best guys which aren't as good as you'd like them to be take these new apprentices and teach them to be almost as good as they are which is less than what you wanted so we get this never ending downward spiral out of our training programs and because of that and that the mental situation where we think we have to have this four year apprenticeship we bring them so slowly that their value to you in the marketplace doesn't grow as fast as it should so their wages don't go up and they lose moose of thoughts of this is really a good idea what they're thinking is I'm doing this every day and this guy is making me do a lot of crap I don't want to do and I'm not making any money either so I'll do something else so they they tend to hop out the the skill shortage it's caused by two things the the perception of the trades by many you know we've gone down this road telling every young kid in the world that they need to go to college so they can be something so in the US especially I mean these kids are they're their parents get them committed to this four to five or six year college journey and then because they don't have any money of their own then they go and they get these student loans and they'll when they get out of college end up oh oh and 250 to $300,000 and their area of study was like being a sociologist so when you get out you're qualified to get $40,000 a year job as a social worker who goes out and talks to people that aren't doing too well and they're going to camp out at 50,000 and you you you can never pay that off that and you know they really have they have no future getting out instead of telling this person you know there isn't another path you know you're gonna go out and do that because you don't know what else to do and you just want to go to school with your buddies and drink beer for four years and run up this big debt now you got a $40,000 a year job so you're gonna go ahead and petition the country to wipe away your college loan and make this truck driver who didn't go to school pay for it so what so these people have a hard time getting in their mind they look down at trades people you know I've got a college degree so I'm better than you and so many people have done that and you know I I guess it's just it's just a thought that everybody has you know I want my kids to have more than I had you know so I didn't I didn't go through college and you know a lot of people I know didn't go through college and we are the worst ones about wanting to send our kids there because we want them to do something different I don't want my kid to have to be a plumbers helper was out there digging ditches and all of those things you know in the cold and the snow and the way it matters you have to so so we discouraged them from getting in the trade so we planted that in their mind and then we send them down this other path when the college really isn't for everyone no and so obviously a change coming Joe I really do I I I'm predicting that look with the amount of private equity and the amount of investment companies plumbing more so air conditioning HVAC plumbing electrical companies all selling for massive multiples I see it's gonna change and really you know things are moving fast now with what's going on with artificial intelligence and chat GP I think and right there's gonna be I just see it yeah I get it being a plumber a drain cleaner an air conditioning technician it's not it's not a sexy trade really it should be and you know followed Mike Rowe for a long time and I loved his view and I I see it's gonna change because the amount of money that can be made being a plumber and electrician air conditioning technician when you're good at your trade whether that's if you wanna be in sales which I recommend we're all in sales anyway just to be specialized in trenchless drain repairs you know the ability to earn anywhere from 100,000 to $200,000 a year which can be trained in a relatively short time I look I just think it's a no brainer but that's me I'm biased towards the trades we're probably gonna have to round up soon but I think the topic here and we're gonna do some more podcasts I've got now that we've started back we're gonna be doing this regularly I'd love to get you back on soon to maybe talk more about the so-called trade shortage and companies that are really struggling to get quality tradesmen I mean my recommendation is grow your own send them to to one of your schools and you might wanna give a little bit of a a shout out to your trade schools yeah I think this labor shortage kids not wanting to get into the trades lot of companies they just want the best people well you know sometimes the best people are the ones that you've got right under your nose that are already working for you and maybe they need to be trained in new schools to help you take your business forward so I'll probably we'll round off on that Joe and I want to thank you for everything you've done for me not just with my companies in Australia and all the other hundreds of companies you've worked with in Australia and America it's not just me that wants to thank you for what you've done for this industry I'm sure hundreds and hundreds not if thousands of people that wanna thank you as well so I'll probably get you to round up this podcast pipeline to profitability podcast with just a little bit about some of the the great schools that you actually have going on in uston when you mentioned the trade shortage at that always makes you wanna talk more so I will close down you know in mentioning Mike Rowe though I will say one thing here's the perfect example of what happens when you see things Mike Rowe was an opera singer which is kind of strange and that's that's what he took him in school it took a lot of music and singing classes and he found out about the trades and it led to The Dirty job show and the trades have taken him a long way he was a fantastic guy but as far as trades go we have the fastest way to train and the technician that's out there and that we're we're expanding that as well we have our ten day fast track programs plumbing or HVAC it doesn't matter we can take a person if they have mechanical inclination and they will work and show up in the morning and I can create the best entry level HB AC tune up technician that has ever lived they understand sequence of operation they know how to charge your system using subgroup super eight they understand basic electricity and they understand troubleshooting our classes the reason they're so successful is because they're 45 there 55 to 60% hands on that we don't do virtual training virtual training is kind of like thinking you're getting trained but you're not everything we do is hands on that's 10 days no days off 8 hours a day when they get out of that school their EPA certified and they are ready to put them into a truck and go do we make it as foolproof as possible because we teach these stacks to work on one of the most complete checklists that has ever been developed for our industry so they can check everything they know how to do everything on there and there and actual working person when they get out they can go to work and make you money it's the same thing on the plumbing side 10 days and now because people don't want to send their guys away all the time we're now we did it during the pandemic we're going to start again we're doing some specialized classes where we're doing 2 hours a day five mornings a week for six weeks it'll be the same thing as our fast track program the only difference is I will give you the set of plans that you can make your own lab at your place of business your guys will have the same thing that we work on and it will be a hands-on 2 hours a day broadcast at 7:00 o'clock in the morning so you guys can go to class and go get the truck and practice it and it is absolutely amazing the guys that went through our online class had tremendous results and because of what they wanted me to do we're going to make that possible for for them again we're starting out in HB AC with that as well they built our line up a little heavier we're now opening our second location where we're gonna have our install school along with our plumbing and HVAC school at the second location and we're going to do some specialized advanced HVAC and advanced heating classes and advanced troubleshooting classes for your guys that have gone to our basic school and are now ready to make the next step we teach them how to do the work and then we also give them two days of customer service skills so they know how to handle the customers there's no better program out there than ours in my estimation and I've seen them all and I've got good friends that have good so I'm not going to say anything about them I just feel that ours are the best and if I was standing on the outside looking in and seeing what we do versus what the others do I'd have to say the same thing but if you really want to maximize the opportunity that you've got out there you know you've got to take advantage of contacting your base and new prospects more often you have to take a look at all the opportunities we leave in the field because we haven't trained our techs to pick them up leave no stone unturned you have to rehash the opportunities of leaving out there to make massive profits but in order to do that you have to run your calls to collect have information to do that you have to perform a better call we've changed our perfect service call process so your technicians are now doing more things to get more business they're going where nobody else has gone before they're doing a better more demonstrative job on every call that uncovers most everything that's out there and they win every time they go they learn how to make presentations to fully engage their customers and build perception overwhelming value and they take control of the process so they do a better job so there's no better way to grow your business than to grow your own tax grow your own employees whether they're the people that are answering the phone whether the people that are dispatching for you or service managers in there and we love to help you so if I can do anything I'm easy to find I'll have Alan put my number up at the end so easy to find me give my cell phone number so you can reach me and I'd love to get you involved and if you have any employees or future employees that are benefits don't forget we do some veteran scholarships and some of your guys might qualify for that as well so they'll actually get to go for free one hour that pleasure my friend I just wanna conclude to say there is you know with with our company your company service success Academy and you've got the technical art centre you've got success track network I think the combination of these three companies is going to provide the industry with the classroom training which you do in Houston and together we're gonna build what I believe is going to be the greatest online training and I know you're not a fan of online training but I am and and and I think some things can be trained online some things definitely need the classroom but I I think it's it's all our friends down under that are really wanting Joe Cunningham back down under and I know we've talked about this dates haven't been locked in but we are aiming for December January period to get you back down under but we will be putting together some amazing training which will be online that will I suppose meet the needs of most of the contractors but can't afford to come across to Houston so so some exciting stuff coming along and yes I will definitely put all your contact details might even get we we might put a little I suppose sales video together with all the services that you provide and thank you for being back on my podcast pipeline to profitability I'm Alan Ferguson signing out and a big thank you from my very dear friend Joe Cunningham catch you later Joe all the best to you OK talk to you later out alright see you bye now
