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BRAND U Brand U is a one day seminar on contractor branding that precedes HVAC Comfortech 2009 in Nashville, TN
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HVAC Is A Neighborhood Business
Satisfaction Comes From Contractors
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Have you ever heard the Toby Keith song, “I Wanna Talk About Me?” Toby starts the song by noting how he and his significant other always talk about things of interest to her.
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“But,” he sings, “Every once in awhile, I wanna talk about me.”
Substitute “market” for “talk about” and the song could represent the relationship between contractors and manufacturers. The manufacturers want to market their brand and they want their “dealers” to do the same. Contractors, however, want to market themselves.
Contractors sing, “Every once in awhile, I wanna market me!”
But wait… Every once in awhile? Why not all of the time? Well, too many contractors think the manufacturer’s brand is all important, that it matters most. Phooey. It hardly matters at all. Brand awareness is higher for toothpaste, toaster ovens, and a thousand other products than it is for the best known HVAC brands.
For your business, only one brand matters: yours. Your brand, your company name is all important. Every other brand is secondary. You should be singing to yourself, “I wanna market me!” |
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When you market yourself, you are building your brand. This is high level marketing. Branding is like adding a turbocharger to your marketing engine. Branding makes lead generation easier. Branding gives your marketing more power, more momentum.
But what is branding? In HVAC, we often confuse branding with the brand name on the box. There’s much more to branding than putting a name on a piece of equipment. Branding is attaching a set of attributes, images, expectations, and promises to your name to create preference, provide reassurance, and then to deliver. Branding is necessarily about your name, not someone else’s. You should be singing, “I wanna market me.”
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Whether you agreed with his politics or not, it’s hard to dispute the fact that the late, Tip O’Neil was a terrific politician. He won 16 consecutive Congressional elections and served as Speaker of the House of Representatives for 10 years. O’Neil stated his philosophy as, “All politics is local.”
What O’Neil meant was that perceived relationships and local issues mattered more to voters in Congressional elections than national issues. In short, the election of a Congressional Representative was personal to voters. How else can the public hold a consistently negative view about Congress while continuing to return incumbents to Washington? People view their Representatives based on the local experience, regardless of the Representatives’ national voting patters. Thus, people think, “My guy’s okay, but the rest of them are bums.”
Mike Hajduk, president of Callahan-Roach Products & Publications, likes to describe the HVAC industry as a neighborhood business. He’s putting Tip O’Neil’s maxim into air conditioning parlance. People want a neighborhood contractor, which means all contracting is local. At least, all consumer contracting is local. And because it’s local, contractor branding is all important.
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Some contractors think branding requires a national presence. Nonsense. Not only is HVAC a neighborhood business, a local business, the best marketing is local. When it’s a personal service or an emotional decision, the local brands are even more likely to trump national brands.
Business is built on relationships to begin with. Personal services and emotional decisions are even more relationship driven. Local brands win because they are community brands. The people behind the brands care.
National brands by contrast are impersonal, monolithic, and uncaring. You should market your local, caring brand over someone else’s impersonal, national brand. You should sing, “I wanna market me!”
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Look at it in terms of the box. In the residential replacement market, homeowners don’t accept you because of the equipment brand you happen to carry. They accept the equipment brand because you recommend it.
Contractors often fear repercussions from customers when considering a change in equipment brands, but rarely if ever, report any problems after making a change. If asked, the contractor explains, “We changed because we were getting better service/quality/support/etc. from the new brand.”
“Okay,” the customer responds, “Whatever you think is best.”
If contractors can change equipment brands without incident, doesn’t this prove that the equipment brand is not as important as the company brand? In fact, industry research studies show that only one consumer out of four starts the replacement process with an equipment brand in mind. And this preference is diluted across dozens of manufacturer brand names and dozens of contractors selling each of those brands. Statistically, the impact of any specific manufacturer brand to your company is negligible.
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The vast majority of homeowners – three out of four – look for a contractor without consideration of a manufacturer’s brand. Even when homeowners start out looking for a specific equipment brand, a quarter still say they end up following the contractor’s recommendation. For the other three quarters, the contractors probably just went with the flow, but could have persuaded the homeowner to switch equipment brands if the contractors desired.
You could persuade 99% of your customers to accept any product brand you want to sell. And why not? After all, a furnace, boiler, heat pump or air |
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conditioner is just a part. In isolation, it’s no more valuable to the homeowner than a solitary expansion valve. They’re both parts, and parts are useless to homeowners. Only installed systems have value. You, the contractor, take parts and create comfort systems in the field. Yours is the final brand. You should be singing to yourself, “I wanna market me!”
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HVAC manufacturers do a good job building quality products. All of them are pretty good. The same can’t be said about contractors. While the industry has many terrific contractors, it also has some lousy ones. Consumers should worry more about the quality of the contractor than the quality of products built with hard tooling, automation, and standardized assembly methods in the controlled environment of factory production.
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Let’s be honest, homeowners will be happy with the worst box in the business as long as it’s installed correctly, but miserable with a lousy installation of the best quality box. There’s simply far more quality variation between one contractor and the next than between one manufacturer and the next.
Some manufacturers build half a dozen different brands, side-by-side, in the same factory. Where’s the difference? The sheet metal wrapper? Satisfaction comes from the contractor. The most important brand is yours. You should be singing, “I wanna market me!”
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Picture that appeared in a national industry trade magazine
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Your brand is the most important brand to the homeowner. It’s also the only brand you control, the only brand your competitors can’t offer, the only brand that can’t be taken away from you, and the only brand that won’t be offered by a national retailer. Why promote anyone else’s? Sell a dozen different brands if you want, but don’t promote those over your brand.
The most important, most expensive component in an air conditioner is the compressor. Do you see air conditioning manufacturers marketing the compressor manufacturer’s brand over their own brand to you? Of course not.
The research data confirms what most contractors know from experience… homeowners will accept any box brand the contractor offers. Since the equipment brand is irrelevant, sell any brand you want. Sell the most reliable brand with the best value for the money that’s the easiest to service. Sell the brand that gives you the most support, offers the best availability, is sold by a great territory manager, and gives you the most effective training. |
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Sell the brand that best supports your business. Sell it. Sell it all day. Sell it, but don’t promote it over your own brand.
Don’t put anyone else’s brand above yours on your truck! If a manufacturer wants its brand name and slogan on your vehicle, ask your TM if he’ll return the favor, putting your logo on his company car. Or, find out what the city charges to advertise on buses and send your TM an invoice. Think he’ll pay?
Don’t put someone else’s name on your building! If a manufacturer wants his name over yours on your building signage, find out the cost of the nearest billboard, and charge accordingly. If the manufacturer protests that he helped pay for the sign, ask if he’ll put your name above his on his building if you pay for the sign. Or, drop by any other business and see what the owner says if you offer to pay for a sign that puts your name above his on his building.
Don’t pay a manufacturer advertising tax in the form of group advertising. Why pay for 23 seconds of manufacturer promotion, followed by a seven second tag you split with a competitor. If the manufacturer wants to build his brand, he can pay for it. Put your money into building your own brand. You should be singing, “I wanna market me!”
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Think it’s heresy to put your name on the box? It’s not. All manufacturers either offer private branding today or look the other way while contractors put their emblems over the manufacturer’s. A number of cutting edge contractors have been selling their own lines of equipment for years. The impact of moving away from the manufacturer brand has been negligible. Peaden’s Robert Wilkos, for example, notes that far more homeowners ask for the Peaden name than ever asked for one of the national brands Peaden carried. Steve Miles from Jerry Kelly notes that while his competitors are tanking, his sales are up by a third. Steve sells his brand exclusively.
Take a lesson from the industry leaders. Start singing, “I wanna market me!”
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While manufacturers allow or accommodate contractor efforts to brand their own line of equipment, they do little to help. Fortunately a group of contractors has joined together to form the Retail Contractor Coalition to split the costs of developing a private label program and offer |
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mutual support. With the Retail Contractor Coalition, private branding has never been easier. Special manufacturer rebates will even pay the cost of participating. The RCC makes it easy to sing to yourself, “I wanna market me!”
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If you want to learn more about branding, specifically private branding, attend Brand U., a one-day seminar occurring in Nashville during the first day of HVAC Comfortech (Brand U. finishes at 2:00 p.m. and Comfortech kicks off at 3:00 p.m.). Brand U. will feature branding experts and branding contractors to talk about their progress and the pitfalls they’ve encountered. Brand U. is free for members of the Retail Contractor Coalition. A limited number of seats are reserved for non-members who want to learn more about branding. As a Service Roundtable member, you will only pay $149 to attend Brand U. You also receive the guaranteed lowest price to attend HVAC Comfortech. Contact Janet Thomasson for more information (janet.thomasson@serviceroundtable.com or 877.262.3341). Come to Brand U. and learn how to sing to yourself, “I wanna market me!”
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Whether you deploy your brand on the boxes you sell or not, here’s the bottom line on branding. You design and assemble the comfort system. You control the brand of equipment that goes in the home just as surely as the manufacturer controls the brand of compressor that goes in his box. You are the captain of the distribution channel. In other words…
You should be singing to yourself, “I wanna market me!”
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Brand U. takes place on the first day of HVAC Comfortech, but does not conflict with Comfortech. You can combine Brand U. with your Comfortech attendance and keep your costs down. One plane ticket gets you both programs.
Brand U. is an outstanding day with unique contractor marketing information, not found anywhere else. It is contractor driven and focused. The cost is only $149 for Service Roundtable members.
Date.................................................................................... September 23, 2009 (First Day of HVAC Comfortech)
Time.................................................................................................................................... 8:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
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Emcee & Moderator................................................................................ Steve Miles, Jerry Kelly & Visible Defects
8:00 a.m...................................................................................................................... Welcome & Introduction Matt Michel, Service Roundtable
8:15 a.m.................................................................................................. Keynote Address: Services Branding TBD
9:15 a.m. .............................................................................................................................. Selling Your Brand Corey Hickman, Comfort Matters
10:00 a.m..................................................................................................................................................... Break
10:15 a.m........................................................................................ Building Excitement & Fun In Your Brand John Price, Aloha Aire
11:00 a.m................................................................................................................. Contractor Branding Panel Daniel Boyette, Benson’s Air Conditioning Ben Stark, Stark Air Robert Wilkos, Peaden Air
12:00 a.m...................................................................................................................................... Awards Lunch
1:00 p.m............................................................................................................ Branding Through Social Media Chris Hood, Shubee
2:00 p.m................................................................................................................................................... Adjourn
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RCC Members.................................................................................................................................................... $0
Service Roundtable Members........................................................................................................................ $149
Non-Members................................................................................................................................................ $199
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Janet Thomasson
Janet.Thomasson@ServiceRoundtable.com
Toll Free: 877.262.3341
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All Rights Reserved © 2009 Service Roundtable® |
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