The principal focus of this podcast episode revolves around the imperative distinction between a salesperson's perception of price and the customer's perception of value. Throughout the discussion, we elucidate the significance of understanding this divergence, as it fundamentally influences the efficacy of sales strategies within the HVAC industry and beyond. We delve into the concept of the "value stack," a technique designed to enhance the perceived value of an offer, thereby justifying the price to the customer. By illustrating various scenarios and examples, we demonstrate how sales professionals can effectively articulate value-added components to their proposals, ensuring that clients recognize the benefits of their investments. Ultimately, we aim to equip listeners with actionable insights that will elevate their sales prowess and fortify their market presence.

Price and value often mean two completely different things, and while they’re often conflated, it’s important that you discern the difference between them, if only for the sake of your business. Pricing your services comes down to how you perceive your own business, so it’s best that you take some time to sit down and think about what you bring to the table. Sam Wakefield urges you to think about how you’re pricing your services. At the end of the day, you may just be cheating yourself out of turning a better profit.

The episode presents an insightful exploration into the nuances of HVAC sales, delineating a framework that pivots on the understanding of perceived value as juxtaposed with pricing. Sam Wakefield, the host, engages listeners in a discourse that underscores the paramount importance of recognizing that a customer's perception of value often diverges significantly from a salesperson's perception of price. Through illustrative anecdotes, Wakefield elucidates that clients are typically willing to pay a premium for services that alleviate their burdens and offer convenience, underscoring the necessity for sales professionals to comprehend the psychological underpinnings of their clients' decisions. Further, the conversation transitions into the practical application of the value stack concept, a strategic approach wherein sales professionals are encouraged to articulate the comprehensive value inherent in their offerings before revealing pricing. This technique not only enhances the perceived worth of the services rendered but also positions the salesperson as an indispensable ally in the client's journey, rather than a mere transactional figure. Wakefield's emphasis on the differentiation between selling a product and presenting a value-laden offer serves to amplify the effectiveness of sales interactions, ultimately leading to increased client satisfaction and loyalty. To encapsulate, this episode serves as a salient reminder of the critical role that perceived value plays in the sales process. By adopting the principles discussed, HVAC professionals can transform their sales methodologies, fostering deeper connections with clients and establishing themselves as trusted experts in their field. The insights provided herein are poised to significantly enhance the efficacy of sales strategies, positioning listeners to thrive in the competitive landscape of the HVAC market.

Welcome to Close it now, an H Vac sales training podcast with Sam Wakefield.

Here we'll build your reputation in residential H Vac sales to be the expert influencer in your market.

You'll get insight into the top minds in the industry as they share their skills and hacks to help you on your journey.

This podcast isn't just about selling more.

It's about understanding your customers needs and building efficiencies behind the scenes so you can sell more but work less while being top of mind when people think H Vac.

Now let's get started with your host of the Close it now podcast.

This is Sam Wakefield.

Boom.

Hey, Sam Wakefield here.

Close It Now.

Back for another episode.

Today we are going to talk about some fun, fun stuff.

Stuff.

It is a fan freakin tastic day.

You know why?

Because I choose it to be.

And that is a key principle for you as salespeople.

First of all, I want to give a huge shout out to my friend jp.

Thank you for some insight you gave me.

But as salespeople of anything, and that's where I'm going with this is I understand now, thank you.

From your response that not all of you out there who listen to this podcast sell air conditioners.

Not all of you sell heaters.

Some of you sell cars, some of you sell plumbing, some of you sell electrical, some of you sell all kinds of things.

I don't know what you're all into, but the philosophy is the same.

So in the podcast, when you're listening, when I say things like air conditioning, heater, substitute that in your mind with whatever it is that you sell.

If it's a supplement, if it is a tankless water heater, if it's closets, if you sell drapes, whatever it is, if you could literally be selling anything.

And the philosophy is the same.

The sales conversation doesn't change.

Marketing philosophy, sales philosophy, closing technique, it's psychology.

People are people.

So use it in whatever element you could literally be in dealing with your spouse or your partner or your kids or your brother or sister, mom or dad, whatever relationships.

The philosophy is the same.

We are winning people over to our way of thinking.

So thanks JP for that.

I appreciate it, brother.

You do.

You're such an awesome person.

And yeah, your insight was very helpful.

So today we are talking about something that is a lot of fun, something that's near and dear to my heart.

And that is how the customer, how the client perceives you, how they perceive everything.

Because it's you, remember?

So this all started with me thinking about I heard somebody say the other day, your perception of price is not your customers perception of value.

It totally changes so many times.

We get almost bogged down into our perception of price that we have an idea in our head of whatever the number is that is assigned to what you're selling.

Maybe it's a $10,000 project.

And in your mind you're like, man, you know what?

I don't know if I would pay that price for this project.

Because here's the thing, and this is why for years and years and years I worked for way too cheap or free.

It didn't, I didn't understand the value.

Because here's the example.

I personally could learn electrical.

I could learn how to change the switches.

You know, I know how to do it.

I know how to change a light switch in my house.

However, I'm not going to jump on YouTube, spend the time tracking down all of the ways that wiring can be connected.

I'm not gonna.

Maybe this light switch that should be turning this light on, it turns on the light in the other room and it shouldn't.

You know, whatever the example is, what it has to do with is you call the electrician and they come in and they're like, you know, they start what happens a lot of times.

And the example came from a true story.

Electrician comes in and he starts apologizing for how much it is.

It's like, oh man, I thought it was going to be a $40 repair, but I ended up needing another switch and a couple other parts.

It's gonna be $140 repair.

I'm sorry about how much it is, but at the end of the day it's like, listen, just do it.

I don't care how much, I don't care how much it costs.

I, you know how to do it.

So the value to me is worth that $140 or whatever it is.

The problem gets taken care of.

Because now I don't have to spend the time to go learn how to do it.

I don't have to go to the store, I don't have to do all these things.

My time doing what I do is more valuable than trying to waste half a day figuring out how, going and getting the right parts, bringing it back, running the risk of it not working once I get it installed.

Because you know how to do it, you can do it immediately, you can get it taken care of, you get the problem solved.

I will Gladly pay you $140 to go ahead and fix my problem and be on with life.

That way I don't have to clutter my brain with this other thing that I have to learn.

Because the thing is, we sometimes get so lost in the mix of, well, this is so easy for me.

I've done it so long, it's so fast, it's such an easy thing.

I know how to do it.

So we forget that because say it's whatever you repair, say you're changing a capacitor, and we all know it's a $15 capacitor.

You know, the $40 capacitor, if you're putting the good ones in or whatever, however much it is.

But we know what we forget is the value to the homeowner.

They could they do it themselves if they googled it, if they went and got the part, yeah, they could.

But you can do it in 30 minutes and be done and they're back up and running on with life.

The value to them for convenience and knowing that somebody's going to do it, right, knowing that somebody's going to warranty it is worth the $330 or however much you're charging for a capacitor change out, it's worth it to them.

We have to remember that our perception of price is not the same as the customer's perception of value.

We're going to start talking a whole lot about value and how to add value to what we do and how to add value in our offers to our clients coming up, moving forward.

Because, see, the thing is, when you get hit with, wow, man, your price is too high.

That doesn't mean your price is too high.

That means you didn't show enough value for them to perceive the price as being a reasonable price.

Is this making sense to anybody?

Just jumping right in with this?

Because it's been, man, it's been heavy on me.

I've been studying about how marketers work and how to write, just looking really paying attention to even spam emails and junk mail.

And how do people write their ads in a way that they could make a better offer?

Because here's what's going on with in our society, in the heating and air world, and I know it's in every world.

Yes, there's a difference between good companies and bad companies.

Right?

20% of the companies do 80% of the work because they're the best.

If you're the truck in a truck, who's cutting corners?

You're not listening to this podcast because you wouldn't put in the time or effort to be working towards educating yourself to get better.

However, that doesn't mean that you are not maybe a one man shop who's striving to better yourself.

That's awesome.

You are.

If you're listening to this podcast, you're already on the right track.

Now what that means is once you cross that threshold, and we see this all the time, it's like, okay, so in our world, there are a handful of companies anywhere you go who are the top of the top.

They're the most expensive or close to it.

I mean, usually they're within almost like the same.

Really, really close.

In fact, however, it doesn't matter.

It's not about price.

When you stack up the top companies and they've got the same certifications, they're all Nate certified.

They're all whatever the certification is.

They're all got the license, they all got the insurance, they all have the same accolades, they've all got the same president's award or circle of honor, whatever your brand's top award is, your certified triple platinum, double diamond top dog certification.

You've gotten the awards.

But then so have other companies in town.

So on paper, when the homeowners say they get three bids or four bids or five bids, whatever, if they all come from those same handful of top companies, what their problem is, on paper you all look the same.

But then what happens?

One or two of those will come in with, okay, here's the cheaper price.

Oh, well, cheaper by a couple thousand dollars.

And this actually comes from what happened to me over the last couple days.

I went to a home, made a really great proposal, got it to the people, of course, and they've got to get one more bit.

Couldn't this situation.

There was.

And of course we'll talk a lot about this in the future, how to overcome this, this situation.

It just wasn't happening.

So they're getting the other bid.

She hits me back with, well, this other company who on paper looks just like you because they've got all the same certifications, they've got all the same things.

What's the difference?

So of course it's like, okay, well.

And she sent it to me.

I was like, well, you don't even have to send it to me.

I'll show you that we're not $2,000 more expensive.

Were $2,000 different.

And here's how.

And the way that you do that is you start to differentiate selling a product to making an offer.

And we do that by what's called a value stack.

It's adding value, showing them perceived value so much that it's ridiculous if they don't buy perfect from you, if they don't hand you money.

Because here's the thing, if you can't be the cheapest guy in town, be the most expensive and show the value to be that, there is no benefit in being the second loss leader in town.

Besides, you have to work so much harder to make any amount of money.

It's ridiculous.

Don't work on being the cheapest guy, don't do the whole price drop thing.

It's ridiculous.

Make a better offer.

Because there's two ways to lower a price.

Did you realize this?

There's two ways to make something cheaper.

This first way is of course to drop the price, to actually lower the price for that.

The second way is to increase the value.

As you increase the value, the price seems cheaper.

And here's an example.

So imagine that you've got a thousand dollar item.

It doesn't matter what it is, it's a thousand dollars.

Well, that right off the bat sounds expensive.

But then when you take that same thousand dollar, we'll call it the new iPhone, right?

We'll call it the new iPhone.

IPhone's $1,000.

And obviously that was a huge deal.

But at the same time, it's a commodity on its own.

When you look jump online, you can go to the Apple store, you can go to Best buy, you can go to where, any place online or in your town that sells the iPhone, it's gonna be the same price.

So it's a commodity.

It's just a matter of where you're buying from.

It's a matter of, you know, that's it.

It's a matter of that.

There's no differentiation because you're selling a product.

Now imagine that very same iPhone.

Maybe it was somebody, some famous person's iPhone, maybe a business.

Let's take a business person.

Imagine if it was maybe Steve Jobs iPhone, okay, when he was alive.

So that very same iPhone is now Steve Jobs iPhone.

So what does it have with it?

If he was to sell his iPhone just straight away, not for the fact that it was his iPhone, it would just be that thousand dollars.

However, do you think that he would have a list of rich, famous, important people's phone numbers, personal phone numbers in his iPhone?

Absolutely.

He's probably got Tony Robbins on call and you know, Bill Gates in there and Elon Musk or whoever, all of these business titans, they're in his iPhone.

Their personal numbers are there, I guarantee it.

So how much value would that be to you as a business person if you could get in touch and probably lots of athletes and sports people and actors and who knows, famous people, Would there be value to that if you all of a sudden you had all of those personal cell phone numbers?

Absolutely.

That kind of a network would be worth, I mean could potentially be worth millions or hundreds of millions or more.

But we'll just say maybe that's thousand dollar value to be able to have that list of those phone numbers.

And then because we know that leaders are readers, he probably had a massive amount of maybe trainings and courses and different things that he's bought over time and probably had those downloaded in his iPhone as well.

So it's not a stretch at all for five to 10 years worth of education to be $50,000 or more worth of investment into education.

Well, that's downloaded on there too.

So how much does that be worth to you to instantly get that entire catalog of personal growth and education?

And not only that, he's got all of these access, but you get where I'm going.

I could go on and on and on.

But then here's the thing, there's only one of those phones.

So you put it up for auction, starting bid $10,000.

That would be.

The auction would go way up.

Because the value now that is associated with this offer, it's not just an iPhone anymore, it's a tool, it's an offer.

All of these things that are combined because the perceived value is all of a sudden dramatically more than just the value of the phone itself.

Is this making sense when we offer what we do, the best way to take it away from price, take it away from.

So it's not even an apples to apples conversation.

Especially when you've got on paper, the company looks the same.

On paper the reputation looks the same, the install looks the same.

But you have to start offering value items that are little or no cost to you but are a massive perceived value to the client that the competition is not doing.

How do you do this?

Do it with the inexpensive things.

You got to price yourself there, cover it.

Of course a good way to do it in the heating and air world is take things like surge protectors.

They're super cheap, but the value is, I think we sell ours for close to 500 bucks per system.

Surge protectors on equipment are, it's a no brainer for people nowadays, but when you can say I've included this when the competition didn't.

It's a 497 value.

And the next thing is, okay, I chose for your project this thermostat, WI fi connected.

It's the upgraded version that has maybe a remote temperature sensor for the other room.

So you don't have the upstairs downstairs issue anymore.

Well, that upgrade alone is a $200 value.

I'm including it at no extra charge because we know that on the back end, the cost difference is not that much between thermostats.

However, we can offer it as a huge value added.

And you can go down the list all of the things that you do.

We schedule quality control person, or you can go back out yourself.

We schedule for a quality control inspection after the installation to guarantee that your system's running the way it should be.

This is a $119 value.

If you give away a maintenance plan with your new installs for the first year, that's something we do.

I recommend it.

It's great.

Don't give it away.

Build the price into the project, but don't break it out as a line item and give them an opportunity to say they don't want it.

You put it into the project, and then when you are selling your system, when you're making your offer to them, that's when you say, okay.

Now here's something else that we do.

We include for the first year our maintenance plan, which is super important because we want to get a full tune up on the system twice in the first year to make sure it's off to a good start, it's doing what it's supposed to be doing, and that's a $280 value, or whatever it is for us.

It's a $280 value.

So we included it, no extra charge, because it's important in our quality control process to make sure that you get exactly the project that you're looking for.

So when I go in and I make an offer for a system to a client and I go through every single one of these items, and literally the client I just had yesterday that I locked in, we were $2,000 higher than the other company.

I went through this value stack with her.

I said, look, all of the things that we're doing, $1,650 value, additional value, that doesn't cost you anything.

Does this explain the differences in attention to detail, the differences in price, the differences in quality of install between us and the competition?

And she.

It's amazing because she just was like yeah, exclamation points.

This is awesome.

And then the cool part, which is even better is we were talking about a mid level system the whole way that she was comparing to.

Once I gave her the value stack, she got back to me with oh, and we'd like to go ahead and upgrade to the next level up at the same time and okay, no problem, let's get it done.

The next steps are.

But that's how you do a value stack.

When you're making your proposal, when you're making the presentation.

We're not selling products anymore, we are making offers.

When you make an offer, you have so much value in the project and the way that you present it that it doesn't make any sense that they would go with someone else because they don't get anywhere near the same value.

It's about their perceived value.

Yes, every single thing sold separately would cost what you are.

And we're not making stuff up.

It would cost what you're telling them is the value.

Obviously we know ala carte items when you do it with a project, they don't cost us nearly as much or they're nothing.

However, obviously if you do it by itself, it would be $500 or $700 or whatever it is.

When we do it with the project, we can give that value and outline it and add it up.

So that's called the value stack.

It's how you move and differentiate yourself from anyone else in the field.

Because I guarantee you nobody is doing this.

This is a different concept for presenting in our industry or any industry that has to do with any kind of trades, even cars or whatever it is, people don't do this.

Your regular everyday out there salespeople, comfort consultants, project managers, they are not presenting this way.

And when you present this way, it's going to change everything for you.

Does this make sense to anybody?

I hope it does because try this method.

So do something basic.

I mean, so say you've got allergy issue.

So when you go through and you're presenting your project, you're presenting your offer, you've gone through the presentation of maybe the different types of equipment.

The big caveat here is you have to do this before anyone ever sees a price for anything.

The value stack is before the price.

You have to show all of the big value and add it up for them before you ever show actual prices of what you're truly priced your offer at.

So the example would be here, let's just do a scenario.

We've got a house, they're gonna Go with a maybe a two sage, two stage air conditioner, 92% furnace.

It's got, we've got one bedroom that is too cold, too hot in the summer.

We've got allergy issues.

So when we make our offer, we go through with, okay, here's the equipment and you show your full retail price, fully booked price with no discounts, no rebates, nothing.

It's this value.

And then the next thing is okay, and then you're also going to get this room is now going to be the same temperature as the rest of the house year round.

And it's this value.

What it would cost to a la carte.

Fix that and it's this value.

And then the next thing is and you're going to get the allergen problem we talked about.

This is going to make a dramatic difference with that.

Here's the value.

And again, it's the fully loaded book price that you would do that a la carte.

Now all of that together and then go through everything else like your maintenance plan and all the things that add up every bit of the value at the end.

Here's the value that you're getting.

Now, of course I'm not going to charge you that.

Here's what your price today is when you we bundle all this together because people love bundle pricing.

Let's bundle this together.

It's just however much it is today, why don't we get on the calendar, you know, and that's it.

That's how to do the value stack.

And it's so, so, so powerful.

We're gonna be diving a lot more into this.

If you haven't, go join the Facebook group, go to CloseItNow.net, find the link and go straight to the Facebook group.

Join the Facebook group.

Because I'm going to be doing a lot of videos on how to present this way, how to use the value stack in different parts of the visit, different parts of the call as a service, call, service appointment, all a lot of different ways.

So go join the Facebook group.

Join the community.

People just like you and I are crushing it every day, constantly striving to be better.

And that is the community where we just, we share, we share all kind of things.

So we're all getting better in there.

I know this was a longer than average podcast, but this was a big topic and I wanted to really get it all in in one.

We'll break it down more in pieces in the future.

Until then, you have been listening to the Close it now podcast.

My name is Sam Wakefield.

Every single one of you.

Go out there.

Save the world one heat stroke at a time.

Save the world one frostbite at a time.

I will talk to you again soon.

Thanks for listening to Close it now with Sam Wakefield.

Subscribe to the podcast now so you're first to hear new episodes jam packed with actionable tools and tips to make you the top H Vac professional in your market.

If you have friends and colleagues who would like this show, share it with them and send them to our Facebook community for more in depth discussion discussion about the challenges we all face and how to overcome them on the Close it now podcast.