My recent interview with the affable, congenial, appreciative and insightful Steve Howard reaffirmed two truths I’ve often experienced in this industry: the most effective sales approaches are firmly rooted in human nature, and they will never fail.
What a trainer Steve Howard has been. He's another industry legend I wish I had known back in his earliest days as an author, sales coach and writer for Contracting Business. By the time I joined, he was writing for another publication.
The good news is, I will be there (and you can, too) as Steve Howard is inducted into the Contracting Business HVAC Hall of Fame on October 16, during the Service World Expo in Lake Buena Vista, Florida (serviceworldexpo.com).
Steve Howard and Charlotte -- his wife of now 55 years - have been in this together. Steve did the training and writing, and Charlotte, as Steve told me, “kept the wheels turning.”
Howard is best known as the founder of ACT Group, Inc. (Air Conditioning Training) in Phoenix, Arizona, an industry-specific training, consulting and publishing firm. He also has some sales-specific trademarks under his belt, including No Pressure Selling®, Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy™, Design the Ideal Comfort Solution® and Comfort Concerns List™
Prior to his career as a trainer, Steve Howard was an Air Force aircraft mechanic who served in VietNam; and a refrigeration technician. He was first hired by Paul Hobaica, Sr., founder of the legendary Hobaica Services in Phoenix.
You can see two of Steve’s articles on this page, and I’ve posted them for the first time digitally at ContractingBusiness.com. They’re from 2002 and 2003. In one, he shares these gems:
“There are four things only you can provide: your company; your installation; your comfort system; and YOU.”
“People trust people more than products. Trust is the most powerful shortcut in the entire sales process. To build trust in your people, show how they’re ‘more than safe to hire.’
“A final company differentiator is your integrity. Socrates said: ‘You’ll never know a line is crooked unless you place a straight line next to it. Set the standards by discussing your straight-line, non-negotiable policies: Your Satisfaction is 100% guaranteed, and Our Word is Our Bond.”
Have you ever tried to define “Total Comfort” for your customers? Steve Howard has, and he shared 12 actions that illustrate it, in that article from our series on Total Comfort from March 2003. Among those actions:
· “I shall conduct Manual J and D calculations, then show them to my customer and explain their importance.”
· “I shall present the benefits of properly designed, sealed and balanced duct systems combined with two-stage, variable speed high-efficiency furnaces, air conditioners and heat pumps for maintaining the ultimate in comfort, quietness and low utility bills”
· “I shall propose fresh air and positive pressure options when needed: HRV/ERV and whole house HEPA filtration and dehumidification systems.”
During his many years as a sales trainer (For YORK, Trane, Carrier and Alabama Power), Howard’s most famous sales truths that formed the basis for his No Pressure Selling® process took shape: “Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy™ and this will allow the customer to sell themselves.”
And the questions are the all-important starting point. “In VietNam one of the planes they flew was a C47, WWII-vintage aircraft; the other was a U10 Helio Courier utility aircraft, the slowest airplane in the Air Force inventory. But before every flight, whether it was a large plane or small, the pilot and co-pilot would go through a checklist, which were basically a series of questions. By asking questions, they didn’t forget anything.
“Then, I had read a quote by Aristotle: ‘The fool tells me his reasons; the wise man persuades me with my own.’ So, I thought, what if we ask questions to find out what people wanted and then told them how we would give them what we wanted. That was it,” he said, and we both laughed at the simplicity of it all.
“Nobody else in sales was asking questions, he recalls, just telling customers things. With our process, we ask the questions and tell them how to provide what they’re looking for. The price is too high if they don’t see the value, so the whole idea is to build value.
You must, Howard insists, Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy™. If you don’t you’re being pushy, doing the wrong things. There’s a process in which you try to get the customer to agree to buy what you’re selling before they even know what you’re selling. You have to have empathy and make it about the customer, and not about trickery.
Thank you, Steve Howard, for your dedication to HVAC sales training, and welcome to the Contracting Business HVAC Hall of Fame.