How To Be The X-Factor For Your HVAC Business

Pete Ramsey – How to be the X-factor for your HVAC Business

Tersh Blissett: Hello everyone out there in Podcast World. Hope you’re on a great day. You were listening to or watching Service Business Mastery Podcast. I’m here sitting virtually next to my co-host. Joshua Crouch is super excited about today’s show. We’re going to talk about The X Factor, how you stand out with your business. We’re talking with with Pete Ramsey. He’s an Army vet and huge shout out to Ta Ta Pete for that and thank you for for your service. Then he left there, became a technician and then started a business, sold it, then went to work for Linux for a while and is now in the coaching side of things. And so I’m super excited to talk about HVAC, X Factor and really how you can stand out in a crowd. Everybody that knows me has listened to the show for a while, especially if you’re anywhere around Savannah, you know, Jesse Cole and the whole team over at Savannah Bananas and the whole concept [00:01:00] there with the bananas and the find your yellow tux. If you if you’re watching this video, you can see behind me his book is actually sitting right there behind me on the shelf, the yellow book, find your yellow tuck. So how you stand out. And so that’s kind of what I’ve always kind of taken to heart as reason why I wear a three piece suit to out in public.

 

Josh Crouch: And that’s your yellow tux?

 

Tersh Blissett: That’s my yellow talks with a ball cap.

 

Josh Crouch: And so I think you should just do an orange tux.

 

Tersh Blissett: I actually have one. But the problem is, is that I look like dumb and dumber whenever I’m wearing it. So it’s like, yeah, it definitely it’s an awkward one because the one that I actually found has these like huge lapels on it and I’m like, Yeah, this is, this is not going to work.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah, I don’t think they make orange suits in bulk. So you got to like special order. You got to find some off the wall store that has something like that.

 

Tersh Blissett: Exactly. Yeah. But yeah, I’m super excited [00:02:00] to have Pete on. And I know that you’ve you’ve spoke with Pete a good bit in the past, so you have a little bit more of a relationship. So I’m going to definitely dove into the the fact that I’m ignorant in this situation, in this conversation. So I love those those words because it’s.

 

Josh Crouch: Different than any other episode.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, that’s something that’s most of the episodes which are great because I could just see them. I can really I’m not the I’m not the type person that I’m afraid of looking dumb or sounding dumb. So I’ll ask the craziest questions in the world.

 

Josh Crouch: So yeah, yeah. No, Pete, what he focuses on is a lot of times businesses, especially contractors, are great at what they do. That’s why they started their business. They’re a great tech. They’re great at sales, they’re great at something, but they don’t know how to let the rest of the world and their customers know that. So that way people remember you and they have a certain emotional feeling about your business. Because we all [00:03:00] know at this point people buy totally irrational reasons. They buy because they feel something. And that’s what Pete’s program is about. And I won’t get into too much of that. I’ll let him talk about it. But he’s he talks about bringing the greatness out of your HVAC business, which this can apply to any any type of service business.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Let’s get started with a show.

 

Announcer : Are you looking for valuable business advice to reach that seven figure revenue mark? Do you want actionable tips to properly navigate through every business challenge you encounter along the way? Let Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch be your guide in getting you to the top here at Service Business Mastery. Tune in as they sit down with world renowned authors in business leadership and personal growth who share valuable insights about management, marketing, [00:04:00] pricing, human resources and so much more. Let their nuggets of wisdom goals guide you in owning a thriving, profitable and ever growing business. Here are your hosts, Tersh and Josh.

 

Josh Crouch: Welcome, Pete.

 

Pete Ramsey: Hey, Josh, how are you doing? Hey, Tersh.

 

Tersh Blissett: Hey, man.

 

Josh Crouch: Doesn’t that music just kind of want to make you. I know it makes you want to move a little bit.

 

Pete Ramsey: No, it was awesome. It’s awesome. No, I appreciate the opportunity, you guys. I’m a big fan. I’ve been watching both you guys on and off as I can, but what a nice impact you guys are having on our market. We really appreciate that.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, absolutely. It’s our pleasure. We love the connection aspect of it, really introducing people to like just meeting guys like you on [00:05:00] the show. And Kasey, who we interviewed this morning and just being able to connect her and you and other guests together with with either contractors or other guests on the show, which is is really it really is awesome. That’s our main focus is really helping to ask the and ask questions answer those unasked questions that contractors may have or even technicians and managers who may be considering starting their own business. And so that’s that’s our whole that’s our mission is to to be that connector. And so we especially think people like you that come in as a as an expert and are willing to answer some of these ridiculous questions that I have. So with that being said, tell us a little bit about yourself and why you do what you do now.

 

Pete Ramsey: So, yeah, I appreciate that and I appreciate what you’re doing too. So yeah, I’ve been in heating and air conditioning since 1982, [00:06:00] so that shows how old I am coming up on 40 years. Feel old. I know, right? Well.

 

Tersh Blissett: Anything even back then I mean I was air conditioning. Well, I was born in 83, so 85 years.

 

Josh Crouch: So sorry, Pete. You’re going to feel a little old.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah.

 

Pete Ramsey: So, yeah, I was back when. Willis. What’s the name? Willis Carrier. I see you.

 

Josh Crouch: Guys are neighbors, right?

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah.

 

Pete Ramsey: So, no, actually, it was the recruiter that got me, the US Army Corps of Engineers. They sent me to Fort Belvoir, Virginia to study heating and air conditioning refrigeration. And so that’s cool. The old saying it’s a great place to start. It was certainly true in my case. But but yeah, I left the military went into the civilian aspect of it, was hired as a junior service technician. I was really young and just continue to put in the hours and work for a few companies. We’re doing refrigeration, [00:07:00] worked on some chillers, worked on a little bit of boilers, but ultimately decided I had to do this for myself. And and I started my company back in 1989, 1989, and went through all the struggles, made every mistake you can possibly make. But during my ten years before I sold it, I went from just out there struggling like everybody else to we had a nice team, we had a good culture. We had about 14 total employees. We had a really good area of the market. We were right up against Charlotte in that area. And like I said, we got a lot right. But we learned our lessons, the honest way to and and and got our bumps and bruises along the way.

 

Tersh Blissett: So can I ask you a question real fast about your transition from army into the civilian world?

 

Pete Ramsey: Yes.

 

Tersh Blissett: So [00:08:00] it’s going to be different for every person. But how is that transition, even though you were doing refrigeration and whatnot in in the army coming to the civilian side of things and getting into commercial refrigeration? How was that transition there? I mean, because we Josh and I both prior service. Your prior service, you go from here to zero and that’s a whole concept in itself. And then you’re but you’re getting out of government, quote unquote, refrigeration and air conditioning and moving into the civilian world, which is a little bit different.

 

Pete Ramsey: Yeah, it that’s the first time anybody’s asked me that. And that’s a great question. I think I think accountability and. I think the ability to measure yourself was was part of the biggest transition for me, because I remember going from a scenario where [00:09:00] the discipline was so strong. We had we had checklists, we had procedures. And it was just a certain way of doing things into a world where. Yeah. I can remember standing so that my boss couldn’t see my shoes because they weren’t clean, because we always had them with a high buff, you know, serious and, you know, going out to customers and and just really just being thrown out there without a process.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah.

 

Pete Ramsey: Go figure it out.

 

Tersh Blissett: No SOPs. No, I had a guy come in and we hired him straight from the Navy. And actually everybody that’s on board with us right now, that’s in the field anyways. Our prior service, they weren’t air conditioned, but this one was he was Navy, he worked on submarine, he was a refrigeration guy there and he came on board with us and all he had known was Navy for 15 years, I think, or something like that. And [00:10:00] he was like, Where is your sop for this? What’s your where’s your manual for this? I’m like, where is your man? You haven’t I haven’t been asked to that in so long. I was like, it’s all digitized, like we everything we have here. Yeah, but I need, I need the steps on this. I was like, Oh, we are not the Navy, we are not the government. Like, I’m not going to give you every single step on how to charge a refrigerator or charge a unit. But I was like, Wow, I completely forgot how that process, how strict everything was and very regimented.

 

Pete Ramsey: Yeah, it was definitely a culture shock and it’s funny how quickly that becomes ingrained and a part of who you are. But but it was a move for the best. I mean, you know, I was a civilian at heart, so it was nice to get back out there, you know. Yeah, in the real world.

 

Tersh Blissett: So then you had your business, you started your own business in 1989 and then you exited there and you went to work for the manufacturer, right? Linux.

 

Pete Ramsey: I did, I. I [00:11:00] sold my business. I went through a divorce and that was my primary reason for exiting out. And I go back to my old market and I look at the companies I used to kick their butts and they are massive now. And so part of me looks back on that. Oh, man. Mixed emotions, right? Yeah, but. But but I did. I said, you know, I’ve done this. I did notice that my favorite part of being a business owner was Tuesday morning training, when I would have all my techs in there and we would go through all our process training and stuff like that. I really enjoy that. And so the transition over to Linux worked because they they made me a territory manager and I got to utilize my skill set by working with business owners like yourself. And it was like a consultative sales process, you know, and they look forward to visiting and it was really nice. It was it was a good transition.

 

Tersh Blissett: So [00:12:00] you weren’t that you were in that pressure sale, that pressure team.

 

Pete Ramsey: You were. No, no, no.

 

Josh Crouch: You were the guy that came with actual actual knowledge of running a business and how to do it successfully. Which. That’s a whole nother segment where we could get sidetracked.

 

Pete Ramsey: As well as unsuccessfully, because we have that aspect, too. But you’re right, a lot of times people would just it was just so well received and it was really nice. And yeah, and I was in my learning element as well. I was doing a lot of training. I had the audio books going, I had the one third of the state of North Carolina, so I had an entire East Coast from the Outer Banks, Kitty Hawk up that way, Nags Head all the way down to Calabash Pass, Wilmington. So it was a beautiful theater, a lot of driving time, a lot of audio training and and things like this and a lot of opportunity to learn and get better on that side of the business in terms of interacting with [00:13:00] people and gaining their trust. And it’s generally like we do still to this day. It was through through through service, through helping others.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. So then you started the coaching aspect of things and I’d like to dove into The X Factor and how you came up with this and kind of lay it out there for us. Like, what is The X Factor? I know we have four, four pillars here that we’re going to cover on today’s show, but let’s let’s kind of dove into that a little bit.

 

Pete Ramsey: So yeah, the first concept was greatness. So I’m, I’m a great service technician. I really do good work. But yet when I walk into the customers home and I tell them all the logical reasons why I’m superior and why my services are worth more, they nod their head. They tend to agree with me, but ultimately they revert back to Yeah, but you know, the other company is this is cheaper than you are and stuff. And so I couldn’t break free [00:14:00] from being lumped into that group. And so I thought, well, how can my greatness bleed through? What can I do to set myself apart? And oh, gosh, the CEO of Nuts or I’m sorry, Southwest Airlines, you wrote a book called Nuts and he called it one percenters. And he was asked essentially, you know, how is it the Southwest Airlines, your service is so much better than everybody else’s? And he said it’s not it’s 1% better, but it’s 1% better at every customer touchpoint. And so I started to try to internalize that type of of a philosophy and as our business practices. And it really made a difference. It really made a huge impact. So coming full circle now, I had to go through my bumps and bruises as well because being a business coach for heating and air conditioning contractors, it usually attracts the young, struggling guys [00:15:00] that really need help. And I can’t turn them away. So I’ve got to have a price point that works well for them and all that good stuff. But what they were missing ultimately was something deeper than what I had to share. I was talking about this earlier on the show. I’m talking to 14 different contractors and I’m trying to be everything to everybody. And ultimately, I don’t know that I did a good a job as I could have, because once we got focused on the the X Factor, that what is that thing about, not just about your company, but about you, that that that really makes, you.

 

Tersh Blissett: Know.

 

Pete Ramsey: When you’re the technician at first and you’re the one that goes out there and you get your first hire, let’s say you hire Josh, you send Josh out there and and they say, you know, Tersh, you know, Josh, good guy and everything else, but you mind taking care of my equipment going forward? We really like you. What is the difference?

 

Tersh Blissett: That’s that is such a real comment because [00:16:00] you can see in the reviews like even in Google reviews when when they’re saying. The owner of the company, like when that’s the technician that goes out there and that’s the sales person and whatever that goes out and site, you can it’s a different review that’s left and it’s Oh yeah, you can tell that. It’s like, okay, that person was probably the owner that was out there. Yeah, it’d be a long message.

 

Josh Crouch: It’s like, it’s like a couple of paragraphs about how awesome and they did this thing and that thing and it’s not. It’s not. Yeah.

 

Tersh Blissett: As soon as I, as soon as I got out of the field like a couple of summers ago, I hop back in the van and did a summer as I was hiring more people because we had an influx of calls. And I needed to I wanted to turn people away. So I jumped in the van for the summer. And as we were hiring people in and onboarding and and and everything, the we got clients, we [00:17:00] got new clients, commercial clients over that time period. And we slowly have they’ve kind of teetered away, not a lot of them, but a couple of them have kind of like stepped to the side and said, Hey, look, it’s nothing about you. Your company is great and everything, but it’s not you. We’re looking for one guy in a truck because that person gives a different service than a company that has seven technicians. And I was like are like, dang like I wish I had known this six months ago, we could have this conversation and that’s on me for, for that not happening. But they really just valued. Me versus like the whole company. And I knew we dropped the ball on some things, but it’s, it’s crazy how different the relationships were between that.

 

Pete Ramsey: So yeah. To that point that the problem is OC. Tersh comes in and he’s got his own personal values. Among [00:18:00] them may be family, professionalism, honesty, integrity, caring about his customers. All these different things. You tend to press the emotional responses to people who share the values.

 

Tersh Blissett: It’s a good point.

 

Pete Ramsey: Which you overlap, right? So they’re responding to you not necessarily because of who you are, but the way you make them feel. And so when somebody else comes in and they don’t share those same values, that same commitment, the attention to detail, the the preoccupation of is everything good is do we cover everything well, thoroughly and things this nature. And so they don’t feel that same feeling from the service experience. And so ultimately boils down to the problem with when you build it around you, it can be that you can’t scale you.

 

Tersh Blissett: Very true.

 

Pete Ramsey: You can’t clone off and [00:19:00] and be Tersh Tersh or Tersh. So what we have to do is take that part of you. Externalize it into processes. And here’s the key point. Attract employees who share those values.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. And that’s the amazing thing there, because that that point that you make there. Is really so accurate because the clientele that we had when I was there and then since left were the ones that that we attached because we tried to do consistency of care, like continuity care, so that a similar technician goes every single time as often as possible. And the technician that was going was assigned to those two clients that I think that come to mind no longer with us. He didn’t match our core values. He just the integrity wasn’t there. And so what you say there, it’s it’s true. I mean, it happened with us. The [00:20:00] technician didn’t share our same values.

 

Pete Ramsey: Yeah. And so this is why we see so many people hiring a based on personality as opposed to experience. You get this new technician who’ve got ten years experience and he’s coming in and burning all the bridges that you worked so hard to build to begin with.

 

Tersh Blissett: Exactly what happened.

 

Pete Ramsey: Yeah. And so, so so what it boils down to is if you if you find the right team mate, if you will, and you share those values and you analyze and understand the key characteristics that come naturally for that person in a given role, you’ll know if they’re a good fit for that job or not. And if they are and you have your values and you have a similar cultural personnel, you’ve developed a culture in essence, and and and it gets stronger and stronger. And when you hire people like that, they don’t leave. They don’t go for somewhere, somewhere else for a couple of dollars.

 

Tersh Blissett: On the house. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Josh Crouch: So [00:21:00] is that as far as because obviously people are like, well, how do I how do I figure out what is what is my X factor, my personal X factor that is going to be the business is really going to be built on. You know, I know you have some steps. Do you want to. Yeah, yeah. How you how you figure that out about yourself?

 

Pete Ramsey: We talked about the four pillars and I’ll touch on that in just a second. But ultimately it starts with doing the work. You’ve got to go inside. I do this little thing called branding from the inside out and we do. We go through and we assess your values and we look to Tersh point to Google reviews and we look for emotional responses in those reviews that are emotionally charged. And so Tersh was great and he was very reasonable in his price. Well, that value is money. That that’s not the one we’re really looking for. But Josh was fantastic. He took the time and he explained everything really well so that we understood what we were getting. [00:22:00] So now we have a value of somebody that knows how to communicate. And so we start to define, okay, what is it about me that people are drawn towards and what part of me can I accentuate and elevate and and put out to the world in a way to draw more of that type of customer? So I’m learning I’m kind of reverse an engineer in how to fish for certain kind of fish. Yeah. If, if I’m attracting a bunch of price hunting, bargain hunting type customers, you know, I may want to change my approach to how I market myself because I’m appealing to a certain part of somebody that I really don’t want to. And so, so, so yeah, it starts with branding from the inside out. So what is your why why did you do this? Right. What, what is your story? How did you come to this point? And we’ve we’ve heard the story. And so when you start to look at your values, your story and your why, you can come [00:23:00] into an identity that blends with what your passion with the business is and create what we call if you read the book Blue Ocean Strategy by any chance.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yep.

 

Pete Ramsey: So for those of you who haven’t, there’s a theory there that everybody seems to be over in that red ocean fishing in those bloodied waters of heavy competition. But if you can learn to take and set your lift yourself out of those waters and over into these fresh blue waters where you don’t have all that competition, you can be much more successful. And so what what the X Factor is, is we’re dialing in on this genuine, authentic version of yourself, and we’re building a business on that. And this way you’ll never. You never get caught being something that you’re not because you built it on something genuine. And so in the Blue Ocean, for example, we talked about the US Army Corps [00:24:00] of Engineers. So my story might go like this. You know, when I was in the army we had these sop’s. Everything was done a certain way. And I go out into the civilian world and they just throw me out there.

 

Josh Crouch: There’s beer, canned cold, right?

 

Pete Ramsey: Right. Yeah, beer can cold. There’s, you know, that’s good airflow and all these different things. And I realize, you know, this isn’t right and the customer didn’t get what they were paying for you. Callbacks were high. And so when I formed my company, this is just me riffing here.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah.

 

Pete Ramsey: I said, that’s part of who I am. I was an engineer in the army, so I come up with this identity called the Comfort Engineers. And the Comfort Engine is my power identity, by the way. I am different than everybody else. And so I set myself apart, not just with a different identity as a comfort engineer. I also have what I call level five service, which in my story I might utilize that that transition [00:25:00] from the military with a very detailed checklist and process and how I have that over into my company now. So that may be that part of it. So if I have this powerful identity that is drawing the right kind of people and I do this work that’s superior and I have a way of communicating this, you’re getting much more out of me. Suddenly the value, the perceived value goes up as long as the customer interprets that greatness or the quality and everything that you’re doing bleeds through. And so that leads you to the third pillar. Pillar number one is power identity. Pillar number two is your unique service or unique approach to service. And number three is what we call insider rapport, customer experience. And so rapport is one of the seven emotional triggers that everybody is. What Josh said at the very beginning responds to automatically.

 

Pete Ramsey: People buy for emotional [00:26:00] reasons and they justify justify them logically. That’s the way we work. And your customers are no different. And if you learn to press those emotions, you get a lot more yeses. And we round that out with the fourth pillar, which is emotional marketing. So we’re marketing not to the logic, we’re marketing to those emotions. And of course, the big two are friendship. That’s rapport. People do business with people they like. So when you you’re going through that customer experience. If you have a process that builds rapport, you’re much more likely to get a customer that’s going to do business with you. And if you blend that with the second emotional trigger and by the way, these come from a book called The Seven Triggers to. Yes, and I can’t remember the author’s name right now, a really good book. But the second one is authority, right? And so if you are the authority [00:27:00] and you have rapport and you do this right, you transition the the dynamic of this confrontation where you’re on one side and they’re on the other, you’re the customer and I’m the maybe a salesperson in the sliding slide, in the chair beside them, shoulder to shoulder. And we address this problem as a team.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, you’re working. You’re working with them.

 

Pete Ramsey: Exactly.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, I love that.

 

Pete Ramsey: Yeah. And so those are the four pillars. But yeah, arriving to that, creating that identity. And then you have to capture a really good artist to go out there. And and this is I think this is where a lot of heating and air conditioning companies just get it wrong. We think we can do a brand. We can’t. We think our company name is so cool because it’s cool to us in a private way or our slogan is so great. You know, the slogan is Mean Something. So let’s take my example, the comfort engineer. So how can I what can be my key message [00:28:00] that might say, okay. I’m different than everybody else. And so how does this sound? Why settle for just another HVAC contractor when you can have your own personal comfort advisor? The comfort engineer’s a different kind of comfort company, so make me be kind of dummy down on the wording a little bit, right? Sure. Capture a visual representation of this person. But he has those shared values. Mr. Artists make that comfort engineer look honest because my core values are honesty, integrity, caring and professionalism. Make him look professional, make him look honest, and make him look like he cares. And you can you can capture that kind of stuff visually. Put that on your wrap. Put that on your website and put that out when you’re working with people like Josh and things like this, so that the message that you’re putting out, it triggers the emotional responses, not the [00:29:00] $99 special.

 

Josh Crouch: Right. Not competing on price.

 

Tersh Blissett: Right? Yeah, that is really good.

 

Pete Ramsey: That’s the overall concept of that transition. And it really is a transition now, unfortunately. We’re all who we are. I talk to guys all the time that say I want to be like Victor. Over there in California, I forget Victor’s last name. Right? Cause he’s crushing it, right? Yeah. So he’s crushing it out there. And, you know, I tell these guys, you can’t be somebody you’re not.

 

Tersh Blissett: That’s right.

 

Josh Crouch: You got to be the best version of you. Yes. Not the best version of someone else.

 

Pete Ramsey: Right. Right. And so your success is directly correlated with how you perceive yourself and what you believe is possible for yourself. And so this creates a lot of limiting beliefs about ourselves. I don’t know if I can sell. They might think I’m selling if I say this or, you know, I don’t know if I’m good enough to compete with that big company. So that [00:30:00] limitation is very real. But the beauty is. It’s temporary, it’s a fluid. It’s not written in stone. You can rewire those circuits in your head. Yeah. Something that serves you better.

 

Tersh Blissett: Absolutely. And I deal with that with with technicians having the imposter syndrome because I come in and well, from the first time, like when our CSR call, when they call in, the CSR just touts the service expert and they’re, they’re an expert in our industry and all this the dispatcher does it the pre before call and then they get out there like all of our notifications are our expert is on your expert is on the way to you to to service your home. And then they get there and they’re like, I have imposter syndrome. Like I’m not an expert. Like, I’ve only been doing this a handful of years. Like, I’m not the smartest guy that has ever done air conditioning. And so I’m like, Dude, you cannot [00:31:00] go in there doubting yourself. Like, let’s just go in here and like, I did a job on a ride along a couple of weeks ago, and the technician was like, Man, you just handled that so smoothly. And I was like, That is the first time I’ve ever done what we just did in my entire life. Like, I’ve never done this before. And he was like, I would have sworn you’ve done this forever. Like you’ve always done. I was like, Just go in there with confidence and just handle it. Like, just just do it. And he’s like, All right, cool. And it’s watching him. Transition has been great. It’s taken we’ve been doing two ride alongs a week for about six weeks now, and it’s been really eye opening for me and helping the technicians just really come out of their skin. And it’s very, very cool to see exactly what you’re talking about. The guys that had I didn’t know how to vocalize it. And [00:32:00] now I kind of understand, like I can share it with the team, but very much that’s exactly how it happened with us.

 

Pete Ramsey: So that type of thing. Okay, so you’re the business owner and so you had to make that transformation from employee mindset where your accountability was exterior over into self employment, which now I don’t have any boss if I don’t want to work today, I’m just going to lay around to the business owner or entrepreneur, somebody who has a vision, who is responsible. So this requires different disciplines and different mindsets and different beliefs, and it all starts with your core beliefs. And so a ritual, it starts with goals obviously, but affirmations, gratitude, exercises, things, things of this nature. This is where the rewiring becomes reinforced. And so as a business owner and this is the X Factor, by the way, it’s a huge part of it, not just the pillars. You got to get there. You’ve got to go through the transformation. You’ve got to get past. I’m not [00:33:00] good enough imposter syndrome that grease the grass is greener on the other side to this based on I’m not good enough or something’s wrong with me to what you are good at, good at doubling down on that and going for it. Now that said, you’ve got to work on your weaknesses. But if you. Reframe the way that you’re looking at the scenario. A lot of times that’s all it really takes. Instead of being a salesman, be a consultant. That’s a consultative service call process that I mentioned earlier that we do that takes all the pressure off the technicians. I hate to sell, but my numbers look better than the sales guy. Why? Because I’m. I’m not going to not go through this process without doing my job. My job is to go over all these things with you so that you understand exactly what the stat is, the assessment is of your system. Right. And so that that has to happen not just to the owner level, but it’s the cultural leader. You have to provide that for your team.

 

Tersh Blissett: So how would you how would you give [00:34:00] the team that? Like, because a lot of times they don’t know that that’s what they need. And sometimes they’re going to put up a wall like, hey, look, I don’t want I don’t want this right here. Like, it just sounds like some voodoo stuff to me.

 

Pete Ramsey: Like it does. And you do have to make it real. Stephen Covey called it The Paradigm Shift, and I’m sure you’ve read that one. Yeah. And so it becomes like I was saying, when you’re looking at things one way and you look at them the other, one day I had a I had a service meeting. It was on. It was on a Tuesday. It was on a Tuesday. And I’d asked Stacy, he was my technician. I said, How did that service call go on Friday with the blower motor over at that church? And Stacy said, Well, it didn’t go to good. He said, the customer said the price was too high and I don’t blame him. It was too high. So you can see right there he does not believe in our pricing. Well, at that time, we were the very first [00:35:00] to introduce flat rate pricing in our market. Not only was it new to our customers, it was new to our employees. I had just finished Ruth King’s financial training over at Lennox, and I went over to the Grace Board. So everything’s fresh in my mind, right? So I’m going through and we break down everything, everything tit for tat and we translate it over to the by the hour. I total everything up. And it come to 100, if I remember this right, $119 per hour back then. So this is what it costs us. And I said that book is based on 120.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah.

 

Pete Ramsey: So and the same technician said, we need to go up. And I said, No way. We’ve got markup on parts that’s not factored in there. But you can see our pricing is very fair. Guys, their eyes popped up. The the change in their behavior was evident because of the change in their beliefs. And that’s where it has to start as a leader, because we have to understand what beliefs need to be in place to provide [00:36:00] the consistent action that I need for this particular role.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, that’s great, man. That’s good stuff. I yeah, we could be talking for 4 hours about this stuff. I mean, obviously I’ve shared my experiences and what we’ve dealt with within our business, and it’s very real, everything that you’re mentioning here, Pete, and we appreciate you coming on the show. Where can people reach out to learn more about you and everything that you have going on?

 

Pete Ramsey: I appreciate that. Tersh. Yeah. Hvac greatness. Hvac greatness at gmail.com is good.

 

Tersh Blissett: Right? Perfect. Yeah, man. Well, I appreciate that. Josh, do you have anything you want to say when we close out? So I’ll cut you off?

 

Josh Crouch: No, but Pete’s just. He’s just a down to earth guy, you know? And that’s that’s what I love about doing this podcast stuff, is we’re able to bring people that I think deserve to be heard by more people, but sometimes there’s just not the avenues just aren’t there for them to be heard by different [00:37:00] audiences and stuff and being able to bring them in front of a lot of people and see that they’re genuine, they actually care about your success, not just they want to get paid more, I think is a really rewarding thing. And I know I’ve been following actually when I was still in the contractor side, I had followed Pete and took some advice from some of his stuff from when you were doing the videos, the video trainings and some of those other things back in the day. So I’ve been following him longer and he probably even realizes, but it comes full circle now that you kind of get to I get to do it on this end and help him out. But Pete’s very down to earth. And I think if you’re looking if if you can’t figure out what that is, I think I think Pete’s a really good resource for you to figure out how to find that X factor for your business and not just be another chuck in the truck, if you will.

 

Pete Ramsey: Yeah. Thank you, Josh. That means a lot coming from you, bro.

 

Tersh Blissett: Really cool. If anybody has any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to myself. Josh, [00:38:00] Pete, we’ll put all our information in the show notes. But with that being said, I hope you have a wonderful and safe week. And thank you again for watching this episode of Service Business Mastery Podcast. We’ll see you.

 

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