San Antonio, TX – Close to 30 HVAC salespeople from across the country attended The Unified Group’s Sales Strategy Session in April. The conference took place at The Hotel Contessa in San Antonio, TX and included two full days of learning, best practice sharing and networking.

“Jeff’s sales presentation really opened my mind up to doing things differently and identified things that I am currently doing that may not be very effective.” said Mark Heikkila of Peterson Sheet Metal (Bemidji, MN)

Jeff Ruby, Founder of Red Rock Leadership, led the first day of the forum. Jeff has industry experience and was the head of sales for a national lighting contractor where he helped grow revenue from $700k to $5.8m in less than four years. In 2020, Jeff published RedRock Leadership: Transform Your Company Culture and Unleash the Potential for Exponential Growth, which outlines best practices that’s helped strengthen thousands of business leaders around the world. His presentation began with helping the group to develop the proper mindset to be successful in sales.  You want to be the trusted advisor for your customers, not the solution provider.  He shared how to select a top 25 ideal customer target market by demographic (who), geographic (where) and psychographic (how they think).  He reassured our salespeople that they need to know their worth and they are not only proposal providers.  They need to complete their due diligence to give the customer a proposal only when they know it will be accepted and to begin with the end in mind.

If you are not growing in sales, you are dying.  One question Jeff asked the group was “Do you love to win or hate to lose?” This question was impactful as salespeople are notoriously competitive and creating a solid foundation will help to win more business.  He provided the group with a sales playbook, which is essentially a sales process to follow from prospecting to closing the deal.  This plan included ways to take initiative, be persistent, actively listen, be creative and flexible as well as adaptable to their customers’ needs. 

“If I didn’t attend this meeting, I would have missed the skills and techniques used to define a sales process, ways to follow the process, and ways to shift the mindset to get 100% of the business that we want,” said Josh Dacres of VHV Company (Winooski, VT).

Chris Reiter, Service Division Manager of A&G Services (Fort Worth, TX) was the meeting MC and facilitated the second day of the session.  We had member panels consisting of five member experts on each; sharing best practices on CRM systems they are using including the positives and negatives, success stories of members expanding their business by breaking into new markets, and key sales metrics members are measuring to keep on track.  Juan Flores, Sales & Marketing Director, of Blauch Brothers (Harrisonburg, VA) facilitated a panel discussion asking members how they go to market, get in the door on cold calls, face objections and close the deal. 

The group also had small group breakout discussions where they chose a topic they were most interested in learning more about.  Those topics included selling controls, transitioning from the field into sales and the struggles faced, improving the construction sales process, prospecting and cold calling and ideas to maintain customer relationships. 

“I was able to speak with so many people about what’s worked for them and how to implement those ideas into our company. The best part of these forums is always the people I meet and phone numbers I come back with. It is great to be around so many friends that are willing to help wherever possible,” said Clayton Wood of Legacy Mechanical (Denver, CO).

The Unified Group’s Sales Strategy Session was a huge success. It was a great opportunity to get salespeople from across the country together to share ideas, create processes, build relationships and to go home empowered and ready to become even more successful.

Upcoming Forums include Leadership, Financial, Construction and Service Management! If you are interested in learning more about attending a meeting or becoming a member of The Unified Group, contact Janet Kelleher at KelleherJ@TheUnifiedGroup.com.