The members in the South came together earlier this week in Charlotte for the Southern Regional Meeting. Rob Lehman (Maxair Mechanical) started things off with a discussion on how each member company is finding, evaluating, and retaining good people. Jim Hopson (Shoffner) shared a new Ride and Decide Program they’re implementing this summer to help high school kids decide if the HVAC industry is for them. Many members are working with local high schools or on the board of local community colleges and implementing internship programs to help students with tuition. For more experienced technicians, some members have tried online services, but had limited success. The members who have tried these online services liked the screening process, but found their customer service and overall knowledge of our industry to be low. Rich Bodwell (ISS Mechanical) said they have good luck with supply houses. Jeff Smith (Brady Services) suggested utilizing Orion (former military) to find techs. For finding sales people some members have had success using someone with a technical background.

Most attendees were evaluating their technicians, but only giving informal feedback. Rob (Maxiar) found it easier to put numbers behind sales evaluations, but harder to make it translate fairly on the technician side. Curtis Rippee (ACIS) said they look at overall department performance, any exceptions, and how well each tech is meeting the company’s core values. Rob (Maxair) encouraged the group to look at both turnover (number of separations divided by the average number of employees) and retention (percent of employees who were employed at the beginning of period and remain employed at the end of period) when it comes to keeping our people. Jim (Shoffner) said they reward their long-term techs by taking them off the on-call list once they reach their 15-year-milestone with the company. Steve (Soefker) said they have an Employee Appreciation Banquet every year.

In the afternoon, members spent time diving into the vertical markets. Some of the markets that members are having the most success with are surgical centers, industrial refrigeration, pharmaceuticals, and computer rooms. Some of the challenges members talked about were investing the time/money to get their technicians trained and finding the right technicians to do the work. Steve (Soefker) also lead a discussion on the importance of working together and sharing opportunities when they come up. Many of the attendees had referred work (typically one of their clients who had a location out of their area) and received work from another member.

Jim (Shoffner) kicked off day two with a conversation about the importance of branding and marketing. Shoffner created a list of the 12 things that make them uniquely different and they also created a value proposition to help differentiate them. The team at Soefker asked the techs to come up with 11 unique things about Soefker, but they couldn’t say anything that was on a competitor’s website. They gave that list to the sales department as reasons why a prospective company would want to do business with Soefker. Rob (Maxair) came up with four points that make Maxair different and are using them in the recruitment process to help people understand their company’s culture.

Most of the attendees felt that it was hard to understand how our industry could successfully use social media. Jeff (Brady) said they have started utilizing Yammer, which is a Microsoft product that acts like an internal Facebook with great success so far. Rich (ISS) partnered with The Unified Group to redo their company’s website. The attendees also talked about customer surveys, networking/different industry associations to get involved with, community outreach/PR, and different promotional items they’re using.

Special thanks to our task force for planning the meeting - Rob Lehman (Maxair), Steve Harvey (Soefker),  Randy Stone (Nashville Machine) and Jim Hopson (Shoffner).