Ask the Experts | Competing with Cable Companies Entering HVAC

Question: A large cable carrier in the area is buying up smaller HVAC companies and using their existing customer base and marketing to take market share. What would be your first defense or offence to keep customers when they’re inundated with marketing from the cable company about HVAC?

Drew Cameron; EGIA faculty member and HVAC Sellutions Founder:

You need to market yourself as the local market expert.

Cable companies can install a smart thermostat in a customer’s house and monitor it with their smart technology, but can they fix what the thermostat is connected to if there’s an outage? No!

If they put in a smart water shutoff valve, can they fix a customer’s plumbing failure? No! They can monitor the problem but they can’t fix the problem.

You want to position yourself as not only the company that can connect homeowners to their home and everything that’s important – including their thermostat – but you’re also the company that can come out in a timely manner and fix any problem they might have.

The cable company doesn’t understand our industry the way we do and they don’t know what’s truly important to homeowners. You do!

It’s only a matter of time before someone outside of our space with a lot of money – in this case the cable companies – can beat us at our own game, unless we can wise up, give the customer the experience they want, and position ourselves as the experts we are.

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