Design Principles for Residential Comfort Advisors

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Focusing only on system replacements forces your customers to do one thing: shop around for the lowest price. But what if you could step out of that race to the bottom with a superior system design process that sets you apart.

Contractor University faculty member Drew Cameron and HVAC business owner Eric Kjelshus go in-depth on building a fiercely loyal customer portfolio based on maximizing comfortability— even if it costs a little more!

Audio Transcription (in Beta)

 Learn the design principles for residential comfort advisors on today’s show.

All right, let’s get going with today’s show with Drew Cameron and Mr. Eric Kelsis. They’re going to talk about the very important design principles for all residential comfort advisors. Take it away guys. So we got Eric, like I said, I’ve known Eric a long, long time. Uh, he’s been a member of EJ, I think since the inception, uh, as well as I’ve interacted with him through other groups as well.

And the one thing I’ve known about Eric is a very, uh, Uh, sharp business mind as it HVAC has a very boutique business that he runs in Kansas City. And so why don’t you kind of tell me a little bit, you know, tell us a little bit about your background. We started doing insulation. We did, uh, basically boilers and started what year, uh, I’ve been in self employed for 53 years now, 53 years.

Yep. Uh, I started when I was a teenager. My grandfather used to carry me around and. And if he needed something, whether it was roofing or, or siding or HVEC or carrying, I was the guy. Mm-Hmm. . Okay. And so I definitely been very, very hand-on since forever. Uh, my dad was a minister and during the summer, uh, he would farm me out to relatives or grandfather.

Okay. And, uh, I was a laborer for, but he went out of his way to show me, to mentor me a little bit of electrical, little bit of. HVC, a little bit of whatever he was doing, I was part of it. Well, the reason I invited Eric in is, like I said, I’ve known him a long, long time. And the thing I’ve known about Eric is he’s got a very, uh, technical savvy mind and he’s a contractor just like you guys are.

Uh, small business, uh, there in, in Kansas City, but it’s a very boutique business. He’s, he got away from just basically switching out boxes years ago. Because he realized that that was shortchanging customers and he wanted to be something different, better, more and unique, uh, in the customer experience there and differentiate himself and stand out.

He didn’t want to be someone that the customer would comparison shop. He wanted to become compelling so that he would stand out in the customer’s mind. And now to this day, we were actually talking last night at the hotel, uh, which we got a. 6 a. m. wake up call because a homeless guy, a homeless guy kind of came into the hotel and refused to leave and set off the alarm and we were all out in the hallway at 6 a.

m. So, uh, but anyway, we were talking before that last night at dinner. Uh, we were talking a little bit about what his business is and he’s He has the unique distinction of being able to turn away work. He is so busy, he gets to pick and choose the jobs that he wants. He picks very profitable work at that because it’s very unique and very different.

And even has a way, uh, people who are willing to wait for him because of what we’re going to talk about today and tomorrow because he specializes in not just being a box changer, You can, you can do that and you can make some money and there’s lots of companies out there that are doing that and some very large businesses that do that.

Um, but when you’re a boutique, you can be a very, very profitable business at a lower amount of revenue and I think, uh, Eric has actually accomplished that very successfully. And so he’s a very sharp and savvy business mind. Um, and so why don’t you talk a little bit about, you know, that shift in mindset from being kind of just an HVAC contractor.

To this system and home performance, you know, i’m more of a building scientist Uh, some people say i’m an insulation specialist But i’m really really go out of my way to make buildings Very very comfortable and I go on my way to make buildings very good iq Good indoor air quality. Yeah, so when I enter a new building, I actually test the air And then I test the airflow and I try to make the building for the customer.

Eric’s really a, a comfort, uh, air quality and energy efficiency doctor in the home. Uh, and he has his process and he won’t, it doesn’t matter if a customer doesn’t want to give him the time. If they won’t give him the time, then he, they’re not his customer and he knows who he is and he focuses on that with complete certainty to do the job right.

And if you’re not willing to, you know, basically, you know, take the time as well as spend the money to do the job, right. Then he realizes you’re not his customer and he’s okay with that. And he has no problem telling customers that, you know, as well. And, uh, I simply tell the customer that you’re not his customer.

My customer. Yeah. And, and I, I literally try to fire the customer because if it doesn’t work out at the beginning It’s not going to work out at the end either. Yeah, and, and they, and then, and then during that process It’s not unusual when you’re challenging a customer to some extent where they say, well, no, no, no, no, hold on I don’t want you to go yet, right?

Because, because they realize, you know, that he believes, I mean with moral certainty that That what he is doing is the right thing to do, the best thing to do. Not because it’s, you know, the, the optimal money thing to do it’s, you know, he, he realizes the money will follow. He doesn’t chase the money. He chases the principle of doing the right things the right way and the money will follow.

So ABCs, attic, basement, then conditioning the air and, and if you do that in that order, the indoor air quality, the air flow. It all fills out. So that, that’s the intention, right? Is the ABCs attic, basement, and then, you know, conditioning the space. And I think a lot of contractors, you know, kind of dive right into the sea, the conditioning of the space and the equipment.

And so the next two days, we’re going to build on that concept of ABCs because it’s setting that intention. When you have the right intention, you get the right result. And so with that being said, I want to kind of give you an understanding as to where we are in the elevated consumer buying experience.

What you know is the sales process because many of you have tuned in, um, you know, to that training before, have attended it live in a classroom. And so it’s the, you know, what we call the best path, excuse me, to achieving the best possible outcome. And the best possible outcome is that the customer makes a decision that they’re happy with.

They went through a process that they’re thrilled with. They got the result that they’re thrilled with so much so that they gave you a great review and they’re happily referring you. Right, and they would buy from you again and will continue to buy from you again. So here’s what the process is that we go through.

It’s professional mental preparation. It’s the approach and introduction in the home. It’s the exploration and connection to the customer and their situation and what got you there today. It’s setting mutual expectations to your process and then getting to work. Going around the house, doing your survey, you know, learning about the customer, learning about the house, learning about the building envelope, learning about the living space, learning about the equipment in the application and what needs to be done, what’s going on in the house and what needs to be done to get a customer, a happy customer, a happy result, right?

And so getting to work is what we’re going to focus on today and tomorrow. So we’re at step five in the process. From there you then, once you figure all of that out, then you can put together your findings and options, price that up, and then share that with a customer, uh, through your findings and options.

Get commitment to what is the next step, right? Whether that’s doing business with you, doing business with somebody else, kicking the can down the road and doing it sometime later. And then bottom line at the end, continued connection. What does that mean? That means, okay, follow up if they didn’t buy from us, or we go back and thank them and continue them, uh, uh, continue communicating with them as a customer.

So that’s the 10 step framework of the elevated consumer buying experience that we teach in that class, the elevated consumer buying experience and sales execution. So that being said, let’s get to work. All right, so let’s talk about states of flow because again, we’re going to start with that because it all starts with you as the individual as the comfort advisor going into the home.

The states of flow are basically self flow. Self flow is basically showing up a state of being first, right? Having the right mindset, the right attitude and being present. Showing up. Being present for the customer, not being bothered by your phone, not being distracted by anything else, the next call or anything else you got going on in your life.

You got to be there for those people. You have to be a person of character and integrity and set the intention to serve the people and then execute with intensity. What is your desire, your commitment, and your responsibility in that process? And we talk about that in the sales training. We talk about having the right attitude or the outlook, and that’s, you know, tying together basically you as an individual, that’s your mind, your heart, your soul, your spirit, your body, all kind of coming into unison.

And I talk about the importance of that in the sales training classes. So we’re not going to talk about that today. But that is a state of flow, hence the term flow odyssey. What we will talk about today is technical and tool flow, right? You have to understand the basics of this industry. And you have to understand, like we were talking about a little bit earlier, you have to understand a little bit of indoor air quality, a little bit of HVAC, a little bit of building science, uh, and, and obviously on the sales side of things, you’re understanding people and communication and whatnot.

But again, we’re not going to talk about that today and tomorrow. But here we’re going to talk about what is the technical knowledge that you have to have, what are the computer software and apps that you might want to consider, and the other diagnostic tools, because you have to become a master of those, you know, in the home.

And then lastly, you pull that all together with your skills and your ability to be organized, manage your tasks in time, be disciplined. Communicate effectively, you know, be different and compelling in the home and then execute that process, that 10 step process. But for time purposes today and tomorrow, we’re going to focus on item number two.

And, um, and just to give you an idea here, this, uh, little link right here, uh, David Holt, a good friend and colleague of mine from National Comfort Institute, big fan of that organization. If you’re not a member of that, you certainly should be, because what we’re going to talk about today and tomorrow, those principles are what’s driving this thing.

Everything that we’re going to be doing to get the ultimate success and happiness with the customer. So that being said, I want to, uh, turn to bring, uh, bring Eric back into the conversation and talking about the concept of the house as a system. Now, Eric, when you see this graphic, what does this graphic kind of bring to mind in your eyes?

This is one of my favorite graphics, by the way. Uh, EPA came out with this and, uh, they pulverized it really, really heavy in the late 80s, early 90s. And, and, and I, I show it to every customer, uh, because you have two systems here, one up and one down. The system up in the attic is out of the building. And how do you bring the HVC system back in the building?

So if I’m in the Kansas City area and my expertise is really in the Kansas City area. So if you’re It applies everywhere. Yeah, uh, but if you have an HVAC system up in the attic and your attic gets to be 150 degrees or 20 degrees below zero, you have to make sure that you have enough insulation and sealing in there to take care of those weathers.

So, if you’ve got duct leakage, you’ve had too much return on the attic, you have to take that into consideration. Yep. It’s a huge big thing. Absolutely gigantic. Yeah, we’ll pull that, we’ll pull that into the conversation. But this graphic is pretty compelling, like you said, because you got two different systems.

You can see how they’re, you know, the living space, the conditioned space, before, you know, the two middle floors is where the customer lives. That’s how they interface with the systems. And you can see there’s air leakage in and out of the building there. You use it for a conversation starter. If, if you’re talking about indoor air quality, this is a good example.

If you’re sucking attic air, and it’s full of mouse feces and rats and other stuff, and you’re sucking a lot of attic air, you’re polluting the building. If you’re sucking crawlspace air, again, you’re sucking nasty, nasty air. And, and, it’s not It’s very earthy and musty. Yeah, yeah. If you walk in the front door And that first breath that you get, it really tells you what’s going on with the building.

And then the building, your lungs, your body, takes use to that smell. And it’s not as prevalent. Yeah, so the homeowner may be used to it, but you coming into the house, you may, uh, Actually smell that and have to call, you know, call the customer out on that a little bit, because they may have actually said, like you said, grow to custom to it, started using like burning candles and incense and plugins and spraying for breeze and things of that nature.

Right. And you need to be aware of, of the stuff that they do to cover up those smells. Yeah. So if they’re built, if they’re burning candles all the time to adapt the smell, uh, what happens to all those particulates? If you look up and you notice that there’s a layer of. Candle soot everywhere, you know, plug ins or like you say Febreze or incense, right?

Anything that’s putting off an odor if you think about it They’re masking some other odor more than likely number one number two is they’re putting An additional toxin into the air, right? So Febreze has a chemical in there to kill the olfactory smell and then they’ve also got different scents Yeah, uh, one of my customers literally At the return would dump chemical You To customize that smell.

And then when I was testing the ear, the particulate count just got gigantic, huge. And their house is real dusty and we’ll talk more about air quality tomorrow in detail. Yeah, that’s fine Yeah, so let’s talk about the house as a system and kind of basically what we’re talking about here And i’m going to give you an additional resource.

There’s a A document that’ll be in the the packet that you’ll get post event They’ll have three articles that are titled the house as a system And dominic arino from national comfort institute wrote two of them and another author Uh, wrote another one, uh, and they were out, like I say, in the trade publications over, uh, in the past, so they’re out there in public domain, you can get them offline, but, uh, I just downloaded the PDFs, and I’m including, uh, including them for you as a resource, so you can understand this, because, again, we don’t have a lot of time to go into the detail of all this, but I want you to, uh, you know, I want you to get it, because what we’re really talking about here is making sure That you know when you take this whole ball of wax together You’re not just looking at one element.

It all has to kind of come together and work together So the house is a system first thing we talk about is what we call the thermal uh, thermal comfort, right? And that is where you know What we start with there is what we call the building envelope now when we talk about in terms of the building envelope eric What we’re talking about is insulation air leakage, right infiltration exfiltration of the house Windows and doors.

What’s that you’ve got the air barrier the air barrier, right? And the thermal barrier of the of the of the structure, right? And you’ve got a vapor barrier again. You may have a great system properly designed properly installed working perfectly charged Right combustion efficiency is set up properly And the customer is still uncomfortable.

In fact, David Richard from, from the National Comfort Institute wrote an article years ago, a couple of years ago about this very situation and realized that the situation that the customer was experienced, experiencing was they were not happy. They were not comfortable. Their energy bills were high and they kept calling his company back.

And he had, he was blind to the idea. That, uh, this was not his problem, uh, but the customer believed that it was because in their mind They were going to the thermostat and saying hey, the house is not comfortable It’s saying that it’s it’s it’s designed for 70 or 72 and it’s you know running and whatnot But I am not comfortable and i’m not happy and it had nothing to do with him There was a big hole under the jacuzzi in a bathroom in one area, and then there was another big hole in a cabinet under the kitchen sink.

And air was just pouring in in those two areas, and the customer’s feet were ice cold during the winter, and obviously other things were going on in space as well. And he had to go in there and realize, Hey, he had to seal some things up. And, uh, at that point he realized he needed to become a member of National Comfort Institute and hooked up with Rob Falk and the rest is history.

And, uh, uh, we lost our, our friend Rob Falk earlier this year, but, uh, uh, his teachings carry on through guys like myself and, uh, National Comfort Institute. But again, talking about the building envelope, um, you know, I, I think too many contractors ignore that when they go into the house and it’s huge, okay.

Can lights. You get the stack effect on can lights. Recess lighting, yep. Yeah, and they heat up. And if you still have an incandescent bulb in there, it could be 75 watts, and you can get 20 CFM of air. And if you have lots and lots of can lights, it’s lots and lots of air. Attic fans. Attic fans is one huge big hole, and it could be the equivalent of leaving a window open.

So basically, you turn on an attic fan up in the attic, what does it do to the living space? It’s part of the living space. Because what’s it doing to the living space, though? If it’s in the attic, the fan’s in the attic. Yeah. It’s sealed off, I mean, technically it’s sealed off from the living space, isn’t it?

Oh, no, no, no, no. You have a shutter that’s made out of aluminum, and every two inches you’ve got a gap. Right, but I’m saying, so what’s it doing in the living space, though? If you have the, if I turn the fan on in the attic to exhaust air out of the attic, what’s it doing to the living space? Is it creating a negative or a positive?

It’s creating a negative space in the building, positive in the attic. Yeah. And then if you have holes that are in the attic, it dumps everything from the attic back in the building. Yeah. And I have measured with a particulate counter, literally quadrupled the amount of particulates that go from the attic back into the building.

So you’re talking about air qualities being impacted as well as comfort. That’s correct. And if I’m affecting both of those, I’m also affecting probably the energy efficiency of the place too, right? Correct. It’s not uncommon that there’s not enough holes in the attic, soffit To get rid of the air and you’re super pressurized in the attic and dumping all that air into the building again.

Yep, it’s real common, uh, crawl space if you suck heavy from your attic fan And you’re you have a lot of crawl spaces you’re sucking all that air from the crawl space back into the building. Yeah And, and, and I have a customer who basically, we took out her attic fan because whenever she turned on her attic fan, it would suck from the crawl space and she had mold in the crawl space.

And she got deathly sick. So basically that acted as a conveyance system to bring the mold out of the crawl space into the living space. Right, right. And she’s drying out the crawl space, but Okay. Yeah. At what cost right? Yeah, it was getting her sick. So I I’ve also heard uh, and again, there’s no absolutes here But i’ve also heard that about 50 percent of the air that we breathe in the living space comes from underneath the house basement or crawl 30 percent comes from the attic And 20 percent comes from doors and windows, right, in the conditioned space.

I’ve proven that many a time with a blower door. Yet most people, most homeowners and most contractors, you know, are more concerned about, you know, leaky windows and doors. And what you come to realize, which we’ll talk about a little bit more later, is how the stack effect impacts that. I don’t want to get into that right now, but how the stack effect impacts that.

And the reason it’s not as big of a deal as you might think is because, you know, as you said a little bit earlier, right, We’re positive at the top of the house, we’re negative at the bottom of the house, and we’re probably about equilibrium in the middle of the house. About where your eyes are. Yeah, yeah, and so we’ll talk more about that a little bit later.

But that’s the building envelope impacting the comfort. Now here’s the thing I want to call your attention to as a comfort advisor. I understand many of your companies, your companies that were tuned in here, you might not be doing insulation and air sealing and windows and doors and weather stripping and things of that nature, building science.

That doesn’t matter. I think that you should be doing it, number one, but number two is if you’re not, hopefully you partner with somebody, but number three, if you’re not doing it and you’re not partnering with somebody, you at least need to be aware of it and take into consideration and be able to explain it to a homeowner.

Part of your job and what I teach you in the, in the, uh, the sales training is to make the customer aware of everything that’s going on in their home. The good, the bad, and the indifferent, and the ugly, right? So that they, they can become a better steward of their home. Even if it’s things that you don’t do.

Because that way, you’re a better resource to the consumer. And that way, you differentiate. You stand out in the customer’s mind as the resident expert in all things. And you’re helping them understand things. Even if it’s some things they can do on their own. Like, you know, customers can literally roll out some Pink Panther insulation and put it into their attic if they wanted to.

You may not do insulation, but if you told a homeowner, Hey, why don’t you reduce the load on your house before we produce the BTUs, By adding some insulation in your attic is probably the, uh, the most cost effective thing that you can do to improve comfort and energy efficiency in the home. Awesome content right there from Drew and Eric.

Be sure to share this on Facebook. And if you’re not a member, click the button below, you’ll get a free 30 day trial, which will give you access to all of our content here at Contract University. That’s our show for this week. We’ll see you next time. Until then, my friends, bye bye for now.