Enduring Sales Truths | Contracting Business

And the questions are the all-important starting point. “In VietNam one of the planes they flew was a C47, WWII-vintage aircraft; the other was a U10 Helio Courier utility aircraft, the slowest airplane in the Air Force inventory. But before every flight, whether it was a large plane or small, the pilot and co-pilot would go through a checklist, which were basically a series of questions. By asking questions, they didn’t forget anything.

“Then, I had read a quote by Aristotle: ‘The fool tells me his reasons; the wise man persuades me with my own.’ So, I thought, what if we ask questions to find out what people wanted and then told them how we would give them what we wanted. That was it,” he said, and we both laughed at the simplicity of it all.

“Nobody else in sales was asking questions, he recalls, just telling customers things. With our process, we ask the questions and tell them how to provide what they’re looking for. The price is too high if they don’t see the value, so the whole idea is to build value.

You must, Howard insists, Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy™. If you don’t you’re being pushy, doing the wrong things. There’s a process in which you try to get the customer to agree to buy what you’re selling before they even know what you’re selling. You have to have empathy and make it about the customer, and not about trickery.

Thank you, Steve Howard, for your dedication to HVAC sales training, and welcome to the Contracting Business HVAC Hall of Fame.