Homeowners don’t need three bids — they need you

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA — Americans love a tale of redemption. Plumbing-heating-cooling contractors love them when they are about one of their own, whether it’s the up-from-nothing stories of Ed O’Connell or Kenny Chapman, or the prison and homelessness story of Weldon Long, who keynoted the Quality Service Contractors Power Meeting XLII here.

Long’s philosophy was affirmed long ago by Ralph Waldo Emerson: We become what we think about all day long. Most people begin with a result, such as I want to sell more plumbing, without changing their mindset in a way that will allow them to do that.

People do that all the time, Long told QSC members. “You need to get your grades up,” we tell our children. That’s the result. The way to accomplish that, however, has to start with one’s mindset, whether the desired result is better grades or more success as a plumbing contractor.

Long emphasized that everything he knows about success and business was learned one kitchen table at a time selling plumbing and HVAC systems to homeowners. Long started a Colorado HVAC contracting firm in 2004 and billed $2 million in his first year and close to $7 million in the fifth year before he sold it, for a total of $20 million over the five-year stretch.

It was after he sold his contracting firm that Long wrote his first book, The Upside of Fear, which became a sensation because Long had become wealthy and successful after spending much of his adult life in prison for crimes like armed robbery.

The right decisions and the right actions produce the right result.

—Weldon Long

His turning point was in 1996 when his father died suddenly at age 59 when Long was still a guest of the Colorado Department of Corrections. Long realized that his father died believing his son was a criminal and a loser. He began working on the principles that would guide his life, to become a man that his father would have been proud of. He had also fathered a son during a time when he was out on parole and becoming a reliable full-time father became one of his goals.

Running a service call right is easy, Long said. The problem is that running it the wrong way is even easier. You just write down a smaller number for the homeowner and walk away.

Long centered his talk at QSC around the theme of his second book, The Power of Consistency, which describes how to use Emerson’s dictum by thinking about the right things all day long — things that will make you healthier, wealthier and with better relationships. Both of Long’s books are recommended reading for all contractors.

Doing the right things is pretty simple, Long noted, and it isn’t mysterious. You think things. What you think may be true or false, but if you have a thought, it creates an emotion. That emotion causes you to take action and that action will have a result. It may be a bad result, but it’s a result. The key is to start at the beginning by filling your head with the right thoughts.

Long uses metaphors and one of his better ones is the box. You have a box in front of you that’s filled with motorcycle parts. You take the parts out of the box and assemble them and the result is a motorcycle. You could not have “accidently” baked a cake. The box, Long said, is your brain. You can only take out what’s in it. You cannot come up with a completely different result from what you were thinking.

“The right decisions and the right actions produce the right result,” Long said. “Our thoughts trigger a chain reaction in the hypothalamus. That creates an emotion that triggers a reaction.”

If you think that something is true, for all intents and purposes, it is true, he said. If you think that a customer doesn’t want to buy something, then that’s the way you’ll sell it and it will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. You might say to yourself, “I knew it,” and you’d be right.

When you go into a customer’s home on a sales call, your job is to diagnose everything that needs to be fixed and make recommendations. When Long was running his HVAC firm, he had a grandmother rule — if you wouldn’t recommend it to your grandma, don’t even mention it. Diagnosing and recommending is it. It’s up to the homeowner to either buy or not buy. Long cautioned the contractors to not do the homeowner’s job for them. You can’t force anyone to write a check, but if you become skilled at making recommendations, your average ticket will grow.

A homeowner’s answer to your recommendations is always “no” until you ask them to make a decision. Long pointed out to the contractors that “no” will not kill them; “I don’t know,” on the other hand, will kill them. Homeowners will stall — I need to think about it, it costs too much, I need three bids.

Homeowners don’t need three bids, Long emphasized, because lots of people have gotten three bids and still gotten screwed. They need you, Long told the QSC contractors, because they need to be able to call you at any time and you’ll go out and solve their problem.