How HVAC Techs Use ChatGPT and Claude to Shift into Sales Without Slick Talk – Tony & Ben Part 2
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All right, guys. So part one with Ben and Tony at AHR. If you listen to it, thank you very much for the support. Now this is part two coming at you real quick. If you haven't listened to part one yet, maybe listen to part one before part two. Probably make more sense when you listen to it chronologically in order that way. So again, guys, HVAC Know It All podcast. I'm your host, Gary McCready.

This podcast is sponsored by Cintas, and if you're looking for blue-collar uniforms or anything that's an accessory to a blue-collar uniform, check out cintas.com forward slash HVAC Know It All for your blue-collar uniform needs. Welcome to the HVAC Know It All podcast, recorded from a basement somewhere in Toronto, Canada.

Your host and HVAC tech, Gary McCready, will take you on a deep dive into the industry discussing all things HVAC, from storytelling to technical discussion. Enjoy the show.

from my experience of working with some capital projects, I was in a startup that was doing technology, digital twin technology for massive scale, like basically oil refineries and stuff like that. And it seemed like that 50 to 80% of those scale of projects all were either over budget or over schedule. And so on the commercial side, what would you say is the ratio of those kind of projects that go off the rails? Is it a lot lower than that? I

I would say it's lower than that in my experience. I would say maybe 20 to 30% go over budget. It might even be less than that. I'm not really sure. I've been out of the game for a little bit, but then you go through the value engineering. We call it a VE process, value engineering process, where contractors will get with the vendors and say, okay, this job's over budget. What do you think? And then we submit a list of line item menu of, okay, if you get rid of the coil coatings or if you go to two fans instead of four fans, things like that. Cool.

So do you have any, I guess, war stories, like anything really memorable of a sales experience that taught you something really important that made you who you are today? That's a great question. I think early on, I had some really good mentors. It was this huge contractor in Jacksonville, which I was assigned to call on. And

And they'd seen newbies come and go for 20, 30 years. Right. So, you know, here comes the new guy, you know, and I remember there was I can't remember what the problem was. I remember it was extremely painful. And I remember being at the contractor's office and I were like, I'm way too passionate. I care way too much if that's possible. But, you know, I would stay up at night worried about it. Oh, my gosh, they're never going to buy. I got to take care of these guys.

And I remember going into their office after three weeks, we're still trying to fix this thing. And I said, man, I can't tell you how much I hate this. I can't believe we can't fix it. He's like, Tony, relax. He said, this was the advice that changed me. He said, you know what? It's what you do when the shit hits the fan that differentiates you from the other guys. Like anybody could be here when things are good. You've been here every day trying to fix the problem that separates you. And it means a lot to us. So that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It goes back to that demonstrating value, but also,

showing that you really care about their outcomes. And you're not just there to say that, okay, as soon as that check is signed, then like, you know, I've forgotten about you. Because that's all what we all want. Like when we're getting treated, you know, during an interaction, when we're trying to do something that's really important to us, I don't like to just kind of be thrown away by somebody else as soon as that interaction is done. And I've worked on projects with partners that did not take care of their jobs after the fact. And we suffered for that.

You know, some guys will say, well, I was going to buy the order from you guys, but so-and-so wasn't there when I needed him for two months. When I called, he wouldn't answer the phone. You know, that kind of stuff will kill you in the industry. Even if you can't, don't have a solution yet, you got to pick up the phone and you got to talk to him and, you know, deliver bad news immediately. That's another thing I've learned.

You know, with humility. Yeah, that's very important. And back to some of your maybe not war stories, but I see that a lot of your content, you are maybe some of your older content, you're like on the factory floor. You're doing a lot of on-site work or at least content related to like rooftops or big chiller plants. How often in your sales engineer role were you working, let's say, behind the scenes in the office versus online?

on the job site or at the factory? That's a great question. More in the office than I wanted to be. But a lot of times you just get, if you're lucky and you're blessed, you get a lot of orders, which keeps you in the office. But I was always a hands-on guy. I'd love to go. I actually had a tool bag with like, you know, for me, there were a lot of tools, but I had like the voltmeter and the gauges and I would go hook them up. A lot of sales guys won't do that, but I like to know how the machines work and test the pressures and stuff like that. You know, I would say 10% of the time I was on a job site.

And very rarely in a factory, which I regret because factory tours are a great tool if you're a sales guy and not just from you to learn, but to build a relationship with your customer. Right. You can show me a catalog of a custom air handling unit panel for 10 years. Until I go see it, I'll be like, oh, okay, I get it now because I just can't visualize it in the catalog. Right.

But I think that speaking to what we talked about earlier in kind of the building value, building relationship and finding out what your unique value proposition is that you're aware of that you can bring to the table with that stereotype of whether...

I don't know if they're not called white shirts, though, in the commercial game now. But in any case, that kind of slick salesperson stereotype. There's a lot of people that maybe, you know, they're a little bit... Yeah. They've tasted it so often, kind of it's gotten to the point of like fast food where like, sure, McDonald's is good once in a while, but you don't want it all the time. Right, right. And so bringing that type of...

the educational, the curiosity and data driven value that a lot of technicians that you start out in the field as a technician. And if you wanted some variety in your role and kind of move into a different part of your career, you don't have to become that select sales person.

You can end up taking the route that you took, which is just basically showing up and being like, wow, I just, I like to learn how this works. And now I'm going to share that with you in a way that helps us get to the next part of this relationship. So yeah, I kind of want to talk about that for a little bit. Sure. For those technicians that maybe the field work is getting a little bit either tedious or they're maybe a little burned out.

If they want to make that transition, what kind of steps would they have to take? Yeah, that's a great question. And as you were talking, I was thinking like there were many times in my career where if I could, I would pull a technician into a high level meeting with owners and engineers because

They will listen to them way more than they'll listen to me. Right. Because they could talk to, look, we had this 2000 ton central chiller plant. We did this and this and this. And it's real life experience. Right. So it's like stuff sometimes I couldn't speak to. But anyway, to go back to your question for a technician, I think a really good sales role is what we call an owner sales person. So what's that? So in our industry, at least in the southeast, we have a salesman like I used to be a sales under account executive. I will call on engineers and contractors.

And then you have sales guys that work for manufacturer rep firms that we call them owner sales. So they're specifically going and meeting with the, like this facility would be a perfect opportunity. The building owners, the maintenance, usually you start with the maintenance guys. So, hey, I'm so-and-so, I rep these 20 products. I know you have some of them here. If you need parts, if you need filters, if you need this technical support, I'm your guy. If you're going to replace something, I'd love to give you a budget or technical specifications.

Those are great opportunities for technicians because you have hands-on experience with

in the field on those products. You can relate more to the building guys than the sales engineer can. Yeah, but so the process though, like if you're just going right from a technician, you could like start your own little LLC and just start calling up building owners and be like, hey, do you have to have relationships with the equipment manufacturers? So yeah, so let me back up. So most rep firms have building owners sales. So in other words, our rep firm in the Carolinas, which is currently called Insight Partners, we're changing the name to Air Carolinas.

We have owner sales where we hire them. Okay. And we have a line card and we have a controls company and we have a parts department and they could go sell any of that. Yeah. So they can be integrated into that existing machinery. Exactly. Without having to try to like build it all themselves. You can start your own business and get, you know, that's a whole. That's a lot of work. Yeah. A ton of work. I would say if you're a technician and you want to go into sales, look up your five biggest commercial rep firms in your area and go talk to them.

So, hey, look, and I could tell you if you make a call and say, hey, I'm a technician and I'm considering going to sales. Can I get a few minutes of your time? Most people would say, yeah, sure. Come on by. Now, what are they trying to hire you as a tech to? Of course. Yeah.

What question should a tech ask one of those rep firms to know that it's the right type of fit for them, though? Like that it's the right kind of environment that will support their curiosity-driven approach instead of, you know, trying to form them into a slick salesperson. Yeah. So, again, I can tell you, like, almost all of the rep firms that I've been involved in have been very...

I use the word good old boy because we're in the South, but very caring about their customers. I've met very few of the slick types. I can't even think of one, honestly. It's such a stereotype that's just not present in our industry that I've seen. Well, but there's still a couple of bad eggs out there that are just all numbers driven where it's not about the people. So maybe it's a...

A question could be like how what's the longest relationship that you have with somebody in the region? Yeah, that would be a great question. And maybe ask to shadow some of the guys that are there. That would be a really good one. And look at their product line. You know, you might know Chillwater real well, but you don't know PackageDX. And if all they sell is PackageDX, maybe that's not.

you know, the company free to work for. But it's funny, someone on LinkedIn just texted me or messaged me like last week, like I'm a service tech. I want to go into sales. What do you recommend? And I said, find the five biggest commercial rep firms in your area and go talk to them. Just pick up the phone and go talk to them, you know? Yeah, that's that's great. Now, I guess your experience with now spent what, five years now at Insight Partners? Mm hmm. OK.

What's been your role there? And I guess what's that machinery look like on the inside? You talked a little bit about the different line cards, but like maybe some behind the scenes understandings that if somebody were to start launching themselves into this side out of the being a technician in the field, what should they prepare themselves for? What's the day to day look like? So the day to day for me was selecting equipment for engineers, which was on the, you know, on the computer programs and stuff like that, handling any job site issues, startup coordination, or

ordering equipment, which is the least fun part of the job, to be honest with you. Filling out forms, you're on the phone a lot. Yeah, and then doing submittals. It's a lot of non, like the stereotype of the golfer and this and the party and the sales guy, there's very little of that compared to the behind-the-scenes grind work is very boring and tedious. Sounds very administrative. It's very administrative. And most of the guys have like an assistant to handle a lot of this stuff, but they're still so bad. If you're moving, you know, five to $10 million a gear a year, it's constant,

Your phone's ringing. This is that happening. That's happening. We don't see a lot of service techs come up through the sales engineer role. It's possible you can. Most of the service techs we see go into the more of the owner sales side.

Okay. Is what I've seen. But again, call your local, I would say there's different paths, you know, and you're passionate about it. Call and talk to your local rep firms. More behind the scenes knowledge from yourself. How is artificial intelligence shifting how yourself and maybe some of your colleagues as they're kind of navigating the sales world? Do you have a plethora of LLMs and other AI tools that you're now using to make your job easier?

I recently was using, and I'm not in sales right now. I do use it a ton in marketing, content creation. I use it all the time. I use ChatGPT like three times a day. Just ChatGPT? I use that. I use a program called Synthesia. I use Opus Clips. Probably a couple more that I can't think of right now. MidJourney. Yep. Those are the ones I use as a content creator. As a salesman, there are a few programs right now that'll go through and read plans and specifications to give you a summary. Like this rooftop unit needs these 15 people.

Pieces of accessories. That's the word I was looking for. So there are AI tools to use that. I haven't used them that much, but you can't. But that stuff's coming. Yeah, the manufacturers are all going to have their own AI, basically ecosystems. Yeah. All of their manuals, all of their training materials. It's all going to now be accessible to a customized artificial intelligence bot of some sort that probably, you know, as a salesperson, you get even more.

you get a much deeper access to it than let's say tech would. But yeah, like Copeland, we were checking them out earlier. We're going to have some content on that where they're demoing their new scouts, where they've loaded it with absolutely everything, like all their data from the last like 20 years or 20 years is inside that new scout bot.

So you could ask it a question. Well, yeah. And it not only is able to reference any piece of documentation they've ever written and kind of create a cohesive answer around it instead of just kind of randomly hallucinating. It also has access to a lot of real-time information for understanding the distributors. Like it can basically access an API and

to see if the parts are in stock nearby. And so, yeah, they just keep getting more and more integrated. But for writing though, you really got to check out Claude. Oh really? Yeah. Anthropic. It is, there is nothing that can beat it as far as creative writing.

I can't stand writing, so that's why I do a lot of videos. Oh, it's fantastic. And their context window is really, really big. And so you can load in lots of documents. And it's just so much more cohesive and intelligent than ChantGPT, at least in my experience. And I've tried Gemini and a couple others as well. Cool. Yeah. What's it called? Claude. Claude. So it's a company called Anthropic. Okay. Yeah. I'll check that out. SupplyHouse.com is your shortcut for part shopping. They have thousands of HVAC parts from all

all the leading brands and the orders get shipped and delivered across the U.S. in a day or two tops. HVAC professionals can get free shipping, free returns and discounts on every other order through their Trademaster program. Order parts and get them delivered right to your door

That's supplyhouse.com. All right, let's get back to the HVAC side now. Amanda, because my background is I'm, you know, startups, telecommunications, engineering, product design. And so I spend a lot of my day behind a computer. Some of my day out in the field, like mostly learning and trying to shadow and kind of get to understand, you know, all those problems that everybody's facing in the industry because, you

I've just worked with too many entrepreneurs that don't know. They basically, they build a product that isn't connected to the end user as, as well as it should be. So the plug and play products. No, the, the ones where there's a, I guess a dream that they can solve a problem that they aren't super intimately familiar with. No, I know it. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, back to HVAC. So,

So would you do anything differently in your career on your trajectory of going through the engineering school and getting into sales engineering and now where you are? I'm not sure in my career. In my personal life, I would have done things differently because I was kind of a screw up in college. It took me eight years to get my four-year degree, if that tells you anything. And personally, I struggled a lot early on with stress and anxiety. Mm-hmm.

There's a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of fear, a lot of... It was terrible at some points. And I'm like most guys, like, I don't need any help. I'll get through this. And this kind of stuff. And that was not a smart attitude to have. So if I can go back to my younger self, I would say, hey, man, go get some help with your...

And the fact that you're up five nights a week is probably not very healthy either. So see if you can get some help with that. So that would be the thing I would do. And, and, you know, just to try to relax a little bit more and enjoy life, you know? Yeah. You only got one. You only get one. And I, it was only recently that I've learned to kind of relax and enjoy the day as it comes and be grateful for what you have rather than, you know, always wanting something to be different, which is a very stressful way to live. Yeah. But then now you, I think you have a certain, I guess, approach a certain way.

way to value life that a lot of people will never have access to that because they haven't been through all that pain that you have. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. And there's a lot of people who've been through a lot worse than me. Trust me. Yeah. But,

But yeah, you come out the other side with a very unique perspective. Yeah, absolutely. So maybe we'll wrap this up with maybe a couple of tips for, you know, techs out there. Anything that you would have learned more recently, something from HR or just in general, if you were, when you talk to techs that are asking for advice in their career, what do you tell them? I tell them talk to a lot of people. That to me is the path to, if you want to make a change,

You know, first of all, make sure you're changing for the right reason, because jobs are jobs, right? Like to me, a job, there are certain jobs that are easier to do than others. But true happiness doesn't come from changing jobs. It comes from looking at what's going on with you as a person, right? Like if you're miserable where you're at, you're probably going to be miserable at company B, right? It's probably not the job. It's because you're going with you wherever you go. So I would say look at that.

And I would say, just talk to a lot of people, you know, if you want to go into sales, because for me, like I might have a vision of how that's going to be. But when I actually go to the office and do a ride along with somebody, I'd be like, this isn't at all what I thought it was going to be. And I in college did an internship. You know, most engineers go into manufacturing plants. And I did an intern in Jacksonville, Florida at a sheetrock manufacturing plant. And I'll tell you, after about two hours of being there, I was like, there's no way I want to do this for a living. It was a hot plant. It was stinky. The workers hated the management. And it was just like it was awful.

So, you know, going to talk to people experiencing it before you make a jump and, you know, just take your time with it too. Don't do any sudden things. But yeah, don't be afraid to try. And in the trying, don't be afraid to fail. Oh, for sure. That could be another hour of stuff right there. I love it. But yeah, for sure. I mean, don't be afraid to try and, you know, don't

Don't be scared, you know, or if you're scared, do it anyway. That's my favorite thing is just, you could be scared and still do things. Yep. Yeah. It's usually where the most amount of growth comes from. Yeah. A hundred percent for sure. Well, that's awesome. Anything else you want to end with? Well, thank you for having me. And I love HR. This was a great show. I'm looking, already looking forward to next year. We're already booking our, we have a big party every year for our family of brands. We had a thousand people to hard rock on Saturday. Yeah, it was huge.

So next year, we're already looking at Vegas, going to rent out a venue, and I'm going to get my hotel room early this time. Usually I wait to the last minute, but I'm going to get my hotel room early. And yeah, so thank you for having me. And I appreciate all you guys do for the HVAC community. Yeah, thank you, Tony. And it was great meeting you for the first time here at AHR and love your content. So what's your handle on all the socials?

So Tony Mormino on LinkedIn. YouTube is at HVAC TV. On Instagram, it's Tony. There's a space, Mormino. There's already another Tony Mormino. And then on TikTok, it's Tony Mormino. And Facebook is Tony Mormino again, too. That's awesome. Yeah. Check them out. Awesome. Thank you, man. Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.