How Technical Pros Succeed in HVAC Sales without Being Sleazy by Earning Loyalty - Tony & Ben Part 1
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AC SmartSeal, the professional's choice. All right, guys, this is a bit of a different one. So I wasn't at HR, but if you guys have followed along with HVAC Know It All on like social media and stuff, you would have seen Ben Reed down at HR doing a lot of different booth stuff with different manufacturers. Now, he also recorded a podcast with Tony Mormino and

And it was along the lines of sales. Now, Tony's a commercial guy, commercial HVAC. So it was along the lines of selling in commercial HVAC because that's Tony's experience. So Ben heads up as host on this one. I'm just setting it up here in the intro and he's talking to Tony Mormino live at AHR. So let's get to this one, guys. This is the HVAC Know It All podcast. I'm your host,

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.

Hi everyone, my name is Ben Reed and I am here with Mr. Tony Mormino and I am with the wonderful, I guess you can't see it here, but HVAC know-it-all. So Gary couldn't make it this year. He sent me instead another fellow Canadian as a part of the requirements to work with Gary. I had to retain my beard, trim it to a very specific length, but it was worth it. I have enjoyed my time so far here down at HR 2025.

Have you liked it, Tony? I loved it. This is like a content creator's paradise. So it's a lot of fun. I think one of the busiest ones I've ever been to. It's been a very energetic year. Yes. Yeah. Love it. And thanks for having me on the podcast too. I love it. I love it. Yeah. Thanks for coming. It is end of the day, day three.

So I'm surprised we still have our voices. I still have gas in the tank, which is surprising, too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's use that gas to talk about something, something important, something that a lot of techs struggle with, which is sales. And we're going to talk specifically about sales of commercial equipment.

So that's something that, Tony, maybe you can fill the audience in a little bit on your background about where you came from and what you specialize in. Yeah, sure. So I got introduced to the HVAC community through my dad, Joe Mormino, shout out, who was a residential installer.

and went on a couple of job sites with him. And he really, you know, my dad came from the generation where if you're able to go to college, you go to college, right? Like that's the, and God bless him. You know, he wanted me to do that. So I ended up going to college, got an engineering degree, but I always was like being pulled towards HVAC. And I also was always pulled towards sales for some reason. Oh, it's just weird. Like most engineers do not grab a say toward sales. Totally. And we'll talk about that in a little bit, like my experience with that. And

You know, it was kind of frowned upon in the engineering community. Like, you're going to waste your engineering degree and go into sales. But I had grown up kind of waiting tables and being on the front of the house. I worked in the back of a house of restaurants, too. Used to working with people. Used to working with people. And I thought, well, sales will be fun. But...

At the time, there was no like, you know, there was this thing called the World Wide Web when I was going in college. So there wasn't any information on there. Was this before the dot com bubble or way before? OK, this was there was we didn't even know what the dot com was. I mean, it was like, what is WWW mean? What do you type that in for? So there was no information out there. And I happened to stumble upon a seminar that one of the big manufacturers was doing. And they talked about this career called a sales engineer. And I was like, oh, wow.

Okay. Marrying my two loves.

is anybody could do sales. Like I had this misconception that it was the, you know, the guy who's real boisterous and he's partying all the time with people and that like, and there are salesmen who do well by doing that. I've never been that type of salesperson. I'm more of a nerdy, like,

Can I come by and educate your new engineers on psychrometrics? But there's a stereotype that most people are used to that, and there's a gap between what most people who are techs, who are fixers, and then those, like at least from what I hear, the white shirts that's in the residential side. I get a lot of the home performance contractors that I work with. They do not like the white shirts because they come in

And they oftentimes sell things that the customer doesn't need, but because they are convincing enough and the homeowner doesn't know any better. Right. Yeah. And I learned a lot of that from my father. And of course, I was in the I'm in the commercial side is my experience. But I watched my father. He would almost not charge enough. And I'm like, Dad, you got to get paid for your because he was such a nice guy. He wanted to help people and he would never like.

that I knew of sell anything that they didn't need. But yeah, I have a little bit of a disdain for that too. And I see some things on social media that I'm like, makes me cringe because they're talking about, you know, not being very honest with the customers. So I could tell you in the commercial world, that is extremely rare. A lot of the commercial folks that I've worked with, I said, I would say 98% of them had their, because our business is like foundational on relationships. Okay. Like I was a sales engineer in Jacksonville for 20 years.

It was the same, you know, 40 people I called on for those 20 years. Right. So the process of building your relationship will quickly vet out the people who are not honest and not good at their job. But also just, again, kind of creating a juxtaposition between the residential and the commercial side. I think one of the reasons why the relationships are so much more important there, rather they end up having such a bigger impact is.

is because the scale of those projects means that there's a lot more, I guess, accountability and liability that's attached to the end-to-end process of putting equipment into a building. Absolutely. In residential, at least from what I've seen, is that a lot of people can just get in, toss in a box, and get out. And the homeowner, as long as it's blowing hot or cold air, they're okay with it. But in commercial, there's a lot of metrics. There's a lot of investment that people are...

measuring. And so if you don't actually have like kind of bring, if you don't understand that it's going to be a long-term relationship in commercial, then you're not going to last very long. Not at all. And there's a huge, I'm glad you brought this up because there is a huge responsibility because a lot of times the design engineers rely on their rep as the go-to expert on things. And

If you're deceiving and you steer them in a way that's not good for them, but good for you, it could cost them their business. Like it's a major, major deal. You know, you're looking at this facility here. I don't know how many square foot we are, but this has got to be, I don't know, 10,000 tons of air conditioning in this facility. And, you know, it can make or break a company, either a contractor or design engineer, general contractor, and it really has a ripple effect. So, you know, my goal was always to be the consultants to the consultants. My favorite call was Tony Cronkite.

We got this job. We want to do A, B, and C on this job. What do you got? And I knew it wasn't a good fit for me. And I tell them, you know what? If you use my product, we could do it. We're way overkill. You're going to get embarrassed on price. It's over-engineered, but here's who to call. And I would always give them a list of people who are reputable. Like these guys are my competition. I hate steering you there, but they do have a product that would fit well with that. That's the best call you can get because it totally builds trust and faith in your relationship. You know what I'm saying? Well, cause you're,

providing value, not products. Correct. Yeah. And that's a big shift. If you're a technician that's, I guess, hasn't gone into the sales world and find it a bit kind of trepidatious, it's a mindset shift where, yes, a lot of the manufacturer training might be like you're supposed to sell this product or that product, but you can get very comfortable having a lot of very...

Pleasant, actually quite rewarding interactions. If you shift away from believing that you're selling a device or really a service and you're just solve somebody's problems because we're all humans who want to connect to each other. It's a shift in the perspective of what a sales role is.

Right?

they're out to help the customer become more successful. How can I make the customer become more successful? You give away training, you give away this, you email them stuff that's useful for them. You know when to back off when you're not the right fit and you know when to fight when you're the right fit. It took me a lot of years to learn that because I'm not a big, like if the contractor and engineer want to go a certain way, I didn't want to mess it up. But there was a few times I can remember which were pivotal in my career. I was like, look,

I don't fight you guys a lot. You're making a huge mistake. Go see their factory. Go see my company's factory. And this is where like, especially with niche products that the engineers and contractors aren't familiar with, you might see a pretty submittal and I can make a submittal look pretty, but it doesn't mean I can build that unit right. I've been in the room before where they came back and said, yeah, you were right. We should listen to you. But,

Anyway, yeah. So, but yeah, that whole, like, if you see something, say something, if you have that technical role of, you know, supporting that buying process. And I know that myself, like, I actually, I'm going to be honest, I hate sales. It's something I'm very uncomfortable with. I used to be way more uncomfortable and standoffish about ever doing

things related to sales. I've gotten a lot better now because I'm understanding that it's not a process of selling something that people may or may not need. It's about solving a problem, but you have, especially if you're technical and you're supporting the sales process, it is a responsibility that you have to make sure that everybody is informed. And sometimes they have biases that might need to be overcome and you might be the guy to do that. And so stepping out of your comfort zone,

Do you have any tips for somebody who's in that uncomfortable situation and may potentially face blowback for stepping out and saying something about the situation because they know that that product isn't going to work in that particular plant or on that rooftop? Sure. I mean, the best thing you could speak from is your experience.

Right. No one could argue with your experience. And if they trust you, then they trust you're telling them the truth. But, you know, speak from your experience. Like, I know you want to go with that. That's cool. The product I'm giving you. Here's why you want to go with this product or a similar one, because sometimes they might be looking at something that's just not going to be like, dude, that's not going to work. You're going to have to upgrade that over time.

You don't have to buy mine, but you want to be in this category of product. You get what I'm saying? So there's that. Here's your guardrails. Exactly. You're sharing your experience there. The other thing is to... I don't know where I heard this, but someone said, don't try to convince people, but speak with conviction. And that small... It sounds like a small little nuance, but it's huge. Look, if you don't want to buy it, that's fine. But let me tell you what my experience is. Here's what...

you know, I've dealt with in the past and yada, yada, yada. And the other thing I would say when we were talking about like sales in general is I learned long ago, any personality could be in sales. And I, I heard this, somebody equated this to comedians and I'm totally going to date myself. Cause I don't know who the new comedians are, but like Bob Newhart, Steven Wright were really dry. Exactly. They were really dry comedians if you look them up, but they were hilarious. But then you had like the rambunctious, the,

boisterous ones like Eddie Murphy and stuff like that who were hilarious but a different style but they were both very successful the point is like you could be a nerdy engineer like me and be good at sales or you could be like I was never a good taking contractors out for beers and golfing and doing this kind of stuff I wasn't is this a stereotype

And that's the stereotype. And that's what's popularized. That's what everybody sees. And so there aren't enough examples of people demonstrating that if you're your authentic self and figure out what your strengths are, that if you bring that to the table, that's probably going to be your best sales asset.

A hundred percent. Self-awareness is huge in all aspects of any career, I think. And, you know, I know all life, all life, and I know the things I'm good at and I stick with those and trying to make myself better at something. I'm just, that's just not my shtick. It's just, it's, it's a recipe for burnout.

I think. Yeah. Well, learning new things is great, but it's the, is knowing when to back off. And especially in commercial, you're a part of a team. You are oftentimes a part of a buying process that has a buying committee. Yeah. And so there are, you know, sometimes between three and four,

15 people that are a part of making a decision. And so being aware of not just yourself, but also the other people that are there and kind of trying to navigate like, okay, here's my corner. Here's where I can provide value. But then there's these other guys here so that if I'm not comfortable with this, either I can go to my own like, you know, manufacturer support for additional help on this. So I don't have to speak out of my ass or there's somebody else here as a part of this process that I can talk to, to just get everything going so much faster and smoother.

Yes. Yeah. So I'm a little curious. That was one of the questions I had kind of coming into this is, again, for the uninitiated to kind of understand that if you're in getting into that sales process and commercial, I have a lot of background in like doing market research and understanding some of the processes around why people make decisions and buy products. And so that term that I used, buying committee, is that something that you've come across often in your work?

in your work and you can speak to? I don't have a lot of experience with that, actually. Most of the buying decisions were by, at the end of the day, the mechanical contractor who was awarded the bid. Yep. You know, and if we've done our job right, we're in a position where the job's kind of sold because it's lined up for our products and our specialties ahead of time. But there are some where I guess committees were involved in that. But sure. Okay, I'm going to, it's not an official committee. It's more of a symbolic one. So I'll just kind of, maybe I'll, and I'll just put some examples. Like there's an influencer.

So like if you talk to a, let's say a maintenance technician, they're not gonna be making the purchasing decision, but they will have some input in the scenario. - Right, and maybe the engineer and the contractor, I get it. - Yeah, and so there's influencers, there's the actual decision maker, and then there's a couple other roles kind of scattered throughout there. So maybe in your own words,

When you're kind of dealing with commercial sales, typically, are there a few different types of people or personas that you interact with where you need to kind of give them different information as a part of your sales process? 100%. Yeah. So the engineer has different concerns than the maintenance guy, than the building owner, and then the contractor. And I guess... And you need to switch hats through the process. Yeah. So you need to switch hats and try to find out what their pain points are.

address those pain points. Like the maintenance guy wants to be able to, wants it something legit that's going to last, that he can maintain. And the engineer may be more concerned with energy efficiency and the building owner may be concerned with sustainability. So yeah, for sure. Yeah. Wear a bunch of different hats. Yeah. And kind of like I'd read, I think that Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People many years ago. And like, it's again, talking about simple concepts that are hard to master the whole, like, put

like put yourself in somebody else's shoes, like try to listen before you are trying to deliver your own opinions to the situation. And the game comes to mind. Yeah, much simpler. So you take an education-based approach to sales, right? Yeah. But it doesn't have, you give that a particular name and what does that look like for your process? I don't know that I have a name for it, but I definitely have been always more of the educator type to build a relationship. And I have found that

the best marketing you can do or the best brand building you could do is help so

someone on their journey from point A to point B to whether they're doing. I call that a value gap, right? So you got to bring value, especially if you're new to sales or new to calling out an engineering firm. The last thing you're going to do is roll in there and ask for a spec or a sale or something like that. You're going to say, hey, man, I'm new here. I'd love to meet your team. Here's a suite of trainings I could offer. And I'd love to come do that for you. Start with humility. Yeah. Yeah. Because you have, you got to earn it.

You know, nothing's going to be given to you. You know, sales is not, you know, commercial HVAC sales is not for sissies. I mean, it could be a brutal job. It's very difficult. You can work on a job for a year and lose it and get paid nothing. So it's not always an easy job. Now, it is very rewarding. It's probably the next best thing to owning your own business in terms of income and freedom and stuff like that. But if you're an entrepreneurial and don't want to own your own business, that's a good way to make good money. Yeah, good money, but it has its own risk profile. 100%.

Like the whole working on a project for, I know a couple of sales engineers where I meet them after a deal fell through. And they're just completely deflated for like almost a full week, like almost into a mini depression. So it doesn't happen often, but it comes with the job. And that never gets easier. Yeah. We tell people when they're new, look, what you're feeling now, in 30 years, you'll be feeling the same thing if that happens again. But you just got to deal with it, you know, and you got to deal with the...

Until the point where you don't. And I got to a point in my career where I was kind of burned out. I was like, I need to do something different. And, you know, unfortunately, I waited too long to do something different because I was stuck in fear. Like, I didn't want to make a change because it's scary to make a change in a career, especially when you're a little older in your life. I was 45 when I started a new, let me see, 45, 47-ish when I started a new career in

What I do now, which is more of online training and marketing and stuff like that. So, which I enjoy and I'm glad I'm not in sales anymore, but yeah. So back to the kind of commercial equipment sales, what category of equipment did you usually deal with in your field of work? Yeah. So I mostly dealt with applied equipment, which is non-cataloged equipment, large chillers, custom air handlers, built up air handling units, things like that. Pumps, cooling towers, some cataloged equipment too, but that's primarily what I dealt with. Chill water DX type of equipment.

And the types of, I guess, buildings or customers that would be purchasing those were? Pretty much all over the place. Anything from a strip mall to a, I think the largest job I did was a 15,000 ton district cooling plant with centrifugal chillers. It's a lot of fun to get an order of five big units that are all the same. It's super easy to enter the order. But yeah, so anything from schools, office buildings, you name it, I've probably had my hand in

one of those types of applications. Okay. And then maybe just for the people that aren't familiar, like what does that process look like from start to finish? Because like, you know, sometimes there might be RFPs involved, but like maybe if you could like take people through that typical journey. Sure. Yeah. So it all starts with the mechanical engineer, at least in terms of the, in my experience. So you want to really build relationships with the local mechanical engineers. The best call you can get is, Hey, we just got this job. It's

It's a hospital. What do you think about this? Can we work together on a couple options and budgets? Then you're kind of in the project. You know, you're in the beginning stages of the project. The consultant is going to call the people who are going to look out for them. They don't want to call a guy who's got, you know, one solution for every project because that's the only solution he sells. You know, that's not the guy they're going to typically call. So you got to look at it from that standpoint. So you build a relationship with the engineer as the plans develop and the owner's okay with the direction in terms of,

the product they're going to specify, let's say it's manufacturer A to keep it neutral, right? And I rep that product. They're going to specify to manufacturer A. The contractor goes out to bid. The plans and specifications go out to bid. Five mechanical contractors bid it. Mechanical contractor B gets the job and he buys out the job. Now he may buy my equipment.

which is more likely than not because I'm on the plans. So all the, everything's based on my equipment. So if the price is reasonable and it's not out in left park, I'll probably get that job. And then, so I would sell the job to the contractor. That's where the sales part comes in to try to close the order.

Then you get the order and then you got to go through the submittal process, which means you're basically creating a small book, telling them what they're getting. They approve the submittals, the engineer does, and then you order the equipment, ship it. And then if you start it up and there's no issues, you're done with the project. Sometimes there's issues that last years because we were dealing with big mechanical projects. So, yeah, so that's basically the process.