by Jim Hinshaw
I have shared thoughts on how to build a positive culture with your employees in the past, and how important that can be to not only recruit but also retain good people. This week I got to see an example of a positive culture live: Rogers Heating and Cooling. They are based in South Boston, Va, a town of about 8000. Several small towns all around, but they are all small as well. Danville is the largest city close by at 42,000, about 30 miles away.
Here is what is jaw-dropping (wanted to use that phrase for a long time, this was the perfect opportunity), they did 5.2 million last year, which would be a healthy number in any city. The average household income was just over $40,000/year. Just for a comparison, the “other” South Boston average household income is $186,000. So it is not a wealthy community.
Even more impressive, the goal for 2023 is $10,000,000. With a stretch goal to $12 million. And they are on target to hit it. Their lead salesman hit 3 million last year, they have selling techs as well, while we were there a tech who joined them two months ago sold a $30,000 job. For a 18 seer 2 ton replacement with duct mods, IAQ, surge protector, all the accessories that he proposed to the homeowner. Yes, I realize a selling tech will typically sell entry level, they don’t do financing, etc. Not true! In addition, he is the tech on call this weekend, and he was at $47,000 for the week, his personal goal was $60,000 for this week. He came into the office and loudly told the dispatcher, don’t turn anyone away this weekend, I will run those calls. Great attitude.
I had the privilege to be present for the Rogers Premier Tour. They are a Premier dealer with the Service Nation, and both Alyssa and Joey are our newest coaches for that membership level. The bought the biz from Joey’s father in 2018, when it was around $700,000 in yearly revenue. Joey had experience working for the Trane company as a commercial tech. Alyssa has a master’s degree in communication, which has been perfect since she is the voice of Rogers, doing podcasts, interviews, FB posts, all kinds of social media.
Here is what they showed us on the tour. First, we did a dinner the night before, we had about 10 contractors in attendance from all across the nation, New Jersey to Seattle. We got together at a place close by her shop, she had a pizza company show up and do custom pizzas, even had one of the team members playing a guitar and singing some great tunes. This was no amateur singer, he spent years in LA, has two records under his belt, and a published author. It set the tone for the next day, to share their expertise and do some R & D, rob and duplicate. That is how we roll at Service Nation, our members freely share their experiences and business building techniques so that other members can shorten the time needed to grow and prosper.
Joey an Alyssa had each manager share what they do on a daily basis. We started out with an install meeting at 7 am. I saw something that really impressed me, they had the installers come up and do a role play on how they do installs, meeting the customer, establishing the sequence of events, asking what questions they had. Had two installers do two role plays with two of the visiting contractors, we videoed the entire meeting. Oh, forgot to mention, they had a videographer on site, captured the entire day, Evan had time at the end of the day to do individual videos promoting their company in front of a green screen. He will send us a flash drive with the day’s activity to each one of us, game changer!
We also sat thru a sales meeting, also did role playing with the audience. Had an interesting spin on objections, had a wheel you spin to see what objection you will give to the rep, and you flip a coin to see if you will buy or not today. The audience can see all this, the sales rep cannot.
Next we went to the dispatch center, saw how they operated, another “bar raising” visit. They have appointed one of the team members to lead them, start with stretching exercises, tongue twisters, some funny jokes, even had a spinning wheel to select what type of dancing we would do. lots of team involvement. Then…
Wait for it…
More role play! Do you see a pattern here? They practiced how to handle a customer that they needed to reschedule, an emergency situation, an unhappy customer, the typical things they deal with each and every day.
Had a woman who is in charge of HR and culture improvement, she gave us a demonstration on one thing she did on a regular basis. She texted out to every team member, the first one to share something positive about another team member would get a set of Apple EarPods, took about 1 minute for it to be claimed, we watched the results in real time projected on a screen. One team member tried to say how well he did, she shut him down, it can’t be about you!
On our agenda we had an activity at the end of the day: an employee signing. No idea what that was, but it was another great idea. The visiting contractors all gathered in the front office, Alyssa had made up a large plastic board with the Rogers Values on it. We all got to sign it, took a photo, we were officially made part of the Rogers team. We saw these posted around the building, it shows how important each employee was and us.
Hope this visit gives you some ideas on how to improve your culture. A great visit, we do several of these each year in the Premier program, let me know if you want more info. And make this a blessed Easter. Thanks, we will talk later!
