Seamless Efficiency: Integrating SmartAC with Service Titan

Corey Berrier and Josh Teekell engage in a podcast discussion about SmartAC, a technological platform aimed at transforming the HVAC and plumbing industries. Teekell elaborates on how SmartAC, developed as an innovative solution for homeowners and contractors, uses AI-driven predictive analytics and sensor technology to monitor home systems, providing real-time data and alerts for potential breakdowns. This allows contractors to perform proactive maintenance and homeowners to anticipate problems, leading to reduced emergency calls and costs.

The platform also facilitates direct remote communication between the parties involved, negating the need for traditional phone calls or home visits to find revenue. By providing data on needed fixes before a technician arrives, it removes the pressure from technicians to act as salespeople. Teekell likens the platform to a car's dashboard, offering consumers transparency and confidence in the service provided.

The integration of SmartAC with Service Titan software allows companies to prioritize resources based on system age and performance, promoting efficient business practices. Emphasizing the cost-efficiency of sensors for home monitoring, Teekell underscores the goal to instill homeowners with peace of mind and establish the company as a trusted expert in home systems maintenance.

Teekell, drawing from his psychology background, discusses the importance of understanding homeowner buying decisions and maintaining a competitive edge. He advises against price-based selling strategies, recommending the presentation of options during in-person customer meetings instead. He highlights the imperative role of technology and AI in modern business growth and affirms his company's readiness to assist those struggling to adapt.

Transcript

Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast. I'm your host, Corey Berrier and I am here with Josh Tekell. Got that right. 


Josh Teekell
·
08:20
Nailed it. 


Corey Berrier
·
08:21
H*** yeah, dude. I usually screw up the easiest name, so yours was like at least I practiced it. What's up, Muddy? How are you? 


Josh Teekell
·
08:30
Hey, doing well. Thanks for having me on. 


Corey Berrier
·
08:32
Yeah, dude. I'm thrilled to hear about this. Your smart, AC, everything that you're doing with this. I don't know how much background you know, I've been working in AI for the last six, seven months and it's the future to me. And correct me if you think that I'm wrong about this. It's like the internet. It's like when the Internet came out, that's what this is like. 


Josh Teekell
·
08:58
Yeah, we've been pretty head down crunching data that we get and then obviously, considering how can we crunch it better using machine learning and AI, and then how can we automate all of our processes with AI, et cetera. But it's early in our roadmap with incorporating it. But agreed, if you're not using it, you will be well behind in five years, if not sooner. 


Corey Berrier
·
09:24
For sure. And I think, look, I don't come from the home services industry, so it was a little bit of a shock to me when I realized, for the most part and it's not a dig on the home services industry, it just is what it is. But most of there's a lot of people behind, I would say that five years behind most industries. 


Josh Teekell
·
09:52
Yeah. I would say probably more like ten when it comes to technology. Yeah. 


Corey Berrier
·
10:00
So how have you overcome that one thing? Because that's a tough one. 


Josh Teekell
·
10:06
Yeah. I would say that's probably our biggest hurdle. Change management. For anybody that's run a technology company in the space, they understand that change management is kind of one of the hardest hurdles. It's not getting the owners of the business or the visionaries of larger companies to understand kind of what the future is. It's getting them to act on it early and then most importantly, get their team to buy in as well. I imagine service Titan, who's the first behemoth in the space, had the same problems back then. And that's probably why they make you spend two or 3 hours a day for six weeks just so that you're ingrained and trained in how to change the way you do business. So we've had those same struggles as well, but feel like we really kind of busted through over the last twelve months. 


Corey Berrier
·
10:54
Yeah, but you've been in this space for a few years now, right? 


Josh Teekell
·
11:01
Yeah. So my background is selling to homeowners. I built a $50 million home services company before getting into technology. And then we started this company with an energy savings product to start with that had some data capabilities and the world fell in love with the data capabilities. And so about four and a half years ago, we decided to do our homework, study and then pivot the whole company to build out SmartAC.com. So we've been building the platform for about four or four and a half years and we did it in stealth for about the first three and actually had the product in the field and testing and everything for a long time. Built the hardware, built the software, and then we launched the world about a year and a half ago. 


Josh Teekell
·
11:40
So we've been live for a year and a half publicly, but working on it for over four. 


Corey Berrier
·
11:45
That's wild, dude, you're so far ahead of the game, it's not even funny. So tell me, for the people listening, what is smart AC? What does it do? Is it like smart water for AC? 


Josh Teekell
·
12:02
So I like to start with the why, like why we built it before. The what even. So, when we studied the industry, we found out that people will spend money on leads and they'll get in front of the homeowner the first time. And really the only way they get an ongoing relationship with those homeowners in HVAC and plumbing is selling a maintenance agreement. And when we studied the industry, it became very evident that the yes rate, the conversion rate on those was very low, like 20% industry wide. And so the reason we built the platform was to give people another way to sex up that value proposition of an agreement, right? And then have a way, when Ms. 


Josh Teekell
·
12:37
Jones says no to coming to the house, how do we still grab that relationship ongoing so that we can be the company of record or our partners, of course, can be the company of record when that system needs to be replaced. And so that's why we created it. So the what that allows us to do that is just a really simple sensor set that you can deploy in ten minutes that monitors the health of the air conditioning system for heating, for cooling, the percentage of the air filter, life water leak detection and drain clog detection. And so it just allows the contractor to have 24 7365 visibility of the health of the home and allows the homeowner to have some high level metrics of understanding how things are going in their home as well. 


Josh Teekell
·
13:21
And so what that enables then is for maintenance agreements to be a lot more attractive to homeowners and then a drop down offering from zero to maybe $10 a month, depending on how aggressive you want to be to grab homes, of monitoring only, right? Where you only go to the home when there's a man call situation. And so that's allowed our partners to really just dramatically increase that conversion rate to a plan, any plan, and then obviously, the value proposition of owning that home with technology for HF and plumbing is very strong and overwhelms the cost, which is $10 a month, $120 a year, is what our platform costs. 


Josh Teekell
·
14:01
And so for less than of a value of the cost of a truck roll, you really can have a stranglehold on that house and utilize technology to grow your base of customers instead of just utilizing manpower right, with visits to the house. 


Corey Berrier
·
14:15
All right, so, man, you use a predictive analytics. You can predict when the system is going to go down. You can predict maybe even anomalies. 


Josh Teekell
·
14:27
So it's 50,000 data points a day. So the amount of data that we get and the trends that we can see over time, over even individual minutes or hours, but over time, especially over weeks and months, is incredible. So not only are we catching things when they go wrong in an instant, right? If something goes wrong quickly, but many times we're catching trends over weeks and months. And we're able to alert the contractor that, hey, this is an opportunity for you to get out in front of a breakdown. And really what's best for them is they can take their members and fix them three or four or five weeks before the hottest days of the year. So on those days, they can be taking all the inbound traffic and don't have to be servicing the people they already have captive. 


Josh Teekell
·
15:10
We can talk all day about the data and how we crunch it, but we've really set it up to where we let the contractor kind of be the hero, see everything in their dashboard, have an outbound approach, calling attention to a developing problem, and then really having a consultative relationship with the homeowner, adding value remotely. So it's a very different experience for the homeowners as well. 


Corey Berrier
·
15:34
It feels like this is a huge win for the homeowner. Because if you can predict a problem before it happens, so to speak, and you can get someone out there, like you mentioned, four or five weeks ahead of time, let's just say that it is the middle of summer and you get that alert. You have a buffer of four or five weeks, and the contractor doesn't have to rush. You don't have to have an emergency call. My guess is, all right, so if I'm the customer, how do I get the alert? 


Josh Teekell
·
16:09
If it's like a water alert or if it's filter alert, we don't want to bug our partners with that info. Right? I'm sorry. If it's a filter alert, if it's a water alert, it goes to the homeowner and the contractor at the same time. Right. We want them both aware of it. If it's a performance alert, we actually send that to the contractors first. We allow them to set up some timing of how long they want to kind of have it act on it before the homeowner even gets an alert about it. And so we really are taking the side of both the contractor and the homeowner, but we're really trying to empower the contractor to be able to be the hero. Right? 


Josh Teekell
·
16:44
That means giving them the alert and allowing them in their process over a couple of days to find out when to reach out to customer, how to take care of it, work it into their flow, their business, where it's not putting them out like a demand or like an urgent call, like you said. And then the homeowner obviously has access to the data as well, but we're not kind of calling their attention to it for some time. We give the contractor the opportunity to be the hero and then we listen to our contractor partners and how would you like to communicate with a customer? And eventually we'll be using AI to automate all of those interactions. Right? 


Josh Teekell
·
17:21
So really the beauty of the platform will be you put the product in the house, it's got the data and then really eventually, and we're talking within the next twelve months, the next interaction you have with that homeowner many times will be they have had a communication about a product problem. They have seen the problem in their app, theirself. They've either snoozed it for a week or two and then it's brought back up again. But at some point they have confirmed, oh yeah, that's a problem, use the app to schedule a demand call and then it shows up in your service Titan or your Sarah instance. Right? And so that means installation to demand call. And even if it's just monitoring only without ever going to the house, you just get demand calls scheduled automatically. Right? 


Josh Teekell
·
18:06
And so that's the beauty of technology is taking all the things you used to have to do manually and automating them, giving the homeowner a better experience along the way. Right? So that's what's really exciting about the ability to turn data into revenue. 


Corey Berrier
·
18:24
This may be a silly question, but have you calculated approximately how much time it saves the homeowner with the alerts, being able to communicate, let's say via the app, the fact that they don't have to talk to a human being? Because let's just be honest, most people don't want to talk to a human being at this point. There's a lot of people that do, but there's a lot of people that don't. And guess what? The people that do are thinning out every single year. 


Josh Teekell
·
18:55
True. 


Corey Berrier
·
18:55
So the easier, softer way is just to be able to communicate through the device that everybody has in their hand 24 hours a day. 


Josh Teekell
·
19:06
Yes? No, agreed. This is agreed that most people don't want to have these interactions over the phone. They want, they want consultative, they want to be able to send a text while in a meeting. Like they just want to take care of it I'd much rather have somebody let me know. Hey, we saw a problem. Can we meet you at your house when you get home from work at 515? As opposed to calling me and me having to set everything up. Right, so agreed on that. But really what's even more powerful is the time and bandwidth. It saves the contractors. Right? 


Corey Berrier
·
19:36
Sure. 


Josh Teekell
·
19:37
To visit maintenance plans are a thing of the past. They are not the future, they are the past. Right. And so I don't believe that we're going to skip to zero. But one visit a year is plenty with smart maintenance to be able to take care of everything you need to do at the house. And we have many customers already moved to that. And so now you're just saving a ton of bandwidth. The goal is to put as many customers in the funnel as possible. I would much rather sell to 2000 homes once a year instead of selling to 1000 homes twice a year. And the homeowners would rather you be there selling to them once a year as well. Right. And so there's a lot of bandwidth that we can save. 


Josh Teekell
·
20:15
And of course, the goal is just to make our partners more profitable, really. And so utilizing saving your most valuable resource, which is technician bandwidth is a big part of that. 


Corey Berrier
·
20:30
I'm certain that you've looked at it this way. This is also a way to mitigate having to hire a bunch of more technicians. Everybody needs more technicians, but this eliminates half of the calls that are costing the company $250 every time. 


Josh Teekell
·
20:46
Non demand calls. Yes. It eliminates up to 100% of non demand calls depending on how you use the product. We have companies that are only selling agreements where they have monitoring. It's the only thing they have to do. And they have optional ability to go to the house when the data says so or when the homeowner asked them to. Right, sure. You can run in fact, I'm doing a talk at Pantheon about this, how you can run your business with 100% demand calls. Like, this is a way of doing that. Right. You may have need to grow the base of customers by deploying of this to get enough demand calls for that to make sense. But you no longer have to be going to homes to find out where there's revenue. 


Josh Teekell
·
21:27
The data will tell you that and the homeowner will approve it before you even trigger the truck roll. So, yeah, there's a different way of going about growing the business now with a tool that hasn't been available in the past. 


Corey Berrier
·
21:40
And it also eliminates, as we all know, technicians are not salespeople. They are salespeople, but they're not great salespeople. They don't like that process. This really is a benefit to them as well, because they don't have to sell anything. 


Josh Teekell
·
21:57
Well, we call it selling armed with the data. Right. Back in the day before you had dashboards in your car that blinked and would tell you when something's wrong. You'd go in to get your car fixed and you would pray that you got an honest person and not an unscrupulous one, right. Because you didn't know if they were telling the truth or not. But now, of course, you have a dashboard in your car, and if there's not a blinking light, you don't go in. And when there is a blinking light and it gets fixed and the light goes away, you feel pretty confident that there was something wrong. And now it's not wrong anymore. And that's exactly what we do through the app for the homeowner. Right. 


Josh Teekell
·
22:33
And so they can see a trend where the performance is dropping, and they can see that it came right back in the healthy line after it's fixed. And so that transparency is what consumers are used to in many industries. And HVAC, of course, was behind. May had some connected OEM products, but no experience that was delightful to the homeowner. Right. And so we try to take that data and then turn it into a next level customer experience as well. 


Corey Berrier
·
23:03
It's proof. I mean, if you got the data doesn't lie. Nobody's going to argue with the data. Maybe you might find it a couple of people, but for the most part, it's common sense. 


Josh Teekell
·
23:15
Yeah. What's the third party validation? Right. We don't really insert ourselves to the customer as the third party per se, but, I mean, it's a technology platform where the data is giving you that verification that something is wrong. 


Corey Berrier
·
23:31
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes total sense. And for $120 a year, I think it's a no brainer. It would be no brainer for me anyhow. So what's been your biggest challenge with growing smart? AC's customer base? 


Josh Teekell
·
23:50
Well, we touched on it before, but I think change management. I think cutting through the chaos of the business owner's life in business is hard to do, right. Getting a first 30, 40 minutes call to be able to walk them through what this is. We have a 90 plus percent rate of people saying, hey, send me some pilot units, I want to test this out. But getting that initial meeting requires either a warm intro or they're hearing about us on a podcast or in a conference or something like that. But then most of our time is spent not in first meetings. It's spent supporting that partner with the how to go to market with the product. Right. 


Josh Teekell
·
24:31
Once you understand that all of my maintenance agreements can have this element to them, most people generally get to, well, I need to rethink all of this. Right. And that doesn't happen in a week. Right. It happens in a month. And so we're helping people saying, hey, this is what our other partners are doing. Here's how it's working, here's how their conversion rates went from 20% to 60% right. You don't have to do the same thing, but here's what's working, here's what's not. We know what best practices are at this point, and so helping them kind of rethink what their maintenance agreements need to look for or need to be thinking, starting with why. Why do we do maintenance agreements? Right? Why did Jim Abrams come up with this in the 70s? 


Josh Teekell
·
25:10
Well, it was to have a way to when you chop down a Christmas tree, let's plant a new one. So ten years later, we get another Christmas tree, right? And so the why hasn't changed. It's just the how to go about grabbing a home is different now. And so that's really our struggle. It's a fun struggle because we're in the weeds helping people rethink a little bit. Again, it's the same concept as a service agreement. It's just a better one. And it gives you another option with monitoring only. So that's kind of our biggest struggle, day to day. But like I said, it's fun. 


Corey Berrier
·
25:45
So once a company, let's just call it $10 million company, they have 20 technicians. I don't know if that part matters, but what's the process from beginning to end after they sign the agreement? How much time instead, how much effort does it take on the contractors in? 


Josh Teekell
·
26:05
Yeah, so our process, kind of our sales process, we don't start with signing an agreement. We start with just getting them like a six pack of units to test. Right? And so they test the product, they see the install process, they see the homeowner experience. And then we do a dashboard review is what we call it, where we show them their office dashboard, right. With all of the live data from the systems they just put in so they understand the entire product end to end. Then we'll show them the Pro app, which is a different app than the homeowner app, of course, and how that works and how their text can see all the data in the field on their mobile devices. And then we start talking about how do you want to deploy, how do you want to use this? 


Josh Teekell
·
26:38
You want to put it on new systems to sex those up and sell more of them. You want to change your maintenance agreements going forward? Do you want to overhaul your current maintenance agreements with a two to one conversion is what we call it. Two visits to one visit. So you double your bandwidth to grab more agreements, and then we decide. They say, hey, here's what we're going to need for the next three or four months. And then we execute an agreement to get some product to them in a partnership. And then we have our customer, our partner success team, dive in. We go train their technicians. We go help them develop collateral. We give them our assets about the platform so they can weed those into theirs, or we have off the shelf assets they can use in brand if they want. 


Josh Teekell
·
27:19
And so this process, the sales process is usually two to four weeks, and then the rollout process is usually another two to four weeks. So best case, fastest case, three or four weeks from first meeting to deployment, but generally more like six, seven, eight. But it's not really near as hard to do this as it would be to switch to service titan or something, because it's not really changing the way you do business, it's just changing that one interaction where you need to put the product in the house and take that ten minutes. But then from there on out, it's all automated through the dashboard. 


Corey Berrier
·
27:52
Now, does the dashboard integrate with service titan or is it a separate dashboard? 


Josh Teekell
·
27:57
It is a separate dashboard, but it does also integrate with service titan. So when a lead floats to the top in our dashboard, you'll see the high level metrics of why this was the one that we had float to the top, right? Or it can be more than one, of course, and then you can click on it and dive in and see the metrics of every cycle, the time to temp, the five minute intervals in the cycle, all the trends for the last weeks and months, everything. But those leads now flow directly into service titan as well. So you don't have to have both dashboards up at any given time. 


Josh Teekell
·
28:31
You can live and work in service titan and then you can jump over to verify a lead if you want to before you do that kind of outbound approach to the homeowner to call their attention to the problem. 


Corey Berrier
·
28:43
This also prevents, it seems like it would also prevent you sending your best technician to a call that you don't. He's better off on a call that's going to make a bunch more money. 


Josh Teekell
·
28:55
Yeah, so many companies are already doing this with knowing the age of the system, logging that, maybe manually putting it in the service site in the notes, but we make that automatic. So you take a picture when you set up the device of the nameplate photo, all you do is snap, you're done. We scrape all the data off, we populate it into the dashboard, and then it's searchable, right? So on a slow day where you're trying to fill your board, you can search through your members, find the ones that have the oldest systems that are also not performing very well, and then send your text to that place. If it's a demand call and it's coming in and it's a three year old system, maybe don't send your very best tech there that can sell a new system, let's say, right? 


Josh Teekell
·
29:37
Because there ain't an opportunity for that. You can be very wise about where you send your text and you can be wise about if you're going to subsidize the product into the house. And not everybody does this, but many. Of our partners give it away. Right. Either bundle it in or no more with their plan or give it away outright. Then you know when you want to be aggressive with that strategy on an older system and you know when you don't want to wait around eight years for a new system by subsidizing into a two year old system home. 


Corey Berrier
·
30:06
Right. 


Josh Teekell
·
30:06
And so the data allows you to be as efficient as you can be as well. 


Corey Berrier
·
30:11
Well, look, if you look at the math and this costs whomever? $120 per year, that's still less than half the price it cost you for one visit just to put a truck in the driveway. 


Josh Teekell
·
30:29
Yes. We ran the math on this four and a half years ago. I remember where I was sitting when I ran the math after doing some in some research on the cost of a truck roll. And that was the moment in time where I realized I hadn't even told the team yet at that time, but that were going to pivot and make this, because I was like, okay, well, it cost 34567, $800 a year to go to the house two or three times, right? 


Corey Berrier
·
30:52
Yeah. 


Josh Teekell
·
30:53
We can have way more visibility 365 days a year for $120 a year. So the math made sense, right? Yeah. It's not even close. The ROI is there just to add to what you're doing. But the opportunity cost that you're missing by utilizing that bandwidth with less homes, instead of utilizing the bandwidth in way more homes is really where the biggest upside is. 


Corey Berrier
·
31:21
So the sensors the technician puts the sensors how does that work? 


Josh Teekell
·
31:26
Yeah. So they're magnetically coupled. So the first one will go, bam. Right. On the supply vent. Right. We have some accessories if needed, and then one goes in the return air. So we have the kind of vent to vent in some cases or vent in the system split depending on where the air filter is. And then you put one in the base kit that goes in the Evaporator drain pan. It can be used in a different place if the orientation doesn't have that, but usually the Evaporator drain pan. And so what that does is it just lets you know, hey, any problem that's going to happen, we're going to see it those places. Right. If a capacitor goes out, I may know it 30 minutes later, but we're going to see that home is at a temperature it hasn't been at in months. 


Josh Teekell
·
32:08
And so we can still call the homeowner not we, but our partner call the homeowner and let them know, hey, it's 02:00. You're not home, but there's a problem at your house. I know you're not looking at your thermostat, but we just saw it, right? Yeah. The sensors allow you to kind of have all triangulate that something's wrong, and maybe one day with all the data, we'll be able to diagnose. But honestly, we think it's mostly like a smoke detector. Right. You don't need to know which room the fire is in. You just need to send the fire truck. Right. And so this is that for HVAC. All right. 


Corey Berrier
·
32:44
So I think you mentioned plumbing. Are you doing this for plumbing also? 


Josh Teekell
·
32:48
Yeah, five more water sensors on the platform to grab that trade. So put one under the sink in a sump pump, in a basement, in the water heater drain pan, put it somewhere. So that the goal is that the homeowner thinks of you. In their mind. They have a check mark that I have a company for HVAC and I have a company for plumbing, and most of our larger companies obviously do both. And if you don't do plumbing now and you only do HVAC or vice versa, you can use this platform to very efficiently foray into the other trade. Right. And so, yeah, we take care of all the plumbing stuff as well. 


Corey Berrier
·
33:24
Okay, so how does it work with I've just started working with and partnered with Alan Ferguson, who does a drain expert. He knows more about drains than any human I've ever met. And so how would you use this for an outside drain? And keep in mind, I'm not super well versed in drain, so maybe I'm asking. 


Josh Teekell
·
33:58
Yeah, so they're just water sensors. 


Corey Berrier
·
34:01
Right. 


Josh Teekell
·
34:01
So we have a cable you can snap on if you want it for an accessory to running it around in a piece of equipment or run it around a pan or under a sink or whatever. So we're not doing anything with the water sensing that hasn't been done before. We're just doing it more cost effectively. I mean, they're cheaper than any other sensors on the market for this. Right. Connected sensors. Sure. And so we really are just made these like I said, it really comes down to the check mark in Ms. Jones mind. Right. If you have deployed a few more water sensors and you say it's whole home HVAC and plumbing monitoring, they see you as their HVAC and plumbing expert. Right. And so we also want to take care of mitigating risk in their home. 


Josh Teekell
·
34:42
But a lot of this is psychology in the homeowner's mind, and that's kind of how we can get away with getting so much value with not more than five, six, seven data points. 


Corey Berrier
·
34:56
Yeah, that's wild. That's absolutely wild. Yeah, it's super impressive. Well, I don't know if I'm sure you have competitors to a degree, and maybe we don't necessarily talk about them on here, but do you have people that are actually competitors right now in this space? 


Josh Teekell
·
35:23
Yeah. So we studied a couple of products in the past that have been out there that were at the $300 price point and took an hour to 90 minutes to install. Right. That was the feedback we got. Look, it's way too expensive. It doesn't work in our model, and it takes too long to put in. We don't have any other competitors that have an install that's anywhere close to ten or 15 minutes. Right. And we don't have any competitors that have a price point anywhere close to as low as ours, and we definitely don't have any competitors that have an app for the homeowner that's anywhere as sleek as ours. Right. So, yes, we have competitors in a sense, but not that have taken this approach. And so, yeah, to my knowledge, we've never lost a bid. 


Josh Teekell
·
36:09
Can't say that I'll be forever, but so far, we're not the first people to consider that having remote data on these systems would be valuable. Right. Obviously, the OEMs are building into the products as well. The problem is that's, like, two 3% of all systems, and it doesn't really give the homeowner an experience or a dashboard that's user friendly like ours. So we are acting like someone's coming for us, but currently we seem to be far out ahead, and we want to stay that way. Of course. 


Corey Berrier
·
36:45
Makes sense. Makes total sense. Okay. Now, you mentioned that you didn't really come from this industry, but you had a home services company. Can you dive into that for a second? 


Josh Teekell
·
36:57
Yeah. So it was actually a home improvement company doing backyard makeovers. Built it across Texas. I still own that company. I actually set up a great management team to keep growing it. But I saw an opportunity in technology, especially in HVAC, and so I enjoy working in tech more than working in the home. I enjoy both. But really, my favorite thing is psychology around buying decisions for homeowners. And so while I don't come from HVAC and plumbing originally, I do come from what I call homeowner whispering, where I understand how their minds tick, what puts their bunny ears up and makes them worried, what makes them feel safe. And a lot of this psychology is super important with getting them to sign up for a plan. Right. 


Josh Teekell
·
37:47
Whether it's five or $10 a month or even 15 or 20 or 30 in the home, it's not a big ask on the Internet. 20, $30 a month is massive in the home. It's not a lot of money if you're standing in front of them and you can make them feel comfortable with the buying decision. And so everything we do is to try to help our partners get that original yes. Right? And then after you get the yes, now your churn rate is the most important thing, right. So keep that as low as possible. And so that's a lot of the consulting we do alongside our partners is helping them craft those plans to where the customer psychology they want to stay. Right. 


Josh Teekell
·
38:28
And so we have comfort credits, let's say, where people get a day one discount towards their next big AC expense, and more credits accrue over time. So they have a layaway savings plan. Right. Not concepts that haven't been done before, but putting it right in front of the homeowner with their on the home screen of the app. Right. So they have to actively walk away from it. And so really the buying psychology I kind of got off course there, but the buying psychology around buying and retention and churn is really my background and what I get excited about working on. 


Corey Berrier
·
39:02
Yeah, I get that dude. I totally get that. It's really fascinating to me though, most contractors are not tech savvy. They don't want anything to do with technology. So it's interesting that you kind of came from that. 


Josh Teekell
·
39:20
I love technology. 


Corey Berrier
·
39:21
I think everything that's coming out is almost like a rabbit hole for me because there's so much out there that could help contractors. It's ridiculous. And I just pray that people get on board because if they don't, the people that are already on board and the people that are coming on board are going to surpass these guys and put them out of business. That's just the truth. 


Josh Teekell
·
39:51
Yeah. The ability to grow your business will be as a function of how and has been as a function of how you're using CRMs. Right. I mean, that's really been part of it. Right. But now there's just another, you know, another platform that allows you to grow. And I think there'll be a lot of companies out there that don't make the change that are small and stay small. And if you've had your customer base for a decade or half a decade or plus, then I think they're pretty safe keeping that customer as long as that customer isn't looking. But if you're wanting to double, triple, quadruple the size of your business over five to ten years, you're going to have to be offering the best value propositions or at least equally as good as what other people are offering. 


Josh Teekell
·
40:36
And I do believe it'll be something everyone will have to consider or else they will behind. Yeah. 


Corey Berrier
·
40:44
In twelve months, the people that have not gotten on board, it's going to be real hard to catch up. 


Josh Teekell
·
40:51
I think. Well, we'll help them catch up. There will be a lot of fast followers and a lot of I think they call them laggards, which are follow, but when they have to, not ahead of time. Right. And we'll be there to help those people get caught up to speed as well. But certainly there is an opportunity. Now if you're one of the first few companies in your market to be deploying this, then it is a land grab and it's that 15 minutes install gives you a stranglehold on that home remotely. And so the business we have many businesses that are just focused solely on deploying right. As opposed to even subsidizing or changing some of their marketing dollars into this because it's guaranteed grabbing the home instead of hoping to get it to grab the home. 


Josh Teekell
·
41:40
So yeah, there's a lot of changes right now across the whole space. And this is one of the big ones. 


Corey Berrier
·
41:45
Yeah, for sure. What else are you seeing in the AI as far as AI goes? What are the changes are you seeing in the industry outside of smart AC? They're either maybe coming or maybe they're here, and I just don't know about them. 


Josh Teekell
·
42:05
In general. We've had our head down quite a bit. We're not out mixing it up that much outside of conferences and things like that. I'm a huge fan of Measure Quick. I don't know if you know Jim Bergman over there, but that platform is so valuable in making sure things are done right the first time, giving the homeowner the best experience, and using data and technology to do the job better. Right. So real big on that platform. Obviously exciting to see what Billy and Sarah are doing. And the blue on team is really strong as well. I really think we kind of have a nucleus of four or five, six tech companies that are up and coming with addition to a few of them that are already behemoths. 


Josh Teekell
·
42:47
And so if you look at what that technology does, if all of it at once, let's say, or most of it is utilized in a company, it's just a completely different company in the way it looks and operates than what was available five or ten years ago. So, yeah, I think it's an exciting time to be working in the trades, and we're excited to be able to help our partners get those lifts, for sure. 


Corey Berrier
·
43:14
All right, so I do want to ask you one other question that is not really off topic, but how many contract it's sort off topic. How many contractors do you see that still won't give prices over the phone or will not supply price? I'll tell you the reason I'm asking. Well, I'll let you answer first, and I'll tell you the reason I'm asking. 


Josh Teekell
·
43:38
Yeah, I know there's a lot of talk about this. I know Tall Paul is a big advocate of pricing online, and actually, I forgot to mention contractor commerce, but I love those guys, too. Most contractors aren't getting prices over the phone. I can see both sides of this. I really understand why you wouldn't want to get a price of the phone. It really just depends on whether or not you're the high price provider. You can't build near as much value in a 1 minute conversation over the phone as you can standing in front of the customer. And so if you put a gun to my head and said, should you give pricing over the phone or not? If I'm the high price provider, there's no way I'm giving price over the phone. 


Josh Teekell
·
44:23
Now, if you have a relationship with a customer already and it's a maintenance agreement, and you want to give them pricing through software, or you want to have someone on the phone give the price once a text standing there. Of course, there's some incredible companies doing things like that's different. Right. But if they're just calling in the first time price shopping, then I don't see any value in giving them price over the phone. And potentially not as much value if you're the high price provider for even going out there. So I can see the other sides of it, and I think if it's air filters or something like that, it's quite different. And maybe if you're a lower or middle price provider, it's a little different as well. 


Josh Teekell
·
45:06
But if you are and many of our partners are more of the upper end of pricing, then I think you have to build the value before you give them the number. All right. 


Corey Berrier
·
45:17
That was a great answer. That was a great answer. So pretend now you're the customer. 


Josh Teekell
·
45:21
All right. 


Corey Berrier
·
45:22
And let's pretend that we are still talking about the same customers that would much rather text or message with you, right? 


Josh Teekell
·
45:28
Yes. 


Corey Berrier
·
45:29
And you could go on. The unit went out. It's the middle of July. There's zero question. It's out because it's 100 degrees in your house. And you could go online and you could get an estimate right there. Online. An estimate. Not a price, but an estimate. And then you could apply for financing at the same time. 


Josh Teekell
·
45:53
I hear you. Look, the way I shop is totally different than the way I do business. If I own an outdoor living construction company, when I'm getting a bid to do something in my house, I'm not calling the companies that are on the radio. Right. I'm not expecting a price over the phone. I want a price over the phone. I'm going to give them the metrics, and I want a price. Right? Sure. But I know that if they give me that information on the phone, I don't need them to come out anymore, and I'm going to call three other companies. I get that homeowners want that, and I understand why they do. And I do believe there may come a day where technology eats the whole space right. And where something like that happens or a big tech giant takes it over. 


Josh Teekell
·
46:35
But if you're not a tech giant, then you make your money selling to homeowners in the home. And if you don't get into the kitchen table, then you can't expect to close them. You ain't going to close them over the phone, right? 


Corey Berrier
·
46:49
Right. 


Josh Teekell
·
46:50
So unless you have a business model that really is driven only off of those interactions and you are well less than most other people in the market, price wise, then your strong point isn't price. Your strong point is the value compared to the price. And you can only get one of those two across in a two minute conversation over the phone, and it's the wrong one. So I understand that homeowners want that. But if I want to make money I cannot be just bearing all over the phone without giving them the reason why I'm more expensive than the other people. 


Corey Berrier
·
47:25
So let's pretend that we take the highest price, whoever is the highest in town, whoever that is, and then you take the lowest price, and that's the estimate that you get that pops up, and it says it's going to between 21 and $26,000. Exactly. So there's no guarantee. It's guaranteed it's going to fall between those two numbers. But there's still some ambiguity there that there's a chance when they pick up the phone and call the next guy, and hypothetically, if they say, all right, we're 26,000, but they're going to go back to the online guy because there's a d*** good chance that it is not going to be 21,000. 


Josh Teekell
·
48:12
I think given a range, could be a loophole where you could do that, but yeah, I do think that if giving a range gives them the homeowner, the confidence that it's okay to have you come out because they know your minimum isn't $20,000 right. Then I think that'd be okay. But you don't want to lead. I wouldn't lead with it. If they're ready to have you come out, give them as little information as possible because you know you're going to be able to present it in a better way in the home, once you understand all of their options first. Right. And then you can, of course, give them all the options. Of course. You don't want to give one option. You want to give three. 


Josh Teekell
·
48:52
You want them to make a decision of what they're going to buy from you, not are they going to buy from you, but you're in a better place to close the deal. Once you've built the rapport, the customer has the confidence, you know what's even going on at their house. Right. And so I would say you give them as little information as you have to get in front of them. And I don't like the bait and switch stuff. Like even the as low as if you never sell that system ever. Like no one ever can buy it. If it's a hey, you can some people put bids or numbers for just like, the condenser only. Right. Or there's a lot of bait and switch. Right. And so I don't feel of that. Sure. 


Josh Teekell
·
49:38
I don't want to send my salesperson out there when there's a number in their head that's half as much as our average replacement bid. Right. It's just handicapping them before they sure. And so I wouldn't put it out in the world, but if they try to pry it out of you, I think a range would be a good way of going about giving them something. 


Corey Berrier
·
49:59
Yeah, look, I think, well, guess what? If you give somebody a range and everybody else won't give you a price, who are you going to call? 


Josh Teekell
·
50:11
Yeah, I don't think it's hard fast. So I think a range is good and I think if the homeowner is just going to hang up on you because screw you wouldn't tell me anything, then maybe that's not the right play either. But I just think putting pricing of AC Systems on your website is bad for business. And I know there are some people that believe that's not the case, and I'm very good friends with some of those people. But having built a company to very large selling to homeowners, I know we never did well talking pricing over the phone ahead of time. Right. And I do think that is a good way. 


Josh Teekell
·
50:56
If you don't have enough bandwidth to see everyone, the people that are calling asking for the price over the phone are probably the best people to cut if you don't have the bandwidth to see everyone. 


Corey Berrier
·
51:04
True. 


Josh Teekell
·
51:05
Yeah. 


Corey Berrier
·
51:06
Because they're price shopping. 


Josh Teekell
·
51:07
If you do have the bandwidth, you should go out there, but if you don't, then that's the low hanging fruit to cut. And I know Ken Goodrich would be huge on relational customers. Right. I mean, that's in the Emith, relational versus transactional. That's part of why we want to help our partners get them on plans. Because then you have a relationship and you have a relational customer instead of one that's just looking for you for that individual transaction. 


Corey Berrier
·
51:32
That customer is going to be your customer for a long time if it's a relationship. 


Josh Teekell
·
51:36
Agreed? 


Corey Berrier
·
51:37
Yeah, I agree with that wholeheartedly. Well, Josh, dude, man, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you coming on today. Can you tell everybody where they can find you? SmartAC.com, all that good stuff. 


Josh Teekell
·
51:49
Yeah. So if you want to go directly to the kind of partnership side of things, obviously SmartAC.com, but HVAC SmartAC.com is a good landing page for that. We'd love to have a quick meeting with you over Zoom and explain the entire platform and then get you some product, let you test it. You can obviously reach out to me at Josh@smartac.com if you want to contact me directly, but obviously we're at all the conferences, we'll excited to be at Pantheon this year in a big way. And yeah, I'm really excited about our new partnership with Service Titan. It won't be the only CRM we talk to, but it is the first and of course, the biggest. And so if you're somebody who is already using technology to grow your business, then you should be aware of this new technology that will also help you grow. 


Corey Berrier
·
52:40
Seems like a no brainer if you ask me. Appreciate it, Josh. 


Josh Teekell
·
52:45
Yes, thank you very much, Corey. I appreciate the time today. Thanks for having me. 


Corey Berrier
·
52:48
Not a problem.