Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 233. How To Sell More Preventative Maintenance with Jim Marsen

Transcript

Episode 233. How To Sell More Preventative Maintenance with Jim Marsen · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  Trevor: I'd love to dive into PMs PM contracts 'cause I really want to teach technicians how to sell, honestly. Sell this for their companies as well as help end users understand the value of. I'd like to talk about some numbers.
• 0:01
  They don't have to be exact, but like ballpark on what you need to look for was actually a, a real preventative maintenance, not going to just do a checklist because that's what, Oh, I'm paying 50, 000 a month for a checklist, you know, or whatever the cost is, you know, the thing, cause I have so many technicians say, , that come and they're.
• 0:02
  Store owner as a 15 year old store hasn't done any upgrades. And the thing on, thing on maintenance, they say to them, so why would I spend money on maintenance when something goes down? I can just call you at any time and you come and get it up and running. You know what I mean?
• 0:03
  Jim: That comes down to math.
• 0:04
  168 hours in a week. 45 of them are regular business hours. You've got a 3 out of 4 chance out of the gate that it's going to break at a time that's premium time. So the first thing I look at, particularly in industrial like grocery, and as well in property management, right? Think of all the property managers Are managing buildings that have just been purchased by an insurance company or somebody else and are highly leveraged There is no money kicking around right and you you give them a proposal.
• 0:05
  Well, I don't want to spend that So I think it comes down to you start to the basics One is what are the consumables on the piece of equipment you wanna maintain? So if it's rooftop, it's probably belts. If it's a 50 ton air handler, I would suggest to you that the grease in the bearings is a consumable.
• 0:06
  Every time that thing spins around, the grease gets a little more little older and needs a little more, a bigger chance. You need to put some assurance that the grease is still in there and doing what it should. Right? Yeah. Um. If you compare the price of a year's PM to spitting a shaft on a 50 ton air handler, the PM that will get the set screws tight on the bearings and the grease in the bearings and give you a chance to catch a noise in that bearing before it fails.
• 0:07
  So we can do a proactive bearing change in the morning as opposed to two days, two guys pull a shaft out, the business has no heating or cooling, right? So, I don't think you have to You don't necessarily have to be spewing horror stories, but I think in your own head, you have to say, if I was the end user and somebody came to me and pitched me a PM for this piece of equipment, what would be the reasons that I would want to buy it?
• 0:08
  Because I mean, at the end of the day, you know, you know, there's an old adage, you know, out there that, you know, the only time a salesman could be lying to you is when his lips are moving. And. And so, you know, and, and, and you'd hear a lot of that kind of stuff. And yet when you look at people in our industry, whether it's the people who are professional HVAC maintenance salespeople or people who are selling refrigeration maintenance or anything, what they really do is come in and they identify.
• 0:09
  A weak spot, potential spot where the downside is so much greater than the potential cost to mitigate that, you know, so PM in its simplest form is insurance. It's a way to try to mitigate your, your potential for a horrendous repair. And the inconvenience of having you having your equipment down. And then I would suggest as the person who is going to sell it, I'm going to walk up to a machine, if it's a, if it's that 50 ton air handler, I'm going to say to the owner, look, these V belts need to be done once a year.
• 0:10
  We know that we should check the tension. Your filters can go maybe 15 weeks without plugging up. But in reality, if we do your maintenance every four months, You're going to have plug filters. If we get to 17 or 18 weeks, because it's summer and we're behind cause we're fixing things. So you need four a year.
• 0:11
  And this prevents us from having to come out on a Saturday and trying to find air filters because your unit's plugged up and you got no heating in the winter. You got no cooling in the summer. So that's sort of what I've always thought of as the value proposition. The second side of it is know the target, right?
• 0:12
  If it is somebody who is a property manager who has never experienced any pain. Put the philosophy of the maintenance contract in front of them. If they really don't want to bite, couple of breakdowns on those there go, geez, this isn't so good. Maybe we ought to think about it. And, you know, as, as often happens, um, when you've been around as long as I have, I have a, a tale of a client of ours who was notoriously frugal and I don't mean he was cheap because if he needed to spend a buck on something, he would spend a buck on stuff.
• 0:13
  Just had to convince him that he needed to spend it because he wasn't going to spend it purely for the. Cache of saying, you know, I have Jones food store equipment, do my maintenance that didn't appeal to him, but let's do something positive. So he has two stores. One is a bunch of old conventional individual condensing units.
• 0:14
  And the other is he used to try packs in this little store that he had about 20, 000 square feet. And one day I'm sitting, talking to his store manager in the conventional store, which is where this guy spent most of his time. And he asked me if I'm busy and I said, yeah, we're doing preventive maintenance and And the things that we normally do in the spring, washing condensers, changing filters and checking machines out so that when it gets hot and they really have to run hard.
• 0:15
  We're not running behind them trying to put them back together. And he wanders by and mumble something in his usual gruff voice. I don't believe in payouts. That's just a waste of money. That's just baloney. And for some reason, I knew him well enough that I could be a bit of a smart aleck. And I said, well, you've had it every year at the other store.
• 0:16
  And for the problems you haven't had, you're welcome. And he kind of mumbled off. And about three days later, I get a call from the office that I'm to phone this fella. So I phone him. He says, Hey, Jim. Yeah. Yeah. This is Wayne. Yeah. Um, I've been looking at my numbers. And you're right. The store that gets the maintenance, we spend a lot less on service, so we need to do some maintenance.
• 0:17
  And I'm looking at my phone and I'm thinking, you know, is this Rich Little doing impressions? Because this isn't the guy I know. What's going on, right? So at that point, we sat down and we just had a very basic conversation of, look, here's some basic things that need to be done. And if we do this, it's going to make your system run better.
• 0:18
  It's not going to prevent breakdowns. And I think it's really important. Um, if you're selling, don't reach beyond what a PM will do for somebody and give them a false expectation. We're going to take care of some of the things that we know are going to be a problem. Other things are going to bite us. We know that, but it should be a lot less on average.
• 0:19
  And you know, anybody can have a bad year, but on average, and for the most part, a good PM program means your equipment's going to sail along. And if you do have a breakdown, it should be fairly minimal, you know, unless it's something that's 25 years old and it's just plain come to end of life. But if that's the case, your PM program has nursed that thing from infancy to 25 years of age, and you've got your value out of it.
• 0:20
  I mean, you and I, who've both been in the supermarket industry, I've seen the look on a store manager's face and the maintenance manager, when you tell them that a four year old compressor is done and has to be replaced. So,
• 0:21
  Trevor: and that's the thing. Why do you think there's so many end users out there that don't believe in it?
• 0:22
  Kind of like Wayne, is it because they haven't seen the numbers? Did they not have the right person talk to them about it? Did it have to be you? Cause I, I'm sure. That you've been doing the PM for a long time for him. He didn't really even understand. He had a PM going and you guys were doing that with the managers, I guess.
• 0:23
  Why do you think there's so many end users out there? Because I've, I consistently hear this in my supermarket programs from technicians. Like they don't want to do the maintenance. They won't pay for the maintenance. They don't want us there. What, what do you think is turning them off from doing a PM or having a PM contract?
• 0:24
  I guess.
• 0:25
  Jim: Trust, trust, you know, I, I went to one of our favorite events, FMI energy one year, and I was having lunch or dinner one day with a, with a guy who was a maintenance manager for a chain of about 150 stores. And he was asking me what he had to do to find honest contractor. And I said, well, I said, and in my opinion, service is an act of faith.
• 0:26
  If you don't believe that the people that are doing your service work have got your best interests at heart and are trying to do. The best job for you at the lowest price. And, and, and I distinguish between cheap service and doing good service at a, at a quality price. Right. Um, you know, there was a couple of guys that I knew who used to make a, a living out of taking old ice machines and, you know, cannibalizing the parts and trying to make one machine out of two.
• 0:27
  And I said to him one day, so let me get this straight. You're going to spend 30 percent of the cost of a new machine in labor to take two machines that are 90 percent worn out. And try and squeeze 10 percent out of them before they got to go into the dumpster. In what way does that make financial sense?
• 0:28
  Well, I'm saving them money. I said, not really. I said, the cost per unit of ice on your freebie machine is too high. And I said, then you got to go back with egg on your face and tell them they need a new machine. And you know, you're better off to have that argument or that discussion with them and say, look, I could put this thing together for you, but you're going to spend this and here's where it is.
• 0:29
  Let's do us all a favor. I sell you a new machine. I mean a new ice machine What do you get four or five year warranty on some of the components usually the compressor and some other stuff?
• 0:30
  Yeah,
• 0:31
  and it's gonna work. You're not gonna see me and your favorite thing is when weeks go by and you don't see me So let's get to that point.
• 0:32
  So I think I think trust in the contractor is huge I think for a lot of us we don't get a lot of training How to sell things. And particularly as technicians, we tend to think of the sales guy as that guy that goes over there and makes wild promises and all sorts of stuff, and all he does is go around and drink coffee with people and we have to bail 'em out.
• 0:33
  And if you are fortunate enough to watch people who are sales professionals, not people who just run around and make wild promises, but sales professionals, they know what they're trying to achieve. They know what they can do. And the really smart ones have got enough sense when the client says, and it'll do this, this, and this, you go, no, it doesn't do that.
• 0:34
  Here's exactly what it does. I've documented what it'll do for you. So I think confidence is, is, is a real barrier, right? And so for a technician, you know, you, you have to do something with the client to build your own personal brand. They have to believe when you come in the door, you're the person to fix what their problem is.
• 0:35
  And if they believe that you're that trusted advisor, that's not only going to fix it. Um, but you're going to tell them the truth, even when they don't want to hear it. And, you know, I had a, I had a client that, that I went in and, you know, this was a 15 year old compressor and the valve plate was gone, as you can imagine.
• 0:36
  Valve plate's gone. Good chance you've got worn wrist pins if it's been gone for a long time. Center bearing on my favorite brand of semi hermetic compressor, probably gone. And if the center bearing's gone, we'll put a valve plate on it. And in three weeks, we're back doing the compressor. Oh, exactly. Peel this, pull the housing cover off, wiggle a crank.
• 0:37
  Crank's got a bunch of slop in it. I said to him, valve plate's gone, center bearing's gone. You need a compressor. He phones another guy who has a reputation for being sort of the. Cheapie Mr. Fixit in the industry and he comes in and he says, no, no, they were taking your Ferrari. He said that, uh, it only needs a valve plate and the assistant manager looks at the store manager and said, says to him in front of the store manager, did you check the center bearing?
• 0:38
  What's the center bearing? Yeah. Yeah. He said, no, no, you take that little cover behind the oil pump off. Cause he was standing there watching me when I was doing it. And he said, you wiggle a crank. And he said, if it's worn, we need a compressor, don't we? He said, well, I better go check that. So he comes back down.
• 0:39
  Yeah, I guess you need a compressor. Yeah. So again, do you have credibility right and and credibility isn't always i'm the cheapest
• 0:40
  Credibility is i'm the most direct path to your most cost effective repair, right? So you talk about credibility the other side is are you talking to somebody who has enough money That they feel like they can afford it because if you're going to go in with the greatest full blown bells and whistles Pre pm package for somebody that's on a budget Maybe they can't afford that.
• 0:41
  You know, if it's a rooftop, maybe you say to them, look, I tell you what we're going to do. I'm going to give you a flat rate. I'm here sort of twice a month anyways. So every three months, we're going to do your, your HVAC filter service. I will do it when I'm here, so there's no travel charge. I need this much time to go over it.
• 0:42
  And when you tell people, for example, there's companies out there who do filter services, right? No axe to grind with them. They do a good job of doing exactly what they do. But what you don't get with that, is you don't get the experienced eyes looking at the unit. Contact our capacity. When I roll a new belt on, do I check the bearings and see if they're sloppy, right?
• 0:43
  And if I just blow in and out and do the air filters. That goes, I've got a PM, uh, contract. No, you don't. You have a filter replacement contract. It's not the same thing. And I'm not saying it's wrong. There are lots of places that do that. There are small malls who've got a handyman who will go up and have a look at something if it's making a noise or, or whatever.
• 0:44
  But you lose the ability to get at problems when they're small and contain them. You know, so if say on a, on a five ton rooftop and I've got a blower bearing that is just one of those beautiful little bronze sleeve bearings that are so popular, right, but inside a lower Adele, I'd lower, and I got a little, little bit of play in it.
• 0:45
  It's not bad, but it's April and I'm doing a PM. I can pick up a set of bearings. Now I've got a job to go back to when things are slow and I can say to him, look, I'll get back here in the next month or six weeks. It's not urgent. Maybe we'll even do it on the next service call. But we're going to catch this before it's a problem.
• 0:46
  Let that go. Bearing's gone, shaft's gone. If you've broken the mount, you probably need a blower. And for your luck, we're on the West coast of Canada in Vancouver. That blower has yet to be made in a factory in Carolina, has to come into the distributor in Toronto, get on a truck and come to Vancouver. And we're looking three to six weeks.
• 0:47
  Well, you know, a bearing replacement early on short circuits, all of that. So, you know, what are we trying to do? And if, if, if we're only approaching maintenance contracts from the point of view of what's in it for us, I think we're selling the wrong thing. Oh,
• 0:48
  Trevor: for sure. It has to be for what is best for the customer at the end of the day.
• 0:49
  And I like what you said there earlier is like. As a salesperson technician, first of all, let's go back to like a lot of technicians. Like I used to think, Oh, say I'm not a sales guy. Once again, we are the best sales people out there because we understand the customer. We understand their equipment and we understand their needs and we should.
• 0:50
  Be offering different contracts, but what, once again, nobody's teaching the technicians how to sell the stuff. And I do this in my programs all the time to teach some of the guys who want to learn it because they want to bring more value to their customers. The big thing is, as well, as you said, is that trust factor.
• 0:51
  Speaker: If you're a
• 0:52
  Trevor: good technician and you go in there with the best abilities, even though sometimes you make mistakes, it happens, you
• 0:53
  Jim: know,
• 0:54
  Trevor: lots of times you make a mistake, but you got to be trustworthy and honest and you build that trust with them. Yes, it might've cost some money. Maybe you eat some of that cost.
• 0:55
  Don't be afraid to say, okay, we're going to eat that cost. And you go talk to the boss, you know, about it. I made a mistake. So, and then, but that builds the trust level. And as that trust level builds, you can have these conversations about these things. Well, I've been looking at these, your units, these units here really need to be looked at more often as the age.
• 0:56
  And another thing, I like what you said there, that valve plate example, you gave the compressor's 15, 16 years old. It's life is 20 years. Even if that, you know, you could have did the valve plate, potentially would have, might've been a better play, , to replace the compressor anyway. Because if that failed, just say on Christmas day or the day, the Christmas You couldn't get a compressor.
• 0:57
  How much money did that cost? If that whole rack had to be down because of that compressor, for an example. So it's, it's, you got to understand your, uh, customer's equipment, but going back to the, to the maintenance for a technician, I know most contractors will have salespeople that go out to try to sell this stuff.
• 0:58
  What are maybe a couple of tips that you could give a technician building that relationship with that end users who may or not may not be buying, uh, a Uh p. m contract now, but how do you start how do they start that conversation?
• 0:59
  Jim: I think you you talk about You know, I'd like to save you some money. So, you know, if you talk about coil cleaning, right, so let's say I go out and, you know, the client says it's, it's the first heat wave of June.
• 1:00
  My building's warm. My customers aren't happy. People are complaining. So we fire this unit up because we've found that our compressors tripped on the oil failure control, and now we go looking for costs. And now we find that our suction pressure is below freezing on our air conditioning coil. We're building frost like a snow cone machine.
• 1:01
  And pretty soon, pretty soon we're getting refrigerant returning, right? And our oil's thinning. So now our compressor's wearing because we don't have the same lube and at some point we're going to lose our oil pressure and we're going to trip out. So now we found our problem is our evaporators are plugged, right?
• 1:02
  We're not getting any airflow. Okay, so now we have to get in and clean the evaporators. Okay, how long does that take? You know, again, go back to that 50 ton unit. How long is the guy going to sit in there? What can I use reasonably to clean that coil? It's not like a condenser on a roof where i'm going to go in with a pressure washer and just blast it steam cleaner Maybe maybe a hose Maybe I got to get in there with a wire brush.
• 1:03
  I don't know but but we got to clean it That's a lot of money for the money. We spend on that and here's the argument go back to the owner and say look You know i've looked at the filters that are in there And again, if you're the contractor that's been doing this you got to wear some gloves Some blame, but if, let's assume they've gone down to, I don't know, Canadian Tire, and they've found a, the equivalent of a furnace filter.
• 1:04
  They bought something online that's so thin that you can see right through it, you know? And what you really should have, what the, the, the thing was designed to have originally, was a two inch pleated filter, followed by a bunch of HEPA bags. But he's thrown that out because it's too expensive. They don't want to buy it.
• 1:05
  Well, now you've let all the dirt go by and we've had to clean it. So your first opportunity is, look, I'm sorry that you got this bill for eight hours, and we have to put some filters back in. But unless we're going to do this every year, and we're going to change a compressor when it blows out, we'd be better off to put some money over here in the filters.
• 1:06
  The HEPAs we can do once a year, we don't have to do them every time. And then all of a sudden the customer has an aha moment. Well, I had a guy in here to sell me a maintenance contract. He said the HEPA had to be done every quarter. I couldn't afford that. I said, well, you know, if you're HEPA, if you do your pre filters every quarter, you probably need to do the HEPA bags once a year, depending on the application.
• 1:07
  Trevor: Yeah. And the location and things
• 1:08
  Jim: like
• 1:09
  Trevor: that. Yeah.
• 1:10
  Jim: And things like that. But generally speaking, you've got a pre filter, right? So now you've got a conversation. You've identified a problem. You're trying to provide not only a repair, but a solution that's going to prevent it from happening. And as a technician, you're probably the best prepared person to plant the seed That we need to do that.
• 1:11
  Now, you may not be the person that's going to put the pricing together. Maybe you're in a, in a small shop and your boss is the person that puts the pricing together. But say to the client, look, I'm going to have my boss give you a call. I've got the details. Think about it. Next time you see him. Hey, did you, you know, and check with your boss?
• 1:12
  Did you talk to him? What did he say? Yeah, he's a grouch. He doesn't want to do it. Okay. So I'll follow up next time. Don't sell your influence short. The client probably doesn't know your boss. Just know he's a guy who's trying to make money in the contracting business. NFVs. He's a cynical client who's, who's leery of everybody who's got their hand on his wallet.
• 1:13
  He may not, may not be happy to hear that, right? But you're the person that's come in. You've solved this problem. When you leave his store is getting cold again and his compressor isn't tripping up. So you have some credibility. So you say to him, well, you know, if we didn't put the dirt on the coil, we wouldn't have to clean it off.
• 1:14
  There's your in, you know, and I would suggest, say, look, I can go from large to small and, you know, much like me. I've, if I'm going to do something, I'm not likely. To go to a car dealer. I've never, never met before by a brand. I've never seen an order. The top of line of car site unseen on the idea. While he said it was good.
• 1:15
  So it must be. So here's my 150, 000, right? I'm going to start small, right? So I would say, start small, build on your credibility and get the idea of I'm not a salesperson. You're going to have influence on the client, whether you like it or not. His experience with you is either going to, or her experience, is it going to be good or bad?
• 1:16
  And, and I would suggest that one of the other traps that people my age can fall into is we came up through this industry at a time when it was male dominated. There are an awful lot of very, very capable women in our industry. We're probably, uh, you know, an industry where you can't look at somebody in any way and make any accurate judgment of what they might or might not know.
• 1:17
  It's a very diversified field. Yet when I started 40 years ago, it was, it was a very different world. And there was an expectation that, you know, sort of old men knew what was best. And so I would suggest there are different styles to talk to people, you know, people communicate differently. So one of the best things you can do is get yourself a book.
• 1:18
  On communication styles, learn how to talk to people. You know, my mother and I used to fight all the time because we listen differently. Right. And I'm visual. So she would say something and I would look up at the ceiling. I'm visualizing in my head. She thinks I'm not paying attention and she started screaming at me.
• 1:19
  Okay. So we figured this out when I was 40 and she was 70 something. Right. Okay. But if you have that same conundrum with your client, if you can't mesh with their personality style and their communication style, you're going to. You're you're going to grade on each other The good news is if you've got a client and you've got a good relationship with them You've already got past that point.
• 1:20
  You've solved that you're able to communicate with each other Um, the other thing that's obvious is is not everybody is a great fit You know You read all these self help books and other things and there's alpha and beta and sigma and I don't know how many different Letters out of the greek alpha, but there are personality types Not everybody's a perfect mesh with everybody.
• 1:21
  So there are times when you need to say, look, I can come in here and as a technician, I can do the work. I'm not the best person to talk to this person for whatever reason. We just don't mesh, but there will be enough people that you do mesh with that it'll go well. And as you spend more time in the industry and you get better at doing this.
• 1:22
  You'll find it easier to talk to all personalities and as you carry yourself with more confidence You'll get more traction and you'll get more results because people will look at you and go Well, this is obviously a person who's done this before they're confident what they're doing They seem to know what they're talking about and I can tell you the first first ice machine that I sold That was not the sales pitch.
• 1:23
  It was hey, you know, this thing's breaking down. Don't know if we can get parts It was actually An old cold draft cuber with a crusher underneath and yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, because in the days when that came out, um, you know, flakers were not that common, right? And flakers were very problematic. If you look at what's in the marketplace for flake dice machines now, they're a lot more common.
• 1:24
  They get better warranties. They're a lot more reliable machine, but in those days they weren't. So I said to him, I said, look, you're not happy that I'm here twice a week, punching a shear pin into this thing. I've been telling you for a month that unless we replace this, I'm going to be here twice a week punching a sheer pin in and the rate we're going pretty soon it's going to be three times a week and you'll have no ice on the weekends.
• 1:25
  We have to do something to get past this. And you know, I can't do it on my own. I need you to be willing to invest in something. You know, I'm sorry this machine is at end of life at seven and a half years, but that's the way it is. That's not the machine we would have sold you. Get to something else.
• 1:26
  Trevor: Going back a little bit, talking about technicians, talking with the customers, I really try to help technicians learn numbers. Like a lot of people say, well, I'm no good with numbers. You're in refrigeration. You're really good with numbers. You may not think you are. Superheat, sub cooling, pressures, temperatures.
• 1:27
  You're good with numbers. So I'm helping technicians now learn more about pricing because you go to a wholesaler all the time you pick stuff up you're looking at the price you're quoting stuff sometimes depending on where you work and for these like contracts you're building this relationship with this customer like we were talking about and then you had that example about okay well we'll get the the owner to call in with the pricing you know what I mean.
• 1:28
  Maybe you go talk with the owner after he gives the pricing and maybe the end user says no. And when you go back there, like you said, that followup, you're building that relationship, have those numbers there with you so that you're following up too and make sure it's accurate. You know what I mean? That you're bringing that customer, the best value, and this is going to make you better and better.
• 1:29
  And you're going to see more and more opportunities at. That customer as well as different customers. What are your thoughts on technicians learning, uh, the sale side and finding out like Uh quoting and pricing and purchasing because our job is to fix stuff Right is ours to go in to solve a problem a really complex problem in the supermarket industry To get a customer up and running so their store is not down At any time to lose any product or money so their stores always fill What are your thoughts on getting having more technicians in the field to understand the pricing the quoting?
• 1:30
  Um, pms things like that
• 1:31
  Jim: So i'll give you i'll give you one that blew me away when I was working in the wholesaler um Guy comes in and he says how much is this thermostat and I said it's a hundred dollars list fifty dollars net He says what's net I said, that's what you actually pay for.
• 1:32
  So start there Have you got the basics right and and I think You know, it's like any other puzzle, you know, you start by clicking the first two -pieces together. What was it like when you started your apprenticeship? Somebody told you about this gas that it would evaporate uphill and end up in a tank over here if you compressed it and you go.
• 1:33
  You know, I remember the first time I heard that I thought I don't know what you're on man, but keep the distribution rights. Because it didn't make any sense. Refrigeration when you first hear about how it works, it's not like a gas burner. More gas, more heat. Refrigeration doesn't work that way. So, So I would say Start with the little pieces, understand that you're part of a team.
• 1:34
  And as you're out there digging up work, that's what keeps the whole company going. If you're a guy that just sits there and says, give me another call, give me another call, give me another call one day, the phone doesn't ring and then what are we going to do? So, you know, you'll find technicians will go in and say to somebody, I see something, you know, when I started out, we didn't have.
• 1:35
  you know, pipe clamps that had a plastic sleeve and collar inside with a clamp on the outside. Literally, and I found this absolutely stupefying, that we now send a HAZMAT team in to take asbestos cloth off of lines, the same asbestos cloth that we used to cut with our bare hands with a pair of scissors and put on behind a two piece unistruct clamp that was designed for EMT conduit.
• 1:36
  So I look at all of these things and, and, and so it used to be, well, if you're in a store, particularly when a lot of them had been converted to remote air condensers, you'd find lines would rub, right? That was, that was just common in those old stores. So we'd go looking for that and say to the owner, Hey, look, we should put half a dozen clamps on these things because these lines are moving and they're going to rub and you're going to have a leak and you're not going to be happy.
• 1:37
  So if you as a technician are looking at those things and digging out work, PMs are basically the same thing. You know, you put a clamp on a line. Theoretically, that should be the last you have to do with that, right? But air filters, refrigeration systems, you know, if you really want to scare the pants off, off a new technician, take them to a site where you've had moisture get loose in a supermarket rack and say, now we got to clean this up.
• 1:38
  And by the way, you're going to spend the next 19 hours with a bucket of hot water, thawing expansion valves while we try and chase this moisture back into the dryers could have been, could have been prevented. By doing annual dryer changes of the liquid course, right? Um, same guy who will same store operator who will drive his Mercedes and get it maintained meticulously with three oil changes a year.
• 1:39
  We'll fight you on changing the oil dryer on his refrigeration rack. So if you can relate it to him and say, now, look, all I want is to do on your refrigeration system, which generates money. What you do on your car three times a year, I want to do that with the oil dryer once a year. And by taking that out and seeing how much junk is on the upstream side of it, we'll have some insight into what's going on in the system.
• 1:40
  How much wear have we got on compressors and others. And you know, you might, you might say, well, you know, maintenance doesn't matter. Well, we closed a store that, and I think I've probably told you this on one of our other podcasts, but I think it's, it's relevant. We closed a store that had been there 38 years.
• 1:41
  Three of the compressors lasted the entire 38 years. It's huge. And we had some luck. Yeah, yeah. We had some luck, obviously, but, but, but it's not that it can't be done, you know, and that's the question, you know, and, and I, I bring it back to that. When I was a kid, there was a Fram oil filter ad that ran on TV and the technician says, you can pay me now or you can pay me later and you know, on one side, he's got the Fram oil filters on the other side, he's got this row of engines that he's rebuilding because people don't change the oil filter, you know, and, and so, you know, you don't have to be the, the preacher of doom and gloom.
• 1:42
  But when things happen, it's always nice to propose some kind of a diversion that will hopefully either prevent it from happening or increase the duration between events. You know, if, if you could say to somebody, look, I can't guarantee your compressor is not going to fail. But if it runs cool, we should be able to get 12 or 15 years out of it.
• 1:43
  Well, you know, then you say to a guy, maybe you're changing a compressor every three years instead of two a year. That makes a huge difference to his bottom line. And now you've come at him where he really likes to live, which is money. So, you know, I would suggest, you know, get good at it. The other thing I'm going to suggest is when I was in high school, there was a.
• 1:44
  Two, two math paths you could take. One was algebra and the other was trades math. And the general consensus amongst us bratty teenagers was if you had any brains, you did algebra. And if you were, you know, destined to play, be a lower tier learner, you did trades math. And I laughed because I did algebra and then I spent my entire working life going back and figuring out trades math.
• 1:45
  So, you know, you know, so practical skills, right. And, you know, so I would suggest to you. If, if you and I sat here and we, we work back a process to figure out combustion air for gas burner, that's all tradesman, if I need two to one oxygen to fuel and air is 20 percent oxygen, then I need 10 times the air to one time of the fuel, you know, like it's, it's a lot of what you're doing is not complicated.
• 1:46
  You just have to stop. And I would suggest the next thing you need, you need a good teacher. Which, of course, Trevor is where you come in. Well, You know, somebody has to be able to explain it to you in a manner that makes sense, right? If, if, if you come in and you give me this, this huge pitch, my mother one day, you know, very intelligent woman, professional accountant, goes one day, To buy a hot water tank.
• 1:47
  I said to her, just look, I'm out of town, I'll change it when I get home. Just go down, tell him you want a 40 gallon gas fired tank. And tell him you want all the accessories. And the guy should be able to take care of you. Okay. She goes in, and this guy keeps trying to sell her a P& T. She didn't know what the heck a P& T was.
• 1:48
  She didn't know it. Well, it's the pressure and temperature really. If he would have been able to recalibrate himself to his audience. Instead of talking trade talk and say man, this is the pressure and temperature relief valve It's a safety goes on the side of the tank. You should replace it She'd have nodded her head and it would have just gone on the list and that would have been fine But he baffled her so, you know learn to read your learn to read the body language You know there was when I was working at one of the copeland wholesalers in the 80s They sent us to a seminar and the guy who was teaching it Was teaching professional selling, which is logical.
• 1:49
  And he had, I want to say, I think the guy's name was Bill Stiles, but I could be mistaken. And he had this book, I think, or a column that was called Sales Stiles by Stiles. And he really had the art of read your client's body language, see what they're saying, um, understand what's going on. And there was some guys at the table I was with who said I would never do that.
• 1:50
  You're trying to get ahead of your client. You're trying to rig the game. So you win. And I would suggest it's the opposite. You're trying to read how they're taking what you're pitching. Am I, am I giving you a message in a format? You can understand it. Am I hitting the spots you want or am I just annoying you because my conversation and my style of communication just doesn't jive, right?
• 1:51
  And I'm basically grabbing your arm hair and pulling it backwards and you're thinking how quickly can I get rid of this guy? So I would say sit down and invest in yourself. Read those basic things. Start small. You know, anybody that's, doesn't matter what you're doing in this industry. Anybody who's doing big things, learn by doing a whole bunch of small things.
• 1:52
  And when they learned how to do small things well, they got to do bigger things.
• 1:53
  Trevor: Yeah, and I, and I totally agree with that. Vest in yourself, start small because it because it compounds and continues to compound more and that's why we are where we are Today is from working on ourselves for all these decades in refrigeration So you've done Hundreds, I'm sure over the years of maintenance made maintenance contracts and you develop them and you looked at them.
• 1:54
  I want to do an example for any technician who listened or even a store owner to kind of get an understanding what goes into like a supermarket maintenance. So let's talk about a basic store, maybe 10, 000 square feet, 20, 000 square feet, you got one or two racks in there. Uh, you know, a few dozen cases, um, if a technician is going out there and he wants to learn how to build a PM to propose to that end user, um, where would they, what should be on that and in that proposal?
• 1:55
  Jim: Well, let's look at the things that as a technician you were sent to do when you didn't have enough seniority to get out of it. So we're going to start with, we're probably going to wash the condensers every spring, and we have a client who, who is, they want a pressure washing of their condenser every spring, and they want it dusted off every fall.
• 1:56
  There's a little matting or something underneath. You can do that with a whisk, you can do it with a broom, you can do it with a hose, whatever, but they want You just want the surface clean. You don't want the tube bottle thing, right? So make a list. Well, yeah, I would do that. Again, if it was my rack, I would do that.
• 1:57
  There's a lot of conversation out there about whether you need to do the main liquid dryers every year. I'm a proponent of it. Uh, I think it, it follows what my dentist says to me, which is only brush the teeth you want to keep. Um, you know, I wouldn't do filter dryers twice a year. I don't think there's, there's a reason to suggest that systems get dirty enough.
• 1:58
  But as we all know, if you run in the summertime, when there's heat, heat can cause your oil to break down. Heat causes all sorts of, if we've had condenser fan motors and other things go out, those dryers that are on that, that main liquid line do a great job of taking all that junk out. Let's get that junk out of the system.
• 1:59
  Put a fresh set of dryers in, I always say, I'm going to relate that to doing the oil filter on your car when you do an oil change, you brought it in, you got it on the rack, you've changed the oil, how much more is it to spin a new filter, right? And, you know, I know people who say, well, I do it every third time.
• 2:00
  I do it every fourth. Okay, great. But, you know, a lot of the filters that you can see, particularly some of the oil filters have got bypasses. So if they plug up, they're going to keep filling. So you're gonna say, well, nothing's gone off. I guess I don't need to do the filter. No, we're pushing crud through.
• 2:01
  So I think if you. Have it in your head as Bill Stiles said enthusiasm and the last three letters I A S M I am sold myself I actually believe we should do this I would suggest anybody if you're going to go in And lay a string of baloney that you don't believe on somebody in the hopes that they'll buy it I don't i'm sure there are people that are successful like that Most of the people that I know are not you know You got to be sold yourself that this makes sense You need to be able to sit there and debate with with the client if he's got an alternate proposal You Why you think what you are doing is a better fit for and I I use that term because I don't think It's it's to say that somebody else's proposal is wrong It's just if you're a size 38, you don't want a suit that's a 44 or a 28, you know, you want what fit And that's important, right?
• 2:02
  So so You know get used to that and I would say okay, uh, almost all our systems now have oil dryers when I started You There was no such thing as an oil dryer. We would just take a standard core 303 and cut into the 3 8ths line off of the reservoir and think we were innovators. At the time I guess maybe we were, right?
• 2:03
  Because it's led to what we do now. Um, leak checks. Everybody knows the price of refrigerants are going up. We know that at some point if if stores actually started keeping a carbon scorecard of what's released and what that is going into the atmosphere that would be a real eye opener. So I think a leak check, you know, quarterly is a good thing.
• 2:04
  And If you tell somebody that the leak check for me to wander around your store for two hours and do a thorough leak check with a quality leak detector is going to be the price of, you know, 10 a refrigerant. Well, how big a leak do you need to lose 10 in 13 weeks? Not a lot, right? So again, you're buying insurance off this, this maintenance contract, right?
• 2:05
  Um, do I do a walkthrough individually? Absolutely I do. And I use my ears more than anything. What am I listening for? I'm listening for the sound of noisy fan motors. In some cases, I'm listening for the roaring silence of no fans running at all. I'm running my hand across the, uh, the case. If I'm really sharp, I've got my little Elnor volometer and I'm dragging that because that's just as easy to do while I'm walking as running my hand.
• 2:06
  I'm listening for the sound of fans either hitting ice or hitting water. Another story, right? I'm walking through a store two weeks to Christmas and an old five deck freezer, and I hear the fans hitting the water.
• 2:07
  And I said to the store manager, this thing's iced up. You got to pull it. He says, no, no. It's two weeks to Christmas. He said, I'll lose my job. If I pull it now. Well, I said, you know, it's the Fram oil filter story. Pull it now or pull it later, but trust me, you're going to pull it. I'm having my Christmas dinner and not him, but another guy from the store calls.
• 2:08
  He says, I got a freezer case off. You got to come. I said, so is it this one over here? He said, yeah, you know about it. You know, it's broken. What did you do to it? I said, no, I told you guys two weeks ago, it was iced up. You got to pull it. I said, you got to pull a product. He said, I don't have time. I said, well, I'm not coming.
• 2:09
  It's iced up. You look in the bottom, close the little hand valve, pull the product off. You go. So, you know, I'm, I'm doing that. That's the visual stuff. That's the low hanging fruit. And that's something you can do without being intrusive and without being. Really in depth. Does somebody want you to go through their machine room and drag all of the components on their rack with a leak detector?
• 2:10
  Maybe, maybe not. Have they got an infrared leak detector? Because a lot of the infrared multi zone leak detection that you can buy today is spot on accurate. And if you know how they work, you're going to be brave enough to set the trip limits so low that at the first sniff of refrigerant, you're going to get an alarm and you're going to get in there.
• 2:11
  My, my favorite, favorite one is your leak detector doesn't work. I've had to raise all the limits to keep it from going off. And now all of a sudden I got no refrigerant in my system. I've heard that multiple times.
• 2:12
  It's, it's kind of funny because. One of the first ones we sold was into a store where we had put temperature monitoring in, but nobody wanted to do a retrofit rack control.
• 2:13
  Okay. So I get a call from this guy and bear in mind, he's nine hours from Vancouver. So it's not like I'm going to jump in the truck and just go give him a hand. Right. And he is the local jack of all trades refrigeration contractor in this small town. I mean, he's got to keep, I don't think he did the ice rink, but he did the chiller in the hospital, all the heat pumps there, he's doing residential, the grocery store rack was just another headache for him.
• 2:14
  And he says, your leak detection doesn't work. So anyways, through a little diligence, we found out what time the leak detection was going off, and we, we checked the graphs to see what systems were in defrost, because you could get that off the temperature logs, right? And I said to him, I'd like you to do me a favor.
• 2:15
  I'd like you to go in the back room and put system five in defrost. He said, why would I do that? I said, well, cause I've asked you, and I'd like to see if there's a leak in a coil. And, and then I said, I'd like you to open the doors on the case. Well, where his leak detector was going off was a head that was in the return air trench in this old grocery store.
• 2:16
  And so when system five goes into defrost, the coil starts to leak. You open the door, the refrigerant gets sucked into the return air trench, which is taking the cold air out of the aisle and off goes the leak detector. So at that point, I said, okay, now it's going off with system five and defrost, pull the deck pans and see what you find.
• 2:17
  And sure enough, there's a case there that's completely covered in ice. The coil's crushed, and every time it goes on defrost, the pressure in the coil comes up, and we're gushing refrigerant up. So much for your leak detection doesn't work, right? So a good maintenance contract will catch things like that.
• 2:18
  You know, look at temperature graphs. I mean, with today's, with today's automated control systems, Go back and see what's been an alarm. Say to the client, look, one of the things we should do is we should look at what's been an alarm in the last three months, and we should, should make sure that we've fixed those things.
• 2:19
  You know, if it's, if it's four things that you've been back to more than once, or somebody has been, and some of our service crews are getting, you know, some of the companies got large service crews, it's not the same guy every day, like it was when there was three guys in the service department. So four guys can have worked on the same thing and be unaware of it.
• 2:20
  If you're not careful. So go in. Tell them I'd like to spend half an hour and just review the graphs, make sure things are good. And I think what you'd find is, I mean, that's maybe a little over the top, but those are the things that come to the top of my mind in terms of what are the things you could look at?
• 2:21
  What are the things you could, uh, could propose to people and understand that not everybody's going to buy everything. And, you know, the other thing that hits us in this world is budget cuts. You know, so many of, of, of the major grocery chains are publicly traded companies. So think about this. We're all working in our trade and we've all been very fortunate that the industry as a whole has put money into pension funds for it.
• 2:22
  And so as people contributing, we want those funds to make money. Cause we want to be able to retire. And the sooner, the better the net effect is that they go out and buy stock in our favorite grocery store. And if it doesn't look like they're going to hit their target, then for a momentary period of time, they put a drag on or a slow down on spending.
• 2:23
  So you go and go, Hmm, you won't fix anything.
• 2:24
  Yeah.
• 2:25
  Sometimes you're up against budget restraints. Sometimes it's pushed down the road and other things. And. You have to find a way to be able to work with them. I've had more than once where people have come to me and said we love the pm program But this year we just don't have the money for it How do we cut it back from four to three or three to two?
• 2:26
  We find a way to work with it So I don't think I don't think there's value for you in being stubborn You know, you need to be adaptable if your client comes and says look this is my current situation Find ways to work on, you know, and, and, you know, go back and say, if I could only, if I could only have 12 hours this year to do maintenance on your refrigeration rack, what would I do?
• 2:27
  I would wash your condensers. I would clean your dryers. I would do a visual and I'd do a leak check
• 2:28
  Trevor: And that's the thing. I like that. It's like being flexible with your customers because you're right Some customers don't have the budget. They want to do it some of them, but they just don't have the budget And you have to be flexible.
• 2:29
  So maybe it's you have a A full inclusive one. Maybe there's one that's broken down. Like he said, clean that condenser, change those filters, do the leak check, you know, because that's, and then you've got to break it down into terms that they understand that. Like you said that earlier, like that, that, uh, thing where your, your mom went down to get the, the water heater.
• 2:30
  And then all of a sudden he was talking in trade terms. And I think this is a, a big thing that I talk and teach about my programs that you got to, See them where they're at. Like you said, you got to talk to them in their terms. And I like the one that you use where everybody understands the car analogy.
• 2:31
  You go and change the filter in your, your car every three months or whatever, 3000 kilometers. It's the same thing in a refrigeration system. There's people opening up the system that things get changed, things that break down. So I think that is very, very important to make it relate to them. And I talked about it, especially in a grocery store, they understand.
• 2:32
  Every bag that leaves the store how much money they make from it and how many they need to move out of the Out of the store to to make the bottom line profit, right? Because they don't make that much margin They got to sell a lot So when you talk in their terms that that'll make it easier uh, because having a store down for a day and i'm i'm talking with people in with Grocery change and contractors like the store is down for a day.
• 2:33
  How much does that cost? That pays for 10 maintenance plans, depending on where it's at in time a year. You know what I mean? I
• 2:34
  Jim: think you got heat on your neck when you're on holidays in the sunny zone. Just be standing there with a store down and see how much intensity and tension you're going to get.
• 2:35
  Right. I mean, it's, it's true, but I think, I think all of this comes back to working with a client. You know, I had a situation where, you know, in the early days of 404 and poly oil, there was a lot of conversions done. To equipment that was built for 502 and R22. And admittedly we had wear issues and other things, right?
• 2:36
  I went into a store and it was still under warranty. But the client had closed another store. So the refrigeration system they put in had been repurposed from another site. It wasn't that old, but it was still 4 or 5 years old. And I get in there and of the 12 cylinders in his 4 compressors, 3 were doing some work.
• 2:37
  I think I had like 38 pounds suction pressure on a low temp rack on 404. It was just bizarre. I said, this will barely keep a cutting room, much less frozen food. Pull ahead and find out. I've got, I've got reeds smashed all over the place. And I went down and I said to him, I said, look, we got some major trouble here.
• 2:38
  We got a scramble, but there are free valve kits upgrade kits for these available. I've found some I'm going to be 45 minutes to pick them up. You got to keep the doors on the freezers closed. This is going to get bad before it gets better. But in about three hours, we should be pulling down to something that's good.
• 2:39
  I said, with little luck, we can keep three of these pumps online and going. You got one that's just scrambled and we're going to have to change it, but we're not doing it today. There just isn't time. We're going to do it tomorrow. This is three weeks before Christmas or two weeks before Christmas, right?
• 2:40
  Not what he wants to hear. And he's a new store manager, you know, so this is going to put him in trouble with his regional manager. Everybody is just interested in what's going on. We get those three that we thought we could fix up. Back pressure starts pulling down. It's late in the day. They close. Pulls down overnight.
• 2:41
  The next day we change the other compressor. And for the rest of the Christmas season, they were fine. Hanging by a thread, but they were fine. We managed to stretch the replacement of the two other compressors out. Instead of over six months like I had hoped, we managed to stretch it out over 18. Well, that's not a great story in terms of the problem.
• 2:42
  Oh. But I think for him, it was a pretty good story because he had six months to amortize that compressor changeover. He wasn't getting hit month after month after month, you know, a new store, they got a lot of costs. It takes a long time before a new grocery store gets to the point where it starts to make money.
• 2:43
  So, you know, a little, a little understanding and then to be able to say to him, look, in light of what's going on, We really need to keep a close eye on what's going on with these compressors so that we don't get caught out again. So to your point, some of it's PM. It's all selling. I'm here to do what's in your best interest.
• 2:44
  And, and we as the technicians are the people that know the equipment the best, you know? So to your point, you know, all of these soft skills that you can learn, whether it's selling, whether it's numbers, you know, just basic communication with people.
• 2:45
  Speaker: And
• 2:46
  Jim: you know, English is a great language, but it's used so imprecisely that, that confusion is almost, almost inevitable.
• 2:47
  You listen to what people say, I catch this, catch myself doing it all the time, and you say something which is a generalization which describes what you're trying to say. But it's not necessarily specific. And I think if we were all absolutely deadpan specific, we'd drive each other nuts, but you have to understand that the potential for miscommunication is huge.
• 2:48
  The ability to back up, slow down, rephrase something and make sure that you've qualified it properly. I mean, we had a great salesman at Jones and he always said when he was going to close the deal, he closed it twice. And I said, you close it twice. How can you sell it twice to the same guy? He said, well, he said, I get the order.
• 2:49
  I let them off the hook. And if they jump on willingly the second time, I know I got them. They're going to buy it without buyer's remorse. And there are a lot of people in sales who think if I can just get in and get it, once I've got it, I'm not going to let go. I'm like, you know, I'm like, uh, double sided tape.
• 2:50
  Once I'm on, you're not getting rid of me. Our industry tends to be multiple sales to the same people. It's not like you're selling a dishwasher to Mr. and Mrs. Smith on a Friday night at the appliance store and if they bought this one you don't see them again for five or seven years and there's a good chance that they go to a different appliance shop next time anyway.
• 2:51
  We're repeat business, so it's all about integrity and communication. And I totally agree with
• 2:52
  Trevor: that. And that's how you build your business, you know, and this is the way I talk with business owners, just like yourself. And this is what you want your teams to do. You want them to build the relationships, all the managers that I know and understand and operation managers and directors and business owners like yourself, do you want to have your team be that go to person for that customer?
• 2:53
  You know, there are times though, when you're bigger customers, they're seeing different technician, but when you're there, you should be the technician that you want them to call you back every time that you want them to call up the service manager, the owner, say, Oh, we want Jim to come back. And he was a rockstar.
• 2:54
  And that, when you do that at every store, every call, you're going to start to see a difference in the way you troubleshoot, the way you communicate. Both with the customer as well as in your office. I see this time and time again with technicians that I work with, where they're like, all of a sudden they're trying every call is a new call.
• 2:55
  You know what I mean? It's that's the first call. And all of a sudden it's not like, Oh, this is a fixed fifth call. I'm tired. I'm done. And cranky at them because the last customer is cranky at you. No, this is a new customer. They never seen you all day, all week, maybe all month. But if you come with your a game tried to every time, and I know our industry can be punishing.
• 2:56
  You're working nights, you're working days, you're on call. But if you can come in with that smile, with a clean shirt on and try to listen to what their, their problems are, because a lot of times they don't know what their problem is, but you're the person that has the solution for that
• 2:57
  Jim: problem. Well, and, you know, consider where you are in the, in, in the building.
• 2:58
  And I'm going to put this up. , when I was an apprentice and sometimes when I'm in my backyard working on something that's not going so well, the language sometimes gets a little colorful. Consider where you are. If you're swearing your head off and you're on the sales floor and there's customers there, the client isn't going to be very happy, you know?
• 2:59
  So I always think today is the best day in the world to go out and present the best version of yourself. And if you can go out and do that, you don't have to be perfect. I mean, I, I get calls from clients who say I'm reading this work order and I don't really know what it says. And I said, well, I can read between the lines, but I'm going to call the technician and find out.
• 3:00
  I said, the reality is. I said, you know, we're fridge guys. Cause we want to hit something with a hammer for a living. I said, if we were going to be that eloquent, we'd be English teachers. That's not who we are. That's what you get. That's part of the nature of the beast. Right. Um, but, but from the point of view of being able to get your message across to the client, you know, and being able to write a work order, and I will suggest to most people, less is more, you know, don't tell me a flowery story about the.
• 3:01
  The roses on the side of the road as you're driving to the store and how the weather was, and you know, you were worried about the traction on your tires or whatever. I got to the store, the client reported this problem. I investigated and I found this, this, and this. This is what we did to fix it. This is what we think are the root causes.
• 3:02
  Here are our recommendations. And by gosh, off your recommendations. Don't you have a base to do a quote or give them a maintenance proposal? Right, like it's one thing leads to another, right? So
• 3:03
  Trevor: yeah, there's two ways on that too. You don't want to write three pages of a story that makes no sense to the customer as well as you don't want to go in and give them a ten thousand dollar bill and just say A valve plate replacement or a compressor replacement.
• 3:04
  Jim: Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, no there needs to be there needs to be something plausible and again, I would would suggest You know, keep away from the trade speak, you know, my SST was too low on this and that, you know, I found the rack not performing properly, find a layman's term to put it in. You know, I always think if, if I was going to put it in front of my, my mother or my grandfather, would they get enough out of it that it seemed reasonable.
• 3:05
  And, you know, I asked one of my clients one day, I said, you know, how are we doing on service for you? He said, well, I think it's okay. But he said, to be honest with you, I don't understand it anyway. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, he said, all I know is my case doesn't work. You come in and you tell me the foo foo valve was broken at a 7, 500 bucks.
• 3:06
  And I nod my head like a dope and say, go ahead and put another one in. He said, how would I know? He said, you put it in the case starts to work and everything's great. You come back two weeks later. My, my case is warming. You tell me there was a breaker off for the fans. Okay. Case starts to work. I have to believe what you're telling me.
• 3:07
  I don't know the difference. And that's the important part. You know, um, if, if you had a brain tumor, tumor. Would you want the technical description of how the doctor was going to treat it? Or would you like something that was geared towards you as a layperson who has a disease to try and understand what you're going to go through and what we can do?
• 3:08
  Right? So, you know, when you're pitching it, think about what would happen if you didn't know what you know when you were receiving it. That's a great, I find that's a, you know, if I could explain what I was doing to the receptionist in our building, Hey, I heard you had a tough service call. Yeah, I went and did this.
• 3:09
  If they give you that glassed over, you're too technical. If they nod and say, well, it sounds like you did a good job, then maybe you hit it about right. That's a learned skill, you know, and a lot of us, you know, particularly if you're not a person that's that outgoing. If you're good technically, but, you know, you've had the luxury of being on construction sites for years where you talk to your workmates and maybe the odd client, but not people regularly and you get thrust into service.
• 3:10
  Service is about talking to people, you know, you have to be, you do better if you're social and outgoing, and if that's not you, you're going to have to work at it. And
• 3:11
  Trevor: it can be, you can, anybody can do really anything, if you're an introvert, I know tons of people that are introverts, but they go on stage and talk to a thousand people or two thousand or five thousand people, but you see them one on one, they're awkward.
• 3:12
  So, but you can get to that, that, that stage, but you got to work at it. And when you say you're bad at something, when you say that the first time you should start working on that, that's exactly, if you say, Oh, I'm bad at this, why don't you just go right then and there and start working at it? Cause the only way to get better is to work at it.
• 3:13
  It's just like refrigeration. Like you said, what, what did, where does the refrigerant go up the hill? How does it get up there? Well, you worked at it for 40 years and now you know how it works. Yeah,
• 3:14
  Jim: yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, uh, what he was distributing was common sense. I just didn't know it at the time, right.
• 3:15
  And, uh, you know, really when you talk about working at it, you know, most of us like to practice the things we do well, that's fun, but the greatest growth is to go to the things you do the poorest, because even a slight increase there is going to have a phenomenal impact on what you're doing. Right. And, you know, It kind of comes down to math.
• 3:16
  So I'm going to give you an equation, Trevor, and I'm going to say, so here's something that I can do with a skill level of one, I'm going to multiply it by something that I do with a skill level of two. I'm going to multiply that by something that I do with a skill level of 15. I can add one to any of those.
• 3:17
  What gives me the biggest bang. If I take the one and make it a two, I've instantly doubled it. If I take the 15 and make it a 16, I haven't had that big an impact. So go to the stuff you're the weakest at. Suck up your pride. And, and I would suggest this for, for a lot of, a lot of us, we grew up with peer pressure.
• 3:18
  The feeling that you had to quote, in my day, the term was look cool. I got no idea what the current term is because, you know, I'm not cool. But, but, but you had to look like you had it all together. Right? And yet, if I look back on the people that I've known in my life, the ones who have had the marvelous experiences are the ones who were not afraid to dance like nobody's watching, who were prepared to get out of their comfort zone and just do something to enjoy it.
• 3:19
  Get the experience. And in some cases, what the experience tells you is, this is not for me. I've tried it. I know it's not for me. Okay, then go do something you like, you know, and if you like doing service and you're shy around people, You will find if you get talking, you can be the motor mouth of all time, just like anybody else.
• 3:20
  Just learn how to talk to people. It's the greatest skill in the world. Most people don't know what you're going to say. So if you think I've missed something when you give the speech, they had no idea it was there. They didn't go, Oh, he didn't tell me about this. No, they don't know. And the good thing is you get a do over every day.
• 3:21
  Every conversation you get to go and catch up, right? Have you ever gone into a site and said, Hey, when we were here last time, we went through this, but there's just one other thing I want to add for you to think about. Well, if somebody did that to me, I think, Hey, that's great. This person's actually thinking about me and my problem beyond when he's just standing in front of me, as opposed to, I'm going to give you what for it.
• 3:22
  Cause you missed something and I didn't get it in the first bit pass. You don't have to be perfect. You just got to keep at it.
• 3:23
  Trevor: I love that. And I think that's so true, Jim, this, this is always amazing chatting with you. We'll have to have to do this more, but I think if. Us as technicians, just continue to try a little bit, work at ourselves.
• 3:24
  It's, it's only going to benefit you because I, once again, I said earlier, it is a tough job, like you said, you're working on Christmas day. Sometimes you're working on holidays. You got to be away sometimes when your kids are at a sports event, but. If you work on yourself, it's going to make it a lot easier and that you'll get out of those situations just like you did on that one time where they called you up on Christmas Day and you, you told them this is the steps that you need to take because I can't make it out there today.
• 3:25
  And I know it's not the case always, but this is how you build a relationship, build yourself, build yourself. The more you build yourself as a technician, the better and easier supermarket refrigeration is going to be.
• 3:26
  Jim: Yeah, and you know, I would leave people with one thought, which is put yourself in a spot to be successful.
• 3:27
  And, and, and I don't want to encourage anybody to leave a job, but what I would say is this, if you have ambitions to do things, it helps if your employer is willing to find ways to move you along. Now, you know, I did have a first year apprentice who wanted to be my controls guru, and he left when I told him, get yourself 10 years field experience.
• 3:28
  Then we'll talk about controls. Cause if you don't know how the machine works and more importantly, how it breaks. Trying to control it isn't going to be for you. You need the skillset underneath, but that said, if you want to do this and you're somewhere where they say, no, there's just no opportunity.
• 3:29
  Then like a lot of us, you have to stand back and go, okay, what is it I want to do with life? And you know, you're going to go to work every day. If it's going to be work, that's going to make it a lot harder. If you can enjoy it, if you can go out and do your job and have relationships with your clients, your coworkers, your boss, and everybody that are positive.
• 3:30
  Well, you go in on Monday and before you know it, it's Friday and it's the weekend again. Um, I worked at a guy who worked at a, worked with a guy who had come from a job making cardboard boxes. He said they punched in at eight o'clock and at five after eight, you started watching the clock waiting for coffee.
• 3:31
  That doesn't happen in this trade. So put yourself in a spot to be successful. I love that. I love
• 3:32
  Trevor: that, Jim. Jim, thank you so much for taking time. We're going to do this again and look forward to seeing you on the Refrigeration Mentor Podcast again.
• 3:33
  Jim: Thanks,
• 3:34
  Trevor.