SAVANNAH, GEORGIA — National Comfort Institute connected the dots for its members at the organization’s 13th annual meeting here at the Savannah Hilton DeSoto hotel in mid-April. The dots that NCI connected for its contractor members are the three major components necessary to be successful: Generating Leads, Closing the Sale, and Delivering the products and services.
More than 140 total attendees descended on this historic coastal Georgia town to attend seminars and visit vendor partners at the accompanying trade show.
This year’s theme focused on connecting the dots between Home and HVAC Performance. Over the years, NCI has taught HVAC contractors about the concepts of Performance-Based Contracting and addressed preliminary action plans on how to actually implement it into their companies.
“Two thumbs up for the 2016 Summit in Savanah,” said David Squires, president of Vincent’s Heating and Plumbing Inc., Port Huron, Michigan. “For those who couldn’t make it, there was a lot of new content and useful tools and more value added to the membership. I already have Scottsdale [next year’s NCI Summit] in my calendar for April 2017.”
In addition to the classes and networking, attendees were treated to an opening session skit and video show that took a humorous look at the difficulties of implementing Home and HVAC Performance into individual businesses. Attendees met the fictitious management team from Connor’s Heating and Air Conditioning, who were struggling with getting their field personnel onboard with NCI’s trademarked “Performance-based Contracting.” An intervention was organized by the NCI team to help Connor’s team understand the relationships between the home and HVAC systems and then connecting the dots to help make their customers raving fans.
“This was my first time attending Summit and it won't be the last,” said Kevin Walsh, president, Schaafsma Heating, Grand Rapids, Michigan. “I learned new things and re-learned some old things. You can bet I’m already planning on changes at Schaafsma to improve our product delivery. The sales presentations were so good I have signed up one of our Comfort Advisors for the upcoming Performance Sales Bootcamp.”
The lively Q&A event threatened to run into overtime as the audience and panelists interacted together, sharing tips and advice.
NCI CEO Dominick Guarino led a five-member contractor panel that addressed questions from the audience on the difficulties, success, and roadblocks to implementing Home and HVAC Performance into their companies.
The lively Q&A event threatened to run into overtime as the audience and panelists interacted together, sharing tips and advice.
The panelists included John Ellis, SoCal Air Dynamics, Northridge, California; Tom Johnson, TM Johnson Bros., Cambridge, Minnesota; Rob Basnett, Basnett Plumbing & Heating, Littleton, Massachusetts; Mike Hartman, Thomas E. Clark, Silver Spring, Maryland, and Mark Pippin, Pippin Brothers Inc., Lawton, Oklahoma.
Even the vendors found the panel discussion fascinating. Case in point, Tracy Johnson from the R.E. Michel Co. said, “I gained so much knowledge about NCI, how much your technical training impacts the companies and lives of the members you work with. I was truly touched from the panel discussions on how the technical trainers impacted their companies to the awards ceremony on how NCI has changed the future of the companies, the lives of the families within those companies and how NCI truly is a family with their members.”
R.E. Michel, which is one of NCI’s newer vendor partners, was also recognized as the group’s 2016 Vendor Partner of the Year.
Additional information about Summit 2016 is available at www.gotosummit.com.
The National Comfort Institute (NCI), is the nation’s premier performance-based training, certification, and membership organization, focused on helping heating, air conditioning, plumbing, and electrical contractors to grow their businesses and become more profitable. To date, the organization has trained and certified more than 20,000 industry professionals in a variety of disciplines including system diagnostics and design, indoor air quality, air balancing, carbon monoxide analysis and combustion efficiency. Additional information is available at the NCI website at www.nationalcomfortinstitute.com.