Tales From a Real-Life Customer: An Interview With Adam Spencer and Nate Lammers
Tales From a Real-Life Customer: An Interview With Adam Spencer and Nate Lammers
Featuring Adam Spencer and Nate Lammers
With Tim Reed
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Interview Note: This conversation originally aired as episode 308 of The Fire Time Podcast and has been edited for print.
Tim Reed: Joining me from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a return guest to the show. I’m here today with Nate Lammers, sales rep for Kozy Heat in the Midwest, and Adam Spencer. Now, Adam is someone we’ve never had on the podcast before because he is a customer who just bought a fireplace and had it installed. Adam and Nate, thanks so much for being here today.
Nate Lammers: Pleasure.
Adam Spencer: Thanks for having us.
TR: Okay, we’ve never done anything like this. And Nate, this goes back to you. You texted me a number of months ago saying, “Hey, have you ever had a customer on your show that has bought a fireplace?” And I said, “No, I never have.” You immediately texted me a picture and said, “I think we can get this guy on.” So why don’t you take it from there? Set us up with how we got here today.
NL: Sure. I’ll try to make a long story short. Adam and I went to high school together, and then, about four years ago, we found ourselves living in the same neighborhood. So I’m out walking the dog one morning a couple of months ago, and I’m walking by Adam’s house, and I notice there’s a fireplace shop with a truck and trailer in the driveway. And I’m like, “Huh, looks like Adam’s getting some fireplace work done. I wonder what’s going on there.” So I get a little bit closer, and out on the lawn is a pretty beat-up 42-inch zero-clearance wood-burning fireplace and a bunch of associated chimney with it. Obviously, it’s being extracted from the home, and I’m like, “All right, I see what’s happening here.”
So I kept walking, and I got Adam on the cell phone, and I said, “Hey, dude, what’s happening? It looks like you’ve got some fireplace work going on.” And he said, “Yeah, as a matter of fact, our fireplace was pretty shelled out, and it was time to be replaced. It was just in terrible shape.” And I said, “So do you know what I do for a living? I’m in sales, right?” And he says, “Yeah, I think I knew you were in sales.” I said, “Well, I sell fireplaces for a living.” He started laughing, and I said, “Yeah, it’s funny. If you’ve got a minute, can I pick your brain about this project?” And he says, “Yeah, fire away.” I said, “Well, I kind of want to know how you decided to go with that fireplace company. Did you shop around? What started you wanting to do this project? Just fill me in, if you don’t mind.”
And so Adam started talking about it and filling me in on all the bits and pieces, and I was just blown away because everything he was describing was the sales process that we go on and on and on about in training when we talk about how to sell, how to close, how to educate customers, how to solve their problem, and so on. Every single thing that came out of his mouth was like, “Wow, it’s all true.” If the dealer follows certain steps, the dealer will get the sale. So I think that you and Adam can probably take it from here, because it was just good stuff.
TR: Awesome. Okay, so Adam, I’ve got so many questions. But maybe first, could you lay it out? A number of months ago, you start thinking about replacing your fireplace. What brought you to the point where you took action on starting to research online?
AS: It actually came about three years ago. Every year, we have the chimney and fireplace inspected and cleaned. And three years ago, the person came out, cleaned it, inspected it, and said, “Okay, I can no longer give this a passing grade moving forward, because the back of your fireplace is kind of caving forward, and that’s a safety issue. You need to consider replacing this or changing it out.”
So I called somebody. We also needed a new gas pipe insert at the time—the starter—and I needed to replace that anyway. So I called somebody to replace that, and I started talking to him about, “What do we do from here?” And he said, “Well, I could come out, and it would take a few days.” He was not motivated at all to dive into the project. It was very clear. And on top of it, he left me the gas pipe to replace it and didn’t install it. He was like, “You just get a wrench.” And I’m like, “I didn’t want to do any part of this. I wanted to hire you to do it.” You should also know, I might be the least handy man that you know. So I asked a friend to come over, and he ended up putting in the new pipe, and that was great.
So the next year, we realized it was even worse. So I contacted somebody else and had him come out. His suggestion was that I heat it up real hot and bang it with a sledgehammer and bash it back into place.
TR: Was this a service technician with a chimney service company? Was this a fireplace retail shop?
AS: It was a heating and cooling company.
TR: Got it.
AS: One that services, and then, according to them, does as much fireplace work as you need. Well, like I said, his suggestion was to heat the back up real good and bash it with a sledgehammer. I’m like, “I’m not doing that.”
So this spring, we decided we have to take it seriously, and we don’t want to burn in there anymore. The siding on the other side of the house was warped, because we think too much heat was escaping, and that’s not safe at all. And so I decided to get online and research area companies. I think the one we chose was the second one down on the list, and it said “beginning to end,” meaning, “We’ll do it all. You’ll hire us, and we’ll do everything.” And that is right up my alley, because I want to be presented with options and then choose the option. But I don’t want to go searching for a drywaller and searching for all the different things that go into the fireplace. The one-stop shop was exactly what I wanted. And so that’s how I came to contacting the person that I did.
TR: Man, that’s amazing. So I’m curious: When you knew that you wanted to replace it, did you start with browsing products on, like, a manufacturer site, or did you go straight for local companies?
AS: I went straight for local companies. My wife was looking at products.
TR: So you’re typing in, like, “wood stoves, Cedar Rapids,” or something like that?
AS: I think “fireplace construction,” or some typical Google search. I just wanted somebody to hire and do it all for me.
TR: So your wife is looking at products. Were you with her in this? Was she pulling you over to say, “Hey, come look at this. Look at this”?
AS: We didn’t get that far, because I left a message with the company we used, and within 10 minutes, maybe, he had already called me back and set up a meeting time. So I think at that point, we decided, “Hey, I want to meet with this person before we even go any further, just to see what he has to say,” because I didn’t feel overly good about educating myself. I’m not the type of person to just go online and look at products and decipher which one is best when I have no idea what I’m looking at to begin with. So the fact that he called me back 10 minutes after I left the message, that’s not easy. It’s not easy to get people to call you back. Right away, he had a time and a date to meet. So that’s the process of how we got him.
TR: Okay, I want to pause there. Nate, I want to go to you. I was actually just teaching on this last week with a company here in Portland, where I live: The sooner you can follow up with customers who have given you a lead through your website, the better chance you have of closing a sale and of helping them. And I think that a lot of salespeople get scared that they’re going to come across as too pushy or too aggressive if they call back two minutes later, five minutes later. Just hearing Adam’s story, what are you thinking about in terms of this?
NL: I don’t want to sidetrack the story, so I’m going to tell just a super quick one from my own experience buying something this summer. We had our closet remodeled, and we used a company that got back to us right away and said, “We can handle this work right away. Here’s your pricing, and here’s a discount if you purchase today.” I loved the discount. Pricing was fair. And I had a new closet in two weeks. I was like, “They got my business.” Whereas the other closet companies were all cabinet companies who said, “We can get out there in a couple of weeks to look at your project.” And I’m like, if I can get this done in a couple of weeks, then let’s do it. Expediency is king, in my opinion.
TR: Absolutely. And I have to imagine you see this as a sales rep, because this is what I see as I do trainings: Many salespeople are gun-shy, or they don’t make it a priority to call back incoming leads. And it’s like, man, that is someone right now who’s saying, “I want to talk to a person about this.” That should be really close to the top of whatever else is going on.
AS: I can actually expand on this as well. We have a guy that we consider to be our siding and roofing guy, and he’s done a little window work for us. We were driving by one of his work trucks, saw the number, and called it. We were four minutes from home. We left a message, and he was on the phone with us before we even could get home. And now we’ve used him maybe six times over the last four years for different siding, roofing, and window projects, because we were just impressed with the callback that quickly.
TR: Wow. Yeah, that’s really good. Nate, anything else on follow-up time?
NL: Well, I understand that in the busy time, as Adam said, it’s hard to get back to people right away, especially if you’ve got full schedules. But I think a touch point to a lead sooner than later is important. There are fireplace dealers sometimes, especially when it gets into fireplace season, that are like, “We literally, physically cannot get out to your job for four weeks,” which I think can be problematic, just because the customer may just go buy something from someone else, and the sale just evaporates. So that’s a challenge. I don’t have to solve for it for places that do get booked out that far. But when somebody says, “I’m interested in a fireplace,” I think that person needs to be contacted—lickety-split. Even if you can’t get there until, let’s say, January, you can still say, “We want your business, we want to see your project, and we can be there sooner than later.”
TR: Yeah, sales is a game of momentum. And even to say, again, in your example, “I can’t get out there right now, but there’s something I can do right now to help you move the ball down the field.” I think that as long as customers feel like, “These people care about me; they’re helping me move the ball down the field,” people can be pretty accommodating with schedules. But when we don’t even lift a finger, like, Adam, I love your language when you were like, “It was really clear that first company was just not motivated in any way to come out and help me.” When we just pass the buck like that, customers know that, and of course they go elsewhere.
NL: Well, and then I think it’s important, actually, to give our fireplace dealers grace and understand that homeowners don’t necessarily need it done right away. They just want to start the project. So, Adam, your stove was set in position last week. When was your first reach-out to the fireplace dealer? Do you have any recollection of that? Was it maybe two or three months ago?
AS: If I went back and looked, I could find messages and stuff. I have to think it was late May.
NL: So three months. So you didn’t have to have your stove installed in two weeks. You just wanted to know that you were beginning the process.
TR: And seeing the before-and-after pictures, your project was a pretty major project. It just looks like there were a lot of steps to it. Okay, I want to fast-forward, Adam, to when this company comes out to your house. What did they do? What made you feel comfortable moving ahead with them? Were there multiple appointments, or just the one?
The one-stop shop was exactly what I wanted.
AS: We had two appointments, one initially. I think I was on the phone with him on a Tuesday. He showed up on Friday afternoon at around 4pm. And I just remember we told him we didn’t have an end time, and he said, “I don’t either.” It was he and his wife, and I think they were with us for two hours that first time, moving through way more than I ever could have expected—all the different options. So at that point, we were pretty set on getting a wood-burning fireplace, an actual fireplace. So we kind of narrowed it down.
And then we were supposed to meet back, I think, two weeks later. And when we met back two weeks later, a couple of things had changed. I made a couple of comments that made him leery of the fireplace being what I really wanted and needed, and he showed me a picture of the wood stove. And within a second, I knew that’s what I wanted. We had talked about a wood-burning fireplace and a gas fireplace; the wood stove, we hadn’t really touched on that much. But there was something I said that triggered him to think, “I should at least show him this.” And I knew immediately. So, two weeks later, we basically changed the entire plan. He was going to do the thing where he cuts the siding in the back of the house and pulls the fireplace out from the back. We went from that to a complete indoor remodel, where we’re out with the brick and the built-in cabinets and everything around it and going with something completely different. And so even two weeks after they gave us two hours of their time, he sat in our living room for another hour and a half going through more prep and design-type stuff.
TR: That’s so cool. Okay, so I’m curious, too: As you headed into this, did you have any idea what these things cost?
AS: Not a clue. As I was researching a company, my wife was researching products, and I want to say we came up with a ridiculously low number initially, thinking, “Oh, this won’t be that bad.” The websites that we looked at, you’re looking at just the cost of the product, and there’s no sense of how much it costs. So you can think you’re ballparking it, but you’re not. It’s quite expensive, which is, I mean, totally worth it, but you’re going to pay the price.
TR: So how did he approach pricing for you? How did you get an understanding of what that was going to be?
AS: We really didn’t touch much on pricing. I think we came across as, “We’re going to pick what we want first and worry about the price second,” which isn’t always the case. But in our situation, we were just in a position where we could think design and interest first, with price secondary. And then, once we got more of a hardcore plan, that’s when he started talking about different things that could potentially bring the cost down. So he did talk about it afterwards, as far as different things we could lower the price on, different suggestions that could help us out there. But we didn’t really touch on price as much as we probably should have.
TR: It sounds like he was making sure that he understood the solution that you wanted first, and then came along with the price for that solution. Am I understanding?
AS: Absolutely. He definitely was looking at our desires first, and what he thought would fit what we would really want in the end.
TR: Man, there’s got to be a lot there. Nate, how does that relate to your closet remodel?
NL: This closet story, if you want to hear more about it—it’s probably just boring, but I have to go on. So I need the closet. Closets by Design, which is clearly a franchise closet company, gets back to me right away. A 25-year-old girl shows up in her pickup truck. She comes in and says, “Hi, I’m Allie. Nice to meet you.” And I said, “Nice to meet you.” She says, “Show me the closet.” And I said, “You bet.” And she says, “I’m going to sit down on the floor and sketch out your closet. I just need about 15 minutes, and I’ll come back down.” And so she comes back downstairs with the sketched-out closet, and she’s got pricing with good, better, best categories. And she says, “Your ‘good’ is going to be just pressed white wood. Here’s going to be the layout.” And I said, “Well, this is in our forever home, so ‘good’ is just fine for me.” We had old wire racks before, right? We wanted a more organized closet space.
And she shows me the pricing, and she says, not to repeat myself, but I think she said, “10% off this month is our special. And if you make a purchasing decision today, we can do an extra 5% off.” Which I loved, because she’s leading me to making a decision, and we’re talking about price right away. So there’s just no ambiguity. And I said, “Well, my wife put me in charge of this project. So can I talk to her and shoot you a text within a day and still get that extra 5%?” She said, “Absolutely.” And so that was my pricing experience: Here’s the price. Looks good to me. And yes, I do want to make a decision; move it forward. So my decision-making process went kind of hand in hand with price. She really put me into the sales funnel and spit out a closet.
TR: I love hearing how she honored your time, right? She gave you the ability to make a decision now if you want to. But if you need to talk to your wife, “Hey, that’s okay. You can text me tomorrow. I can follow up with you.” I love that idea of having a time-bound incentive to make a decision, but we’re not going to force you to make that decision. If you want to sleep on it, if you want to talk to your wife, I really like that.
NL: Yeah, it was low pressure.
TR: So, Adam, going back to you. Looking at these before-and-after pictures—and by the way, I used to sell the brand of wood stove that you purchased, and it’s a pretty rockin’ wood stove, from my experience. So you did really well. But these before-and-after pictures are wildly different. You went from carpets to hardwood. You went from a built-in fireplace with cabinetry on the sides to the cabinetry is gone, the brick chimney is gone, a sleek hearth pad that the fireplace is on, a contemporary wall with new cabinetry. Going into it, did you have any idea that’s what you were going to do?
AS: We didn’t think we were going to lose the cabinets. We thought we’d keep those. We had the plan for the hardwood floor; we had kind of been talking about that for a couple of years. And going into it, we thought we just would have a replaced fireplace, or a new fireplace, with new stone around it. We did not expect a wood-burning stove sitting up against the wall. We did not expect that the built-ins would be gone. I would say maybe 25% of what we expected going into it is how it actually turned out.
TR: And this fireplace company did all of that for you? Were there other contractors involved?
AS: The only other one involved was the hardwood flooring guy. So the work of removing the fireplace and removing the brick all took place in mid-July. And then he just kind of left it as is. He did the stone; he did all that. And then, I don’t know, maybe two or three weeks later, the flooring guy came in, took out the carpet, and put in the hardwood. And then two or three weeks later, the wood stove went in. It was maybe a two-month total process of actual physical work. And it really was organized well, because the drywall, the stone, and obviously the stove all were done by the fireplace company, and that made it really, really easy.
TR: I’d love to hear about how this process went because there’s a lot that you did. I think that for many people, it would get very overwhelming to have so many decisions and so many moving parts and pieces. And I know that for myself, there are times as a salesperson where you’re tempted to punt on a project because you look at it and you’re like, “It’s probably a little bit too complex. I don’t want to mess with it.” Maybe like the first person that you talked to on the phone. And so they just throw customers some homework to try and get them out of their hair, essentially. How did this fireplace company allow you to keep things focused without getting overwhelmed as to how much there was to choose from and the complexity of it?
AS: He did a great job of just making stuff sound doable. Not overwhelming to him at all. He was very, very open to our questions. He was incredibly thorough with responses. Because he laid out seven or eight or nine or even more different options, we felt like there was something that we would find that would work for us. And again, he did not make anything seem overwhelming from his perspective. All of it seemed overwhelming from mine.
I would say it helped that, between the two houses we’ve owned, we’ve done some pretty major remodels. And so that definitely figured in that this is doable. So it kind of kept us even-keeled: While it seems really difficult right now, just remember some of those other projects we did were a beast, and they got done, and now we’re really happy. And so I think his ability to just make it seem doable was key. And he was very clear on the things that we couldn’t do too. And he wasn’t mean about it. I’ve actually had people that made me feel stupid for not knowing that something wasn’t doable. He was not this guy. He was very open about what could be done and very kind about my ideas that weren’t such good ideas, and he definitely made us feel comfortable that it was doable.
TR: This makes me think about something Donald Miller talks about all the time: Customers aren’t looking for another hero in their story. They’re already the hero of their own story. They’re looking for a guide to help them overcome their problem. And it seems like that’s exactly what you just described. It sounds like this guy wasn’t trying to prove how much he knew or anything like that. It sounds like he was really comfortable with what he knew. He was obviously comfortable with what you couldn’t do. And he was a guide for you. I’m curious: Does that language capture it?
AS: 100%. And it’s funny: When we initially discussed pulling the fireplace out of the back of the house, we ended up having this specific siding that is really not easy to deal with and not easy to find. And for the replacement, he was like, “Hey, I know I’ll get it done.” And I said, “Well, I know you are ‘beginning to end,’ but we actually have a siding guy that we really like and rely on. And if we do have to pull him in, I’ll be okay with that because we have somebody we’re very comfortable with.” And so it helped that we had that availability. But he was willing to take it on, just because I had made such a point to say, “You’re the reason I hired you because of your ‘beginning to end.’” And he wanted a hold of that.
TR: Yeah, that’s really good. Okay, so another thing on this: There are a lot of options, right? You picked your hearth pad. You picked your stone color. You picked your paint color. You picked out a stove that had different options on it. How important was it that he made this easy for you?
AS: It was very important. It was a big project, and we’re spending a lot of money. He made us feel like we were the only customer he was dealing with over the last three months, and I’m sure that we weren’t. And being as knowledgeable as he was, but not making me feel inadequate for not having his knowledge, was really important to me. It kept us going in terms of maybe adding on to the project—some things that we weren’t really looking for, where we were like, “Oh, let’s go ahead and do that, because he feels confident about it, and he seems to know what he’s doing, and he’s very articulate with the way it’s going to turn out.” And that was really important.
TR: It makes a ton of sense. It goes back, Nate, to so many conversations we’ve had, and I love, Adam, that you’re validating this. As customers, we ourselves have so many things going on in our lives. If I’m going to be getting a fireplace project, the last thing that I want is to have to become a fireplace expert. I would way rather hire a fireplace expert who can give me clear decisions, so that my input can be understood, but then let the expert be the expert and do the thing. And I feel like, Nate, that’s a big problem: Many salespeople can make the customer feel stupid, maybe because the customer is not as familiar with fireplaces, or they overly educate the customer to the detriment of the project getting done. And I feel like education is valuable to a point. But after that, no more—because it’s like, “Well, I’m hiring you to be the expert. I’m not hiring you to make me the expert.”
NL: We just did a training on Friday last week with a dealership. And I don’t want to say “training,” because I’m not an expert; it was more of a discussion than anything. Over the course of my sales career, talking about all the things that the fireplaces do and how they’re built and what makes them special, the training really just focused on being not a designer but a design consultant. In the sales process, the people walking in the door know nothing about our gear—less than nothing. And so salespeople will jump into the thickness of steel and the dimensions and this and that, and all customers want to know is that it’s going to be done, that the work is quality work, and that when it’s all finished, it’s going to be what they want.
And so we spent a lot of time talking about: Is there going to be a TV above the fireplace? Is there going to be a hearth? Are they interested in serious heat? Just talk to them. Have a conversation about what they’re after, and don’t inundate them with stuff. The thing you said, Adam, about how in the past you’ve dealt with contractors who made you feel stupid: They probably didn’t even know they were doing it. It’s just tone. That can happen in a hot minute, where pretty soon you’re inundating end users with too much information, and they’ve got absolute information overload.
TR: I think that we’ve all had those situations. Again, it’s not that we want to make an uninformed decision. We want to make an informed decision, and that does take a little bit of education. But I really think that principle applies: Customers are hiring an expert to be the expert. They’re not hiring an expert to make them an expert. Otherwise, they’d just be doing it themselves.
So, Adam, this is a big project, start to finish. Nate sent me these before-and-after photos, and they look absolutely incredible. What’s your experience been like now that the work is done?
AS: Now is the part where I’m actually maybe even worse: decorating around it. Dealing with the colors, and dealing with what we put back on the walls that were there before. Obviously, the whole room is a different color. And so the next thing is just finalizing what goes back around the new stuff. My wife is excellent at that, and she’ll take on the bulk of that responsibility, which I appreciate. But it’s definitely a more fun project, knowing that the rest of it looks so good, and we’re just adding to it.
Customers are hiring an expert to be the expert. They’re not hiring an expert to make them an expert.
TR: And I know it’s a wood stove, and it’s still the early fall. Have you guys been able to use it yet?
AS: No. It went in last Friday. The previous Friday, it got pretty cool on the Friday night, and my wife kind of looked at me, and she’s like, “If only we had done it a week earlier.” And I thought, “Yeah, it’s true.” So we haven’t gotten a chance to use it. I was just looking at the weather; I think Sunday night of this week will be the first try.
TR: That’s awesome. I think that as salespeople, Nate, me and you see it on the front end, right? We’re talking to customers, and we’re trying to capture what their mind’s eye wants. Like, Adam, when you mentioned, as soon as he showed me that picture, immediately, that was it. That’s what we’re trying to capture as salespeople. We don’t get to experience the backside of it, which is the warmth and the enjoyment and the community that comes from it. And I just know for myself, having a couple of fireplaces in my house, that experience of staying warm around a fire with your family when it’s freezing cold outside—that’s an amazing experience. And I think it’s an experience that is worth sharing with people. And I guess where I’m going with this, Adam, is I’m thinking about you. You had this great experience with this company. They did this amazing job with the installation. You’re on a podcast talking about it, but this is something you had to have been telling friends and neighbors about, right?
AS: Oh, yeah. Well, it’s one of those things: I will be talking about it, and people know us for it. Through the winter, I typically start the fire when I get home from work in the morning, around 9am, and we have a fire all day, every day, through the course of the winter. And it’s something that our friends and family see when they come over. So, yeah, it’ll be something that gets noticed and gets discussed.
TR: I love that. And so, coming full circle: This company that you used, I know pretty well, and I know that Nate does too. And so when he sent me this picture, and hearing about your experience, for me, it’s really cool to hear that this went so well, start to finish, because I know that this is a business that’s worked really, really hard on trying to make it easy for their customers. They’ve worked really hard on trying to be thorough. I’ve talked to them at different conventions and things. And I know in speaking with this company, there are times where they’re like, “Man, we’re winning jobs where it just seems like people aren’t interested in helping the customer answer the basic questions. And we’re just trying to answer the basic questions, and we’re winning all this work.” And I think that it’s just cool to see that come full circle.
I’d love to end by asking you maybe some marketing questions about our industry. I’m thinking about when we were just talking before we hit record: I asked what brand of stove you got because I couldn’t totally tell from the picture, and you didn’t know. You were going to have to go look it up in the paperwork. And I think that that speaks to something. And again, if you’re a manufacturer listening, you can just turn the volume down for a couple of seconds. But no one, I think, really knows or really cares about the brand of their fireplace, in the same way that if you asked me, “Hey, Tim, what brand are the cabinets in your kitchen?” I don’t know. I’ll have to go check the invoice and see. I have no idea. Now, I want to have a reputable brand, and I want the function and the look of the cabinets to do the thing that I need. But there’s no status that’s gained from me choosing a more premium cabinet brand. And I’m curious: How does that play into your experience with the brand of your particular product?
AS: Going into it, one of his first questions to me was, “Do you have a fireplace insert, or is it a fireplace?” And I didn’t even know. We’ve lived here for 12 years, and I don’t know anything about fireplaces. So we started off with zero knowledge. And to a degree, we kind of ended with zero knowledge, because it was laid out to us. He didn’t focus on the names much. He discussed, “If you go with this company, it’s out of Canada. If you go with this company, it’s out of Detroit.” There were different things that he was updating us on along the way, but he wasn’t just trying to educate us on every little option that we had, with details. Like you said, I might care if I have Nike or ASICS or Reebok shoes. I don’t care about the brand of the fireplace, so long as it functions. Like I said, I wouldn’t know exactly what it is right now without going and looking. The function of it is everything.
TR: I totally agree. And again, manufacturers, you can turn your iPhones back up now. For manufacturers, it’s not to say that brand means nothing. I think that brand is the promise that you commit to. Jeff Bezos says brand is what people say about you when you walk out of the room. Brand is important in the sense that every manufacturer is making promises every day to their customers, based on their marketing, based on the quality of their products, based on how their sales reps support the products, based on how that manufacturer is making decisions in the marketplace. But I would say that brand matters more to dealers than it does to consumers.
AS: I never felt enticed by any one thing other than what he was selling to me. So definitely, the installer seemed more like the customer to the fireplace companies than I did.
TR: I love that. You’re the customer of the fireplace company. They’re a customer of the manufacturer. And again, I think that’s where I’m going with brand: That’s why brand matters so much to the dealer. And it’s not to say the manufacturer shouldn’t go after end users. They should. But what they need to be doing is going after them to say, “Here’s how we can help you solve your problem, and this is the connection to the local professional that’s going to help you do it.”
So, okay, I’m really biased with this. I’m going to try to hide my bias, but I probably won’t be able to do it very well. Adam, I want to ask you about three different situations in your shopping experience. If you’re doing this all over again, and let’s say that your wife’s on a manufacturer’s website: You talked about how she got an idea of pricing, but it was really just the bare-bones product itself. There was nothing else with it. No pipe, no installation, no hearth pad, any of that. Okay, so you’re in the same situation. Would you and your wife prefer option A, option B, or option C in your online shopping experience? Option A is the situation that you had: You see a bare-bones price for the product only, no venting, no installation. Option B: nothing, no prices, “Click here to connect with our local dealer,” and that’s that. Or option C: an average price range, including installation and everything, for these kinds of products.
AS: Average price range.
TR: Why would that be so helpful?
AS: Because when you look and see that a fireplace is $1,500, or X amount, and in the end, after you’ve called somebody to come out and give you a quote to put that fireplace in, and it’s, say, six times that amount? You feel duped. Now, that didn’t necessarily happen to us. But I’ve had that scenario, where I thought I was going to pay a certain amount for something, and in the end, with all the other things that go into it, it’s four times, five times, six times more. And you feel duped by your initial contact of looking at the prices. Maybe it’s on the customer to just realize that the installation and all the work that goes into it is going to be a lot too. But it’s just human instinct.
TR: Like you said, you’re coming into it with nothing. So it’s not your fault that you don’t have the knowledge.
AS: That’s right. We had no knowledge. We’ve done projects; I know they’re expensive. But having a ballpark that’s much closer, even if it’s expensive, is much better than seeing something where you’re like, “Oh, we can work with that,” and then having it not be anywhere near that, and feeling kind of duped.
TR: Okay. So option A is off the table. It’s a bad idea to post just the price of an installed product that actually needs way more things than just that price. We’ve taken that off the table. Now we’re left with option B and C. Option B is just to say, “We’re not posting any prices for any of our products,” just a button to find a local dealer, and the dealer will answer that for you. Okay, so that’s one option. Or it could be an average installed price range. So you’re looking at a given wood stove, and it could say, “Average installed price range: X to Y.” Maybe there’s a little note underneath it saying, “Every project is a little bit different, but here’s an average number of what people spend. You can click here to connect with one of our local professionals, and that professional can come out and give you a more specific bid.” Would you rather have option B or C? So B is no pricing whatsoever, the pro being they’re not going to make a pricing mistake, or option C, with an average installed price range. Which one would you rather have?
AS: I think C. I can do an average price and work with it. When I’m saying I want an average price, I get that it could be higher, it could be lower, but it should be in the ballpark, and I can live with that. No prices? That seems a little deceiving as well, not having any information out.
TR: I love this. How come?
AS: Because a lack of information sometimes just feels deceiving to begin with. It’s, “What are they hiding? How far along in the process are we going to get? Are we going to be completely bought in, find out it’s six times more than our budget, but we’re so far in that we’re going to do it anyway?” So I would say no prices makes you feel really kind of in the dark, and that you’re maybe not getting enough information. But I can live with a ballpark figure.
TR: Man, this has been so good. We’ve never had an episode like this before. And Adam, I’m just really thankful for how gracious you were with your time here. Nate, any parting thoughts for you, as you take all this in from your perspective as a sales rep?
NL: I think it cements what we know about the sales process, and about being responsive, and being informative up to a point where you’re not too informative. And just the quicker you get back to people and help them solve their problems, the more successful you’ll be selling products.
TR: I totally agree. As I’m hearing you out, it’s like, man, make it easy for your customers, and you have a pretty good chance that they’re going to buy from you. Not a guarantee—but a pretty good chance.
AS: And he was very thorough with small details. So when he installed the stone, he asked us if we had any samples of the new flooring that was going in, because he wanted to make sure he didn’t go too far down, so that the flooring guy had room to put the floor all the way up against the wall. And two or three weeks later, when the flooring guy was actually installing the floor, he made a comment that that’s pretty uncommon. A lot of times, they have to sand down those pieces up to the wall because the stone guy’s just going straight to the floor, and they have to work around that. Whereas our guy made it easier for the flooring guy. So he was very detail-oriented. He thought of the little things. And that was impressive to me—that even the flooring guy commented that our fireplace guy knew what he was doing.
TR: Wow, that’s so good, Adam—and I’m so pumped that you got that stove. Like I said, I used to sell those back in the day. They’re really, really nice wood stoves. And it’s cool that you worked with this company too—because I can say first-hand that they really care about their customers, and they’re trying to do nice work. So thanks for being here today. Nate, thank you for putting this together, man. This has been absolutely amazing. I appreciate both of you guys.
NL: Yeah, thank you.
AS: Thank you.
