How do I know what my team is really doing when most of the time they’re not under my direct supervision? What can I do to make sure my team delivers on my expectations consistently? These are two very common questions we regularly hear from our business coaching clients. So when things don’t go well …
Read more

Seven #HVAC Myths Debunked

When it comes to the HVAC Industry from a consumer’s perspective, there seems to be a lot of misinformation about how to manage and maintain comfort systems. These tidbits of misinformation come disguised as “truth” when actually they are more like myths and urban legends. The problem is that a lot of contractors out there …
Read more

Reputation management

Reputation management? Online Reputation management? What gives? In case you haven’t noticed, the Internet is changing everything. It can be good or bad change and depends on how well you adapt and take advantage of the opportunities it presents. It’s noteworthy that internationally-recognized leadership consultant Robin Sharma says, “Change is hard at first, messy in …
Read more

Are you a member of an HVAC trade organization? I’m talking about the ones you have to pay dues to belong to. If you don’t, think about something that Benjamin Franklin once stated: an investment in knowledge pays the best interest. Seems reasonable, right? Yet it occurs to me, in the HVAC contracting world, the …
Read more

Comfort Solutions are Key to Performance-based selling

Beating the Comfort Commodity Challenge When it comes to comfort differentiation, HVAC manufacturers have it tough these days. The rapid pace of technological development means that no single manufacturer can maintain a competitive edge for very long. Each one invests millions of dollars developing new products and, before they can cash their first check, one …
Read more

Measuring static pressure

Like blood pressure in humans, static pressure impacts HVAC systems, positively or negatively, depending on what that pressure is. We all know that high or low pressure is bad for human health. The same is true when it comes to building static pressure as well. Taking a building’s static pressure lets you “see” the HVAC …
Read more

When it comes to dealing with HVAC customer and employee problems, the famous quote, “We have met the enemy, and he is us,” by the comic strip character, Pogo, said it all. Some time ago, I was following a conversation on one of the HVAC Industry discussion forums that addresses how business owners deal with …
Read more

Red Ocean

About 10 years ago, a book titled, “Blue Ocean Strategy” was published by the Harvard Business Review Press. When I first read this book I recognized the things that we’d been doing at NCI for the previous 10 years were actually part of a blue ocean strategy. Our blue ocean was, and is, helping our …
Read more

When it comes to HVAC sales, things can be quite confusing. The rapid pace of technological development means that no manufacturer can maintain a competitive edge for very long. Manufacturers develop a hot new box and, before they can cash their first check, a competitor has produced a bigger, better, faster or cheaper version. As …
Read more

Angry American Politics

It’s in the books: the first Republican debate on the road to the 2016 presidential elections. As a native of Cleveland, I want to say how proud I am of this city and its people. Commentators said that the Cleveland audience was one of the most demonstrative in the last three election cycles. How cool …
Read more