How To Sell Complete Systems Over Partial Systems

Many technicians and salespeople have trouble selling their customers a complete system as opposed to partial pieces or products. If you’ve ever struggled with this when you’re on the job, keep reading to find out how to educate your homeowners on why a complete system is important for a healthy and proper running home system. 

Explaining Whole vs. Partial Systems

As we know, total system replacement can be a big investment for homeowners. You’ll likely hear this train of thought from your customers:

“We already had the inside portion of our system replaced, so we just want to know how much it will be to replace the outside portion.”

To get past the homeowner’s insistence that half of their system is perfectly fine, you’ll need to emphasize four things.

1. Efficiency

What many of your customers don’t understand is that the efficiency of their system will always be limited to its lowest common denominator. For example, this homeowner has a 13-14 SEER indoor system, but they want to install a 16 SEER outdoor unit. The indoor system is only designed to provide the lower efficiency ratings, and that system is a few years old. This means that home will never see 16 SEER efficiency levels. In fact, it could even dip below 13 SEER over the course of its life. 

2. Effectiveness

When homeowners “Frankenstein” different levels of systems together, it lowers the ability of the system to do its job properly. Systems are designed to work with certain components working together. The homeowners may not know this, but their system will not be able to cool or heat their homes as well as it could. As technicians, it is your job to educate your customers on what will work best for their homes.

3. Total Investment

It usually appears that replacing a single component of a system will be cheaper than buying an entirely new one, but that isn’t the case. Continuing to piece together parts of the system over time will end up costing them more money in the long run than if they just installed a complete system today. Plus, they won’t be receiving the efficiency or effectiveness they think they are with all of the mismatched components.

4. Bonus

Some homeowners will be stuck on the loss of money they have already invested in their failing system, or the amount of money they have to invest to get it all working together again. This is the perfect time to add a bonus benefit to tip the scales. Give them a financial incentive that makes installing a complete system now worth the perceived cost. For example, the 5% efficiency increase that will lower their utility bill or a buy back deal for their older system makes them feel like they aren’t wasting their money.

Find a powerful analogy

Another great tool you can use to educate or explain the flaw in replacing partial components is the use of analogy. For example:

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith, when you go out to buy a car, would you hook the front end of a Tesla to the back end of a Ford truck?”

This example shows how piecemealing two different systems doesn’t make sense, especially when the customer could be getting the performance of an entire Tesla. This is an example that most homeowners will understand better on a field they relate more to.

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