Click to Buy’s Aaron Bramwell on HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed

Click to Buy’s Aaron Bramwell was recently interviewed on the vodcast, HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed. Check out what he had to say about e-commerce strategies and building value with a digital presence.

a photo of the podcast

When homeowners are sweating HVAC issues that make their homes inhabitable, they want service immediately. Lengthy request-a-quote forms and waiting on confirmation is the last thing a customer wants to endure in an HVAC crisis. .

Click to Buy is an innovative platform offering automated estimates leading to greater ease of purchasing HVAC services online. With Click to Buy, HVAC businesses and contractors can sell annual service and maintenance programs, add a priority charge for emergency service, get paid upfront for one-time services, and more.

Since HVAC issues can pop up at any time, Click to Buy provides customizable estimates 24/7/365, meaning you are there for your customers any time and can bring in sales even if your business is closed.

HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed

HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed is a weekly streaming vodcast that interviews HVAC industry leaders and disruptors hosted by Thaddeus Tondu (Thad) and Evan Hoffman. Their goal is to bring an understanding of the HVAC industry. Thad and Evan recently interviewed the founder of Click to Buy, Aaron Bramwell. In the hour-long podcast, they covered everything from Aaron’s 20+ year history in the home services industry to his advice on how to start a digital presence and his hobby as a beekeeper. In this vodcast, Aaron, Thad, and Evan delve into pricing, e-commerce strategies, how to market add-on services, and more!

On the Slow Adoption of E-commerce Strategies by Home Service Companies

 

Thad: Why do you think that the home services, and even HVAC specifically, why do you think that there’s a slow adoption to be able to bring in these e-commerce-based strategies?

 

Aaron: “That’s a great question. I would say the quickest answer is change is hard. I think that we in the digital space are accustomed to the pace at which digital moves and evolves. That’s the reason people hire us collectively, is because we’re keeping our pulse on that and they’ve got a business to run. And a lot of them are still trying to figure out CRM tools and still trying to figure out how to manage their digital marketing and so adding one more piece to that is hard for them, some of them, to compute. So that falls into the general “change is hard” category.”

“I would also say, and again in our minds we really are focused on services, so the challenge of selling services versus selling products. The selling of products has been online for a long time, whether it’s Shopify, WooCommerce, or other options out there. It’s not an unknown entity on how to be able to sell a product. Services are a little bit harder to calculate. The variety that we’ve seen between even similar companies in the same trade are very different in how they want to package things and how they want to sell things. Selling services requires a bit of different thinking. In some cases, not so much if it’s a one-time diagnostic; you know what the cost is; cool, put it online and let somebody pay for it. In other cases, and where we really have a lot of fun and really are trying to help educate, is the value of options and thinking how can I deconstruct really large services to let somebody give me a little bit of money to start that engagement in that relationship to build trust along the way. How they potentially have to deconstruct larger services into more purchasable offerings is one that takes a little bit of creative thinking. But the other piece that I think is important to the whole e-commerce thought process is that we’ve got to put ourselves in the mind of the homeowners that are buying these services and legacy models. The way historically services have been packaged and sold may not be the way that homeowners really need and want to buy them. So, deconstructing those to provide different types of financing options and different types of purchasing options. Maybe, it is a more recurring service but you still want to offer a one-time option; great, let’s explore that, test it, and see what works. That creative thinking about change is a part of it, and some of them just need a little help.”

On the Value of Add-ons or Order Bumps in Shopping Carts

 

Thad: One thing when you talk about is adding multiple services to an order form, or order bumps. Is there something that you found in that part of the process, whether using an order bump or not, and if you are, is there something that you find is working quite well?

 

Aaron: “We’ve played with a couple different things. We call them add-on services. It’s pretty much the same thing. There are a couple of different ways you can handle it. One is if there is an additional bump specific to that service, like, “Hey, we’re going to come out and do this. Do you want something that’s directly related to it?” That’s one option, and that’s one of the ways we’ve gotten it out. The second option is where you promote uncorrelated services. For example, you came out here you want to buy pest control. Do you want us to do your lawn too? Do you want to buy an annual HVAC maintenance plan? You can cross-sell different services across different categories. It was kind of an unknown when we launched it to see how many people may come for one thing and buy a totally uncorrelated service. So one option is to get them within the buying process, so you came, you wanted this; here are some additional bumps or add-ons. The other option is to just continually reinforce that. So once they do check out, we have something that says, “oh, by the way, did you know we also offer these other services?”

“There’s this push and pull on the e-commerce side where we’ve got to keep a deep empathy for the homeowner, how do they want to buy, what would be of interest, what cadence might they want some kind of financing plan based on their budget or finances, what kind of services, might they really just need someone to fix their toilet? Okay, great, don’t make me send the request-a-quote for that; let me pay you 150 bucks to come out and fix it. So it’s having empathy for the homeowner, but it’s also then in the business owner’s mind, how can we deliberately not blow up the machine but make those tiny little steps to start to build a bridge to e-commerce overall.”

To listen to the videocast in its entirety, head to the link below!

 

 

 

 

Get Started With Click to Buy

Click to Buy makes it easier for customers to buy services at any time of the day, which helps you make sales even when you’re closed. As a digital solution to the outdated request-a-quote forms, Click to Buy is modernizing how businesses sell their services.

With Click to Buy, businesses get paid before they provide HVAC services, eliminating the need to collect payment in person or to employ sales staff for on-site quoting. In addition to the HVAC industry, Click to Buy offers options for appliance repair, electrical, lawn care, pest care, and plumbing businesses.

Learn how to get started with Click to Buy.