How to Design HVAC Sales Tools Sales, Distributors and Reps and Will Actually Use
Beautiful, comprehensive documents that nobody reads are not winning. Here’s a conversation that happened last week between a VP of Sales and their Marketing Director: Marketing: “I created this great one-pager for the field team!” VP: “I like it. It’s great. But you can’t give that to somebody and expect them to know what to do.” That exchange captures…
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How Customer Stratification Can Help an HVAC/R Distributor
HVAC/R distributors sit in the middle of a demanding value chain: manufacturers rely on them to place products close to the market, while contractors rely…
How PE is Changing the HVAC Contractor Landscape
I recently read an article on LinkedIn with a headline that asked an “uncomfortable” question: Is private equity ruining home services? After reading & reflecting…
Your Best People Are Retiring and Nobody Wrote Any of It Down
While inventory may site on your balance sheet as your most important financial investment, every distributor owner and manager knows that their people are their…
Optimizing Sales Call with a Sales Whisper
One Customer Signal Can Change a Sales Call. Thousands Can Change the Business. HVAC manufacturers and distributors operate in a market where timing matters. Seasonal…
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Your Best People Are Retiring and Nobody Wrote Any of It Down
While inventory may site on your balance sheet as your most important financial investment, every distributor owner and manager knows that their people are their biggest asset and can also be their biggest liability. They are an asset as they are the #1 differentiator within your business. Without them, a distributor is a vending machine. People interact with customers, with…
Optimizing Sales Call with a Sales Whisper
One Customer Signal Can Change a Sales Call. Thousands Can Change the Business. HVAC manufacturers and distributors operate in a market where timing matters. Seasonal demand shifts quickly. Contractors need fast answers. Equipment replacement cycles create opportunities. Weather, regulations, inventory, and project schedules influence what buyers need and when. The information needed to understand these changes often exist, but it…
The Next HVAC Battleground: Owning the Contractor Lifecycle
It’s already happening in Europe. Manufacturers owning contractors as part of their data center strategy. Recently I was “trolling” LinkedIn and ran across an article from Carl Fredrik Sverdrup, a Zurich-based partner in an investment firm. His LinkedIn article focused on Mitsubishi Electric’s recent announcement of the acquisition of two groups to strengthen its installation and maintenance capabilities to serve…
Ricardo Bristotti to Lead Nidec’s Global Appliance Platform
Nidec Global Appliance (GA), a business platform of Nidec and owner of the Embraco HVAC&R solutions brand, announced Ricardo Bristotti as its new president. Bristotti takes on the leadership to drive the next phase of growth and strengthen GA’s global portfolio. For the last 15 years, Ricardo has built a career spanning both the appliance and industrial segments, starting in…
Home Depot’s HVAC/R Strategy Is Getting Bigger
A few months ago, I wrote about Home Depot’s acquisition of Mingledorff’s and what it could mean for the future of HVAC/R distribution. Now we have another piece of the puzzle. This week, SRS Distribution announced its agreement to acquire Lohmiller & Co., a Denver-based HVAC/R distributor with four Colorado locations and approximately 220 employees. SRS, of course, is the specialty…
Women in HVACR Announces Breakout Speakers for Annual Conference
Women in HVACR (WHVACR), a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering women in the heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration trades, announces Carrie Fraser, Bryce Batts and Michelle Myers as three of its breakout speakers for the 2026 annual conference, Built for Speed. The three sessions will provide attendees with practical guidance on leading through uncertainty, creating workplaces where women can…
AI Is Confident. That Doesn’t Mean It’s Right.
Artificial intelligence has become one of the most transformative technologies of our time. It can write reports, summarize meetings, analyze spreadsheets, generate code, answer questions, and even help us brainstorm creative ideas. Used well, AI can save hours of work and dramatically improve productivity. But as AI becomes more capable, it also introduces a subtle and potentially dangerous problem: it…
Watsco’s Q2 Results Signal a Return to Normal: HVAC Market Stabilizes
Watsco, the Florida headquartered distributor in the North American HVAC market, serving over 125,000 contractors and installers through over 692 locations in the US, announced 2Q 2026 earnings on July 29. Watsco reported second-quarter 2026 results that reflected a stabilizing but margin-compressed environment, with revenue up 2% to $2.1 billion. Gross profit declined 4% to $579 million as gross margin…
